Shakey Isles 2016

Last night around midnight we were woken by a lot of shaking in the form of a 7.5 earthquake that was centered in the South Island (near Kaikoura).

It was the biggest earthquake I've even been in and also the scariest, as we took cover in our bedroom (including Mia, who took shelter under our bed and wouldn't get out) we heard a lot of smashing sounds - I was certain it was our windows, fortunately for us it was only a few picture frames falling over.

This is pretty much as bad as the damage in our  home got - we are very lucky

We are very lucky - we still had electricity, internet and clean water. A lot of other people weren't so lucky and many of our friends in the lower lying suburbs had to evacuate their homes due to the threat of a tsunami.

Glass smashed in the central city by the earthquake, the glass from these windows was still on the footpath below

Although Wellington was fairly badly hit, our friends in the South Island were much worse off, particularly those is Kaikoura and the surrounding area. They are completely cut off by road due to slips and various other areas of the country have sustained pretty seriously damage.

I don't remember an earthquake being felt so far and causing so much damage to so many places in the past.

Glassons on Cuba Street 

Neither of us could go to work today, we both work in high rise offices buildings and all of these buildings need to be checked by engineers before people can return to work. At this stage Rich can't return to work tomorrow. My building has been checked, but its damaged, so I am not sure if I can go back yet.

T2 on Lambton Quay

The message today was to stay out of the city, but that's a little bit hard when you live in the city and its your home. We did go for a walk and despite what the media said about Wellington being a "ghost town" there were actually quite a few people around and cafes open. The city is a ghost town on Christmas Day - it was quiet today.

We are safe, but really didn't sleep last night and there were a lot of aftershocks last night and today. Here's hoping tomorrow is a better day x

My new and improved sewing cave!

I have a brand new sewing cave, well not quite, but it may as well be new because it's like a totally new space. I've spent the last few weekends getting it into order and now you can even see the floor!

The problem with the sewing  cave is that I just didn't have enough storage for everything, which meant it was a disaster and was going from bad to worse.

This was my fabric shelving before, this poor bookcase was literally falling apart, it wasn't designed to hold the weight of so much fabric. I couldn't fit all my fabric in here, so the rest went in the cupboard.

But the cupboard storage was far from ideal, there aren't any shelves in the cupboard and the buckets I had for storage were overflowing.

There was also random "bits" everywhere because I had  no room to put anything!! There were patterns , projects and other sewing stuff throughout the room which was making it almost unusable.

Mia was really the only one who was happy with the room, because it meant she had lots of places to hide! The first thing I needed for the room was more storage, so we bought some big and solid shelves that we thought would actually be stable enough to hold ALL my fabric! We had some kit set shelves delivered from Warehouse Stationary and Rich built them for me. However, before we could get them in the room, I had to empty out the current bookcase and get it out of the room which was difficult as there was so much "stuff" in the way!

Mia was again pretty happy with all of the piles of "stuff" to play in, she loves to burrow in fabric.

I bought the new shelves in and they were SUPER heavy, which means they are surely strong enough to hold all my fabric right?

Next up was the biggest task, fitting ALL of the fabric into the new shelves. I wasn't convinced it would all fit. The only way it would fit was if I rolled all of my fabric up to store it, this took a while.

I decided to put the biggest lengths of fabric and the bulky fabric in the bottom cubes, I made a cube especially for my stretch fabrics (I only have one cube! I have much less stretch than I thought) and I made a cube of fabric a brac fabrics. All the other cubes I filled up with my wovens. I'm not going to lie to you guys this took a LONG time - as it about a week and a half. I just did it in small bursts as there is only so much fabric rolling a girl can do!

I was a good chance to go through my whole stash as well and I now have another bucket of fabric for the next Fabric-a-brac (as long as we get a table again!).

Fabric-a-brac fabrics

woven fabrics

More wovens

stretch fabrics

longest fabric lengths/bulky fabrics

longest fabric lengths/bulky fabrics

With ALL of my fabric FINALLY in one place, it was time to tackle the rest of the room. Rich was able to repair the old bookcase, so I put that inside the wardrobe so I actually had storage space.

All kinds of crafty bits are in here - my unwanted fabric (hopefully to be sold), sewing magazines, notebooks, printed PDF patterns as well as other sewing room essentials like my heater and iron.

I moved my bookcase with my sewing and craft books on it, the bookcase had been a little messy but moving the magazines into the cupboard helped to clean it up. Also that's Rich's yoga mat as he now actually has room to do yoga and stretches in the sewing cave!

 I didn't want this to be a boring space, so I put some of my patterns (more in the cupboard) and treasures on top of the bookcase. I love the little skull cameo Ria bought me back from the USA. I'm hoping to frame a few more cards and prints I'm got lying around to create a wall of fun pictures.

 I've got a couple of bowls with useful sewing things - one bowl with machine needles, quick unpick (or seam ripper, depending where you're from) and other odds and ends. The other bowl is all patches - I really need to use some of these! The purple sewing box is from Ria, as are the tiny bunnies. The little Guedetama (egg guys) are from my friend Lillian in Hong Kong and they are actually stamps!

My one and only monsters high doll from my niece a few years back, skull piggy bank from Vany and a few other treasures.

Final view of my new cupboard - on the left hand side the top cube is only half full, the bottom cube has notions and current projects and the middle cube?

It's Mia's bed of course, she didn't like it that much when there was only one of her blankets in there so we added a few fabric scraps to make it feel like home.

The sewing room is ALMOST complete, we've ordered a futon as well so when friends and family come to stay they can have a real bed instead of a air mattress.

Halloween 2016

I know its nearly a week since Halloween, but better late than never I say! I thought it would be a bit of a bummer having Halloween on  a weekend this year, but actually I had a pretty great day.

It was a Monday, so I still had to go into work but I thought I'd dress slightly more creepy than usual (well not really), so I wore my wolf man dress (It's not made by me,  the label is Sourpuss clothing).

We did "secret trick or treat" at work, a bit like secret Santa, but only better because it was Halloween themed. We have some pretty great bakers in my team and one of my colleagues go this amazing cemetery brownie!

I received this week ghost with fudge inside, the ghost is now in my craft room holding all my thread.

               After work we went to Film Society, where they were screened Night of the Demon in honor of all things Halloween. I've been looking forward to seeing this movie for a while and it did not disappoint! I love old horrors as much as I love the modern ones (well actually often more than I love the modern ones).

 After the movie we went to the Space Place for a Halloween show in the planetarium, I'm looking forward  to taking my nephew Lukah here when he visits later this month.

The show included a free creepy cupcake, aren't they so amazing? It was pretty hard to choose only one, but I went with the ghost as he's a little bit cute as well!

I hope you all had a great Halloween, ot a not too terrible Monday if you don't celebrate Halloween.