A weekend in Auckland - which included seeing Sonic Youth!!

Last weekend Rich and I spent the weekend in Auckland, so we could head over to the Bruce Mason centre and see Sonic Youth play.

But we also have a lot of friends in Auckland and heard about a cool fari that was happening on Cross Street (near K Road) so we ended up doing a few things other than just seeing Sonic Youth.

My friend Charlotte picked us up from the airport - but she unfortunatly didn't have much time to hang out so we ended up chatting on the way into town and she had to head off to do something else.

Charlotte dropped us a K Road, so we were able to eat and drop ourselves off at the icky backpackers (don't ever stay at the Columbia - it's icky and unclean!).

After dropping our stuff off we headed off to Cross Street which is near K Road as they had a fair on which was really cool - it also included a craft market so we got a chance to look at all sorts of crafty things. There seems to be a lot more fimo badges than usual though and some of them were quite familar designs...hummm....

Anyways - I bought myself a really cool 2 headed giraffee necklace at the markets (which was a little strange because I normally buy softies at markets these days!)

Below are some photos from the fair - must have been one of the coolest fairs I have even been to.

At the fair I met up with my friends Steven and Corey and my other friend Greg who had come up from Hamilton for the day so it was good to see them all and just have a drink and chill out because the morning had been one of those mornings where you felt exhaused even though you knew you hadn't actually done that much.

After hanging out with the guys I went and met up with Rich's sister, brother in law and nephew and went out to their place which was near the Bruce Mason Centre in Papakura so we managed to get a lift out there - transport problem number 1 solved.

We hung about for a while - had some dinner went for a beach walk and then headed over to the gig.

The warm up act was a bad called "The Dead C" I hadn't listed to these guys before but I knew they had been around forever - they were pretty cool and a good warm up act for Sonic Youth because they were kinda noise rock rather than anything too melodic.

Then it was Sonic Youth - hurrah! They were fantastic they played their "Daydream Nation" album in it's entirity and then came back to play too encores and pulled a fan up onto the stage and he was so excited he decided to hug the whole band - warm fuzzies all round. Oh and I bought a funky Sonic Youth Tote Bag:)

Although the concert was great - post the concert was a bummer. We had missed the last bus to the city from the North Shore which left at 11.10! (no wonder people complain so much about the transport in Auckland - pretty poor show for the largest city) But eventually we managed to get a taxi van will some other people (after much stress!) and it did only cost us $5 each to get into town.

So that was my weekend in Auckland - in conclusion - Fair, Dead Sonic Youth, catching up with friends and Dead C all awesome. Public transport and backpackers - very LAME!

Love Bat

I love handmade presents - they are my favourite - because you have to actually make a REAL effort with them and can't just pick them up at the last moment.

Here's the handmade present I recieved for valentines from Rich - I call him love bat - he's the perfect mix of morbid and super cute!

I **heart** valentines craft

So as you may already know - I like the idea of valentines - but hate the corporatisation of valentines day. What's the obvious solution to my dilemma? Craft things for valentines instead of buying things from the shop.

Here's a couple of things I made for Rich for Valentines day -

Firstly a heart made of beading wire in leiu of a cheesy card - nothing says "I love you" like heart shaped beading wire;)
Secondly (sorry the photo's so fuzzy my camera doesn't handle taking photo's of small things well) a bracelet made of a combination of washers and beading cord.

Finally a valentines "card" for my friend Fiona - well - kinda of....a group of us girls had a handmade "secret" valentines swap. I had all these ideas of cards I could make for Fiona out of actual paper and card - but none of the ideas seemed quite right. So instead I made her this felt heart, with a skull, the lacey stuff around the outside is an old doily. I thought it was really cool - but of course - they style of the craft screams "Teresa made this!" so Fiona had not trouble guessing who her secret valetine was!

A recent creation of mine...

I'm the first to admit it - not buying new clothes is difficult for me! I LOVE clothes and I LOVE fashion. But I recently revamped a bright pink bustier top that I bought for $4 at the Salvation army and I am so pleased with it. It started out as a plain olde bustier top - there wasn't anything wrong with it us such - but it just wasn't fun or exciting. So I embriodered a wee swallow on it - added some heart shaped buttons and a wee bow:)

Now it's so super sweet - it almost gives me a toothache looking at it!

Chinese New Year Parade

So I got it all wrong in regard to the Chinese New Years markets and parade being on last Saturday - they were in fact taking place on Sunday! So on Sunday Rich and I headed off to the markets first of all. They were really cool - I especially liked all the red Chinese Laterns that were put up around the waterfront.

We actually thought we had missed the parade - but when we were walking towards Courtney Place we heard the sound of firecrackers going off (good firecrackers too - not the lame ones you buy in the shops - they were old school double happies) so we rushed to see the parade. It was such and AWESOME parade! I loved it - the Chinese Dragons were especially amazing - I love Chinese New Year!

Nicky and Rick's Visit

This weekend been our friends Nicky and Rick came down to visit us from Hamilton which was awesome - I love it when people come and stay! We met up with them on Saturday morning as they decided to spend Friday night in a hotel (as they arrived in Wellington late) we decided to head to the waterfront first off - but it turns out I got my dates wrong - I thought the Chinese new year festival (parade and markets) was on Saturday but it turned out it was on Sunday...opps. So we just took Nicky and Rick to have a look along the waterfront and decided to come back for the Chinese show which WAS on that Saturday.

After going for a bit of a walk we met up with a couple of Nicky and Rick's friends who were visiting from Dunedin - we caught up with Celia for a bit as well then headed to check out the Chinese new year show on the waterfront.

The show was all good to start with - there were three very cool Chinese Lions which were awesome. But it turned out that after the first cultural performance the show turned into a fashion show which we weren't really interested in...we came to see Chinese cultural acts - damn it!!

We decided that next it would be a good idea to do something very "Wellington" so we took everyone up to the botanical gardens via the cable car - we even went to the cable car muesuem - which is something I haven't done since before I lived in Wellington so it was pretty fun.

Here's a photo of Nicky and I sitting on the "old school" cable car in the cable car muesuem - with the slightly creepy driver in the back ground...

Some photo's of the whole gang at the top of the cable car looking out over Wellington.

After the cable car adventure we tried to decide what to do next - I had booked us into dinner at Harem (of course!) for later on that night. So we decided to go for a drive around to Scorching bay - just to hang out and take in the views.

After returning home and the guys having a few drinks it was time to head out to dinner at Harem (naturally I had to take Nicky and Rick to Harem - it's where I take all my visitors!), Nicky and Rick's friends from Dunedin and some other people joined us too so it ended up being quite a big group of people which was cool.

Neither Nicky or I were drinking that night but we decided to get the non-alcoholic cocktails just for fun - I was so glad we did - they were such awesome looking drinks!

I also took a photo of the celing when I was leaving Harem randomly - I never really noticed how creepy and crypt like it was before I took this photo!

We ended the night at San Fransico Bath house - we watched a Fringe Festival gig called "Surfing on the Fringe" it was a really cool gig and one of my favourite bands from back in Hamilton was playing - "The Hollow Grinders" and they were really awesome (as always).

We didn't end up staying at San Fran too long though as Nicky and Rick were leaving for Hamilton at 8 the next morning....

But it was such a fun day - so awesome to have visitors! Yah!

Donna's Pincushion

It was my friend Donna's birthday back in January - but sometimes presents take me a while to sort out seen as I usually make them.

Anyways - Donna is a bit of a sewer and every girl who sews needs a great pincushion - I have my deceased tofu pincushion after all:)

But I didn't think a deceased tofu pincushion was Donna's style - so I made her this cute little "flower pillow" pincushion from felt - I was really happy with the result.

The Anticraft

Well - I do love craft websites - particularly the type that come with instructions of how to make an array of projects. So I was especially stoked when I came across the Anticraft website - not only does it show you how to make stuff for free all the crafts are a bit dark and sinister which appeals to me to no end.

There are also a number of AWESOME crochet projects on this website - I REALLY need to learn how to crochet! Can anyone out there teach me?

Anyhoo - here's the rather awesome "Anticraft" website - http://www.theanticraft.com/index.htm

A new necklace for me!

I have a rather large badge collection - but the truth is - there are only so many badges a girl can wear at one.

However - if you take some of the badges from your collection and turn them into a necklace then you can wear a whole bunch of badges at once and not look silly.

Wellington City Harbour Cruise

Rich and I are eternal tourists - you know how some people only get out and about in the city when friends or family come to stay and say "it's funny how you only do these things when people from out of town come to visit" - we are NOT those people!

We have no adversion to doing all the tourist stuff - it's fun! So in the spirit of doing tourist related "stuff" last Sunday we did a Wellington City Harbour cruise - it was a beautiful Wellington day and it was so fun (although - I suspect we may have been the only Wellingtonian's on the boat other than the crew).

At Kat's for cocktails and cupcakes...

Last Saturday afternoon/night we were invited over to my friend Kat's place for a garden party - it was such a beautiful day and seen as Kat has an actual garden with lots of space (very rare in central Wellington) it was just perfect.

Almost as perfect as the selection of VERY girly cupcakes that Kat made - she has a HUGE amount of patience to ice so many cup cakes in SO many ways - they are uber cute though.

So it was a summer afternoon of drinking, eating and gossiping and an evening of singstar - Rich and I totally nail the Nick Cave and Kylie song on singstar 90's (I think it's called Wild Rose - ironically I am a huge Nick Cave fan and know every word to the song but I don't know the title - go figure...).

Martinborough Fair

I've wanted to go to the Martinborough fair for a while - I heard it was a huge crafty occassion that was not to be missed. However - when you don't have a car and there's no buses/trains heading out there you can miss out on the most excellent of crafty events...

So when my friend Donna text me on Friday night asking me if I wanted to head out to the fair with her I jumped at the chance.

This was a fair unlike I'd ever seen before - people had told me it was big - but it was beyond big - it was MASSIVE!!

We spent ages just walking around looking at everything - I got some ideas for craft projects for the fair but I didn't actually buy any crafts.

But Donna and I did buy preserves a plenty - I got a chilli sauce, some banana pickle and some pesto mustard. I figure it tasted good and this is the kind of stuff I can't imagine making myself (plus it's nice to buy a food product where you can actually pronouce all the ingredients because they are things like vinegar and basil opposed to preservatives 175, 298, 897).

We even managed to have a semi decent vegetarian lunch at the fair - tuscan potatoes on a bed of rice, it was really yummy and I'm still a littled surprised about that (in a plesant way of course).

So yes the fair was good times all round.

Die! Die! Die!

On Friday night Rich and I headed out to our first gig in a while with one of Rich's guitar friends and his friend. There were a couple of good bands on that night - Die!Die!Die! at (the newly refurbished) Bodega or The Ruby Suns at San Fran. In the end we decided on Die!Die!Die! seen as we hadn't seen them for a few years (we saw the Ruby Suns relatively recently opening for Architecture in Helsinki).

It turned out to be a really good night I have to say, Die!Die!Die! were very awesome (at one point the lead singer jumped off the stage to walk amongst us in the crowd) and it was pretty fun hanging with other music geeks.

Die!Die!Die!'s set did seem a bit short though but I guess that's what happens when you're a punk band and all your songs are really short!