Walking By Myself: Wellington Waterfront to Kilbirnie

Today was a stunner of a day so I decided to take another walk by myself - this time from the waterfront to Kilbirnie.

The walk was also a good chance to try out the new camera I've bought for my trip next week. My new camera is another little "point and shoot" digital camera, nothing fancy. But it seems to take a good photo or two.

Fabric-a-brac - April 2013

Hello World! I had a really great start to my weekend this weekend, I spent my Saturday morning volunteering on the Hospice Stall at fabric-a-brac. It was a good chance to do a good thing for a good cause, catch up with some fellow sewing/crafty ladies and of course do a spot of shopping.

Here's a small sample of some of the great fabric people donated for the hospice stall - so MUCH fabulous fabric and this was only one stall of many.

Here's the fabrics and patterns I picked up from fabric-a-brac - so many good things and I didn't even spend much money (promise!).

Fabric-a-brac is usually held in Newtown, but this time it was held in the old Dominion Museum at Massey University. It's a lovely building and the tomb of the unknown warrior and the National War Memorial is in from the Museum.

Hope you're all having a lovely weekend so far - its my last weekend in Wellington before I spend three whole weeks in the USA! Yikes!

Peg Dress & Petone

As you may have guessed from my earlier post - today is Anzac Day in New Zealand, which is a day of remembrance for those we have lost in war time. I also means we get a public holiday.

Rich and I had a quiet day off - Rich had study and I was intending to do sewing, although to be honest I didn't get much done. I did wear this dress though that I finished making last weekend.

Here's a close up of the fabric - it has pegs all over it. It's kind of a random print, but kind of fun too. I means why not have a dress with pegs on it?

 Rich decided to take a few artsy shots of our building whilst we were taking these photos - as you can see the scaffolding is still up. I'm beginning to wonder if it will ever come down, I asked the property manager about it but their answer was at best vague.

In case you were wondering, I did manage to actually get out of the house today. Rich went up to the university library to study and I went to hang out with my friend Nankz. We had a coffee and then went to the beach in Petone.

It feels weird having to go back to work tomorrow after having Thursday off - I guess the up side is I only have one more working day and then its the weekend again.

Anzac Day

Remembering Gallipoli, 1916 - Source

Anzac Day Gazette notice, 1916 -Source

Malone Memorial, Stratford, New Zealand - Source

Wellington City People Memorial - 24 April 1931 - Source

Anzac Day Ceremony outside Parliament House, Wellington, 1927 - Source

A good day to be a New Zealander

I usually like to keep this blog pretty frivolous - mainly its full of clothes I like, stuff I've sewn, traveling and hanging out with my friends.

However last Wednesday was a good day to be a New Zealander - an amendment was made to our marriage act to allow same sex couples to marry, the vote being 77- 44 in the favour of the amendment.

Here's the scene in parliament after the amendment was passed - the waita (song) is Pokarekare Ana.

It really has been a good week for equality in New Zealand.

Stuff I did this weekend - upcycling, roller derby & morning tea

Hello World! Hope you all had a good weekend - here's a few things I got up to this weekend. First of all I made a new dress.

This dress is an upcycle - I bought a vintage dress a while back because I loved the fabric. However, the dress was hideous. The body was literally two squares sewn together (not flattering) and it had a horrible cowl neck.

So much ugly in one dress - but I LOVED the fabric and I decided I must have it, and then it sat around in my sewing pile for literally months.

Here's the ugly frock reborn using my vintage maudella 5619 pattern. The blue fabrics are the remnants of some fabric that Emi gave me that I've already used to make an A-line skirt.

Unfortunately daylight savings is well and truly over here now so I had to get an indoor photo of this dress as by the time I returned home daylight was almost gone.

I actually prefer the back of this dress to the front as most of the pretty vintage fabric is on the back of the dress. The original dress pattern didn't have ties, but I felt like the frock didn't have quite as much shape as I like and I knew it would look weird with a belt. So I added some ties to give it some shape.

But the past weekend wasn't just about sewing! It was also about roller derby - I got to see my friend Jaimee skate as "Jammit Frame" for her team "Smash Malice". It was a pretty fun night, we went with our friend Andrew and then got some Mexican food afterwards. I even bought a Smash Malice tee shirt to wear to the next bout.

Finally I met up with Jaimee on Sunday for morning tea, we went to Martha's Pantry which is quite possibly the most girly cafe in Wellington. Here's a few pictures.

I love the fans - they also have some very lady like hats you can wear whilst sipping your tea (or coffee).

Hope you all have a good week xoxo