More mundane banality, please....

So 22 February was not a very nice day, to put it mildly, for New Zealand. Another big aftershock in Christchurch; smaller than the one in September last year, but much closer to the surface. Most of the older brick buildings in the business part of the city were destroyed, many people were killed and injured. The ground liquified . The death toll presently stands at 166, still a large number of people are missing.My family-in-law there are fine, they live in a suburb on the northern edges of the city.

If you want to know more please just google it, I feel too emotional to relay it all. This has affected everyone in this small national population. Everyone knows someone with Christchurch connections. There are countless ways to make donations too.

And now the absolute horror in Japan...

My sister-in-law is Japanese and her family are o.k. as well.

My thoughts are with all the victims.

We live on a live and kicking planet; we are so vulnerable...

Yet we are also a resilient species.

Here a link to a teacher's description of the first day back at school for Christchurch children . She manages to capture that bittersweetness much better than I can.

So some normal and more mundane happenings .

In January I visited the Napier Weavers to say hi to some of my fibre friends. Here my friend Heather is showing another friend's daughter how to paint designs on fabric. Heather is a very talented lady and knows her way around many and varied mediums, be they clay, paint, fibre or stone. Although she is now 70 she still teaches art, and works with young adults at risk.

Some of the gorgeous looms for the weavers use. Printing your own fabric is one thing, but actually designing the fabric itself from scratch is a whole different kettle of fish.

One of the members "dressing" the loom with the "warp". A precise job which needs some maths beforehand. And dexterous skills , not to mention good eye sight.

Which always makes me wonder how the old weavers in the 1800's did it in their little dingy cottages without electric light..?
A gorgeous hand-dyed silk warp is put on . Each thread goes through a different set of metal "heddles" depending on the pattern she wants for her cloth. This is a 4-shaft floor loom; it has 4 frames of metal heddles, which can move up and down independently when you push down their floor paddles.

A clever machine that doesn't need electricity to work!

One of the reasons I haven't been blogging lately ( apart from being completely distracted by the ongoing plight of Christchurch) is that things here at home are "afoot".

Most people in the world are nice. I really believe that.

A few are not. Just our luck they decided to live next door to us. We've had noisy neighbours before. Behind us a 16 year old keeps having his stereo confiscated by the noise control officers and then he quitens down again for a while. Too young to learn and an un-supporting parent who is hardly ever home. It's bearable.

The 28 year old next door however, has sunk lower and lower since his girlfriend left him. ( I will always call the police when I hear and see evidence of a bloke hitting a woman.)

The flatmates he got in, in order to pay the mortgage, love partying. 3 Times a week preferably and on the front lawn from 3p.m. to sometimes when it gets light again. Much manly roaring and swearing, girl's screaming and death-metal "music". Our girls started sleeping in the livingroom to get away from the noise; the man was un-approachable, became aggressive and abusive. Even worse after noise-control came to take away their stereo. Although we would have carried on with calling the authorities, it was becoming increasingly stressful in our household. My love didn't like coming home in case he saw them busy on the lawn, knowing what kind of night we had in store for us. So we started eye-ing up our street: a number of elderly women, with more health issues over the years, in houses that hadn't been updated for decades; cheap places once they'd have to go into a resthome or decided to leave. What kind of people would buy their houses? More of the same kind as next door if we were unlucky.....

Maybe it was the right time we should sell?

The thought alone at first made me weep, I couldn't even talk about it.

This has been our family home for 15 years, our girls grew up here. I have never in my life lived anywhere so long...
This picture shows the weeks' drinking by 3 people (fishwife drinks wine) without having a party. Other weeks it's one of those green wheelie bins stuffed full. You'd think they'd have a liver problem.

Certainly there seems to be a fore-brain problem with the concept of action and re-action.

Well, to cut this story short : we have bought a new house. And we will be shifting soon. And we are excited!!

In Napier, an opportunity knocked, and we opened the door to the cheapest house in a very good street. Now we have to sell this lovely home. So my love is finishing off his painting, there he is;
It is going to go well! It will be tip top looking inside and out, I am culling my hoarded treasures aggressively, cleaning curtains and throwing out spiders.

To add to our delight (and cursing Murphy's Law) the neighbours have been pretty quiet lately....

Weird Impulse Buy

from some time ago. Well not really weird, but unusual.

This vintage necklace and brooch in beautiful condition. Enameled metal leaves in soft sage green with flowers inset with coloured sparkly glass stones.( also called paste stones)

Sooooo Pretty! Don't know from what era, but I have been making it this era by wearing the brooch. I'd like to wear the necklace, but it is a bit too short. I might need to get a necklace extender or something like that. It was $5nz. Love at first sight...

It's just so girlie!