artwork love

13 year old's artwork which arrived home today. Seriously jealous that he has one last day of school and then a whopping 2 month holiday for him!

a day immersed in wool

I woke up yesterday and on impulse spent the entire day (it really, truly did take all day long!) sorting out my wool and adding it all to my Ravelry Library (I'm "KimberleyA" on there if you want to look a wee peek :) ).


I'm so happy - still a bit to load - but it has really given it a big sort out; plys are stacked together; I know exactly what I have (4 jersey/cardigan lots which is fab to know) and it all looks tidy and less de-cluttered now!


The funny thing is that the husband came home for lunch - the look on his face was absolutely priceless! I think he was saying "why on earth do you want more wool for your birthday next week?".... and other things ;).


I've also found a grand pile of works in progress - some things were knitted, just never stitched up! I spent last night doing that and now have a few things I can use for Christmas gifts too! Yay!


I still believe there is always more divine wool to be bought... ;)

oops - bit of a spend up!

I love my husband! Last Friday was the first free Friday in months from study. A girlfriend and I went shopping... we went to the first H & M opened in NZ about a month ago. Think we timed it well as queues were not bad at all - 2 shirts, 2 tees and a couple of things for family Christmas presents.
The off to the little Scholastic bookshop -


the pile for a few teenagers (most expensive book was $7 ! Most were $5!)

The one dollar pile !

The pile for school (now in the school office with me thinking about donating - or not - as I have run out of budget)...

After shopping at Scholastic with these prices, one finds it very hard to go into normal bookshops like Whitcoulls etc (but I do!). Great prices for schools at Scholastic!

The next day - a wee splurge on stationery at K-Mart. Only my 3rd time this year in there - insanely cheap! Adore the set of 3 notepads (A5 size) for letter writing especially.

Then the husband took me to Spotlight to buy my birthday gift, but I snuck a few things in on top of that....

Wool on clearance for $10 a ball; ribbons for $2

 Fabric was 30-50% off a metre -

 Christmas fabric 40% off

 This was down to $24 for me - back of the box says it was originally $125.... bargain of the year for these fat quarters.

So a successful weekend one might say; fab to catch up with a friend (and for the husband to say "one only lives once" when he saw the shopping with the friend ;) ) .

Work is tiring and very stressful (I hate this time of the year actually!) at the moment - I want the term over fast! And then 6-7 weeks of lovely holidays!

I'll be kept busy crafting to take away some of the stress!

I have a sock addiction

While trying to get stuff into my head for a university exam, I knit. I knit a lot! This exam I knitted a lot of socks! A few for me, and because I really do have enough socks, I knitted 5 pairs for workmates too! The really funny thing is that one of my workmates appeared in the library the other day saying how much she loved her socks "but..." Rosa goes;  Me " Your husband took them?". "Yes, so..." ; Me "of course I'll knit you another pair!". I thought that was hilarious! So happy people love my socks!

Send us Christmas Blog Swap partners

Gosh things seem to be getting worse for the multiple earthquake affected areas - multiple buildings are being shut down in Wellington due to danger of collapsing (one especially is in high danger from aftershocks - there have been over 1500 of them!). The US Navy now have a ship off Kaikoura and they are evacuating hundreds of people a day. There is now a back road opened to get much needed supplies into townships cut off. The state highway looks like it might not be able to be repaired; tourism operations have no services to offer in the busiest time of the year; floods are affecting areas now and houses have been red-stickered (you can not go back into them) - it is such a mess.
Even the boys' scout jamboree is up in the air due to the location (in the area where quakes have hit).


Anyway here are the swap partners on a bit of a happier note... please contact your partner and swap addresses/likes/dislikes etc!


Kimberley (Kimberley@atkinson.org.nz) and Stephanie


Sandra and Linny  (lyn.robyn.smith@gmail.com)


Tracy and Jackie (jackieah60@gmail.com)


Melanie and Glenda (geemchung@gmail.com )


Enjoy! Any questions etc please just e-mail me.

shake, rattle, roll and flood

New Zealand has been pummelled in the last 36 hours or so. North Canterbury (in the South Island) and the bottom of the North Island (Wellington)  have been hit by multiple earthquakes (the largest one being 7.5 !! ) since just after midnight on Sunday. The earthquakes were felt as far north as here (Auckland).  North Canterbury has just declared a state of emergency. Wellington has since been lashed by huge amounts of rain (today alone, a month's worth of rain has fallen) and at one stage the city was isolated due to major flooding. There are now worries that a building might collapse in the city. The city was basically out of bounds yesterday and then today you could not enter or leave.
Further south, in the South Island, major highways and the one train line are wrecked. The massive inter-island ferries are stuck out at sea as both ports on both islands are unable to be docked at due to damage.  Kaikoura is isolated, with people and many tourists from the town being helicoptered out.
Other towns are also isolated. There is little water, no phones and sanitation is becoming a problem.
Two people have been killed; many places are damaged. People are sleeping in their cars. I even think the first USA nuclear ship to visit New Zealand in decades is being roped in to help. There are still multiple after shocks and some are pretty sizeable. The aftershocks are over a massive area - areas hours and hours drives apart.


Thank you to the dear blog readers who got in touch worried about me. SO sweet and very much appreciated! We have heavy crazy rain today too, but are way north and safe. I highly suggest everyone have an emergency kit ready to go!


Thinking of the rest of the country! Kia kaha.


New Zealand Herald

freedom

My 55 hour weeks are over. I am exhausted. While my university exam wasn't w-o-w (3 hours sitting! Such a l-o-n-g time!!!), "C"'s get degrees!! That is my aspiration for this paper! Oh well.
Two university papers in one semester is full on around a crazy busy life.


One stress over with. The other I'm working on and mostly out of my control. Roll on the 6-7 week holidays I say!


My bedroom (I've great tower building skills!)-


 I'm now in my happy space sorting and organising and throwing stuff out. So much freedom is weird - so many books to read, letters to write, stitching to be done, socks to knit... :) and the family somewhere in there too. So hard studying and working and family-ing too! Four of us have had exams this week!

I let my child wag today

I've a 13 year old (Last weekend! Last teenager! Husband went to church to pray for patience and strength- hee hee) who I let wag school today. I'm not bothered. He is so distraught and upset at the world at the moment. Can't say I'm happy either. How do you try and talk to children this age and say it will be okay? I can't promise that. I can't promise them a future where everything will be rosy. Where another country can basically screw the entire world due to their beliefs? I guess I can hope that he does grow up with respect and morals and thinks of everyone around him with kindness and care; that decisions can and will affect others.


Exam tomorrow. I'm not at. all. happy. about that either!


Here's some of my divine sweetpeas - flowers kinda make us happy in crappy times.

Signs around the house

I woke up this morning and cracked up at this sign on the little freezer (I've no idea which kid came into the bedroom past midnight to retrieve it from the printer!). Capital letters for extra shouting I guess!

So I made a couple more and put one on the fridge and one in the boys' bathroom...

Let's see how far we get with these!

spooky readings

I told all my students that this wasn't a Halloween display, but a "promoting all the spooky books in the library display". We've many. It was simple displays (with the bunting sewed by me a year ago) and the "Suicide Squad" bunting from the teenage cinema worker (except I covered up the "suicide squad" words to say "read a spookingly good book today" instead. (Is spookingly even a word?!?!)


The number of children who seem to have seen that movie is scary in itself, being that most would be underage too - they did have it open to all for the first 3 weeks, until they changed the rating to an R-13. I wouldn't even dream of seeing any movie like it!