New Zealand

 We arrived in Auckland on Thursday after 36 hours in planes and airports.  We just crashed there, slept and headed north to the Bay of Islands the next morning.  Driving on the left side is challenging but even more so for my dear husband as he continually turns on the windshield wipers which are also reversed when he is trying to signal a turn.  The roads are twisty and turny but we survived the first trip and Warren is getting less nervous.  This is the view from our motel called Cook's Lookout high on a hill overlooking the bay -- just gorgeous and a lovely room as well.  They can be found at Cooks Lookout website and it is run by the nicest couple -- some x-pats from Liverpool.  It is away from the hub bub of Paihai but close and just beautiful.

We drove over to Haruru Falls a short distance away for a short walk.

This is a Tui or also called The Parson Bird because of the white tuft under its chin.  We have seen quite a few of these and they have quite a song.

You can see the beautiful sunrise we had this morning -- this is the view from the motel.

Internet is sparse and expensive so there will probably not be a lot of blogs plus I am typing from this tiny keyboard and Google made it super difficult to get even into my blog.

A Springtime Surprise!

As I was peacefully watching Big Bang Theory last night, suddenly heard fireworks going off nearby!  Occasionally people have been setting them off in the empty lot across the street but this was down at Ft. Fisher, probably at the Air Force Recreation Center which is about 1/2 a mile from the house.  When they started, it was still pretty light out and it took me a bit to keep changing the camera settings so I could maximize the impact.  It went on for quite some time.  I have no idea what they were celebrating or why.  There was nothing in the paper and certainly no warning ahead of time.  What fun on a beautiful spring evening right on my porch!!

It's getting darker.

Of coure no blog would be complete without at least one bird!  This cardinal was sitting on the electric line right by the house -- an unusual place to see him.  Usually he hides in the palm tree and annoys the cats!

Springtime in Wilmington!

My daughter came down for the weekend since my dear husband had abandoned me to go get our passports and some other items we would need for the upcoming trip to New Zealand.  He got to see the (hopefully) last of the Rochester snow which has been vicious this year.  She had never been to Airlie Gardens so I told her to bring her camera and we would go for a picture taking day.  I had been there just a couple of weeks ago and was AMAZED at the changes since my last visit.  There were still a few camelias but there were tulips everywhere, magnolias in bloom, redbuds and even some of the azaleas were out.  My ducks are gone for the most part though -- either that or nesting which I suspect is why we aren't seeing all that much these days.  Many have probably returned north as well as spring is definitely breaking out down here!

There were wonderful beds of tulips everywhere, all different varieties and colors.

Particularly liked this bed of the variegated tulips, both this one and a really pretty pink and green one.

The female Mute Swan was sitting on her nest while the male was swimming around the pond.

A small Carolina Wren was sitting by the water.

There were several Osprey hanging out in the trees although I didn't see one in the prominent nest by the water.  This guy was way far away but my little camera (I didn't have the big lens with me as I was taking pictures of flowers) did manage to capture him and you couldn't see him without binoculars.

These rose looking wild flowers are again blooming on the empty lot across the street.  Have forgotten the name but they are one of the first wildflowers to bloom down here.  

Counting down the days now until we fly off to New Zealand and Fiji!!

Class with Vikki Pignatelli

Our guest speaker and teacher this month at QBTS Guild was Vikki Pignatelli, an art quilter who is famous for her work with curves.  As the class was very affordable, I figured it was worth the two days.  Vikki was EXTREMELY generous with her knowledge and time and worked with everyone in the class.  It was the Improvisational Curves class that she was teaching.  The first day was basically learning her curves technique which was different from any that I had used before.  The second day was an incredible potpourri of techniques, many of which I could easily see using on jackets as they were embellishment techniques.  She also had a clever way of having nice bound holes in the middle of quilts which would add a lot of flexibility to you work as well as give it dimensionality.

The technique uses freezer paper as your pattern and a foundation stabilizer on which you pin your pieces.  I liked the idea of the stabilizer a lot but still not sure whether I will use the machine applique technique she uses.  Probably will adapt it somehow.

You can see some pleated (textured) pieces in this work.  It was a very cool idea which I liked a lot.  

This was Becky's piece which will eventually be a full blown tulip.  Loved the colors (my palette -- how could I not!).

This was Barbara's piece which was based on a watercolor she had done of a sunset over the ocean.

This piece shows a lot of inserts into the pleats that Vikki made as well as some yarn embellishment.  Can't you see this in clothing?

This was a display of all the different embellishment techniques which involve the making of "tubes" of cloth which are inserted into pleats.  The tubes can be straight up and down or mountainous like the piece on the top and the far left hand side of the bottom.  

.This was a piece that used larger tubes machine appliqued on top.

During our meeting, Vikki was of course our guest speaker and shared many quilts both in person and on slides.  Below are many of these.

 My favorite!

This was one of the quilts on the slides which I also really liked.

This was my favorite but on a slide so you can see the whole thing but the in person one was so much nicer!

An example of a log cabin type placement.

 

The one to the left is another log cabin while the one to the right is a tree but difficult to see because of the background.

Another one I just loved.

 This example uses pleating and the aforementioned tubes to get the texture.

Another one I loved.

This was clearly Vikki's favorite.

This was most of the class with their pieces after the second day.  The three on the far left are mine and you can see my grey hair peaking out over two of them -- I am sitting.  I didn't bring a sewing machine so just worked on the design and learning the technique of design.  We had a really good time and I met some very nice women in this guild which was very very nice!!  What a lovely group of women!!  Many of them were trying this kind of thing for the first time as this is primarily a more traditional group.  I think they will be trying more!!