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?