Wednesday 26 August 2015

500 Likes Giveaway

To celebrate the support of our lovely yarny friends on Facebook and reaching 500 Likes, we are giving away this beautiful skein of Araucania Botany Lace together with an Anniken Allis lace pattern. You can enter here, or thorough our Facebook page!



Thursday 6 August 2015

Joyce's Travels Continued

NEW ZEALAND


Arriving  at Christchurch Airport  in the early hours of the morning on Saturday, 16 May we went straight to the Airport Motel. In the morning, David walked back to the airport to pick up a car for the next leg of our journey down to Alexandra to visit  Marnie, owner of Touchyarns, the Beautiful Yarn Company.

At this point I should say that New Zealand is a spectacular country and I couldn’t stop clicking my camera. We arrived at Marnie’s and drove straight up to a spectacular hydroelectric dam at Clyde, on the Clutha River between Cromwell and Alexandra.

Loved my photo of the cloud which looks like a giant whale! 

Marnie looked after us wonderfully. We were very spoilt with our own little guest house, next to her beautiful home in Clyde, Central Otago.


Sunday was a busy day. First we visited Irene and Bill Campbell and their herd of angora goats. From memory they have about 370 goats and shear them all by hand.

They are really lovely gentle creatures who are spoilt like little children by Irene and Bill.

Marnie then drove us down to Long Point Farm on the most southerly tip of the South Island, to Long Point Farm in the Catlins. This farm, on a stunning stretch of coastline, belongs to Marnie’s friend Max who travelled with Marnie when they visited Spin A Yarn and indeed stayed at Mill Farm last year.
It is one of the only habitats of the yellow eyed penguin. 

Unfortunately, the day we visited was one of the only days we saw rain during the whole holiday. Max was a great host and we enjoyed a tasty lunch with a wonderful pavlova which he had prepared himself. 




I think these photos help to give you the feeling that we were about to drop off the end of the earth. Next stop is the Antarctic!

Next morning we visited Marnie’s dye factory in Clyde, where she and her family dye the skeins of merino/mohair. This is an extremely low-tech facility where skeins of merino/mohair and possum are dip-dyed or soaked in a huge vat. The skeins are then hung up by pipes in drying sheds.



 





From Marnie’s dye factory we went on to the nearby stunning Matakanui Station run by Andrew and Tracy Paterson. Matakanui is over 23,000 acres and rises to 5,000 feet. In total they run about 16,000 sheep and all stock is raised to maturity. 
Today most sheep are Polwarth merinos which produce wonderfully soft and short staples which have won many Best fleece awards.


The smell in the Wool shed was quite amazing. I loved it and felt like spinning one of the prize-winning fleeces immediately!

Next we were entertained for lunch at the historic Pitches Store in Ophir.  We enjoyed meeting Glen and Kylie, Marnie’s son and daughter-in –law, as well as Marilyn and Ian Bensted who own the largest yarn store in Melbourne, Australia. 

Dining in New Zealand has really changed since my first visit over 30 years ago. Then it was all fried food and carry outs. Now only the freshest ingredients are used to make NZ a gourmet eater’s paradise. Next we made a brief visit to Marnie’s interesting yarn store in Clyde. We would be back!  







After a peaceful walk along the Lake Wakatipu to Queenstown it was time to experience one of the adrenaline-charged activities which New Zealand is famous for. I’m afraid that I don’t bungee jump or leap out of a plane. Instead,a jet boat ride along the Shotover river is exciting enough for me! Don’t you like the fetching get-up!



I managed to visit the Stitching Post which is a lovely yarn and fabric shop in Arrowtown, close to Queenstown, but unfortunately my iphone had run out of memory. The only souvenir I have is a photo of my new purchases. (How can I visit such a lovely shop without buying?) Notice I couldn’t resist buying more Misti Alpaca. Must try to obtain some for the shop! 






We then revisited Marnie’s lovely shop. We also had time for another wonderful gourmet lunch, this time in Clyde, before heading up north via Arthur’s Pass to Hope, near Nelson to stay with my brother-in–law Andrew and his wife, Barbara. Robert and Jenny from Canberra flew over for the weekend. This was the first time all 3 brothers had been together since 2005 - a great reunion!

We were now in the home of Rareyarns. So, our first visit was to the beautiful Cruellas Shop in Nelson. This is now owned by lovely Keren and Caroline who have a huge range of Rareyarns on display.
I was joined in Cruellas by Vicky and Ruth who own and distribute Rareyarns. We had lunch together and they presented me with a delightful sample wheel of all the 4 ply and DK yarn shades that they can obtain for me.

We then drove up to the top of the hills outside Nelson to visit a field of Rareyarn llamas and alpacas. These delightful happy animals rushed to greet us. One was a female, 30 years old the other a fluffy baby of 6 months.






At last it was time for us to leave New Zealand and make our long drive down to Christchurch to catch our flight to Singapore. For those of you who know the route and are exclaiming that it’s only about 5 hours.
Well...we drove via Blenheim as we’d promised to buy Christina some wine. Unfortunately as we were nearing Christchurch, we were stopped by the traffic police and told that we couldn’t drive on the road via Kaikoura any longer. The wild sea had swamped the road, which was now blocked by boulders and SEALS!
So… we had to backtrack and lack of roads and high mountain passes meant another 9 hours on the road. Fortunately, I had plenty of knitting although I was grateful that I had brought easy knitting. Even so, my twisted drop stitch Colinette yarn wrap has more dropped stitches than it should! Winding mountain roads are not good for precise knitting. However, the wrap will always bring back memories of travel in NZ.

From Christchurch we flew back to Singapore to join Christina - back to the tropics from the winter!

SINGAPORE

After a day in Singapore – shopping and having my very first pedicure and manicure at a nearby nail bar – bliss – we travelled with Christina and her friend, Anna , Anna’s daughter Lydia and our good friends Karen and Bob to our favourite tropical coral island Rawa, Malaysia.  

When we lived in Singapore we used to book at least 4 weekends a year in Rawa; so we worked out that we have visited the island over 60 times. I was pregnant with Katie on my first visit; she was there in a basket at 12 weeks old and Christina & Alasdair were there for the first time at 6 weeks old. It was another home for all of us. Now the same people run the island, even though our children are grown up.

An easy minibus ride from Christina’s apartment took us all the way to Mersing in Johore from where we took a half hour boat ride to Rawa. Visiting now we realise how fortunate we were to be able to visit this tropical paradise so easily. The coral is wonderful and snorkling amongst the tropical fish is an amazing experience.






Goodbye Pulau Rawa! Hope we see you again!

We stayed for another two days in Singapore to help Christina celebrate her birthday.
I also had time to meet up with an old friend, Yasmin and admire the pretty nightime lights in the lively city area. 



Then it was the long journey home on Singapore Airlines back to Heathrow Airport where they had managed to give our hire car to another couple called Mason. But that is another story!

My holiday projects were perfect for travelling. I promise to post completed project photos on a post-holiday blog shortly.