Letters from Wetville

It's evening, so my head has been in 19th century Cornwall for the most part. No fabric, patterns or clothing purchases.  I spent the potential fabric purchase money on ordering death certificates. Things which have finished: drum lessons, league practices and games and a reduction in kung fu attendance.  The difference in smoothness of a week is noticeable already, and it is only Tuesday.  There is a five week gap between league finishing and swimming lessons starting.  I'm enjoying it.  This does remind me that I need to sort out a costume for the ballet competitions this holidays though. Ouch ouch ouch on the job cuts in provincial New Zealand already this week. Recent developments in my garden: first iceland poppy (orange) out.  Lovage has re-emerged.  Feverfew and white sage taking off.  One bay tree appears to be flowering.  It's never done that before.  There is a flowerhead emerging from the Chatham Island Forget Me Not a...

Good : the new Cornish project is still fascinating me.  Today I learnt about hedging practices and forced enclosures over the past 300 years and I found information about my great x 4 grandparents who married in 1769 and my great x 3 grandparents who married in 1804 and my great x 2 grandparents who married in 1837.  I want to learn about how my great grandmother learnt to read and write in the period before compulsory schooling and some more about Methodism in their part of Cornwall.  Bad : The housework fairy didn't visit over night. Great : the rugby league season has finished for the year!

In our town, it has never been easier to find a park (except perhaps on certain days in November 2010) and at the supermarket in what is normally the crazy peak just after work hour on pay day night, there were two lanes free.  By day, I do my normal things, like alternately harass and adore my kids (actually the adore bit is usually at night when they are asleep), organise food, go to work, visit Mary K, do loads of laundry, conspicuously not manage any other housekeeping and thus witness the slide into Septemberitis which happens after eight months of busyness each year, chat to my friends, discuss the state of the world with FH, and sneak out into the garden even just to admire the current sea of white and yellow on green formed by the daisies on the unmown lawn, the daffodils and the white and yellow irises and the rocket run to seed. By night I have a new hobby.  I've had this bug before, when I was 19.  My flatmate would warn people at parties: "Watch out! ...

See these two dresses (brand = catalyst)?  I think they are quite gorgeous.  The fabric in the second one is utterly gorgeous in my eyes.  How much do you think they cost?  In the flashest women's dress shop in Wetville, they are $279 each.  Plus, they are only in a size 12 plus a larger size probably wouldn't fit me either, even if I had $279 to spend on a frock.  In this context, making a dress for $70 doesn't seem completely outrageous.  I'm planning and plotting (and poring over the sample Global Fabrics sent me earlier this week and eyeing up this on trademe.

There's a rally in our town tomorrow .  A rally to save Spring Creek, a rally to save our town.  A rally where already I see our young people discovering something worth fighting for.  The older people in this town already know it is worth fighting for. Maybe, if you've known me a long time, or read my blog in earlier years, you wonder where my greenie principles have gone. Like many women, I honed my greenie interests and passion as a new mother, thinking at home instead of being out at work, looking for a better future for my children and grandchildren by treasuring the natural resources in our world.  I used cloth nappies, grew vegetables, made food from scratch as much as possible, experimented with home made lotions and potions and campaigned for better recycling facilities. Tomorrow's rally is also about creating a better world for our children, for the young and old, those single and those in families, in Greymouth.  I do realise that coal is vilifi...

My world is much improved.  I got sleep, I went to work on Saturday and wrapped up an outstanding (as in late) project, I visited the lovely 85 year old Mary K, and the scene was potentially set for me to spend Sunday cleaning the house. Ha ha.  I spent the day in the indolent pursuits of knitting myself a cardigan (30 rows, replete with fancy shaping!!!) and playing genealogist.  Yesterday Mary K showed me a photo of her grandmother (my great grandmother) looking very elegant, and another of her with her sister.  I had never heard of this sister, but it turned out that Honor Ann T. left Cornwall some time after Emma Jane T., my great grandmother.   She went to Australia first, where she had family, and then to New Zealand.  I've found some details relating to her first widowhood, her second marriage and her death.  I also found that both of these Cornish women lost sons in World War One.  Emma Jane T. was also married twice.  She...

1. How to: fill your day with things which are mostly not paid work: go to A & E twice in one day for two separate persons. 2. How to: make a twit of oneself: go to bookgroup when drunk on tiredness and talk too much.  With possibly excessive swearing.  The good ladies of Paroa may prefer I don't come back.  3. How to: develop insomnia: have a glass of wine at book group.  Lethal. 4. How to: start knitting the pink Miette cardigan: be awake 3-4.30 in the morning. 5. How to: get paid work done around everything else?  I'll let you kow when I've found the magic answer to that. Good things: all the A & E visits have resulted in people who are okay now.  The Washed Haze yarn is knitting up nicely.  I believe the appropriate term is that it has nice stitch definition . They were very nice at work when I explained that I was going to be late on a big deadline.  The Indian Takeaways shop was very understanding when I drove four kilom...