Pure joy

Once a month I sell items at a local craft / vintage market in a village 5 minutes from Coneysthorpe. One of the stall holders, an elderly lady, up-cycles baby dolls knitting and sewing a new wardrobe of clothes for them.

Today I watched a precious young family strolling around the market. They had three children. The oldest two looked like twins (boy and girl) and then there was a toddler. The oldest girl got to choose a baby doll from this elderly lady. As she carried it away, the look of pure joy on the little one's face was priceless. I haven't been able to stop smiling at the memory of it.

Shadowstalking

I have written here before about how our cats like to take us for walks in the evening around the garden. It is the only time the three of them hang out with each other (Ruppin is tolerated - he tries too hard!).

Here are Cumin and Ruppin together. Cumin foolishly turned her back on Mr Lonely boy, and he pounced on her from behind some cherry tree cuttings. Sigh, he'll never learn!

Playing Shop

I have been selling things since I was 5 years old. I started with the lettuce I grew in our Yorkshire garden. I put it in a wheelbarrow at the garden gate, and our neighbours would put 3d in a jar for me. I was hooked! I have loved selling things ever since. Since leaving school I have sold holidays, books, planes, crystal ornaments, duty free items (ahem!), more books, jewellery, books, vintage buttons and now haberdashery.

This lovely lot of lace and braid comes from Central Asia. I have friends who work there, and they in turn are trying to run a business to give a better life to refugees. A noble cause, so I bought products from them to sell. I haven't seen anything like it here in NZ. So next week I'm taking this to market. I'm hoping it will make a lot of crafties very happy, because it is beautiful AND inexpensive.

So, want to play shop with me?

An ideal home - 70 years ago

I recently came to own eleven copies of "Ideal Home" a post war aspirational home and living magazine. I was intrigued by the adverts from 1946 and 1947. Here are some of the home and car adverts.

Away days and naughtiness

On Monday and Tuesday we went to the Wairarapa. This is a wine growing region "over the mountains" as the crow flies, from where we live. Of course, we can't go "over the mountains" so had to take a long drive to get there. It was a lovely drive through the Manawatu Gorge. Our first stop was at the amazing Mount Bruce Wildlife centre. This centre preserves many of the wild birds and reptiles which are threatened by introduced mammal predators in NZ. I even got up close and personal to a Tuatara, a miniature dinosaur type reptile.

We stayed in the beautiful town of Greytown at a delightful hotel called the White Swan. There is a backstory now. The two other occasions we have visited this town, we have returned with large pieces of furniture. What started out as a "let's go and have lunch" ended up as "we need to organise a furniture transportation".

This time, we promised ourselves we would be good. We didn't need any more furniture. All was going well, until we drove back through Greytown after a putter around Martinborough. We stopped for a second look around a furniture restoration place.....then the inevitable happened. Oxygen was lost to our brains and we bought a large kitchen table, restored industrial design from the 1960s.......oh dear. It's big. We had to come home and measure our kitchen to see if it would fit. It does, just.

So we are now selling our current 10 year old dining room suite. When it arrives, we won't have any chairs to sit on, so will need to get some of those too. There will be no return trips to Greytown for a LONG time.

Here are some pictures of our naughty adventure.

Driving through the Manawatu Gorge

Tuatara

Kaka

Takahe

Martinborough region through a heat haze

Cheese shop Featherston

Footnote: Driving through the Manawatu Gorge, seeing a Tuatara and "Manukura" the white Kiwi, count as experiences 5, 6 and 7 for 2015

Oh give me a home where the ___roam

Well, New Experience no 4 in 2015 has to be what happened this morning when we came back from the local town. We swung into our driveway and my husband pointed to a very large black bull in the driveway next door, looking somewhat longingly at the paddock beyond! At first we thought it was our next door neighbour's bull, but evidently not. A few phone calls up and down the road to various farmers, and one took pity on us and came to round him up.

It turned out to be owned by someone way up the road. The beast had busted out this morning and gone AWOL. When I had heard amorous bull noises and strange calling sounds in the early hours, I just thought the Highland cows were being wooed. Not a bit of it. It was Mr Lonesome Lost trying to figure out where he was.

I think we might be locking our large gate from now on, just in case he gets wanderlust again.

Number 3 of my "things to try for the first time" and a warning

I have loved and eaten many a custard tart in my time. It comes with being a Yorkshire lass - they qualify as cuisine where I come from. But I can't remember ever making one; today I tried. I didn't make the pastry - mostly because it is too darn hot and I wanted to do other things as well as cook on my day off. So here is attempt number one. It smells fantastic and I suspect it will be consumed at one sitting (it is a small pie dish, I should point out!)

The warning is not to do with pies - custard or otherwise. It is to do with reading the Latin names of plants. My dearly beloved bought me a gardening voucher for my Christmas present and off we went today to spend it. I am planning to have a "picking patch" where our veggie patch used to be. It will be random. There will be lavender and other colourful / fragrant flowers - sunflowers etc. Then there will be bean teepees, because I want to grow sweet pea flowers as well as the beans.

I saw a delightful plant positively singing with bumble bees and looking very pretty and purple. "That will go with the lavender" thought I. I had hardly got it out of the car before our large elderly cat was all over the thing. "Raht sqwiffy" as they say in Yorkshire. I turned the tab over, and the lovely bee magnet was cat mint.......oh dear. I expect my dad is watching me and having a good laugh about that!