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

Orange Pavlova

 The orange pavlova lamp is trialling a new function as a necklace holder....

 

I quite like how it looks, though it may need a lower voltage bulb so it can still be used.

The test will be seeing how functional it is :-)

Hookers & Lamps

Another Tuesday has passed and we're almost in the middle of the working week! I've been inspired today by other Etsy people. A few people use their blogs to promote other etsy shops, how cool is that! So I thought I'd start with my team. I am a member of the Etsy Hookers Team. It sounds way much more racy than it is! Crocheting people use hooks. (sorry, bit of a let down there eh :-) ) http://www.etsy.com/search_results.php?search_type=tag_title&search_query=etsyhookers+teamThey are a great group that are so good at promoting each other. The majority of them are in a different time zone from me so I've been a bit slack being a member, and I thought I could make up for it here! I'm going to ask them if they mind me picking on them every so often and popping them on here, especially if they do things I have no patience, inclination or skill to do. Watch this space...

In the bio thing I mentioned that we enjoy shopping in thrift & op shops. As a consequence we seem to have accumulated more than the usual number of lamps, and lamp shades. Here are 2 of my favourite lampshade re-dressings.

Re-dressing lampshades is one of the few other creative outlets that can make me put down the crochet hook.

I'm working on an idea at the moment to see if I can do more

of it..... lets see if it comes to fruition

I can't take any credit for the ideas, the flowers one was inspired by a NZ artist who had an exhibition at our local art gallery and the orange pavlova was semi-insipired by a shopping trip in York, England