Auckland

Going backwards from my last post - the first stop in NZ was Auckland after a great flight with seven hours deep sleep, aided by a complimentary pair of pyjamas!

We had an apartment overlooking the harbour of a cruise seemed otiose but we did take the ferry across to Devonport for the views. Dennis got a little distracted when, way down at the bottom of the hill he spotted a fire engine. Very exciting. Apparently.

Cushla's Village Fabrics got some custom but I haven't photographed the fabric yet so you will have to wait for that.

We also did the museum where I got completely overwhelmed and excited with ideas for quilt design and City and Guilds projects in the Maori section. At some time I will write an article on it for my website but for now this is a taster - just one of many woven panels from the meeting house and some traditional mok0 - facial tatoos. I have lots of sketchbook pages and had to go back the next day, via Parnell and the cathedral, to finish off the Polynesian rooms.

Te puia

Whilst in Rotorua I took the opportunity to go to Te Puia, a Maori cultural centre based around geothermal geysers. I arranged a private tour and we got a delightful guide who showed us the area and then spent an hour teaching me how to do the traditional poi dancing while Dennis sat there refusing to join in. The dance involved intricate swinging and flicking of poi which are actually sponge balls off thick cord. I can report that I had a great fun time and that with about a thousand hours more practice I could be quite good at it!

We ate food cooked in a hangi in the thermal springs and also went to the cultural tour. Our private guide had had a word with the people running the show and so Dennis got to be the chief of the tourists and had a major role to play in the welcome ceremony - picking up the welcome token and rubbing noses with the home chiefs. It was interesting - all the time we have been here he has told people we are from England. As soon as he was appointed chief his tribal instincts bubbled to the surface and he declared his allegiance to Northern Ireland. In true N. Ireland stubbornness he wanted to know what would happen if he refused the welcome token. Our Maori host fixed him with a steely eye and declared that there would be symbolic war and no show would take place. He picked up the token.

I also got to spent time with some women weavers. Normally you just get to see some displays in the weaving school but I got to learn how to roll flax on my bare knee to make cords for weaving, to have a good old natter with the Maori women about their lives and to see some of their work. At one point Teresa casually brought out a package that she said had not been unwrapped 'since Miss New Zealand wore it'. It turned out that the bubble wrap contained the first prize winning outfit from the 2005 Wearable Arts award and this is me wearing the skirt from it it. Well, this is me holding it up against me as Miss New Zealand is a lot skinner than me!

Lake Tahoe

I am not saying it was cold at Lake Tahoe... ...but that's real snow on them there Nevada mountains!

Fortune Cookies

Ever wonder where your Chinese fortune cookies come from? No, not China.

Yup - you guessed. San Fransisco.

More Precisely this tiny little 'factory' in the dark and narrow Ross Alley which runs between two wider neon-glitzed throroughfares in Chinatown.

The batter goes into a moving belt with shallow circular indentations. It goes around, into an oven, and comes out vertical. The operator prises the cookie out of the indentation and if she breaks it tosses it into a bin of rejects. It is obviousy a tricky task as it was a rather full bin (from which we got to eat for free). The good cookies are still malleable and she presses the fortune slip in the centre and folds and twists them around a sticking-out slim pole of steel and drops them into a cooling tray which is emptied into the bin for good cookies, (from which we got to eat at $4 a big bag to take away.)

I asked this lady how many cookies they produced in a day. She looked up wearily and said, "Lots."

Shop hops

I had a plan. A tried and tested plan. Remember when I went to Europe and bought a alf meter in each shop and made it up into one souvenir quilt? That was the plan for the US. Did it work?
Well, lets just say that I can confirm that you can stuff 23.5 meters of fabric, one gift pincushion and a magazine into a medium USPS flat rate box, which then ships for $42.
So no. It didn't work. but boy did I have fun.
Blogger is messing me about tonight so these photos are not in the ideal order but bear with me...

At Fabrications in Healdsburg I found a number of pieces of Art cloth which had very individual resist patterns on cotton sateen. They were pricier than standard cotton but I could not resist (ha!) a few pieces becuase I am not going to see them again. Then I bought some cottons to tone in both with the Art cloths and with some fabric I have at home, from Cabin Fever in Auburn and Sugar Pine in Grass Valley
I forgot to rotate these photos but Blogger has taken an age tonight to load them so you will just have to tilt your heads 'coz I am not doing it again!

Before Healdsburg in fact I started a shop hope around Berkeley with Diane who only enabled my shopping. I decided to go out of my usual brown comfort zone ( see above) and go for colours which reminded me of the sugared almondy houses in San Fransisco.

The haul was built up over a number of shops....

..... including: cabin fever, Auburn. The lady in the Green jacket is Marlene my penfriend and host in Auburn

Stone Mountain and Daughter in Berkely. This is Diane bringing me more to buy!

New Pieces in Berkely.

Cotton Patch somewhere down the dark and traffic clogged I-24.

Sugar Pine in Grass Valley

And Thimble Creek in Berkeley.

Buddy Can You Spare A Dime?

Guest Written By Dennis
So we made it out of California together, Helen, her fabric and me, in that order, although not before Helen lost her pillow again. The Bell Boys at the Fairmont rubbed their hands with glee every time they saw me approaching with the latest list of lost items; (it had to be me; if Helen had gone she would have left something else behind!). "You got the last tip; it's my turn today."

So, penniless, I left San Francisco. Borrow from Helen? Well, apparently that $200 of fabric was actually a mistaken figure; how much then? I am unable to declare with any certainty as it seems that Helen has "misplaced" her calculator. Lie to me? Of course she wouldn't....although she is always telling me that I need to learn to frame my questions properly!!

Today we went to Devonport in Auckland..to a Quilt shop! After Helen left the owner shut up shop and went on holiday; I wonder why? Buddy, can you spare a dime?

Leaving SF

Ideally there would be lots of jealousy-inducing pictures on this post. But there are not. For a number of reasons.

First, I am in an American airlines lounge at SF airport. I get to use their computers but not their wifi because I have a BA ticket not American. Go figure. So I can't get photos off the laptop. And they sure as anything aren't letting me stick my USB stick into anything they own.
Secondly I don't have photos of the three best things to tell you about because we keep losing the camera. The first time I left it in a dark restaurant in Berkely marina and we had to go back for it two days later.

Which means that I do not have photos of the most amazing day at Diane's in Healdsburg. A fellow member of the Twelve by Twelve group she invited us to stay and asked if she minded if she asked a few of her quilting friends over for lunch and show and tell. Mind?! I loved it. So the door opens and the first person arrives. I am in the kitchen and I hear her say she got up at 6am. Huh? I peek around the door and there is Karen Rips , fellow Twelve, who got up at 6am to fly Burbank to Oakland and hired a car and drove 90 mins to come and join us for lunch and then had to go back the same day. The cost must have been something and I am so honoured she did it.

Then, what Caroline (Diane's daughter) described as a 'maelstrom of quilters' arrived. Last to arrive ( right in line with her personality) was Gerrie - another amazing surprise which had me in tears. She and her husband the renown Mr C ( who has a fine personality and fine physique - good choice Gerrie!) had driven 12 hours from Portland the day before to join us. It was a truly fabulous day. Of course Diane has photo on her blog already so this is hardly news


The second time we lost the camera it fell off the back seat in the Hertz hire car and we didn't notice it when we returned the car. The car was hired the next day and we had to wait to see if it would be found.

So, no pictures of the fantastic morning I spent cycling over the Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito (Dennis met me there by ferry n0t being keen on the two wheeled mode of transport). The weather was gorgeous, the ride easy. Ok, I pushed it up two small hills but where the road goes up the road must some down and I confess that on the 2 mile down bit when I had the road to myself the word, "wheeeeeeeeeeeee" might have escaped my lips. I even got to sit for a half hour or so on a little beach in the lee of the bridge and journal and to browse a charming clapboard cafe come gift/bookshop called the Warming Hut.

That evening the camera was returned. Much to Dennis' joy. Not so much mine because I had already lined up a good deal on an upgraded version with a nice Italian-American guy who only looked a little tiny bit like Pussy from the Sopranos. However, the next day we realised that the camera was returned but the memory card was missing. So no photos either of the whales Dennis saw in Monterey. I did book to go and I got to within a step of the boarding ramp but then my judicial instinct took over. Those two sailor guys who told me it would be 'just fine' out at sea today. Not credible witnesses. So I wimped out. Dennis returned and told me there was 30 foot swell, that only 2 people did not get seasick ( he was one but he had taken a prescription tablet and worn my acupressure bands as well) and that I would have hated every minute. But he got to see dolphins and sea otters and three humpback whales who obligingly flipped their tails for him. So he was happy.

Me? I took a peaceful and scenic walk into Pacific Grove to Back Porch Quilt shops where I added to my fabric stash. (Oh yes - another post is coming up all about fabric when I get somewhere I can post photos!)

I have bought another memory card but I bought an SDHC card which takes the photos just fine but which Dennis' laptop refuses to read. So now I have to get them transferred to disc in Auckland and buy a plain SD card. Ah the joys of travel. So soon we shuttle to LA and from there to Auckland overnight ( which is where my decision to travel with a full sized feather pillow will come into it's own! And hopefully from there I will send you pictures.

Lost in travel

Guest written by Dennis 12/11/09

Helen is busy stroking piles of shop-hop fabric so it falls to me to inform her readers that we are now back in San Fransisco following a tour of Northern California taking in Berkeley, Healdsburg, Sacramento, Auburn, Grass Valley, Nevada City, Lake Tahoe, Salinas and Monterey. The US is interesting in that it appears that around each quilt shop they have built a city for husbands to visit.

Having ordered a Hertz Never Lost GPS marriage saving device Helen was never geographically lost. However in the last 10 days she has lost the following items:

Bag of apples
Camera ( left in Berkeley Marina)
Camera ( left in Hertz hire car)
Handbag(left in In and Out Burger Morgan Hill)
Passport ( albeit only for a panicky five minutes when she failed to reach deep enough into the safe pocket of her bag where it was all along)
Scarf
Sunglasses
Camera spare battery
Can mango juice
Feather Pillow
Box of fabric worth some $200 (that's what she is admitting to anyway)
Pedometer
Bicycle.

All have been recovered save for the the mango juice and the pedometer which fell off in the ladies' restroom and I draw the line at searching in there. The Hertz people returned the camera but the memory card has been removed. This is a mystery even Helen has not yet solved. So far she has failed to lose me but should my name not appear in any of her posts please email her and remind her to check for my whereabouts.

San Fransisco

San Fransisco turned out to be a good place to recuperate from jet lag for it is a gentle and well mannered city. The houses are the colours of sugared almonds and the tourists can happily hang from the cable cars without fear of being sliced up by passing courier bikes or white van men. With the exception of the number 49 bus which left us stranded, the city works. Service is good, automatic and given with perk. Each neighbourhood has its own village atmosphere and we have chosen our multi-million pound house with bay views in Pacific Heights which is like Notting Hill on diazapan. Even the No 49 can be forgiven, as its absence forced a walk through a residential area containing sights the like of which we had never seen. Nor really want to again.

Even Haight-Ashbury now provides it's bong shops and Indian gauze scarfs with old lady-remembering grace and stature.

Although, I suspect that the old lady is wearing purple, as the cafe in which we ate excellent apple pie crepes was called Squat and Gobble. In English-English I suspect that means something very rude to say the least!

Time zones

Written 6.20 am November 2009

San Fransisco

Time zones are like chess. I know the moves and I have the basic intelligence to grasp the deeper subtleties. If I could be bothered. Dennis on the other hand delights in working out eighteen ways to say "Ha! I got your prawn." Or pawn. But in this case prawn. Because, there we were in the Far East cafe , China Town, San Fransisco and he is saying things like, "Today started at 4am yesterday." Or, "Today is the longest day of my life, with 32 hours," and other logical impossibilities. It makes my head hurt, but with the aid of a mobile set to UK time and a watch on Us time I worked out that, having arrived, checked to the Fairmont, walked the labyrinth at Grace cathedral, I had just ordered a plate of scrambled eggs and the biggest King Prawns I had ever seen at 3am on my body clock, and that, given I had had about 5 hours sleep in fits of 10-20 minutes the night before and then had got up at 5am to fly half way across the world, (Albeit horizontally whilst watching films*), this might be why I was about to fall asleep in a plate of Foo Young.

Since then, I have had a solid ten and a half hours of sleep, uninterrupted save for a text at 3am from my Best Quilting Buddy who sent me a picture of a rainy lorry laden road in Darlington. This was fair punishment since earlier I had sent her the picture above in an unnecessarily bragging text explaining that this was the view from our freely upgraded room. But, that ten hours sleep started at 7pm US time which is why I am now awake in bed with the laptop at 6.20 am watching the sun rise over Alcatraz.

I have made a resolution to download photos every day and actually label them. But also a resolution not to pay $13.95 plus tax a day for hotel wifi so you will be getting releases of this blog in fits and starts as I have internet access.

* Does any one know the ending to the Audrey Hepburn film Guess Who's Coming to dinner? I mistimed my watching on the flight and the entertainment system got turned off before I found out if the couple got their father's blessing.