the year of the foot

We had a genu-ine earthquake here last night, and the couch did a sort of jolt and juddered a bit, and then a few times for the rest of the evening it felt like a big gust of wind had hit the house with a whoomp. Oh, and lest you imagine I have finally stopped going on about the weather, it turns out that July was the wettest they've ever had here. Lucky us, hey?

But to get on to the real news, the knitting is back, as you knew in your hearts it would be.

It is astonshing that, even equipped with Chris's new kick-ass camera, I can manage to take photos that are such utter arse.

These little slippers, finished on the plane to the land of rain and chilliness (that is to say, here), are a beeyoutiful lavender colour, hand-dyed by me during my crockpot phase, and exactly the sort of colour a little girl could feel like a tiptoe fairy in. Instead they look mildly brown.

You will notice that you can see all the stitches, and this is because (as I mentioned before) I haven't dared to chuck them in a super-hot washing maching to make them not only lavendery and pretty but also cute and fuzzy. So they will in fact be quite a bit smaller and less floppy and more fluffly than this in the end, and hopefully I will manage to put something pretty on like beads or sequins or sparkles or other things that your average adorable Ontarian four-year-old would like at Christmastime. Then I might show you another picture, and hopefully I will have figured out by then how to unbrownify my photos.

I am also currently reading a very wonderful and magical book, and I might tell you about it sometime, but at the moment it is too precious and fragile.

folding, formatting, and the logo that broke the bookseller's back

It's easy to lose perspective when you're, you know, me.

Over the last week I've been producing a Great Big Newsletter to mail out to no less that a thousand people, along with a few other publishers' catalogues and lists. My Great Big Newsletter is 4 pages of book cover pics and blurbs, a covering letter and an order form.

Given that the programme I'm using of necessity is simple old Word, I've not done at all badly with my text boxes and my tables and my logos and it looks a pretty bang-up job, though I says it as made it. However, when it came to the order form, my tables and my text boxes began disagreeing with each other, and since the computer picked that exact moment to implement a go-slow, the frustration started mounting.

As we all know, that is the moment to go for a walk, or at the very least a cup of tea and a flick through the jobs section of the Dominion Post, imagining we'd really prefer to go for that "Sophisticated Lady Hostesses - earn a thousand dollars an evening" advert, or in fact anything that didn't involve a computer ever again, before taking a deep breath and starting again. And as we all know, none of us accept that at the time, and continue to sit and click and click and sit and click...

Eventually, due to the disagreement between the table and the text box, and their insistence that our fax number and email simply didn't belong in either of them, the computer made a final decision that an illegal operation had occurred and it must immediately close down and not let me back into my document.

Twice.

This meant bringing home the rest of the afternoon's other work to do in the evening, and it was while working on the general store newsletter last night that the final straw came. I duly downloaded the New Zealand Book Month logo (September, since you ask), and...it disappeared.

When I tried to put it into my newsletter, I couldn't find it. My little doggie search icon with his magnifying glass shrugged and said he couldn't find it either. Yet it was downloaded, and squatting insidiously like Philip Larkin's toad somewhere on my hard drive.

This is what finally brought me to tears last night.

I'm feeling much better now. I spent much of this afternoon folding a thousand pieces of paper from Auckland University Press in half and realigning my perspective settings.

Knitting? What knitting?

cold is a concept

...and if I tell myself I Am Not Cold, then I won't be. Repeat: cold is a concept.

Here's a nice toasty picture of that wool I dyed using the magic of the crock pot and the food colouring many aeons ago, in a country currently suffering from 30 degree summer heat. Much of it has now become nice toasty slippers, unfelted as yet as I am too scared about buggering up our rented washing machine with fluff. We really can't afford a buggered up washer on top of everything else right now.

Anyway there has been no need lately of toasty slippers, nice or otherwise (the motley pair is definitely on the "otherwise" side of the equation, though they are totally free because they come from the ends left over from other projects), because we just had a weekend in the seething metropolis of Auckland, where it is several degrees warmer. It also helped to be staying in a rather nice hotel, with duvet, bath, thermostat, and tea-making facilities. This all came courtesy of Random House publishers, who were kind enough to sponsor me to attend the national Booksellers' Conference. They provide a sponsorship each year for someone who's never attended this esteemed event before, and as I've only been in the country a month, that definitely meant me.

Not only did I get to go to the Conference, meet everyone who's anyone including a whole lot of Awesome Folks Who Do Stuff With Books, AND stay in a rather nice hotel with the above warmth-related facilities, but I also got to go to TWO posh dinners. The first was the industry awards night; the second, the Montana Book Awards, a super-glittering event involving bigwigs and prizes and gourmet food and the Prime Minister. I felt quite whelmed over, though it was mostly by the niceness of all those aforementioned Folks (and also by starting the days at eight a.m and keeping going till after midnight). Lordy. What an introduction after only four weeks in the country.

Oh, and when I got home, the local freebie paper had a little bit about our Harry Potter event and there was a picture of me on the front page.

However, today we came back to earth with a bump - the gas company had come to cut us off. We didn't even know we had a gas water heater, hence not paying the gas company any money. We're all right now, but it's another hundred bucks "set-up charge" to add to the bills...what is that for? Typing your name and address into the system? What a bargain. But since the gas, electric, phone, internet and rental companies (both house and appliances) all demand it, it'll be a hell of a month. Better turn off the heater. It's a good thing cold is just a concept.

a hongi and a hangi

Tena koe!

As Maori Language Week draws to a close, I'm pleased to report I've done both of the above.

At the request of the author, we attended a book launch this week at the local tertiary college, which has its own marae (like a big ole meeting house), and they had The Whole Ceremony prior to the launch.

As you approach the marae as visitors, the hosts (in this case the staff of the college) issue a chant, the someone from the visitors' group responds. Then you're allowed through the gate and there's another chant and response, and you approach the building with lowered heads.

Inside, the speechifying begins - a man from the hosts gives a verrrrry long speech and then they sing a song, then a man from the visitors responds with a speech, and the visitors sing a song. Then it goes back to the host, speech and song, and the visitors again. It takes, in the words of a woman who taught at the institute who I sat with during the meal "as long as it takes"...and that is very true! (to another of our dinner companions, also a teacher at the college, she said "only two hours over time," to which the other lady responded "as usual...") Anyway after the multi-speeching, everyone sort of gets a bit more jolly and that's when the hongi is. All the hosts line up and you move along the line touching foreheads and noses or kissing on the cheek. It does rather feel as if you've very much met everyone.

Thereafter the book was blessed, and there were innumerable more speeches, and after that came the hangi. This is a great big meal of slow-cooked comfort food from a big underground oven (because this is the world of thin-crust Earth, with the bubbling mud and the sulphur and the geysers and the steam). It's meat and potatoes and kumara (root veg somewhere between potatoes and yams, sorta), and pumpkin, which btw is in EVERYTHING over here, and stuffing and good solid winter food, also with bread and jam and sponge cake in custard on the side.

Fortunately, the rather large hill in the picture is the very first thing I cycle up every single morning to get to work. So I can definitely afford to eat at a few more hangi.

information overload

Here in the world of dial-up, you can't just throw pictures in like there's no tomorrow. You have to choose carefully, because it will be twenty minutes before it uploads. Faced with a difficult choice: knitting or New Zealand? Though I know you'd really rather see the half-done emergency motley slippers (motley because using up ends of yarn, emergency because I'm so. freakin'. cold) I went for a rather spiffing aerial shot courtesy of Chris and a cable car up the mountain.

Yesterday's comedy moment is that the lock on the laundry room door has seized and we can't get in to retreive our clothes. This brings the total of non-working keys on our keyring to six: three are unidentified; the back door and front-door keys don't open either door, and now we can't get into the laundry room either. For your information, because I know you're wondering, we enter the house through the french windows, a situation whch is perfectly normal according to the rental company, who assure us that one has actually never been able to get into the house via the doors. So that's okay, then.

I have been reading New Zealand Unleashed, an exhausting non-fiction state-of-the-world-today book in my quest to get a handle on the new country. I have only got halfway through, and the first half relates only a little to NZ, mostly describing how the world is changing at an astonishing rate and we'd better hold onto our hats . The degree to which things are moving on according to this book leaves me utterly breathless and I have to keep taking breaks and read something else. Apparently in ten years we'll have all computers more powerful than anything NASA has now (turns out our current laptops outpace anything they had for Apollo 11) processing gajillions of megabytes a millisecond, while we're simultaneously genetically-modifying our in-utero babies and becoming ever-poorer as China takes over the world and NZ becomes an LEDC. We are all suffering from information overload, that is, having way too much choice and less-than-reliable information on which to base our decisions (for example, we see some random article on the possibility that eating apples can lessen your risk of breast cancer, so we feel we ought to read up and find more articles to see if it's true, spending time and energy getting half-useful information that we think we ought to find out because we might need it in the future).

The tone of the book makes me read in a panic, rushing through to find out all I think I need to find out (ironically), as the second half purports to tell us "how NZ should be" to cope with the upcoming changes. I certainly agreed, on our first big shopping trip the other day, with the overload of choice, when the supermarket has not a chilled fridge cabinet but an entire chilled ROOM containing solely cheese and margarine.

One fortunate thing is, I won't be suffering from choice-overload in knitting terms. A lady bought a knitting magazine in the bookshop the other day, so I asked her where in town was good for getting knitting supplies. She replied "Hamilton". That's a city over an hour and a half away. Hurrah.

colder than Saskatchewan

Seriously. What's up with New Zealand and heating? Haven't they heard of insulation? I can see my breath in our house this morning. I am currently shovelling down gobs of hot porridge as if it's going out of fashion, in a vain attempt to create some inner warmth.

One other reason I haven't been knitting much lately is that I've been trying to catch up with the NZ literature scene. I fell upon the two Fleur Beale books that I couldn't get in Canada and devoured them; oddly enough, both girls (one historical, one contemporary) experience the same Big Chill as I am at the moment. One is packed off to a remote island off the coast as part of a reality-tv show; the other lives in the "real" old world before - gasp - heating! I was so pleased to see that _A Respectable Girl_ won the NZ Post book award - such awesome writing, such characters. Seems to me that families are Beale's major strong point - she just gets it. The respectable girl of the title is actually a kick-ass, no nonsense girl who you wish you could be like but privately know you aren't. Being this cold - which, really, isn't anything like a 19th century cold, and I know it - rather puts it in perspective. I'd have no hope of being that girl; I'd be the miserable delicate one who makes everyone cross by whining about how cold she is all the time. Wouldn't have time for kicking any asses, putting any colonials in their place, or marching through the woods barefoot - I'd be the one poking at the fire all day and wishing she had more blankets.

To be honest, that's mostly what I'm doing right now. Sorry for letting down the kick-ass side.

so then what happened was...

...well, you know how it is. Some days you just get up and think, sod it, let's move to New Zealand.

Okay. There's a little bit more to it than that, but the long and the short of it is we are now down under enjoying (?) a New Zealand winter. Hence the lack of posts for a while. All that moving and packing and unpacking and repacking and getting rid of everything we own and spending all our money and hopping on a plane and hopping on another plane, and hopping on a third, really big plane, and hopping on a bus and hopping on another bus and winding up on the other side of the world. As you do.

But what you really want to know is...what have I been knitting?

Piccies next time. As soon as we are off dial-up and it takes less than five hours to upload one.

In fact it is a bit difficult to post pics because everything I am knitting is a Christmas present for someone. I've done two pairs of socks since last we met, but both have been sent on as birthday presents with nary a snap of either one of them. I decided to only chance taking big fat plastic short needles on the plane and so ended up with three pairs of slippers. Since they are for kids I can safely trust they won't be bothering to read this and only their mum might see them, and she can probably be trusted to keep the secret till Santa comes.

Off to chuck another log on the fire. Very odd to note that, although I am sitting practically on top of the fireplace, wrapped in a duvet, with rain and wind lashing the house and howling down the chimney, out of the window I can see a tree that is actually bearing oranges. What a crazy country.

swish and flick

I wish I had had a camera at work this evening. Only a photo could show you the magnitude of the task I just undertook. I feel a bit light-headed, my hands are cramped and an unrecogniseable colour, and my environmental conscience will never recover.

First, there was dowelling. Then, by the magic that is Joel, the dowelling became smaller, foot-long bits of dowelling. By the sweatshop that is grandad and the nieces, the foot-long bits became foot-long bits without a single barcode label stuck on. By the perseverence that is Chris and me, the foot long, label-less bits became foot-long, label-less bits with two beautifully sanded ends.

And tonight, by the tenacity and the o-god-this-was-all-my-idea-I'd-better-be-the-one-to-do-it of...me, all 1000 or so foot long, labelless, sanded bits of dowelling were spray-painted with purest VOCs to become raw, unfinished...magic wands.

The final Harry Potter launch is a month or so away, and those who come to the bookstore at midnight to get the first copy expect something a bit special. Handmade magic wands sort of fit the bill.

The wandmaking workshop takes place next week, when all the wands will be loaded with their magic and finished with variously coloured fabric handles and fancy designs. Possibly, by then I'll have a camera and can show you the finished magnitude. This is epic. I can't even really conceive of what 1000 finished magic wands looks like. Yet.

blink, blink

Is that the sun? How amazing to emerge from the chrysalis of exam marking to discover that it's spring. There's even blossom and greenery.

The thing about marking is, you leave the real world for three weeks and inhabit an alternate universe where time stands still and is only divided by the ends and beginnings of the essays. You no longer say "in an hour's time" but "in four papers' time". "Ten papers" is the new language for "this evening".

In this weird ellipsis of time, everything else gets a bit screwy as well. I have a pair of finished slippers that materialised during the marking period, but all my sewing needles have up and left while I was gone, so I can't finish them off (where you weave in the ends). I have two thirds of one, monster, sock, which is so massive I think I have to rip it out and do it again - though that might just be the marking-time perspective clouding my perception.

Blink, blink. I'm clawing my way back.

the view from here

Talk about the most bee-you-ti-ful Mayday morning. This is Bradgate Park in Leicestershire just before seven o'clock this a.m., where morris dancers were to be found "dancing in the May" - that is, heralding the coming of summer and maintaining the good order of mother earth and drinking beer (yes, at seven o'clock in the morning).

The odd-looking building atop the hill, in fact the hill itself, is known as "Old John", and morris dancers, hangers-on, dog walkers, and one druid, climb the hill every mayday morning to continue this tradition. This morning was an absolute cracker of a day - very breezy up top but the most wonderful blue sky and bright bright sunshine. I have a fantastic photo of Sarah with 6-month old baby Austin who, in his shades and bunny suit looked fit for a day on the slopes - but you don't just go putting pictures of other people's kids on the web, so you'll just have to imagine how cute. It was very very.

There is much more to say on morris dancers, and very much much more to say on visiting England, including turning up in Trafalgar square to discover the Public Art installation that was "Eat London" - an entire London map made of food. Also there is a sweater, which thanks to some very long car journeys and some understanding friends, was finally completed during an almost impossibly delicious morris breakfast post-Bradgate this morning. I never even showed you the denouement of the wool-dyeing experiment, which seems a very long time ago now and by the time I get around to discussing it, will be all made into funky slippers. Finally, there is the start of a sock, whose genesis is owed to the fact that my nice London friends don't get up very early in the morning and I wasn't at the time carrying the then-unfinished sweater.

However, the exam marking is upon us so I'll be laying low for a few weeks while I get that done. Still, all the pics will still exist after that, and you can use the time to anticipate my further eloquent thoughts.