Arty Farty - Just In Time For 'Summer' - Angora adventures come to a close.

Written in 2010 ..

Geri's Angora scarf was a quick knit for sure. As you can see from the photos, I didn't stretch it much when I blocked it. The yarn is so soft that I figured it would just reduce back to close to its original size once the wires were removed so I only stretched it enough to open the lace pattern up enough to be visible.

Turns out I was right!




The past four days have been absolutely gorgeous here in Wellington with soft, windless, sunny spring weather so there's not been much call for such a warm, yummy scarf. However, just last week we had massive southerly; aka freezing, gales and heroic volumes of rainfall which induced country wide flooding and landslips.  If Geri had been well enough to be out the scarf would have been pressed into service pronto!

Incidentally, one of the slips was in Pukerua Bay with another just south of us. The southern slip derailed a commuter train coming north which was then hit by another commuter train that was going south ... my husband was on the next northbound train and so had a lucky escape. Good timing huh?

Communter Train Crash

I see on today's weather forecast that our short taster of Utopian spring weather is coming to an end with another 'exciting' storm system heading our way.  Time to batten down the hatches yet  again, wind the scarf around Geri's neck when we are out on Friday and ride the incoming storm out with good old Wellington stoicism.

Hopefully, Geri won't need to use her scarf too much this 'summer' ...

Arty Farty - Jen, Geri, Lynne and 'It'

Written in 2011

A few months ago our friend Lynne; who inhabits the same masto Facebook corner of the world as us, lost her treasured son Thomas in the most tragic of circumstances. There are no words to describe her loss and the pain and agony this dreadful event has caused her.

As I sat here on the other side of the world I felt compelled to do something more than offer words of comfort - which to be honest felt totally inadequate. Ideally what I wanted to do was to spend some quiet time with her, to wrap her up in a huge hug and to just be there. But, that was impossible so I did the next best thing - I decided that if I couldn't be there in person to give her a hug then I could be there in spirit with my arms being substituted by a shawl.

I decided to use this yarn:

Blue Sky Alpacas 50% Alpaca 50% Silk

And once again used this pattern from Knitty:

Knitty - Ella

After confirming Lynne's address I let her know that 'It' was on its way to her and awaited the day it would arrive. That was today. At last I've been able give Lynne that hug and that's a good feeling for sure.

Shawl prior to blocking

and after blocking.

The Hog Diaries - Chalk and Cheese!

After a break of two months during which I had no incomings, things got busy - little did I know JUST how busy it was about to get...

Chalk and Cheese

On Nov 29th 2015, the rescue rang me to say that two babies had been found curled up by a fence, next to their dead mother. So, off I went to collect them.

And so Chalk; 65gms and Cheese; 72gms arrived. I estimated that they were about 2-3 weeks old. These two little ones were dehydrated and starving but even worse, they were fly blown. However luckily they'd been rescued before the fly eggs hatched. A friend and I spent 2-3 hours plucking the fly eggs off them - they were even in their eyes!

Chalk being a big scary, huffy hoglet!

Right from the beginning, these two had very distinct personalities with Cheese being placid and calm whilst Chalk was a prickly bundle of huffy, defensive spikiness.
As I was syringe feeding Chalk on admission she was jumping, spiking and huffing like a grown up hoggie, LOL. Cheese simply took the electrolytes and went to sleep.

Hence their names. You simply couldn't find two hogs more different in personality.







These two wee girl's journey to adulthood has been uncomplicated and fun to watch. On day 22 they moved outside into a hutch and on day 34 they were into a pen. A week later I split them up as Chalk was being bullied out of the nest box by Cheese.

Since then I've been waiting, waiting, waiting, WAITING for them to go completely nocturnal. Chalk and Cheese imprinted very strongly on me in spite of me keeping my contact with them to the absolute minimum. Since going into their pens they've been coming out for a walk about every morning at around 10am. After talking to Narelle we reckoned they were being woken by me cleaning the hutches and pens out earlier in the morning and were coming out to say 'Hi' to mum! So, I have stopped following any form of routine in 'hog alley' and only open their pens after dark to clean them out and put in their food. This approach seems to be working thank goodness! Tonight - after a VERY exciting and stressful day I will be releasing Chalk a few days earlier than planned as I am now desperate for her pen .... more on that in a later post ...

Chalk on Dec 25th

Chalk on the day of her release - Jan 25th