Vicki Kate, where are you?!?

Vicki Kate, are you out there?  If you are, you’ve won one of my Mystery Make packs and I need you to send me your address so I can post it to you! 

 

Please email me (to macska at gmail dot com) by the end of Friday this week so I know you’re there and that you still want the prize, otherwise I’ll have to do a re-draw. 

A lazy list of things-I’ve-done

I spotted this this evening over on the The Mab Blab. And just coz I’m in that sort of mood (and unintentionally procrastinating with today’s Mending Pile Monday challenge) I thought I’d do it.

The instructions with this are to bold the ones you’ve done, leave the others in normal type. So here goes.

1. Started your own blog (clearly…)
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29 Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33 Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied (hey, as long as I can buy fabric and have the heater on full, I’m happy!
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41 Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45 Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie (well, it was only as an extra in one of the 48 Hour Film Festival movies – does it count? Probably not…)
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60 Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies (or the NZ equivalent of Girl Guide biscuits, as the case may be)
62. Gone whale watching
63. Gotten flowers for no reason
64 Donated blood, platelets, or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66 Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67 Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle (one of my pet hates. You won’t ever catch me on one, no siree, they scare me lots. )
79 Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating (watched my Dad do this – does that count? Once again, probably not)
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a lawsuit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee

So, go on then – which ones have you done?!

Yay! I got an award!

I was pretty excited yesterday when I saw a comment on my blog from Donna over at Nid de Tissus. She’d given my blog the Stylish Blogger award! Yay! I’m still getting used to the idea that people actually *read* my blog, so it’s super-exciting to have someone like it enough to give me the Stylish Blogger award. Thanks Donna – you made my day!

So, in acceptance of the award, here’s my list of 7 things about me that might be a little bit interesting and that you probably don’t know….

1 – I lived in Hungary for a year when I was 18 as an AFS exchange student. I try to get back there every few years to visit the lovely family I stayed with. (If only New Zealand wasn’t so far away, I could go visit them more often!)

2 – I’m the oldest of five children. My mother is also the oldest of five children. I’m figuring this having-five-children trend is going to end with me, as I have no intention of having anywhere near that many!

3 – My cat Kahlua got her name due to a tradition that was started back when I was in my first year at university. My flatmate got a cat and couldn’t decide what to call it, so we named it Palinka, after a Hungarian fruit brandy. A couple of years later, another girl I flatted with got a cat and named it Baileys. Then when I moved to Wellington and adopted my cat, I felt I should carry on the tradition by naming her after an alcoholic beverage.

4 – My feet are half a size bigger than my boyfriends feet. (I balance this out by being about half an inch or so taller than him.) (Sadly the balance then swings back the other way as he’s 10kg lighter than me. *sigh*)

5 – Following on in that vein, about half the guys I’ve gone out with have been shorter than me. My first serious boyfriend was exactly the same height (and shoe size) as me. Funnily enough, many of them haven’t liked it when I wear high heels. And I have a decent-sized collection of high heels.

6 – Just like Donna from Nid de Tissus, I also have a piece of graphite visible in my hand, from when I accidentally stabbed myself with a pencil while working at a bookshop. My piece of graphite is right near the main joint in my right index finger.

7 – I own far far too many books. Currently four bookcases, many of which are double-lined with books, and more books are in piles on the floor. Maybe I have a problem. If I do, I don’t intend to do anything about it. Except maybe buy another bookcase this weekend……

So there’s my seven things! And now, the list of seven blogs I think are awesome and I’d like to pass this Stylish Blogger award on to…..

Veronica Darling
Adventures of a Girl From the Naki
My Happy Sewing Place
Finding My Way
The Sew Convert
Tanit-Isis Sews
Seaside Siblings

Sadness

It’s been a very odd week this week. Poor New Zealand has suffered one of it’s worst disasters ever – a large earthquake struck Christchurch in the middle of the day on Tuesday 22 February at 12.50pm. It was a strong, shallow quake, and has caused a huge amount of damage to the city, the earth, and the people. At this point in time, there are 145 confirmed dead, over 200 missing, several buildings have completely collapsed and trapped everyone inside, they estimate one in every three buildings in the central city will need to be demolished, and the overall cost is currently estimated at $10 billion. People are without water, sewage, power, and in many cases, without homes to go to. Aftershocks have been hitting continuously since the earthquake, and there is fear that another large earthquake will hit in the next few months. This wasn’t the first quake for Christchurch either – in September last year, a large earthquake (7.3 on the Richtar scale, if I remember the number correctly) struck and caused a huge amount of damage. But the quake this week was even worse.

I think it’s fairly safe to say that the whole country is reeling at this. People everywhere are desperate to help, but at a loss as to what to do. And those of us without any directly transferable skills are feeling rather helpless and useless. Myself included. Sure, I’ve donated money to help Christchurch but, like many others, I want to do more. Our friends, relatives and neighbours are suffering in this disaster, so naturally we all want to reach out and lend a hand.

A few days after the earthquake, it’s all feeling quite surreal. Every so often, while I’m going about my day, the realisation hits that down South, people are suffering, people are missing, recovery teams from all around the world are working hard, areas are continuing to be evacuated. And yet up here, it’s a nice sunny day in Wellington and people are out shopping. It makes for a very odd disconnect.

My sadness at what’s happened has been having an interesting impact on my day-to-day life as well. It seems at times impossible to carry on and do anything productive – it almost feels like it would be insensitive or insulting of me to do things like sew or garden when there are still people trapped in buildings, people waiting to find out what’s happened to their loved ones. Some of them may even be people I know – New Zealand is a small place, and I have a lot of former colleagues and classmates down in Christchurch that I’ve lost touch with over the years.

I’ve been feeling a very strong need to do something, anything, to help. Thankfully, yesterday I was able to spend a full day helping with the eq.org.nz website, using the skills and knowledge I have from my day job to work to make it easier for people down in Christchurch to find what they need to find, such as safe drinking water, places to buy food, and closed roads. It felt good to be able to do something, however small. It made me breathe a sigh of relief that there was something I could do other than just watch and hope.

It’s going to take New Zealand quite a while to recover from this. The practical side alone will take a while – our economy is taking a direct blow, unemployment will rise due to all the businesses that will close down, tourism will likely slow down, the housing market will be even more subdued. To say nothing of the city that needs to be rebuilt. But what’s really going to take a long time to recover from is what else we’ve lost – people all over New Zealand have lost friends, lovers, colleagues. Homes people have made, businesses they’ve built with love and pride, have all been destroyed in a matter of seconds. And of course, we’re all thinking about the future – what if it happened to us? New Zealand is on a massive fault line – we all know this, we’ve grown up with this knowledge, been trained at primary school to dive under our desks in an earthquake, to always know where the closest safe zone is to where we are. But knowing it can happen, and seeing it happen, are two very different things.

So yes, it’s been a strange week.

We all love you, Christchurch. Kia kaha.

Hello world!

Yes, here it is – the first post.

In which I randomly try to think of what to write, while getting into the swing of blog-posting. Hmmmm…..

Anyway, the point of this whole thing is twofold – to remind myself of what I have actually been doing/thinking/seeing/creating (which will be handy for my sadly poor memory) and to let others know what I have been doing/thinking/seeing/creating, since I tend to also be bad at telling them that sort of stuff. So. Here ’tis.