Some Crafts for my friend Sue

My friends Sue and Conor came to visit Wellington recently as part of their "Farewell Tour" before they take off to Britain to live for a few years.

It was Sue's birthday months ago - but Sue, Conor and I have an ongoing tradition of giving each other our birthday presents MONTHS late. It's kind of a nice tradition - because you know that sometime months and months after your birthday a random present is going to turn up in your mailbox and make you smile.

Here's the two things I made for Sue's birthday, the first is a soft toy Poo. I remeber telling a few people about this and they thought I meant a Pooh (as in Winnie) but I meant an actualy Poo - actually it was decided on the night that this guy is more of a turd than a Poo.

The second thing I made for Sue was a cross-stitch and seen as we both grew up in the naki I thought she would appreciate this red-neck themed design.

A day in Dunedin...

It all seems SO long ago now (I haven't been paying as much attention to my blog as I should recently) but a few weeks back I had to head to Dunedin for some work training. Which I was really excited about as I'd never been to Dunedin before, so after the two days of training I decided to stay about and see the sites and sounds of Dunedin for myself and found it to be a cute place!

The first place I visited was a clothes shop called "Fern" which was a lot like my friend Kat's old shop "Triangle" - emerging designers from all over New Zealand were stocked in this shop and I managed to pick up a very cute pink skirt with a slightly deranged bird print on it. I am hoping to send some of my jewellery down there in the not too distant future to see if they would like to stock it.

The second place I visited was the Dunedin Train Station - which is apparently - "one of the 100 places you must see before you die". I'm not sure what the other 99 places you must see before you die are. But I am losing my train (no pun intended) of thought, the train station was very cool and my favourite parts would have had to have been the stained glass window featuring a train and the mosaic on the floor and stairs. I have always liked the Wellington Train Station (from the outside at least - this inside leaves something to be desired) but the Dunedin train station is so beautiful.




Next it was a time for a general look-see around Dunedin to check out all of the old buildings. I am sure that for people from Dunedin this isn't particularly exciting, but I loved it!










Seen as Dunedin is a University town, there was a lot of cool street art around. Here's a couple of shots of some street art I snapped. I especially like the giraffe - he's too cute!


My final visit before I had to rush off and get my plane was the Otago Museum - Kat had told me about an indoor butterfly exhibition they had there. When I say indoor butterfly exhibition I mean with actual live butterflies flying about you, not some exhibition with dead butterflies behind glass. The Museum had set aside an entire room and made it into a tropical climate with appropriate plants and the like - they even had a waterfall inside and they had a whole HEAP of butterflies.

You can tell by the number of photo's taken - I really enjoyed this display! (plus how often do you get to take photo's at a Museum Display?)

New Crafty Magazine - and this time it's a kiwi one:)

So looking up craft geek stuff on the interweb - I came across another cool lokking craft magazine.

I am particulary excited about this magazine for three reasons -

1) It's a New Zealand Craft Mag
2) It's only $8 unlike most of the imported craft mags which cost upwards of $15 (well the ones I like do anyways)
3) It's called "World Sweet World" I LOVE the name!

Here's the magazine link - I've ordered my copy and I am now waiting with anticipation my my mailbox.

http://www.worldsweetworld.com/

Walk In beaumont national park

In order to escape the general madness of life over Easter Rich and I headed out to Beaumont National park - this park has it's entry in the weirdest place - it's in the middle of the industrial estate in Petone! But once you got over that it was a really great place to be on a warm day.

ROCK TO WELLINGTON - LORDI, ALICE COOPER & KISS!

So this post has been a while coming - but here it is at last - tales of Rock2Wgtn. Over Easter Kat, JP, Steve and I went to the first night of the Boganfest know as Rock2Wgtn. I have never ever seen so many bogans in my life - both at the gig and in and around Wellington in general - I have to admit I am not used to seeing bogans any more.

I have to admit - my main reason for going to Rock2Wgtn was I thought it would be kinda funny. My intention was to go along, hang with friends and have a good time, my expectations weren't very high. So imagine my surprise when this turned out to be in my top 5 gigs ever.

Lordi were ok - lots of extreme costumes and extreme songs about Satan and what not. Which is what I expected really. The show was a bit like a cross between a horror movie and star trek.

The next act was Alice Cooper and it was AMAZING! I wasn't expecting too much from Alice Cooper - I only knew a few of his songs from growing up in the 80's but he turned out to be my favourite act of the night. He had a whole story to go along with his stage shows - which included a zombie baby, excellent. He had numerous costume changes and when he sang Poison - it was amazing. I think we were all filled with Rock n' Roll excitement by the end of his show.

Finally the night finished up with KISS - I have NEVER seen so much Rock n' Roll excess in my life. The big boots, the sparkly costumes, the flying fox - THE FIREWORKS! I really only knew about two KISS songs but it didn't matter too much - as they were generally awesome. Although the bit where Gene Simmonds did randomly spit out stage blood seemed a bit odd - but what do I know? I'm not a bogan.


Kat and I - Kat obviously laughing at my stoned - bogan look....

Cheesy mosh-pit moment - captured by JP

Me with Kat and Steve

What can I say.....but...."OH LORDI" (really - Kat and I did spend half of their set wondering if they were taking the piss - however - I think they are a very very serious bunch of people).

Mr Alice Cooper - he was the act of the night for me - incredible stage show!

Finally - KISS - what can I say about KISS when the photo's speak for themselves...

So...SURPRISE.....I am going to SHANGHAI

I usually like to keep my blog nicely ordered - making sure I blog about things as they happen. But this entry is going to muck up my order a bit - and put everything out of order - but I HAVE to share!

So nearly every kiwi knows about Air NZ grab a seat - if you are online at the right place in the right time you can pick up some crazy cheap flights...and occasionally you can pick up crazy cheap international flights.

On Thursday this week turns out they had crazy cheap flights to Shanghai - my friend Kat e-mailed a couple of people early in the day to see if anyone was keen on going with her and Fiona and I both put up our hands.

I had to admit - I was really doubtful that we would get the flights - especially for the three of us!

But then - rather amazingly - I recieved an e-mail from Kat saying she had got flights for us leaving May 12 and after making a rather nervous leave application (which was accepted - thank GOD!) I am now happy to say....I am going to Shanghai - next step is accomodation and visa's!

This is by the the most crazy thing I have done!!