It has been a very busy semester-
Show us your bible.
Submitted by Connie.Im carrying it with me at all times at the mo.. along with my little stitching kit, so I can embroider whenever I get the chance!
Well I am a bit slow on the update here- sorry love!
I went to stay with Nelly a weekend or 2 ago and as previous trips have confirmed, our time together is always spent over indulging. Dreaming for weeks in advance about what we will cook each other and trying to eat as much as possible. In the past, you have had to be content with a description of our meals, but this time, we took photos of every meal we made.
here is a virtual tour..
the night I arrived, the spinach and pumpkin lasange was ready to come out of the oven as I walked in the door- aided by a txt at the appropriate distance to tell her to put the oven on!
the next morning was a school and work day for nelly and Jack, so a bit of toast held us over till lunch when I made the worlds biggest plate of nachos.
A red bean base, loads of cheese under the grill, topped with sour cream and a sun dried tomato pesto I whizzed up that contained loads of cashews and parmersan and garlic- YUM!
This one consisted of half a big potato pancake each, 2 perfectly poached eggs fresh from nellys hens, some wilted spinach, 2 sauteed field mushrooms and a generous drizzle of home made hollandaise sauce.
I think it will be some time before I experience a breakfast like this again...
earlier in the morning I had made a batch of paneer cheese, which was nicely pressed and ready for a delicious indian styled curry gravy.
This gravy had about 3 cups of ground nuts (cashews and almonds) lashings of fresh cream, tomato paste, onion and capsicum with a nice spice blend. after the kids had taken theirs, i let loose with the heat and spiced it up to be probably the best curry i have ever made. YUM!
nelly picked a lovely big eggplant from her garden and we roasted it in cubes with a shite load of garlic and whizzed it up with cream cheese to create a heavenly spread. along with the left over sundried tomato pesto and some other stuff from the fridge, or breakky wasnt too shabby really...
other highlights include- DIY scrabble!! yes that is right, we made our own scrabble board. armed with a sample board on the computer screen, we set about ruling our own up out of paper, unaided by a ruler much to my distate (look, I like things to be precise ok?!) and cutting little squares- also out of paper for the letters.
we had a great many games of scrabble on our DIY board, and didnt even notice we were missing the x or a second blank for ages.
of course it pays to play it in a still environment, as the pieces are inclined to blow about a bit, but all in all we decided the latest edition scrabble- ie our edition was pretty bloody good. It was certainly pretty entertaining!
some of us crafty ladies have got together for a weekly stitch n bitch and have called ourselves the craft cartel.
It is so much fun, I am learning to embroider and next will start a crochet project.
My first projects were sewing based and I made a few shopping bags..
I got quite into these, and made about 10 all up before I ran out of scrap fabric. they have made good bags for giving gifts in.
It was a good friends birthday recently and i hand made her 16 painted lanterns which I cant believe i didnt take photos of- I hope she has hung them by now...!
Next project was a skirt for myself, the skirt I made, the doilies I didnt! i have had a doilie obsession for about a year or so now, and have quite a collection that I often take out and look at, so I decided to use a few to embellish this skirt..
I know, I know, it was very lazy of me not to iron out the big crease at the bottom before I modeled it, but I was so proud of it I couldnt wait! its gone now and looks much better without it I must say!
I am currently working on an embroidery project and will post photos as soon as I am finished!
My most favorite in a long time.
For the last few months i have been involved with a womans ritual group.
I always thought I was pretty connected with the seasons and their rhythms but I am amazed since celebrating them through ritual, just how much more in tune I am and how much more meaningful I find my connection with the earth. How i find myself taking more notice of all the plants and their growth, flowering, seed time ect (not just the ones in the garden), how I notice the shifting of the light, the phases of the moon (well the moon calender certainaly helps here too). How I am noticing the movements of the birds and she shifting seasons of our emotional states.
I have become really aware of how I have been expanding and expanding my energy outwards and how much I am looking forward to the winter as an opportunity to journey inwards and nurture my spirit over the quiet months ahead. (helps that we have a toasty warm fire this year..!)
the woman I have been connecting with through ritual are a real blessing in my life and an amazing source of inspiration.
i have looked briefly before at joining pagan groups, but something about it didnt feel like it was truely me, something about the theatrics i think.
anyway, this group has no hierarchy, priest/priestess etc, and we are all encouraged to host a ritual- even us novices to ritual are trusted with the ability to research and design something meaningful and appropriate.
i volunteered with another lady to weave the ritual for autumn equinox and it has been an amazing experiance and really illustrated to me the purpose of ritual and an appreciation and understanding of the reasons why certain things are done.
i wont give a blow by blow account of what the ritual involved, I feel it would detract from some of its sacredness for me.
I wanted to put some photos here that I took of the space we created from before and after the ritual to share with my friends who might be interested and to remind me of this time.
we had wanted this ritual in the bush, but it was important to us to have a fire and there was nowhere we could do that, so we designed this space in the backyard of the friend I was working with.
she lives right on the beach and there is a public access way next door, so the woman were able to walk along the beach and enter the circle from there rather than through the carport which was very nice.
We made lanterns for the woman to take home, a light to carry into the darkness. These made our circle very beautiful.
Easter weekend was the perfect time to get away into the bush for a tramp while the weather is holding and daylight savings has been extended for a couple of weeks.
since the last tramp I posted about, Evelyn and have been on another up to Field Hut again, so she and I both felt ready to tackle something a bit different. The prospect of new unexplored horizons made Ian keen to join us too and after looking at the map, we settled on tramping into waitewaewae hut. A track that leaves from an entrance to the Tararuas (our beautiful mountain range) that is close to our home.
checking out the DOC (dept of conservation) info, the track was graded easy/medium, and a comfortable 6 hr walk each way. (I should know by now to not rely too heavily on the DOC info as a guide to walking times as i have been caught out countless times and it seems I will never learn- more about that later!)
within 15 min of being on the track we came to a long swing bridge. Both Ev and Ian are not big fans of swing bridges so it was a cautious trip for them over that (i, on the other hand LOVE swing bridges, so I waited till they were over before I came bouncing and swaying across!).
on the other side we stopped to admire the view on the river and decided that next summer we will be spending some days here picnicking and swimming, as the water was so deep, still, clear and otherwise simply stunning here.
though I do think this photo shows the gradient as that is ians hand holding her stable from below as she pulls herself up using the tree (and of course Im taking the photo from just ahead/above on the 'track')
this is a small part of that slip, obviously we ignored the tag which appears to be suggesting the track lays directly ahead!!
On the other side of the slip, the track remained easy going for a while and we walked through some stunning bush and felt very lucky to see and hear the song of the Korimako (bellbird), the Tui, Piwakawaka (fantail), Miromiro (tomtit), Kereru (wood pigeon) and Ruru (later on that night). Some of the birds we saw were for the first time for ev, so that was exciting.
about half way through, we came to some old railway ruins.
so into the river it was...
the hut itself was one of the nicest one ive ever been to. and the trampers already there had a roaring fire going so that was very welcome :)
Ive been eagerly awaiting the release of this new album as Ive been loving the single for weeks. I just got it so Im pretty happy. :)
oh and a link to the video, which Im also enjoying.
Dig!! lazarus Dig!!
Today I competed in my first triathlon. I chose a local, low competitive, womans only one for my first time as I was very nervous and wanted to be in as friendlier situation as possible.
This event is the Kapiti Womans Triathlon and it consists of a 400 m swim, a 12 km bike and 4 km run.
It had been a long time since I have swum. I used to be a strong swimmer in high school and being that I am reasonably fit, I thought it would be a breeze as I hopped in the pool for the first time in about 12 years.. how wrong I was! it nearly did me in that first day, and I am just thankful I left myself ample time to train and I have now been swimming 3x a week for the last 12 weeks. finally after I had built up to around 600 mtrs, I started to train in the ocean and was almost back to square 1 as I discovered that it was a whole new kettle of fish and contending with waves and currents as well as not being able to see the bottom etc all mounted up to the need for much more training!!
After finally nailing the distance in the ocean during the practice sessions, you can imaging my disappointment when we had a storm last night and as I listened to the wind and rain I could imagine the sea being churned whipped up into a frenzy, and was feeling somewhat hesitant about entering into it first thing next morning.
turns out my fears were about smack on and I was informed upon arrival that the ocean was in the roughest conditions they would allow before canceling the swim leg entirely.. oh good!
in the interests of safety, the swim distance was shortened to around 200 m and brought right in close to the shore, so those who were very worried could still touch the bottom and wade instead. unfortunately for those of us who were confident and strong in the water had to swim in the breakers and ended up taking in quite a bit of water as wave after wave hit us.
out of the water and on to t1, this was the first time Id ever had to change at this sort of speed, and I was quite surprised at how fast I did it. Next time, I think I'll get some elastic laces.. could have saved a few seconds here!! (competitive, me? noooo!)
heading off for the bike leg on my trusty old steed.. how I would dearly love a speedy racing bike! though today it really became obvious how its still the training that counts the most as I easily overtook many people on their speedy racing bikes and only 2 people overtook me this entire leg.
im very surprised how much time I gained during the cycle- I hadn't considered it my strength but managed to maintain an average speed around 32 kmph which I was fairly happy with..
after racking my bike, it was off for a run. I had practiced this transition a lot as any of you who have ever run straight after cycling know that your legs are like a combination of jelly and lead weights straight off the bike. Once you have done it a bit, they recover quickly, as long as you remember to ease into the run. which is hard because 10k an hour feels really really slow after the high speeds of the bike!!
I had been looking forward to the run, running being my strength, what I enjoy the most and what I have been doing the longest. also the run course is part of one of my regular runs so I thought I had this leg beat. Unfortunately my knee gave it familiar old pain and I had to go much slower than I would've liked and ended up crossing the finish feeling like it had taken me a long time and that I had done really poorly.
You can imagine my surprise as I read the results, and I am pretty proud of them actually!
so.. the boring statistical bit (that all us athletes love the most!)
out of 264 competitors I came 42nd overall and 10th out of my age category (of which I was the eldest) with a total time of 59:50.
and so end my first tri on a pretty high note. Im looking forward to more of this next summer.. YAY!!
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