A trip to the Supershed

I took a trip to the Supershed yesterday. It's like a massive garage sale - so much stuff for so little money!

This big wicker picnic basket was on sale for $7. I would have bought it if we didn't already have a picnic set.



Printers, $4 each.


Lots of computer parts!



Missing a rack for your fridge or cooker? You might find something suitable in this pile.


I think the suitcases were $2 each.


I wouldn't hold out much hope of getting a complete set of anything, but there certainly wasn't any shortage of crockery.


I bought a scanner (not sure if it works yet - I need to find a cable that fits), some old National Geographic magazines from the 1960s/70s, a couple of other magazines, a tea caddy with geese on it, a teatowel hook with a goose on it, and a new non-stick baking tray, for a grand total of $7. Due to the terrible weather we've been having lately, I only looked around indoors so I don't know what is for sale outside, but there is a large area piled high with stuff. I'll be back to check out what else is there whenever this rain stops.

Things that keep catching me out

We've been in New Zealand for nearly 18 months now, and some things keep catching me out, particularly regarding the seasons. I know the facts, but they haven't quite clicked in my head yet. This is the type of thing that I'm having trouble drilling into my thick skull:
- June/July/August are not "summer"
- Easter is not in spring
- Hallowe'en is not in autumn
- there is no holiday to break up the long winter
- my birthday, traditionally in autumn, has suddenly moved to spring
- daffodils bloom in August
- leaves fall off the trees in April

and one other thing which kept tripping me up when we were looking for a house to buy:
- south-facing properties are no longer a good thing. North-facing is what you should look for if you want a nice sunny home and garden.

Weirdness.

Things New Zealand doesn't have (Part 5)

New Zealand doesn't have fuses. Well, I'm sure it does in some places, but standard electrical plugs don't seem to have fuses. I've got no idea how this works or why it's deemed safe (and we already had one plug meltdown which could easily have set the house on fire), but it seems to be standard.

Here's a UK plug. Note the large size, three rectangular prongs, and drawing of a fuse on the label to show where inside the plug the fuse lives:



And here's a Kiwi plug - small size and with three flat prongs, only the top two of which are actually required :

I think the third prong is for earthing the appliance, but the sockets work fine without it, unlike UK sockets which seem to require that third prong to "open up" the other two. The third prong also makes all the plug sockets look like sad little faces.

This is what has kept us going over the last 18 months - that's right, it's a plug adapter:
Skry's dad did rewire lots of UK plugs for us when he was here in January, but we haven't figured out how to do that for ourselves so there are lots of UK plugs still in use. My bedside lamp, laptop, camera chargers, our DS chargers, my hairdryer, the stereo... the list goes on. We really must figure out how to rewire the rest of them for ourselves, but it just hasn't happened yet!

Signed up for Craft2.0

I've signed up and paid for a stall at Craft2.0 this year - it's a craft fair and is being held in Christchurch on June 6th this year. If you're around, call in and check it out! I'll be selling fabric items and jewellery, but there will be lots of other sellers too making and selling all kinds of things. I'm really looking forward to it.

Here are some pictures of the types of things I'll be selling:






Hopefully it'll be a really fun day, I'll sell lots of stuff, buy lots of cool stuff from other sellers, and meet some nice people as well. This will only be my third time doing a stall, but I feel like I've got a fairly good idea now of how to prepare for this sort of thing. Expect to hear more about this topic in coming weeks!

Library books

I don't go through the main entrance for the bus station in town very often, but I spotted this the other day beside the ramp leading to the station itself. It's a facility for returning library books without having to go to the library. Isn't that handy?

Dawn in Christchurch

A few mornings ago, we woke up to a beautiful dawn sky, and I was coherent enough even at that hour to go out and take some photos. Isn't it pretty?

Wet chickens

The weather here has been very changeable recently. The last two days were like summer - it was 26c on Monday! - but today is like winter again. It has been cold and wet all day.

The chickens have eaten all the grass from the inside of their run, and with all the rain it has turned into a big mud bath. Their eggs in the nest are all muddy from their dirty feet, and their feathers are all bedraggled. But yet they don't seem too bothered at all!

The Nor'west arch

The Nor'west Arch is a a really dramatic cloud formation in the sky towards the Southern Alps, caused by a particular weather pattern. The clouds make a perfect, even arch in an otherwise clear blue sky. (While I was on the roof of our office building on Monday I had a perfect view of it, and was wishing I'd brought my camera.) It also brings a strange warm wind called the Nor'wester which can mess with people's brains and make them feel angry or depressed or give them migraines.

By the time I was walking home from work that afternoon I couldn't see the dramatic arch any more, but I did see some really unusual clouds and was able to photograph them on my phone. They looked like there was a big dent on the underneath. And it certainly was big - this plane looks quite dwarfed by it.



True to its nature, the Nor'wester also trailed some cold wet weather behind it. By Tuesday night it was pouring rain, and it has been raining for most of today (Wednesday). I hope this weather pattern blows away again before the Easter weekend!

Just popped in to say hello, and show off my new bag

I have been neglecting my blog recently (and my emails too - sorry folks!). I'm spending so much time crafting that I am not online much apart from the sewing sites and jewellery sites and the online handcrafted item selling sites.

Here's a bag that I made for a colleague's daughter-in-law, which he asked me to make based on one of hers that is falling apart. He hasn't seen it yet. Hope he likes it - and the daughter-in-law too, of course.
It's about 30cm wide and 20cm tall. I made it out of a lovely soft black gabardine fabric, brightened up with some pretty pink flower cotton from Michael Miller. It's all fully lined, even inside the pockets.

Lifting up the front flap reveals a full sized zip pocket on the front:


Inside there is another long zip pocket, and three patch pockets.

This bag holds loads of stuff - in the first photo above, it was padded out with two of my cardigans. It took me about three hours to make once I had figured out the pattern pieces that I needed (I have a little notebook that I am using for drafting patterns - bags aren't really that difficult once you have a grasp of inserting linings and inserting zips). I'll definitely make this style again, as I think it would sell very well.

A four-day week

A few weeks ago, I reduced my hours at my office job to 30 hours a week in order to have more time for the other things I do in life. While this means a fairly substantial cut in pay, having a four-day week is wonderful. I'm feeling more relaxed, more creative, and have started up my online shop again.

I've opened up a shop on ArtFire, which is an American-based online store for all kinds of handmade items. There are artisans there from all over the world, and the site is growing every day. It's free to join, and I recommend that you go there if you make your own things and want to sell them, or if you want to buy gifts that you won't find anywhere else.

The link to my shop is here:
http://DaisyhillDesign.artfire.com

From there, you can browse all over the site. There are some wonderful items, and great prices!

Things New Zealand doesn't have (Part 4)

Here's something New Zealand doesn't have that is actually quite cool. Unless I have been misinformed, there are no traffic lights anywhere on the west coast of the South Island. In fairness, this whole island only has one million people on it, and the vast majority of those are on the east coast, but still I think it's pretty cool that the towns don't have traffic lights. Greymouth has nearly 10,000 people living in and around it, but still, no lights. (They do have roundabouts.)

I wonder how people are able to pass their driving tests if they live somewhere that doesn't have much traffic or standard junction types. It's hardly fair to make them travel to another part of the country to take their test, especially since they will need a few lessons as well, but it's also hardly right to give them a full licence without having experienced the basics of "normal" driving conditions.

Mind you, I obtained my own driving licence in the UK without ever having driven on a motorway (because learner drivers are not allowed on the motorway) and was then expected to just know how to join traffic driving at 70mph/112kph or more (usually a lot more!) and be able to change lanes and deal with that speed with no experience or tuition whatsoever. There is definitely something wrong with that system. The first time I had to join a motorway, 13 days after passing my test and with nobody else around and no real driving experience apart from lessons twice a week, I nearly cried with terror...

(By the way, I have no idea if the west coast of the North Island, or indeed any other coasts, also have this paucity of traffic lights. Maybe my dear Kiwi readers can keep us informed.)

Things New Zealand doesn't have (Part 3)

New Zealand doesn't have Boots. It doesn't have anything even close to Boots, not in Christchurch anyway.

Boots is the Mecca of one-stop-shopping for all toiletries, cosmetic items, and perfume. The main branch in Belfast had aisle after aisle of just about every brand I could think of and every product I could imagine for primping, preening, and prettifying oneself. And it had a loyalty scheme as well as great offers for free gifts with purchase, or buy-one-get-one, or buy-one-get-1000-points. I was the mistress of going in with a fiver and coming out with an armful of goodies thanks to clever use of my Advantage Card. And I really miss it!

Having said that, I am spending a lot less money now that I don't have this sort of shopping available to me. And it is possible to find some Boots brand stuff in the shops here (I've seen a lot of Sanctuary range for sale in Postie+ and some Natural Collection bits and pieces in the local chemist's). So it's not all bad!

Things New Zealand doesn't have (Part 2)

New Zealand does not have Quorn. Shops aren't allowed to import it because MAF objects to its origins.

Quorn is a meat substitute, made from some sort of mushroom product. My husband is a vegetarian and I don't like many vegetables, so we struggle to eat healthy meals together and usually end up making two versions of something, or eating totally different things. Quorn enabled us to eat things like lasagne, spag bol, chicken stir fry, beef and black bean sauce - I could barely tell that it wasn't real meat, and of course Skry was happy because no animals had to die for his dinner.

Since we moved to Christchurch we have pretty much given up cooking together, and although our crappy kitchen is one factor, the lack of Quorn is another. I don't want to experiment to find out what vegetables I can eat - I'll do that in my own time. And of course I could not ask Skry to start eating meat again. Tofu is just about bearable, but nowhere near as meat-like or versatile.

Come on MAF, let us have our Quorn! Do you really, honestly think that it's a danger to the native ecology just because it started life as a mushroom?

Things New Zealand doesn't have (Part 1)

This is Part 1 of a new series on my blog, Things New Zealand Doesn't Have. This is not a criticism, just an observation!

New Zealand does not have hamsters. They aren't a native species here, and MAF is very careful about preventing plants and animals being imported if they might mess with the plants and animals that are already here.
At least one person has been sent to court for smuggling a hamster into the country (probably more, but I did not carry out an exhaustive search).

MAF says this about importing pets from abroad:
"Importation is currently limited to dogs and cats from certain countries, rabbits from Australia and chinchillas from the United Kingdom."

Who would have imagined that British chinchillas enjoy special status where other chinchillas don't? Bizarre. And I am very sad that I can never have a pet hamster for as long as we live here. They are such cute little things and very interesting pets (although annoying when they make a racket late at night, or chew something they shouldn't), but we will have to content ourselves with just the chickens.

(As an aside, one day about a year ago when Skry was walking home from work, he helped a very drunk woman carry her chinchilla back to her house. It was covered in pink chalk dust. I am not making this up.)

Cicadas

Somebody* just asked me if we have cicadas in Christchurch. The short answer is: yes, we do.

Living in Ireland, my exposure to cicadas was limited to books and films. The grim, cold, rainy Irish climate just isn't attractive enough for them (they prefer an average temperature of 29c). But as soon as I visited a hot country, the noise was obvious. They congregate in trees and make enough noise to be audible even through the closed windows of a car while driving past at 100kph.

Wikipedia says that 'they have loud noisemakers called "timbals" on the sides of the abdominal base. Their "singing" is not the stridulation (where two structures are rubbed against one another) of many other familiar sound-producing insects like crickets: the timbals are regions of the exoskeleton that are modified to form a complex membrane with thin, membranous portions and thickened "ribs". Contracting the internal timbal muscles produces a clicking sound as the timbals buckle inwards. As these muscles relax, the timbals return to their original position producing another click.'

Those timbals are certainly effective, I can tell you that much. Apparently they can reach up to 120 dB, which is definitely on the loud side! On my way to work in the mornings, I cycle through a park with several big old trees, and on a hot morning the cicadas are audible as soon as I reach the park gate.

Oh, and here's a picture of a New Zealand Cicada, courtesy of Landcare Research:


Consider yourselves educated, readers in non-cicada-having countries!




*my brother :P

I'm still alive

Sorry for the lack of recent posts. I am working extremely hard at my day job, taking on some freelance editing work at the weekends, and just haven't found the energy to come up with anything interesting to blog about.

The Australian bushfires are certainly topical, but too heartbreaking to discuss at length. I will mention that the skies here were a weird yellow colour on Sunday night - I think the wind blew some of the smoke and ash in the direction of New Zealand.

God be with those poor people who have lost so much - loved ones, homes, pets, livestock, and businesses. I just can't imagine how awful it is for them right now.

A day out in Geraldine

Today we went with Skry's parents for a day out in Geraldine, which is about a two hour drive south-west from Christchurch.

When we arrived, we had a lovely lunch in a cafe called Verde, which has tables outside in the garden surrounded by flowers. It was a scorching day, above 30c I reckon, so we guzzled cold drinks while we waited for our food.

After lunch, the next stop was the Vintage Car and Machinery Museum. I hadn't paid any attention to the plans for visiting this place, and didn't expect much, but it was really enjoyable! A lot of people have put an awful lot of hard work into gathering and restoring the cars, tractors, farm machinery, motorbikes, and sundry mechanical items. The museum has had some bad luck over the last few years, it seems - at least one fire and a collapsed roof after a huge snowfall which damaged a lot of the exhibits - but they have put together something that was well worth the $7 entry fee.

Since I grew up on a farm and spent a lot of time around tractors as a little girl, I was particularly drawn to the farm machinery sections. Skry's dad was very excited to find a vintage car almost identical to one that he owned when he was much younger, and Skry's mum was very taken with the van kitted out like a gypsy caravan, complete with cast-iron stove inside. As for Skry, I think his favourite piece was the tractor that looked like it had been drawn by a cartoonist, with eyes instead of headlamps.





The swamp plough particularly caught my eye (although I could not get a good photo of it because it was so closely surrounded by other bits and pieces in the shed). First of all, it's the biggest plough that I have ever seen (not that I make a habit of seeking out ploughs of ever-increasing size). Secondly, this was built in the 1940s with an estimated cost of £350, but an actual cost of £1,350. That is a colossal difference, but I guess Mr Wilcox could afford it since he seems to have enjoyed many years of use from his commission. I wonder how many other people could afford one of those... Maybe the company never made any other swamp ploughs of this size after the first one was sold. I'd quite like to find out more!

A special post for Wendy

That is all.

Monarch caterpillars

A few months ago I expressed a desire to plant something which would attract butterflies, then Fiona and Richard very kindly gave me a swan plant for a birthday present. This tiny little plant is quite the butterfly magnet! A few weeks ago we had lots of monarch butterflies landing on it, and now it is covered in colourful yellow and black striped caterpillars. I counted 16 caterpillars on it today and it has barely any leaves left. Poor plant!

But aren't they striking?

Way too hot

Help me, I'm melting!

The thermometer from our now-defunct spa pool still works, and it registered 40c in the sunshine of our deck today. When I moved it into the shade [which I think is the correct way to measure temperature] it dropped to around 34c. I almost wished I had gone to work today just to enjoy the air conditioning! I know that other places, Australia for instance, regularly get this sort of temperature, but I don't know how I'd adjust if it was like this all the time here in Christchurch.

From today's paper:

It's a sizzler: temperatures soar nationwide

By MICHAEL FOX - Stuff.co.nz | Thursday, 08 January 2009

Much of New Zealand sweltered in unusually hot weather today, with reports the mercury topped 40 degrees Celsius in Christchurch.
Hotter than normal temperatures were widespread over New Zealand with 12 locations between Timaru and Gisborne recording temperatures of more than 30C, MetService spokesman Bob McDavitt said.
The MetService had recorded air temperatures up to 35.7C in Christchurch, which made it the hottest day of the summer so far and neared its January record high of 35.9 degrees in 1979.
However, Christchurch-based weather analyst Richard Green reported temperatures of 40C in the early afternoon with the suburb of Barrington reaching 41C, Cashmere 40C and Christchurch city 38C.
MetService spokesperson Nic Bonnette said a ridge of high pressure over the Mainland, combined with north-westerly winds blowing across the ranges, was creating the high temperatures; a weather pattern known as the "Fohn Effect".
"So, much of the areas down that east coast [of the South Island] will be getting quite warm temperatures," she said.
Around Christchurch, Lyttelton was also 33 degrees, while further north Blenheim was 30. Middlemarch and Cromwell have so far peaked at 29.
However, the run of good weather is set to end as a cold front prepares to cross the South Island tomorrow, she said.
In the North Island, Tauranga and Gisborne topped the recordings with 28 degrees.
Police are asking motorists to exercise caution when travelling through the Desert Road this evening. Extreme heat on the Central Plateau caused the tar seal on the road to melt and lift on the Desert Road, and police advised drivers to exercise caution.
The good weather is set to last until Saturday.
HOT OUTLOOK
New Zealanders are looking set to enjoy a long hot summer.
Temperatures through to March are likely to be average or above average across the country, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) said today.
It was likely to be drier than average in the south, but rainfall in the north was expected to be normal or above normal.
Niwa predicted more easterlies than normal in the north but lighter winds than normal in the south.
Moderate La Nina conditions were likely to continue into autumn, it said.
There was a slightly higher chance of an ex-tropical cyclone passing within 500km of the country during the cyclone season through to May.