Sunday 29 July 2012

A Beautiful... Wild And Windy Weekend...


I went with a friend and we parked at the end of a dirt road that we had been told about.
It's actually a small DoC car park.
It's at the end of a long beach that stretches from the rocky bluff at Langs Beach, past Waipu Cove,
past Uretiti DoC camp south to where we are...
Opposite is the north side of the entrance to Whangarei Heads.
The weather was wet and windy and got wilder and wetter as the weekend progressed.
These are some photos I took between showers...
Deserted... Dark... Windswept... And Beautiful...
 
 
 
 
 
Posted by Picasa

Saturday 28 July 2012

An Unbelievable Contrast...


Living in the small country of New Zealand I have experienced a certain amount of fascination as I have looked at these pictures...
Of the most crowded cities in the world.
I was born in New Zealand... With a current popuation of about 4.5 million... And have always lived here.
I have travelled in the UK, Ireland, Europe and The Carribean.
The only Asian country I have been to is Japan.
When we live and grow up in a certain place we become familiar with the culture of that place...
Including the culture of the personal space we feel comforable with. 
The comparison of these crowded cities...
Each with their own fascinations and cuture...
Is such a contrast to some of the places I have parked at
and spent time at recently.


This is where I am parked now... For the weekend.
It's a cool blustery day and hardly another person in sight.
 

This is Tauranga Bay... A most beautiful spot and good for fishing.
I spent a week here last summer...
A very popular spot... And by New Zealand standards...
Crowded with motor homes, caravans and tents in the summer.
 

The beach at Uretiti... part of it is a designated Naturist beach.
It's a great place and not far from the DoC camp where I park for weeks at a time...
Summer and winter
 

This is the Avon River in Christchurch...
Not far from the CBD...
But after the earthquakes there...
Again nobody about.
 

Traffic of a different kind...
A BlowKart racing along the beach at Ramp Road.

Friday 27 July 2012

More and More People... Faster and Faster...


Since I did my last post on world population...
Here are the next six most populous cities.
Since I did my last post the world popuation has grown by a mere...
138,765 people.
Another chart on the same web site, look here...
gives the increase in world population since the year 1...
Stats put together by who... I don't know...But it sure makes for interesting reflection.
 
 
 
 


 



Sunday 22 July 2012

How Fast Are We Growing... World Population...



A friend set me an email recently with these pictures... And the question at the bottom.
I found the chart above... Look here...
The numbers change faster than I could read them...
Have a look.
 
 
 
 
 
  

Fascinatingly huge centres of population  !!!
 AND, I wonder , are the people in these cities paying a comparably  HUGE Carbon Tax as will the people of New Zealand  ; a sparsely populated country of 4.5 million ; by the middle of this year     
                     

Saturday 21 July 2012

I've Been Knitting... Felted Slippers...


My daughter in Sydney knitted me a  pair of these slippers. They are so unusual I had to have a go... And try them out... But who would I make them for.
Well a friend offered to be the recipient, so we bought 4 balls of felting wool...
Colours of his choice... And I got started.
I haven't knitted very much for a long time...
But squares of garter stitch... Well that's not difficult.

As you can see... the nearly finished article looks less like a slipper than anything you can imagine... But...

Turn into a slipper it did...
Very oversize and enormous...
But that's how it's meant to be!
During the puzzle of how to sew them up I renamed them...
The Origami Slippers.
I had to refer to the pattern several times.
It comes from a web site called Ravelry.
Look here for the pattern and lots more.

You can see how big they are... These were made to fit size 10.

But that was about to change...
They had to be felted.
My daughter, when she made mine, did this in the washing machine...
But I don't have one of those!
So it had to be done by hand.
I heated up a pot of water... the instructions said to 60 degrees.
And in went the slippers.
I had the expectation that they would get such a shock from the hot water they would felt immediately...
But no... absolutely nothing happened... what was the problem?
I 'Googled' felting and discovered that in these 'modern' days it is done either in a washing machine or dryer.
Well,  as I live 'off-grid' in my house bus the felting had to be done by hand.
This, I discovered is a whole different matter.

I added some soap, kept the water reasonably hot and discovered friction is what does the felting.
The picture here is after nearly two hours of reasonable agitation...
We took turns!
I also discovered... Watching a clip on U Tube... that the stitches soften and go quite floppy and soft before they start to close up.
The process was fascinating... Watching the slipper turn from a huge sloppy article to being tight thick and felted.
The last half hour they needed close watching as the process seemed to speed  up and it's easy to overfelt and make them too small.
Can't reverse this... So need to be careful.
I took them out of the water several times to check them.

Here they are wet but pulled into shape. One was smaller than the other so needed a little more stirring.
At the end my friend put them wet on his feet and we pulled and shaped them.
He wore them wet for half an hour then we put them to dry.
They took two days to dry outside in the wind then by the fire at night.

Here is the finished slipper. Shaping them while wet made definite left and right foot shapes.
They are very thick, very snug...
My friend loves them.
I have already been asked for the pattern...
So have a look on Ravelry.
 
Posted by Picasa

Thursday 19 July 2012

Licorice Allsorts... Everywhere!


How could I resist?
I was looking for some new gumboots... An essential item in my house bus lifestyle.
I saw them in a shop and couldn't resist them.
I love them and the licorice allsorts...
Well  my blog of course.
 
Posted by Picasa

Wednesday 18 July 2012

A New Quilt For My Bed...


When I bought my house bus I wanted to furnish it with sea and sand colours.
The floor is wooden and the couch and chairs are beige suede, the walls are painted white.
So that gives me plenty of scope for adding colour.
The first thing I found was a floor mat...
A 'rag' mat made in India... All different blues.
Then I found this quilt... Also hand-made and dyed in India... At the same shop...
Trade Aid, in Whangarei.
The colours are perfect... The underside is a plain blue which gives more colour for the winter...
The top is patterened...
There is a range of blues and green.
Underneath, for warmth  in the winter I use a feather duvet in a white cover.
Now I'm looking for some cushions.
I saw some in Palm Beach, Sydney... I might have to go back there!