Angels at the Airport

This is the favourite tree in the Auckland Airport Shopping Centre Carpark dressed up for Christmas with peg and pipe cleaner angel dolls



 

Auckland Diwali Festival

Diwali or Deepavali (row of lamps) is an ancient Indian festival that is celebrated throughout India and in Indian communities around the world.  This was the first time we'd been to the Auckland festival, and what a treat it was (even with the weather bomb).

There was a heap of delicious food stalls with gorgeous vegetarian offerings and different Indian sweets.  We had onion bahji (my all time favourite), samosas, pakoras, dahl thingees (whatever they were they were yum!) and some mango laksa to cool the mouth after the heat of the spice.

Rows of food stalls up Queen Street

And OMG The Bling!  
If I had smaller hands my arms would be rattling with the sounds of multiple bangles tinkling away whilst I typed.  Instead my thumb knuckles are slightly sore from trying to push the beautiful sparkly things on to my chunky wrists.  
I wonder if there is a hand and wrist diet I could do??

Aotea Square & the main stage

On the main stage there were singers when we first arrived and then came the fabulous dancers, unfortunately I couldn't get close enough to get a good photo, so this is  'general ambiance' in between squally showers

Afternoon Tea @ The Langham

Today was my sisters 40th birthday, so we celebrated in olde English style with Afternoon Tea.  The tradition was reputedly started by Anna, the 7th Duchess of Bedford in the 1840s and first served at The Langham in London in 1865.

 

The service was wonderful, very attentive, the tea was yummy, they provided the leaves on the side of the pot to inspect and have a whiff of.  This pic is of the savouries & scones, the deserts came on a gorgeous old creaky trolley.  My favourite taste of the day were the savoury macaroons, which were apple and blue cheese.

In another part of the hotel they were setting up for a corporate function and had pictures of movie stars and a red carpet.  

I got to have my picture with Cary Grant.  
Now if only he'd drive me around Rome on my Vespa....

A Mulitcultural Festival and Crafty Day

Today I had a craft stall at the Buddhas Day Multicultural Festival at the temple in Botany Downs.

My sister convinced me it was a good way to use up some of our fabric squares whilst getting some good karma (all proceeds to the temple).  So off I went with a bag full of squares, needles, scissors, felt and brooch backs.

We made $85 (which wasn't too bad for gold coin donations) whilst teaching loads of people how to make fabric flower brooches (the majority of them kids, which aggravated my child allergies).

A lot of the parents told me how they had had to learn basic sewing at school and they thought it was great we were teaching the kids because they don't learn the basics any more. I wonder why these parents aren't showing them?
 
The day also including eating some gorgeous vegetarian food, making paper fish and my favourite; a Chinese knot dragon fly - I feel a renewed urge to learn macramé :-) 

I also feel like I need a weekend to recover!

A visit to the Art Gallery

Auckland Art gallery recently had a refurb with a new bit added.   It's a very cool airy open space, loads to see and even better it's free! :-D

 The flower chandelier, the flowers open and close, it's enormous, I loved it, bit too big to have at home though!

 A room with mirrors and stripes, it gives a feeling of infinity.  

A Belgium artist made it in the 70's.  It was really interesting, though it did give me a bit of a headache and vertigo

I think the same artist that made the chandelier did this one.  

It's at the entrance of the art gallery, this photo is from above

Out and About

A couple of weeks ago we popped up to Matakana for a weekend.  It has a pretty good Saturday farmers market and just out of town there is a craft market too.

It's been a few years since I was at Matakana and it's moved from sleepy country village on the way to the beach at Omaha to popping visitor destination.

 St Andrews church by the craft market. Reminded me we live on a Pacific Island

 I'm a sucker for a tree tunnel

Brisk winter walk along the beach at Orewa

An amusing crocheting interlude

Auckland has those pesky motorway on ramp lights that are turned on in peak times and allow one car per green light through. My 25 minute commute to work would be 15 if it weren’t for these traffic lights.

Each night for 10mins I whip out the crochet, turn up the radio and inch along in traffic fairly happily.

Last night on my way home, the man in the ute next to me was having a great time laughing away. Then he beeped his horn and started gesturing to me and to the car in front of him.

This was kind of weird – us Aucklanders tend to sit eyes front in traffic and pretend there is no one else around. Good grief – what if we made eye contact and had to acknowledge each other?!

On a whim I threw away acceptable sitting in traffic ettiqutte, I rolled down my window and asked what was going on – he pointed at my crochet and at the sticker on the car in front of him and totally cracked up.

I inched forward, craned my neck and read the sticker. 
It read: “Stay Alive – Don’t knit and drive”

Arts & Mittens

The Auckland Arts Festival is on at the moment.  We took ourselves off to the big smoke for the weekend to sit in plastic ponchos in the rain and be entertained by the Vietnamese Water Puppets.  It was very magical.

And my crochet addiction has recently turned to fingerless mittens, there are so many ways to create them, frills, ribs, stripes and lacy. And that's just this week!

The fact that a lovely person bought a pair I gave to FeltAid just increased my commitment to make more!

Re-location, re-location, re-location

I started my new job today, and so this past weekend was spent in Auckland looking at new places to live.

As part of our house-hunting we also showed Tzipi some of the city.



One Tree Hill is fairly famous, U2 have a song about it, and it is now noteable for having no tree after an activist tried to chop the tree down fairly successfully. It is also one of the many (inactive) volcano's that Auckland is built around. From the top there is a fabulous view of the city and it sits in the middle of a gorgeous park.

Tzipi and Andrew then flew back to Tauranga while I am now living with my sister and her family during the week until the house hunting is a success :-)