Hear my Song - March Post Card Exchange

This was due to be sent out in March, but what with sick computers, on-line roleplaying games, making a copy, and general procrastination, I've only just finished it.

The background is rust dyed fabric, with fussy-cut clematis flowers, and a fantail sitting on a punga tree. I've embellished it with brown and green seed-beads along the punga fronds. The reverse is hand-dyed fabric with stamped words, and a hand-written greeting.

Waitakere Trap Line

It was my turn to check the traps on the Dam Road this weekend. It's been at least a month (or is it two?) since I've been up there. Daylight saving ended today, so I was up there bright and early, with both dogs. The weather was warm and sunny, and at 0800, the sun was still climbing over the ridge.

Just for a change, there were rats in the traps - very dead and squashed. The lake was full, and they've built a new building at the bottom of the dam to control the excess water - and water was pouring out, and down the waterfall.

The bush is in flower - rata, rewarewa, hebe, lillies, with lots of lovely smells.

It would have been nice if I hadn't caught my finger in a trap - got a lovely bruise now. It hurt so much initially, all I could do was stand there. So ... lots of lovely pictures.

Endless March

This has been the month of no laptop. It's been pretty neurotic since I purchased the blasted thing, and Vista is a total pain. Then it started having increasing problems connecting to the internet, until I couldn't connect at all. Backed up most of the files - took 7 disks, and then I ran out.

Took it back to Harvey Norman, who sent it to their repair people, who said "no fault found" .... and then replaced the main board. Over the next week, it became increasingly unstable, until by the end of the week, I again couldn't connect to the internet, or the home network. 2 weeks with Harvey Norman's repair people - and now it has a new hard disk.

But .... it won't accept the backup disks - wants an administrator file. So now I'm trying to copy each batch of files back over into the computer. But of course, inevitably, some really important ones, like the document that contains all my logins for various sites, has been corrupted, and won't open.

Not only that, each file transfer has crashed the laptop.

So, I haven't been able to update my blog, log on to sites, download email, or do much of anything. Time to catch up.

Product Training in Oz Pt2

Well, as I suspected, I'm still more than a little brain dead. I feel like I've spent the day travellling, which I guess I have - a not quite 3 hour flight, + the 2 hour+ time difference.

Dinner at the restaurant with Chris? (darn, can't remember her name), was Ok, but I was back up in my room by about 2030. Wrote another scene for Reavers Deep, and managed to get about 5 hours sleep in total. I finally managed to get some cold tablets at the airport this morning. I still feel dreadful, but I'm so looking forward to my own bed.

Product Training In Sydney

Sunday night's flight over to Sydney was ok - the departure gate was "4c"- you went down 2 levels from the waiting area, to ground level. Then we got put on a bus - yes, no kidding - and were driven to the far end of the taxi area, where our tiny little airbus A320 was sitting beside a bigger plane, had to climb a gangway to get up into the plane. They'd run out of air-bridges and terminal space! Evidently it's quite common.

When we got to the end of the taxiway prior to take off, it turned into "Seconds From Disaster" time. Debris had been seen on the end of the runway by a previous heavy jet, and the pilot wouldn't take off till it had been checked. Sure enough, when they sent a vehicle to check, there were debris on the runway, right where it could have got sucked into the engines! Scary. Took off 30 minutes late.

I had a guy (mid-late 20's maybe) sitting in the window seat- I think he was coming down off something - he kept twitching and jumping and sneezing and snuffling - very weird. On the other side was a lady from Victoria, British Columbia, who'd been to NZ with her husband for the 3rd or4th time - they love the place. Had an interesting chat with her.

Wee bit of turbulance once we got within a couple of hundred k's of the Australian coast, so the pilot descended early to avoid it.

The food served on the plane was dreadful - either a meat pie, or what they said was a Thai chicken fritter with sweet chilli sauce. Problem was, the chicken smelled (and tasted) fishy! Not nice at all.

Staying at the Quest, North Ryde as usual, backing on to the Lane Cove River National Park. Monday night I had a fantastic dinner in the restaurant, "Atlantis" - garlic bread, rare eye fillet with a monster prawn on top, and potato chip rectangles built up into a sort of castle, with whole baby carrots, then chocolate cake with rhubarb, strawberries & orange, with a dessert wine. NOM. The wine was a bit average - Noble One - won't have that again. Certainly made up for breakfast - fruit salad, and lunch - chook & chips. Sunday night's dinner was nice too - garlic bread, calamari, and a baked pear thing (a bit too sweet).

Product Training was fun on Monday - but it wasn't nearly as complicated as they'd made out - not sure what all the fuss was about. I think it's more to do with a lack of confidence with a certain person, than actual, real complication. I'd sat the Activac test in December before I'd had training, and got "Bronze" level then - this time got "Gold" level -43 out of 45 - clever me. I've typed up some of my notes, but not had a chance to look thru the manuals they gave me.

Went for a walk before dinner thru the Park -then bush-bashed my way back up to the main road - very good fun climbing up the rock shelves, wonderful old sandstone outcrops - all the soil's long gone! Lots of birds - saw a pair of crows, stood within a couple of metres of kookaburra, saw an incredibly noisy Sulpher Crested Cockatoo, rosellas, ozzy mynahs. No animals tho.

I thought Delhi Road was a 60k zone, but the traffic seemed to be going a lot faster - and no pavement!

Had a long, on-line chat with one of my colleagues - scary! Can't get away from work, LOL.

My brain doesn't know what time it is - the laptop clock says 2400, while the bedside clock is on Ozzy time, and says it's 2200! I'm ready for bed now tho.

Becca's head cold hit be about 2300 Aussie time, with a burning sore throat headache and congestion. Only managed to sleep for a couple of hours, hot, cold, sweaty and horrid. About 4.30 I got up and gargled with straight vodka - that numbed the throat! Then sat and wrote a piece for the Reaver's RPG between Summer and Patrick.

Writing hot romance alone in a hotel room, 2000k from home, after reading Diana Gabaldon's Dragonfly in Amber! The head-cold fixed me good and proper tho!

Had another long day today - not nearly as bright as I was yesterday, and the cold symptoms got steadily worse. Took an Infovac apart, then sat looking at it for 10 minutes wondering why I couldn't get it back together - completely missed seeing another PCB sitting on the desk! Got 47 out of 50 for the Product Knowledge Test - 2 Gold level certificates in two days!

I'm going to meet a Clinical Services Educator (Product Specialist) for dinner downstairs later - not sure how much scintillating conversation I can provide.

more later.....

Virtual Jewellery

My newest venture is making virtual jewellery for a couple of the participants of an online RPG I'm involved with. Tokens of esteem have been exchanged, and I offered to turn them into virtual wearable jewellery.

The first was a cinch - just a matter of finding the right frame, and then the right colour tartan. Then the magic of Photoshop to combine the layers, and Hey Presto, a beautiful brooch:



The lace piece is proving a little more challenging, trying to make it look masuline! Here they are:


The first is a relatively wide lace, backed by ruched blue organza ribbon, with a blue ribbon & pearls embellishment, and an amethyst pin.
The second is a narrow ribbon, tied with gold yarn, and decorated with small fresh water pearls on silver chain.
Both would need to be starched to maintain their shape during wear. I'm not sure if they're masculine enough, but then if you tell a woman you need to swap tokens of affection, and she's not prepared, you get lace, LOL.

Rangitoto Island From St Heliers Beach

This postcard was made for a February/Winter exchange on Goldilocks and Friends, and measures 18x15cm.

The materials: "sky dye" fabric for sky and sea; commercial batik cotton for island and grass, rocks & flax bushes; rust dyed fabric for sand. I put a very thin layer of fused then teased Aurora Crystalina Angelina on the sea to make it sparkle. Fussy cut rocks and flax, hand and FM machine embroidered.

On the rear of the card is a brief description, and pronunciation guide to the Maori words I've used.

I almost became unstuck when I came to bind the edges - my original plan was a wide black bias tape, but then discovered it would cover the words on the back, so plaited some lovely fibres from the scrapbook shop and handsewed them on.

It's currently summer in New Zealand - we had 30 deg C (84F) and 100% humidity for a week, with temperatures averaging around 25 deg C (78F) and 80-90% humidity. To even think of doing a "winter" theme was laughable.

Auckland city is built on an isthmus, at its narrowest only a mile or so wide, with the Manukau Harbour and Tasman sea on the western side, and the Waitemata Harbour and Pacific Ocean on the other. This site has been fought over for hundreds of years, before and after the coming of Europeans. The isthmus is covered with over 50 volcanic cones, and while many are extinct, some are only dormant. The last to explode was the island of Rangitoto, only 600 years ago.

Rangitoto Island is an iconic landmark, and a piece of what we call "kiwiana" - an idyllic EnZed summer.

For those that are interested, the rear of the card says:
Rangitoto Island from St Heliers Beach, Auckland, New Zealand. (Pron: Rang-e-toe-toe)
Phonetic pronunciation & translation:
Haere mai ki te Waitemata o Tamaki Makaurau.
High-ray my key tay Why-tea-ma-tar O Tar-Mar-key Mar-cow-row (rhymes with cow)
Maori (Mow-ree) greeting: Welcome to the Sparkling Waters of Tamaki of One Hundred Lovers.

I really enjoyed making this - I love doing the fussy cutting - I have a lovely pair of sharp-ended, spring-loaded Fiskars' scissors, and fuse iron-on webbing onto the fabric, leaving the paper backing on to provide some stiffening. I usually cut this sort of thing out while watching TV - as I'd rather be doing other things during daylight.

I have three more cards to do - one for March, and two for Easter/April - tho of course it's not actually Easter in the southern hemisphere.... but we won't go there right now.

There's a batch of fabric on the rust for a fat quarter swap - tannin dyed first.

Oh, and don't forget the TT1 & TT2 stuff. TT1 has been pretty boring, and I don't want to go out and buy any fabric. TT2, I've already bought most of the bits, and already used one technique - the angelina, so that's more useful.