On holiday

I'm in Whakatane for a couple of weeks, taking a break and visiting the family. Today was a lovely sunny winter's day, so we went for a drive over the Ohope hill to get fish & chips at our favourite spot, the Ohiwa Oyster Farm.

There were fewer humans there at this time of year, but just as many birds! The usual scrum of seagulls, plus a few kingfishers and even a weka nosing about in the mud.

Low tide at Ohiwa

On the way back we spied a couple of lambs eating grass and wiggling their little tails. So cute!

From afar...

...And close up, courtesy of Dad :)

Baubles

Yup, the Christmas variety. I made some pretty red-and-white decorations to hang on the wall - I think they're very cute and traditional-looking!



The birds are knitted, using a pattern called Bluebird of Happiness, and the hearts are crocheted Danish Hearts. The birds are seamless, and fairly fast and easy if you're comfortable with short rows. The hearts took more time, but I love them! I used to make paper ones as a kid - there's a very simple tutorial here (found via tiny happy).

I think the Christmas fumes must have gone to my head, because I've ordered two big balls of red and off-white cotton yarn to make more decorations!
I'm trying to decide between these cute crochet patterns (all free):

In garden news, our sweet-peas are flowering and smelling amazing, and my baby alpine strawberry plants are getting bigger. And our cherry tomatoes have just started producing ripe ones! I planted a mixed 6-plant punnet of cherry tomatoes, so I'm not sure what varieties we have. The ones with colour on them are all yellow so far.

The first harvest:


The dwarf sunflowers are adding colour too. Yay for yellow. :)

Spot the bee buzzing off!

Birds, a blossom, and a beanie

Mum and Dad's house is excellent for incidental birdwatching. They have plenty of trees in the garden, including a big camellia which is always tui-infested! Here's my list of species I have seen today: sparrows, goldfinches, waxeyes, yellowhammers, fantails, tuis, and one great big kereru.

Dad let slip that there was a spare birdhouse in the garage, and we eventually found a good spot for it... right below the first birdhouse. Hopefully the sparrows who've been setting up their nest won't mind having neighbours. They're in a big prunus tree which we can see from the house (all the better to spy baby birds). The first few blossoms appeared today, like pink popcorn...

Sparrow apartments

The first blossom of spring! *pop*

I finished a hat I've been working on - a Lapwing, in Vintage Purls Sock. It's a lovely slouchy beanie, with the purl side outwards. The wide rainbow 'pooling' on the brim happened totally by accident! I wasn't sure about it at first, because I really liked the yarn as it looked in the ball (with the colours totally mixed up) - but I got that effect at the top of the hat anyway, once I started decreasing stitches. And happily, I have half the ball left over to make something else with. :)

My new Lapwing hat, with broccoli plants


I'm nearing the end of the 'body' of my honeycomb cardie - only a few rows of ribbing to go, and then on to the sleeves. Hazel has decreed it cosy enough to sleep on, which I suppose bodes well!

What do you mean I'm not in NZ?

This year for our Christmas festivities Willie's immediate family and I stayed at Apollo Bay, a few hours drive down the coast from Melbourne. We all had a lovely time - it was most relaxing! And a little cooler, which I appreciated.

It was great to finally see a bit of the Australian countryside, and I spent rather a lot of time watching for interesting new birds and other wildlife. A highlight was seeing a flock of cockatoos gathered around a picnic table seagull-style, while a family ate fish and chips! We also spied some wild koalas when we stopped at a eucalyptus forest on the way back to Melbourne, and I saw an echidna moseying along the roadside at the beach.

But there were also some surprisingly New-Zealand-like moments! Apollo Bay had pohutukawa trees scattered about, like a typical beach town back home, and there were familiar birds around, like fantails and pukekos.

The biggest surprise was when we went on a bushwalk to Marriners Falls - the bush was just so ferny it felt like being on a bushwalk in New Zealand...

(click to enlarge pics)





 

Cardigan success!

It's taken a few months of chipping away at it (in between getting seduced by other projects), but my first proper cardigan is finished! I started it back in April, and blogged about it in my very first post. Awww.


The pattern is 'Chickadee', from Ysolda Teague's wonderful book on knitting well-fitting garments, Little Red in the City. I've put my notes on getting the fit right on my Ravelry project page. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find buttons for it yet, but I'm sure the craft shops in Melbourne will have a good selection. I can use a brooch in the meantime, or wear it open. Next on my garment-knitting agenda is a long-sleeved Cria cardigan from the same book, in variegated greens. :)

Dad and I had some fish and chips for lunch today, down at the 'Heads' - the mouth of the Whakatane river. The local seagulls were pretty excited about our chips! Cheeky buggers.