Random Act of Kindness

After a long, slightly unenthused day at work, I was on my way home after collecting the kiddo from creche. She'd had a meltdown on the way to the car for unknown reasons but had finally perked up enough to manage to get from the car to the door - no mean feat when you are an extremely tired toddler.

On our way past the letter box I decided to grab the paper as it was looking like it was going to be another wet night and I didn't particularly want to have to collect a soggy paper in the morning. When I grabbed the paper out of the box I decided to check inside even though I already knew that I'd checked the mail in the morning.

Inside I noticed a small piece of rubbish, which isn't unusual as Gaz deposits rubbish and forgets about it when he is working on the car out in the garage. But when I retrieved it I found that it was not a piece of rubbish but a small heart, laminated to protect against the rain, and with a little message written on either side:


Is that not the cutest thing in the whole world? It made me smile for sure.

I remember at some stage stumbling across a blog where a Wellington woman was leaving little messages around the city. I can't for the life of me remember where the blog is. Is it her? Or someone else? I'm quite intrigued... and having a nice day.

P.S. Excuse rubbish photos again. I haven't mastered the art of taking photos at night. I need a studio or something!

Sticky Japanese

You'll probably learn more about me with this picture than I could ever let you know.

My fridge revealed. Fuzzily revealed.

But wait... is that sushi on my refrigerator?

There! Why yes, yes it is!

And why would I have sticky sushi on my fridge? Because Mindy is loony. That's why.

It was actually my craft project from the Lucky Dip craft night we had at Juniper last night. Tash and Louise were there, as well as many other clever crafty kids. It was heaps of fun and possibly the only time I am ever going to make felt food - though apparently there is a market for it, as Mindy informed us, having previously sold a custard square and a piece of carrot cake made from felt.

Tash was part of the scarf makers group. They came up with some funky scarf creations made with wool blanket offcuts. Louise and her book making team created some cute little memory keeper book thingies. I think the most creative lady of the night may have been with us though. While two of us stuck with the traditional salmon and avocado sushi roll, Kate made a whole sashimi set which looked something akin to this* BUT WITH FELT:


So all in all, great night and hopefully will be doing it again next month! Thanks Mindy :)

*Minor exaggeration but it was amazing.

Slobbering over yarn

Just made the mistake of visiting South Seas Knitting. BIIIIG mistake. Especially as I am still officially trying to be frugal.

Maybe I need to factor yarn purchases into my budget. In the mean time I may have to raid Hannah's money box and lift up the couch cushions.

Edited: wrong link. Oops. Now fixed.

The Mad Hatter

Mad hatter = me for trying to knit so many at once!

They are for a secret project which you will hear about soon.

Well, actually one is for a raffle for the kiddo's creche. Saturday is a garage sale/cake stall/raffly fundraiser. I'm heading along to man a stall from 9-11am.

Knitting these hats have caused many a problem. Twice now I have missed my stop on the bus because I have been so enthralled in what I am knitting. The other day I had to walk 3 stops back to pick up Hannah and almost incurred the wrath of the teachers at crèche. Now, for those of you who don't have kids, you DO NOT want to get the crèche teachers angry. They spend their day keeping three and four year olds in line. They'd eat ya for breakfast. So needless to say, I ran. In high heels. Not good.

I'd like to claim that it is just the knitting but truth be told, I've done it while reading and then also while day dreaming. The day dreaming was the worst one as it seemed an awfully long way between stops and I had to carry the kid all the way home.

Anywayyyyy... back to the hats.

Princess in a Petticoat

Hannah found one of my petticoats on Sunday, put it on and refused to take it off for the rest of the day. She even wore it to Tash's crafternoon tea and then to the supermarket afterward. Did I mention that Sunday was FREEZING!? Only a three-year-old could deal with that. An extremely stubborn, red-headed three-year-old to be more specific.

My weekend was brilliant. Limited time for crafting but mucho time for family. It was great to have Dad and Caro, Mum and Mark, Robbo and Granny all down to play with me and tell me how absolutely clever I am. We should really do it more often.

Graduation was as spectacularly dull as it should be. Slightly enlivened by the girl sitting next to me, Amelia, who was as vocal as I was about the boredom, the strange outfits, the fact that we needed to pee about 5 minutes in to the ceremony, our itchy heads in the trenchers, being choked by the gown, Joel Cosgrove wearing an inappropriate outfit etc etc. Fun times.

After that we had photos where my maman worked her magic and actually managed to get a halfway decent photo of me. Magic I tell you! She took some cute pics of the Devil Kid too before she packed a tanty. Understandable when she hadn't had a sleep and had lasted all the way through a 90 minute school assembly graduation ceremony.

Dinner was also fabuloso. Though I was slightly disappointed that we missed the belly dancer. I tried to convince Mum to give us a go but she declined on account of eating too much. I felt her pain, as did the other 12 of us. Hannah fell asleep on the bench at about 9pm. Poor kid.

That was the weekend! Or at least the version of it I am telling before I collapse into bed.

I will have craftiness soon. I promise. Just have the sleeves of the pinwheel sweater to go and then it'll be ready to be shunned by the kid. I'm looking forward to it!

Graduation

Thanks to you all for the lovely comments! You guys rock. It served to get me quite excited about this whole graduationy business. I'm probably not be feeling so excited 90 minutes into the ceremony tomorrow. I had thought I'd left my school assembly days behind.

I had a brilliant parade. I walked as academically as I could and I felt particularly intelligent in my trencher. It has a sort of air of knowledge about it right?... No? Oh well.

Geez, just looking at that photo a bit closer and I look like a total dweeb. Clearly nothing intelligent about me. Or atleast not photogenic. Perhaps it's because Pia was born to be photographed? Hrmmm...

Anywayyyy... photo analysis aside. Graduation ceremony tomorrow. The family is all heading down from Rotorua tonight: Granny, Mum, Mark, and Robbo (my little brother)... Daddio and Caro are flying up from Christchurch tomorrow. Weeeeee - family gathering! We are going out for dinner tomorrow night at Cafe Istanbul. That's for you blog stalkers! They have great Turkish food but I always end up eating wayyyy too much. Looking forward to that gross almost-dying feeling. It'll be like Christmas. Actually.

And. Other stuff. I have to announce with great pride that my gorgeous friend Simonne has got a little babe to stick in her tummy. (Yeah, watch out for those. That unidentifiable goop on the bottom of your shoe - could be a baby. Sticky little buggers.) It's possibly the most anticipated pregnancy of the century and if you read back through her blog, you'll understand why. And I'm pretty sure the blog wasn't even the beginning of it all!

So anyway, you are fab Ginger dear and I can't WAIT until you have a little red-headed devil child of your own to contend with. *muhahahahaha*

xo

Parade

Last minute decision: I am going to participate in the graduation parade. Thank you Pia and Sean for letting me tag along with you.

I was walking along Lambton Quay today and heard the call of the bagpipes. I didn't realise what was happening (don't they usually play bagpipes along Lambton Quay!?) until I rounded the corner and was met with a sea of black. Tonnes of students walking along in their hoods and gowns and looking quite fancy.

I hadn't planned to parade as I couldn't think of any of my friends that would be graduating and it seemed a bit sad to be parading by myself. But I felt pangs! I wanted to be involved!

When I got back to the office, fate had pulled through for me and I had an email from Pia asking if I was graduating and parading. I had a friend! So now I have decided to head along... and I am excited.

So tonight I am heading along to pick up my academic dress along with 700 other people (oh yay.) and I will be walking from Rutherford House to the Michael Fowler centre at lunchtime tomorrow. Proudly too damnit.

P.S. My hood is meant to be 'teal and fuschia stripe' which sounded quite funky when I first read it. I saw the hood of what I assume is meant to be 'teal and fuschia stripe' today and holy shit it is hideous. The hood is divided in half, one half bright frigging pink and the other half a bright tealy blue. Grosssss.

Fair trade?

Being Fair Trade Fortnight (from the 3rd - 18th of May) I thought I'd better discuss an issue that arose in the office this morning.

I buy the tea and coffee for the office usually and as a matter of habit, I buy Dilmah. We have always bought Dilmah in my home... from back in Rotorua with my maman, to the flat in Wellington with my sister. I'd read the little leaflet and decided that it was a company worth supporting, as well as highly approving of the taste of the tea.

This morning my boss made mention of the fact that I buy Dilmah tea and said that someone objected. I am not sure whether they objected specifically to us buying it, or objected to the company overall. In any case, I decided to look into it further and found that the company owner had called Fair Trade a "farce" and claimed that it was a "trendy brand" that only served to increase the amount of money in the pockets of the middle men.

The director of the Fair Trade Association of Australia and New Zealand responded, defending fair trade and saying that it had made significant improvements in the lives of the workers and farmers in developing countries. Of which I have no doubt. And while I am not ready to agree with everything that the wealthy owner of Dilmah has to say about fair trade certification, I'm also not ready to write off the Dilmah company.

I find it conflicting to say that Dilmah is unethical purely for not signing up to the fair trade certification when it looks like the founder (while definitely giantly wealthy now!) has worked really frigging hard to make Dilmah a successful company in terms of making money and of looking after his workers and other beneficiaries of his foundation/charity/NGO. I understand that he may be trying to compete with the fair trade brand, and that is why he isn't signing up - but it's the market that drives that sort of stuff and he can hardly be blamed for trying to stay ahead. Mind you, then you could also say that it is alright that the US veto certain Security Council resolutions.

What I would like to see is an annual report or some form of audit. And also to know more details about the conditions of the workers on the Dilmah tea plantations.

It's so hard this 'taking a stance' stuff. I'm not sure I'm cut out for it!

But I do support Fair Trade generally. Yeah. That's a stance.

Mothers' Day

... was spent yesterday in my pyjamas on the couch and in my bed feeling very sorry for myself for being so hungover. That'll teach me for thinking I am still a party girl. I'm not.

I did get a wonderful card with the cutest illustration from the devil child (she's right into drawing figures at the moment - it's gorgeous!) and pain au chocolat for breakfast.... I couldn't eat it, but it was a lovely thought! Tobin then wrangled the kid for the rest of the day. Poor guy. I think I have a lot of making up to do.

However, Saturday night (my biannual night out for 2008) was fun times galore. I don't think I've laughed that much in aaaaaaages. It was Dan's birthday party with the theme Rubix Cube. I've been to parties with the same theme before and no one has really made the effort to really get into it. This time everyone was mucho enthused and I ended up hanging out with 'the reds' for much of the night. I'm a bit afraid about what other photos are going to be popping up on Facebook but thank goodness no one really knew who I was so I will forever remain ignorant of drunken photos.

So here is the birthday boy and a drunken self taking a photo.

I was subjected to horrific sights such as this one.... (WARNING: Not for the faint hearted)

But it was alright because I got to hang out with wonderful people from the school days such as these ones... Bon and Dan again.

And Anna Banana who I haven't seen for aaaaaaaaaages.

So despite the hangover, totally worth it.

Post post

I've not put any crafty stuff on here for a while as I haven't been internetting at home - just at work. So here are some things from the last few weeks.

A vinyl bag for a bag swap - my machine ate it. Or it ate my machine. Either way, it wasn't happy sewing it.Picky Pants (rav link) for a baby associated with Megan - I knit on the next sized needles and so they are a tad loose. I'm hoping a little felting might fix the problem. They are fine to wear though.

And the back showing the short rows - probably wasn't ideal to use this shaping method with stripes but it'll do. Once it is stretched over a nappied bum I doubt anyone'll notice!

And the onion child. We used to do this in the bath as kids. I'm just passing on the tradition to the devil kid.
I attended the opening of the Human Rights Film Festival last night. A film called A walk to beautiful was playing. It showed the journey that a group of Ethiopian women went on to "cure" them of obstetric fistula (warning: link is about vaginas) which was caused by an insanely long labour in the middle of nowhere that resulted in a stillborn child. Apparently when the baby gets stuck in the birth canal it cuts off the supply of blood in the birth canal and basically the tissue dies and the woman is left with a hole. Obstetric fistulas are easily preventable with the birth care that any woman should be entitled to. More than the lack of care, it raised issues about children being married off to men... or abducted to become young brides. That film, coupled with a talk by Mike Wessells today about the reintegration female child soldiers has got me wanting to go to Africa to learn about this stuff. I still am really drawn to anything to do with sexual and reproductive health in developing countries... how exactly to get where I want to go? I don't know.

And in other news I worked up the courage to send a message to Hannah's (potential) dad. I am not anticipating a response but feeeereeeeaky all the same.