The week that was....

Another week gone by. Does anyone else feel as amazed as I do that we are almost a quarter of the way through the year again already? Despite turning on hosing down wet weather for the visit of Prince William, we have since had several gorgeous days. Today the sea across the road is blue, the sun is shining and the West Coast bush behind the house looks stunning. Days like this the Coast is a great place to be.

Number two son in Japan abandoned Tokyo after a day of shakes and caught a shinkansen to Osaka for a couple of days. Not long after he headed even further away to Fukuoka to visit a friend. This weekend he has begun the trek back to Osaka and perhaps Tokyo. His parents would probably rather he stayed out of there a bit longer, but his job and apartment are there, and so far the news is not too bad. I guess at 28 he is well used to making his own decisions, but parents always worry about their 'babies' regardless I think.
Here's hoping the Japanese manage to stabilise and control their nuclear power plant before too long.

Not much energy for quilting this week, having worked a full week and then a Saturday morning as well. The mystery quilt borders are still lying across my sewing table and no blue strips have been cut. Does finishing a sleeve for a winter jersey count?

I did take time to play ladies for an afternoon at a Home Hospice fundraiser. Afternoon Tea As It Used To Be saw a large group of ladies attend a catered afternoon tea. We were served cups of tea in fine china cups and treated with cake stands holding tiny sandwiches, pikelets, cream cakes, truffles, and other such delights. All thoughts of calorie counting went out the window as everyone enjoyed an afternoon of indulgence and being waited on.

When there's no energy for craft, there's always time for reading instead. Finished Harriet Evans and Claudia Carroll, plus the latest Diane Blacklock The Right Time. This one I thoroughly enjoyed. A tale of four sisters, each in a different stage of relationships - about to get married; separated; married but with problems; and 'the other woman' outside of a marriage. The personalities are so well written that this was the first book I have read for some time that I have not wanted to put down until it was finished. Definitely a 'chick' book, though.
It didn't take long to read Wally Lamb's Wishin' and Hopin', a lightweight, short novel giving a slice of life in the 1960's. As it's an era I grew up in, even though not in America, I probably enjoyed it more for being able to recognise aspects of the era.
In contrast my next read, Sophie Hannah's Lasting Damage, has a plot so convoluted with twists and turns that I find it hard to make sense of it and I am a third of the way through. So far none of the characters is particularly likeable, and I would almost label it tedious, however, it holds enough interest for me to want to find out what is really happening.

We've just heard from the son in Japan that he is on his way back to Tokyo. It appears even the French friends are confident the situation is stabilizing. I wish I was as confident, but time will tell. At least the local charlatan Ken Ring is not predicting another earthquake there!

More earthquakes - now it's Tokyo

Just as everything is as settled as it can be for the Christchurch side of the family, the earthquake strikes in Tokyo where our middle son is working. Fortunately, again, all is OK. He was apparently at work when a MASSIVE (his capitals) earthquake set their building rolling for quite some time. After that it was a one hour walk home to his ninth floor apartment as all the subway lines were shut. Nine floors up he says the building is gently swaying now and again meaning not much sleep. Major damage is miles out of Tokyo and the ramshackle buildings he thought would be damaged have apparently been built to take earthquakes so they are still there.
My husband made the brilliant comment that as all the rest of the family had been 'quaked' it must be our turn next. He knows just what he can do with that comment!
This weekend he is off pitting his wits against the salmon at Lake Mapourika. To date the salmon has won, and I don't quite know what we would do with a whole salmon anyway, but he will have fun.
It amuses me when I hear comments about quilting along the lines of 'why would you want to cut up all this fabric just to sew it together again'. I figure standing for hours in a cold river tossing out bits of line, only to throw back what you eventually catch, is in much the same league.
Anyway this weekend I intend to cut up and sew together some fabric in the hope of finishing the borders on my mystery quilt tops. Then I have a lot of blue and white fabrics selected to begin a log cabin quilt for my mother-in-law. She liked this one I made in the past so I will probably copy it. Time to cut up a zillion strings of fabric.

Personally I prefer the zing of this one which I made for both my son and my nephew, but she will like the classic blue and white better.

Before I do that it is blob out time with two books I need to finish this weekend. Harriet Evans' Love Always which so far promises to be a love story intertwined with a tale of family secrets coming to light. Then, in what I feel might be lighter mode, there's Colette Caddle's Always on My Mind. Both are a total contrast to Down Among the Dead Men by Michelle Williams which is on my iPad. The writing in this is not the best, but it's a fascinating tale of a year in the life of a mortuary technician in England, best read in small sections.
So now - lunch, reading, quilting and just possibly, if I really have to,  a very little housework.

Christchurch shakes on

Another quake last night which I felt here on the Coast. My son called it a doozy, and I'm sure everyone is just wishing they would stop already.
Eldest son now has his father's bike, his work is re-opened, power and water (at low pressure), back on and food in the house. He is one of the luckier ones. His workplace has also organised showers, washers and driers for their workers and good on them for being proactive.
Youngest son lives in an area which had very little damage at all and for him life goes on much as normal, with the addition of being 'all shook up' several times a day.
Mother-in-law, with food delivered by Jean, now has power and water back on, and a chance to be taken out shopping with some stores re-opened.
We have many who have fled Christchurch here on the Coast and you can tell by some faces that they are shattered. Our family are some of the lucky ones. From all we hear Christchurch seems like a city of two halves. There are areas where people have lost everything and other areas where it is as if nothing has happened, at least in the way of damage.

Keeping in touch with those in Christchurch each evening, plus work with a staff member away, has meant little energy for quilting, which somehow doesn't seem too important anyway. Must get back to it though as it serves me as a great stress relief. I brought back fabric from the North Island to make into gifts for those we stayed with, so the placemat-making production line is going to have to swing into action.
This is usually my weekend for a quilt retreat in Marahau, out of Nelson, but having just had a holiday I have to skip it this time. Nothing like a weekend sewing, with no household distractions, to get heaps done. I will be hanging out for the next retreat in Nelson in July.

Taking up a lot of spare time at the moment is the new toy - the iPad. I have loaded on more word games, Solitaire and Sudoku,  which can all be great time-wasters. The excuse is it is keeping the brain active! There are also several downloaded books ready to read when I finish the supply of 'real' books I have on hand. I've found an iPad app which lets me check out my Google RSS feeds, plus added a dictionary, thesaurus and calculator. Then there is the app which gives me a series of Monet paintings to explore and an iPad version of Stumbleupon. If you have never tried this out then, depending on your point of view, it is either another time-waster or a form of serendipity as you are led to many websites you might otherwise not come across. The choice of websites depends on the initial interests and topics which you set up.

Naturally I still make time for reading and at the moment it is Lee Child. Just finished 61 Hours and moved on to Worth Dying For. Despite the formulaic style they still make fairly satisfying reading without making great demands on the brain. 
I've also just scanned Martin Hawes' Twenty Good Summers which poses the question of how to spend the years left to live as we get older. It's rather intriguing to look at life in terms of the number of summers which may remain, but rather depressing to find that you probably have to spend most of the few you may have left working just as hard as usual. Guess we just have to win Lotto.

Christchurch earthquake - unbelievable

From a beautiful view like this walking up Mount Maunganui....

I returned to work to find my 'mesk' looking like this....

And then the news of the Christchurch earthquake struck on my first day back. It was felt here on the West Coast, but not as badly as the first quake in September. Having two sons and an 86 year old mother-in-law in the city there was a bit of anxious waiting to confirm where the damage was and where they were.

My eldest son was walking down a stairwell at his work, stopped on a shaking landing and then the power went off leaving him in the dark. As soon as the shaking stopped he was out of the building, work was stopped and he trekked an hour home as obviously there were no buses. He said it was an interesting experience with constant shakes, walking around piles of rubble, and avoiding silt spilling out of the ground. Several days on he has power, but still no water, although there is a water tanker not too far away. His flat is not damaged and he has had a visit from Red Cross checking his street which is off Colombo Street, and providing leaflet information on various services. Amazing that they are doing a house to house in the area to check on people which is great. Physically fine, it is the logistics of things which will be a problem - no transport and the nearest open supermarket was 90 minutes walk away. Others are now beginning to open up. His flatmates have fled to places where the ground does not move, so lack of company is also a factor.

Youngest son got under a table at work and then set off for home on his bike. His flatmates are staying around and they have a bolthole offered out of Christchurch if they wish. Being in Riccarton they only suffered things falling off shelves, and have both power and water back on, but obviously few shops open at this stage.

Mother-in-law, in her own unit in a retirement village, is determined to stay put and not come to stay with us. In fact she will not even go out shopping when offered a chance. They had water on, but it is now off again. The village has a water tanker and portaloos (which she will not use so guess her garden will be well fertilised this year!). The Oxford Terrace Baptist Church which she has attended most of her life, and which had its frontage badly damaged in the last quake, is now reported to be a pile of rubble.

Today my husband is making a mercy dash and will go round the outskirts of Christchurch, staying well away from the centre, to check on all three and take supplies. Eldest son needs his father's bike for transport, plus a supermarket shop where he doesn't have to carry heavy loads; youngest just needs checking on as he has suffered panic attacks in the past, but still has flatmates for company this time; mother-in-law needs the food she will not go out and shop for, so is getting supplies plush fresh veges from our garden.

Thank goodness it is less than three hours drive from here. Hubby has strict instructions (which he will ignore) about keeping himself safe. Hopefully he will return safely later tonight.

In the meantime it has started raining here. I hope it hasn't in Christchurch as the rescue and recovery efforts do not need it. I am about to catch up on housework which I always complain about, but not today. At least I have a house to clean unlike many devastated people over the hill.

Long time, no write....

Being a new blogger, I found it difficult to keep up with this while travelling. The iPad was great, but the lack of wireless was a downer. Despite all the visitors to our area who insist they get free wireless everywhere I certainly found things to be different. Aside from MacDonald's and the Wellington waterfront most of the places we visited made it hard to find wifi at all. Libraries in Turangi and Tauranga are also not part of APNK which is interesting.
Despite this my husband reckoned the iPad was well worth its price as it kept me amused for hours. There are many games on which I can waste time and I have downloaded several books to read including the Steig Larsson series beginning with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I have read all three, and seen the movies, but I find these books have so much content I'm happy to read them again.
During the trip I read two crime novels by Jonathan Kellerman , Gone and Self Defence, and started Sophie Kinsella's  The Wedding Girl (writing as Madeleine Wickham) for a change of pace. 'Proper' books still had a look  in as I read my first Lee Child book, The Killing Floor, while with my brother and sister-in-law who are big fans of his writing. The blood spatter and body count were quite high, but as a crime/thriller I enjoyed it and plan to read more of his books.

We had a great trip up to the 'other island' with Jean’s new Navman leading the way, despite it telling us to do u-turns if he decided to change his mind about his destination and stop to see something along the way. Figuring out how to set in waypoints along the route is yet to come, but in the awful Auckland traffic it was amazing.

Jean had fun fishing in Turangi and walking the Tongariro river. For myself I preferred to walk alongside it in the shade of the trees.

 From rivers and on to beaches, we visited sunny Mount Maunganui to celebrate my 60th birthday in style with lunch outdoors at Mill's Reef winery. They had what they called paddles which provide four wine glasses each containing half a glass. In this way you could try out four different wines. However, as there were four of us we ended up with 16 wine glasses on the table and everyone felt they would look good, once emptied, sitting in front of me!  Great food, great service, good company - highly recommended.

Holiday time at the Mount included swimming and boogie boarding at the beach, a cruise on the harbour, a walk up Mount Maunganui (over 500 steps, I counted!),  swimming in the saltwater hot pools, and visiting McLaren falls for a picnic lunch by a lake. An evening was spent seeing the movie The King’s Speech which everyone thoroughly enjoyed. 

We then moved on to stay in Auckland with my niece and her partner and two children aged 3 and 1. They were certainly demanding. I had forgotten those days!  We also stayed a couple of days with a cousin and her partner who live out in a peaceful bush area out of central Auckland in a cute and cottagey house I love. What's more it was only minutes from a quilt shop. The perfect location.

Naturally I found a few quilt shops along the way including The Dog Box in Picton, The Quilted Gumboot in Taihape, Clever Hands in Taupo, Krazy Cow at Levin, FibreFlair at Waikanae and The Quilters' Barn in Blenheim. Just a few and just a few fabric pieces to play with.

Now back on the 'Mainland' Jean has returned to work today to see what is waiting for him after two weeks away and for me it is one last day to catch up with home. Back to work tomorrow to see what has piled up on my desk.

Holiday by the sea

The last day of another decade and at least before I turn 'ancient' I get to relax at the beautiful beach at Mount Maunganui. Yesterday I was walking by an equally beautiful river at Turangi while hubby went trout fishing. Along the way there's naturally been necessary stops at The Quilted Gumboot at Taihape and Clever Hands at Taupo. We have three days to enjoy this lovely area before heading to the vast, noisy metropolis of Auckland to visit family. Quilting has been reduced to drooling over fabric. Reading has been an experiment in reading downloaded books on the iPad. In this case what I call my 'chewing gum' reads that don't take a lot of concentration - Star Trek books (yes, I confess to being a long time Trekkie) and Debbie Macomber short stories. Well, I am on holiday after all. Today a scenic tour of the area is planned, plus shopping in Tauranga and a long lunch somewhere nice with a glass of wine. It's a hard job being on holiday.

Where did this week go?

Actually, that should be 'where did January go'? Spent the week setting up and playing with the iPad when I wasn't interrupted by little things like having to go to work. The free wifi at work proved useful when learning to buy ebooks on the Internet. Both Whitcouls and Amazon (with a Kindle app for the iPad) worked like a charm and downloaded my books in no time at all. I now have several ready to read on my travels, plus my contacts loaded and email connection sorted. My husband has figured out how to add photos through the separate photo connector which should prove handy on our trip.

Not much quilting done again this week, but I have made a handy dandy bag for my iPad using some bright Laurel Burch fabric sent to me by a U.S. friend. Doesn't it look great? Maybe next time I'll add a pocket for the accessories, but it was quick and fun to make.
Tomorrow we are off on our great 'overseas' travel - overseas to the North Island that is. With neighbours for house and cat minders we will set off early for our ferry trip to Wellington and onwards. The iPad will provide entertainment while the other half fishes, and our trip will take us past (or maybe not 'past') several quilt shops along the way. It'll be fun to see if I can add to this blog as we go.
Her majesty, the ruler of the house,  is alongside me and talking loudly. It might be a reminder that I have things to do, but is more probably what my husband calls an 'impolite request' to add to her food bowl.
Oh well, chores to do, packing to start, iPads to play with.......