Jetty - Portage Bay

This is from archive. You can find a series at here.

Harry's Bar

It's sounds delicious but I miss the quote/joke used to be there, like this one...

Fire Engine

Around Thursday lunch time, two engines were in action. This is the fist one passing in front of me.

Bridge Construction

It's getting to be shaped. Here is the last time I posted the same construction site.

Wet

We have really wet-day in last few days. Well, mostly at night and getting clear in the day and again another rain's coming. This was taken in the morning of 24th, when I had just saw this fire(rainbow) in the distance.

Connie Rose, Textile Artist

Nelson has three sister cities, Miyazu, Japan, since 1976; Huangshi City, Hubei, People's Republic of China, since 1995; and Eureka, California, USA, since 2004. I finally "met" someone from one of these cities recently, when textile artist Connie Rose found my weaving blog. These are some of her work.

Connie lives in Eureka, California, and here's an excerpt from her Artist's Statement:

My work is about TEXTURE, the tactility of cloth and fiber surfaces, what textiles feel like in your hands...and visual texture, the orchestration of patterns and colors that your eyes see. My work is about PATTERN -- line, shape, form, directionality -- inherent in the foundation cloth or imprinted or dyed onto the fabric, suggestive of the mental textural compositions that I create as a medium to organize the world, perceptually and visually. My textiles explore the fusion of these components on handwoven fiber structures.

More of Connie's work can be found on her website, her blog, and her Etsy. I've a few more pics on my nattering, blathering, ranting blog here.

Needless to say, when Connie first contacted me a few months ago, it was a true "Eureka!" moment for me. Maybe one day we can meet in some kind of a art exchange event between the two cities.

By the way, when you're in Eureka, be sure to go see Tim Wraight's "Native Woods of New Zealand" at the Morris Graves Museum of Art. And please please please someone send a few photos my way? Thanks in advance.

Post Script: Connie just informed me that Tim's piece is currently in storage awaiting to be installed at the City Hall. Thank you, Connie, anyway.

Cold

Further south, they are expecting lots of snow today.

Portage Bay Resort

This is the picture of the Portage Bay Resort where we spend a few days and took this shot.

Rural Post

In New Zealand, many of the central city Posties are on foot, pushing strange-looking Postie carts. In the suburbs, at least still around here, most are women on bicycles. (I've been trying to capture ours ever since that "Working Men" theme day of yore, but she never appears at a moment convenient for me.) In the rural community, there are station wagons and vans, and in places easier to access by water, mail and even grocery are delivered by boats. In many places, you can go on a one day boat trip on rural mail boats and observe social happenings. I can't remember the details now, but once I believe I was on a boat either delivering a hen, or picking up a dead one.

Good weekend, everybody.

Delicious

This is a new Cafe in town. It's a very smiler to previous "Zest" - well it's a same place, different owner - and serves a good food.

Alien Message!?

This is the size of the Nelson Provincial Museum. The afternoon light reflected the sign and drop this interesting light on the side road.

This Morming

Shot around 7:52AM this morning. It's straight from camera without any corrections.
Another shot here.

Havelock, Again

Swinging a little to the right from Ben's pic of yesterday, you are witnessing the devastating effects of forestry.

A bus driver told me once the port used to be more towards the right some years ago. Hills surrounding Havelock, between Nelson and Marlborough regions, are used for forestry and the exposed soil has been washed down over the years, making swamps out of what used to be inlets. The inlet you see straight ahead is an example; for over 15 minutes you can drive along it and the changes.

Havelock From The Cullen Point Lookout

It is a little town, but it is the capital of fantastic green lip mussels.

Women in Black

Kiwis love wearing black. These two women were having afternoon tea in the sun in Havelock, the Green-Lipped-Mussel Capital of the World.

Married Folks on Holiday

By golly, I am not a thin girl, but never imagined my hands and arms look so... hefty!

If you are from Sweden or Finland, or know much about folk songs for these countries, or have followed the career of Pekka Kuusisto, can you please help me out with this? Many thanks in advance.

A Ghost at My Loom

The window and the glassed door on my workshop faces northwest, so around sunset, the room is filled with pleasantly sharp light. The glass on the door is the kind that has ... ummm... horizontal stripes... and last week I saw these stripy shadows... Forgive me, I'm very tired, and a bit bored; Ben's working this afternoon, so I decided to keep him company by coming in with him.

A Virtual Exhibition

Ben and I came to this blogging thing late. I started my weaving blog in Easter 2006, and we discovered DP in August that year. We've really enjoyed making new friends and writing and reading about things that happen in places that, well, we may never get to, see spectacular scenery, funny incidents, and also similarities in every day life across countries.

It was in this environment that I started thinking about a virtual, joint exhibition by handweavers. And when I had a bit more time earlier this year, I asked around if others would be interested.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, May I invite you to visit our Small Scarf Virtual Exhibition, opening tonight, at 7PM New Zealand time, here.

Marlborough Sounds

With Blogger allowing us to schedule posts for future dates (like Wordpress always did!!), you might have not known Ben and I were away in the Marlborough Sounds from Wednesday to Sunday. So at the risk of JB net-shouting, "The Sounds is not Nelson!!!", here are some of Ben's best shots from the weekend. (I was writing diligently; it was a writing retreat.)

Depending on the part of the Sounds you go, it's somewhere between 75 minutes and several hours to the east and north east. It's so near, and yet the scenery is so different.

PS. I'm also starting a series at here. - Ben

Home of New Zealand Rugby

I did not know this. But Nelson could be called the Home of New Zealand Rugby. Look what Ben pointed out at the botanic reserve at the bottom of Centre of New Zealand!

And the City Council has a bit more here.

Pity, because we don't have a "Nelson" provincial team as such any more; it's a Tasman team and includes all of the top of the South Island. I have nothing against players outside Nelson; it's just that Nelson vs. Marlborough used to be the best game every year; both teams used to be in the second string league.

Smog in Nelson??

Continuing on the fuel/energy thread, this was shot on Saturday 31 May, from near the Saltwater Cafe, looking Motueka way. It was a particularly chilly morning.

We live in the section of Nelson where we must get rid of all open fire places and all wood burners (log burners? fire places with lids?) installed before 1993 by the end of this year to reduce air polution in Nelson. The Council is doing this incrementally and homes in Central Nelson did this last year.

Because our oldish but still functioning wood burner is tiled and enclosed in a wall, and our chimney hasn't got a flue, (don't ask; it was the original owner who did it; he was a builder by profession), and because we have a wet-back, (burner connected to our hot water heater, making our winter hot water nice and soft), we are looking for a big job in the living room this spring/summer.

And because we're getting a bit old, we decided to put in carpet in the office and the bedroom, and thick curtains in the bedroom in addition to the shades we've got.

So, no holiday this year. And thus we decided we had to be realistic and not go to the wedding of a dear, dear friend in Melbourne in a month's time. Shucks. But there is always Lotto...

$2

In June 2005, when petrol price shot up to $1.50, we carpooled with our greenie mate Ross to go to the Marlborough Sounds for our annual writing workshop. I predicted it'd easily be $3 by the end of 2006. We've been lucky; because the Kiwi dollar was so high, the cost of petrol didn't go up that rapidly, though exporters have suffered, and we lost quite a few iconic New Zealand manufacturers.

Well, the Kiwi has landed and gas has been over $2 since May, and what's worse, the overnight price increases are not 1 and 2 cents like it used to be; they go up 5 and 7 cents while we sleep.

This weekend we were at the writing workshop; we had a fabulous time, but Ross the greenie was holidaying in the South Pacific!! Gee, your carbon footprint, Ross!! (So as not to misslead the world about Ross, he is a serious greenie, and even if he has a few trip to Europe this month, he still can't get anywhere near your average fuel consumption.)

On The Left

Look up the hill (Centre of New Zealand).

On The Right

Beautiful clear sky complement those yellow leaves.

Cawthron Institute

Lest you think Nelson is a sleepy little resort town of sorts, well, it kind of is, but we are a hub for the forestry and fishery industry, too. Nestled in the quiet residential area near the town center is Cawthron Institute, the hub of New Zealand marine and freshwater biology research. (And other stuff; if interested, do please check their web site.)

A lot of folks who got really high marks in math and science work in a few ugly buildings. I'm allowed to say so, because my Dad was a chemistry professor, and whichever university he worked in which ever country, his was always the ugliest building on campus. Next photo, please.

Marsden Funeral Home

Across the street from the School of Music, and diagonal from the Korner Store, is the Marsden funeral home car park. Until a few years ago, there were one or two homes, but these were demolished to make way for the funeral guests' vehicles. I suddenly discovered the little chapel (?) with a red brick chimney; I'm not sure if it was always there, or was brought in then.

Nelson School of Music

The School of Music almost closed its doors in recent years, but it's staying. It has one of the five (???) pipe organs in Nelson, according to Margie who used to run a posh B&B in Nelson; we've only found two so far. You saw just a little bit of the school in Ben's pic yesterday.

Collingwood Strret

Can you recognise the part of corner shop that we posted on theme day on left corner?
This is where "Trolley Derby" was held. You can see the past post in here.

My corner local shop 2

Second runner up for theme day.　　

The red things embedded in the wall are P O Boxes, even though this shop is only about 20 minutes (??) walk from the PO. (Ben, you're doing a rather slack job narrating, I must say!! Meg)

June 2008 Theme Day: My korner local shop

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