Pinterest Project

For me winter is a time for hot food, roaring wood fires and craft fads. The long evenings inside mean that I need to find something to occupy me but with my limited attention span my hobbies rarely last more than a season. Last year it was loom bands, the year before scrapbooks and knitting nancy, this year I've stumbled across crochet.

I find the best hobbies for me are ones that keep my hands occupied but don't require a lot of concentration because the tv is usually on and I find noise very distractive. I like to be able make things and have the satisfaction of looking back at them even if they are useless!

Considering I have only started to crochet this week I'm quite pleased with my progress. My first little play around with the wool produced these little balls which I made without a pattern or any idea what I was doing. The best part is that I don;t really know how they happened or what to use them for and when I tried to follow a pattern for a ball I couldn't get past the first row!

 After mucking about making swatches of random double stitch and single stitch I decided I had better try to actually make something so I turned to my old friend Pinterest for ideas. I came across a pattern for a phone cover which said it was suitable for beginners so off I went. It was easy enough and the only mistake I made was that I didn't really make it wide enough so although it fits my phone, it's a really really tight fit which isn't very convenient if I want to check it regularly. I did make it though and it hasn't fallen apart yet so I'm still pretty pleased!

 And of course I can always make another. I also have a couple of other little ideas that I want to try to crochet so I'll let you know how I go. Do you know any easy crochet patterns for me to try?

 

Mother's Day

Mother's day this year was a bit different for me mostly because my Dad was here too. Usually I take Mum out for a meal, cook something or I buy her a bunch of little gifts so that it's like a mini christmas. This year though I decided that we should go away for the weekend, Dad included, to Taupo which is known for it's thermal waters.

Taupo is only about 2-3 hours away from where we live, depending on fast you drive and how many stops you make so we set aside the whole day to get there knowing that we could do the tourist things along the way. Our first stop was actually on the side of the road where there was some driftwood art in the shape of a kiwi which I thought was not only amazing in it's own right but also well placed because along the way there were road signs warning about kiwis. We passed the main mountains of the north island on the way and although Ruapehu didn't have a lot of snow it still looked lovely. For those of you who don't know, Mount Ruapehu is actually used as the filming location for Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings. 

 

Our first main stop though was a little thermal town half way to Taupo where we stopped to have a bathe in a thermal pool. We also had a look around their thermal forest (which was free) where there are natural hot pools and bubbling mud areas. Me and Dad couldn't resist hopping the fence for a better look even though there are danger signs. We will get caught out one day but until then we will keep bending the rules. The water was so hot there that the local people use it for cooking, they put baskets of food into the water to boil or build wooden platforms over the vents to steam. I would have loved to give it a try but we didn't have any food with us that could be cooked!  

 

On the way past Lake Taupo, which is the largest lake in New Zealand, I managed to get stuck behind some slow traffic so I pulled into on of the rest areas and it just happened to have a family of black swans and an awesome crop of mushrooms.

The main highlight of the trip was the Wai-O-Tapu thermal area which we stumbled across while looking for another thermal swimming pool which we knew was somewhere on the outskirts of Taupo. Along the Wai-O-Tapu road was the most amazing boiling mud lake I've seen and I took so many pics and videos of it that I have more than I know what to do with. Unfortunately out of the 200nodd pics I took only about 4 are decent and even then they aren't anywhere near as impressive as the actual thing. Mostly I think the noise is the most fascinating and with out that it really is just mud!

Further along the road we saw a sign for a geyser but when we got to the end of the road it turned out that you had to pay to go in to see and being the cheap skates that we are we didn't want to pay, especially because we had been told they put chemicals into the geyser to make it perform at certain times of day which didn't seem right to us. There's no point going to see a natural wonder if it's not natural after all. Feeling a bit disappointed we carried on down the road until we saw some more steam and pulled over to have a look. Turns out we had found a thermal stream where the temperature was low enough to bathe. It was a balmy 38c we reckon which was lovely and hot but not burning. After a hasty road side change into our bathing suits we got into the water and really enjoyed the atmosphere and the fact that once again we had found something so amazing for free! The pools that we had been aiming for would have cost us $15 each and are usually quite busy. Bathing in the stream was not only nicer on our pockets it felt far more special knowing that the water was pure thermal, no temperature control or ph checks, no infrastructure, just the trees and the bird song. It was truly magical. 

 

After our bathe and slightly awkward change back into clothes between the doors of the car we decided to go and have another look at the geyser area. This time when we got there the gates were open so we wandered down and had a look at what all the fuss was about. It was actually amazing in it's natural state and although it wasn't consistent it was still rather impressive which made us wonder if they really needed to put chemicals in to impress the tourists. Again we took far too many photos and even played the camera settings to get a group shot of us. We had the place to ourselves as the sign had been removed from the end of the road which made us feel dodgy about the company that runs the area, almost like they didn't want people to know it was there unless you were going to the paid show. They had a whole area fenced further down the road that you could pay to go into but it cost $32 a person and from the look of the brochure had nothing more amazing that what we had already seen for free, so needless to say we didn't go into the complex.

It was an amazing weekend in so many ways and the fact that we managed to do so much without destroying our wallets really made it all the better!

When One Adventure Ends, Another Begins

After two months together I am at a bit of loss now that Dad has returned home to England. Isn't it funny how quickly a big change can become normal in our lives. After all, his arrival was quite an upheaval in the normality of routine here. Work was shuffled, our diet changed, our pets got extra attention and of course me and Dad travelled about 6,000kms in my poor beat up old car! I'm sure that soon enough the big change of him leaving will become normal too and my routine will drop back into place but for now it's all a bit odd.

We dropped him off at the airport super early on Friday morning and, as ever, when presented with an emotionally charged scenario I kinda wandered off into my brain to distract myself. For example check out the control tower. It's a face right? That's not just me trying really hard to find something else to think about is it? Well maybe...

Once we got home I kinda threw myself into doing stuff to keep busy. I sorted out Dads room, got the washing on and then started loading books onto the shelves that Dad had built for us. I'm hoping to have these full pretty soon along with the rest of my shelves. These bad boys are the start of my home library and will soon have the company of a few more shelves hopefully.

Rush is going to miss Dad too because everytime he showed up it meant that it was walking time! Over the next few entries I'll tell you some of the tales of the things we got up while Dad was here as well as writing about what I'm getting up to in my day to day life now that things are going back to 'normal'

A Little Something

So much has happened in the last two months that's it's difficult for me to decide what to write about first. I've been exploring my birth country with my father for possibly the last time which brings mixed emotions. I've been happy, sad, lonely, overwhelmed, excited and scared sometimes all in one day. I've hatched big plans, struggled with my inner demons, learnt things about myself and what I mean to others and ultimately come to the conclusion that my life is for me to live while I can. After all what am I waiting for? The prince charming who doesn't exist? For me to win a million on lotto even though I don't buy tickets? For the right time....

The right time never really seems to arrive, yet in reflection I can find no reason for it ever being the wrong time, it is just time and it will also be just time. You never know if it's right or wrong until you do it and I read a quote recently that really struck a chord with me so I thought I'd share it.

“It's a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you're ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.”

On that note I have decided to move to England for a year to stay with my family. Why now? Why not! I don't really have a plan for my life except that I want to do something that makes me happy and I don't quite seem to be achieving that here. Chances are I won't find what I'm looking for in the UK either but I am still young and healthy and I'd like to see some more of Europe so I'm just going to go for it. There are things here that I will miss and certain people but they will be here when I return. Or perhaps not, but that's just a chance that you have to take when you travel. After all there are things and people in England that I miss while I am here so I never win really!

So stay tuned for further news of my up coming adventures and in the mean time I will tell you some stories from the places I have been in the last two months.