The Week that Was

It declined somewhat, the working part of it, however time and the hour runs through the roughest day and after the weekend at Waiheke I am all brighteyed and bushytailed again. Went over on the 2pm boat straight from work and was just in time to meet the gardener who was removing the privet trees and cutting up the wood for firewood.

Out to dinner at the Bowling Club buffet with roast pork, vegetable bake and other meat and salad dishes. Saturday we got the first real rain for a couple of months. Our water supply was getting low but it is up a third again, so we didn't mind too much being housebound with the weekend Herald. However must have my daily dose of computer so up to the library on the bus and back in the afternoon. I really appreciate my email contact with you all. Sunday the weather was better so walked to Mass at 9.15 then coffeeed at Cortado, which had been reviewed favourably in the weekend Canvas magazine. Good coffee and stunning view over Oneroa Beach.

I have let the bach for 3 months to a former resident of the island so spent the afternoon cleaning and tidying for her. We will be turning our attention to Orewa on the weekends for a while.

Yesterday carried on with bottling and turning the golden queen peaches into preserves and chutney. After the windy weekend there were a lot of windfalls to process. Also brought back pears from the island to do something with once they ripen.

Elisabeth is in the South Island having a great holiday. Today she did the South Dunedin op shops and was going out to a Greek restaurant tonight.

The first picture is the view from the roof of the bach looking over to Surfdale beach, the hall and the macrocarpa trees, the next, my souvenir writing compendium, my trusty preserving pan and good old Alison's recipes.

Domestic Craft on Tuesday 19 February

Went off to my group at Art Station this morning. Hadn't done any knitting since last week so it was nice to be able to sit down and knit for a couple of hours. Was delighted to find that we had a guest speaker, Susan Jowsey who had images of her art career which took off dramatically about 1990 when she won the Visa Gold Award with her series of blankets, with embroidered words like faith, hope in the same cream colour and which kept the original stains and had more added by Susan to create the effect she wanted. Then there were red crosses on each blanket as a symbol of salvation. Carrington Mental Hospital had just been closed and the work came out of her capturing the histories and humanity behind the austerity of mental illness at that time.

One of the next images was of artworks which were made out of old baby clothes and had other pieces added to them making them into something new and transformed. She made about 100 small crosses out of layers of them, oversewing them with embroidery. They fitted in a lunch boxwhen not installed somewhere.

Other domestic objects she used were a coathanger, scales, a cardigan, the insides of handbags, again with all their stains which she used in her capacity as "a rearranger of life".

Then she moved away from art as object to art as photograph, using her daughter as model. Now she works collaboratively with the family - eg in a film her young son made she added certain effects, as did her husband, also an artist and photographer.

Her latest work is as a digital artist and we were shown 2 very short art movies with the aid of the computer. Again her husband, Marcus Williams, appeared in one.

The photo, still life with yellow phone represents my domestic craft for this afternoon. I made 4 jars of marmelade which I put into old Rose's marmalade jars, and preserved two small jars of Golden Queen peaches from our garden. The golden double yellow hibiscus is from 4 Salisbury Street. I gave the bush to my mother about 23 years ago. It is in one of my favourite vases of hers - it has butterflies on it. The yellow telephone I am going to sell on Trademe.

Rakino

Out on the gulf on Sunday to visit Rakino. This trip was organized by the Auckland Historical Society. About 30 of us headed out on rather a small boat which rocked from side to side whenever anything larger or faster moved past it, scaring me no end. There was a classic yacht regatta, lovely big yachts with elaborate sails, some of them coming very close to us. Our skipper gave us lots of information about these boats and also the big boats moored at the Viaduct Basin, including Michael Hill's. Out past Brown's Island, Rangiato, then the length of Motutapu, then further on west of Waiheke to Rakino, first to Home Bay, then on to Sandy Bay for our short spell on land, just time to walk over to Home Bay where there is an old homestead and tiny church. There seemed to be very few houses. They say there is no electricity. Read Shirley Maddock's chapter on the island. She was there when there was a guest house, an alternative community and a few locals. Chugged back to the mainland doing a tour of the viaduct past the yachts which had returned from the day's racing for the prizegiving.

The top photo is at Home Bay, Rakino where Sir George Grey had a house built, this is the house you see in the picture. He started it, but did not finish it. He probably planted the trees too. The next one is in front of the boat that took us to Rakino - Riverhead Cruises. They also do a lot of other interesting ones which we may go on - one up the Waihou River from Thames to Paeroa.

The others are out on the gulf with the yachts, one of a little island just off Sandy Bay, Rakino, the last one is of Home Bay from the distance.

Real Gold - Exhibition at the Central Library

Made another visit to this wonderful exhibition at the library with good friend M who noticed the book at our place when she was here in Inner Ponsonby last weekend. I gave it to Dieter for Christmas . Anyway however had the Special Collections exhibition space to ourselves this Saturday afternoon and had a good browse - things from many of the different collections - maps of early Auckland and Wellington, letters - from Darwin to Sir George Grey, Florence Nightingale to Grey, diaries of Sarah Mathew, autobiographies of Peter McDonald (1876) " Auckland was a queer wee town...in 1842", and Robin Hyde , written while a patient at Auckland Mental Hospital in the 1930s. This manuscript was given to the library by the doctor who encouraged her to write it, Dr Tothill. I remember it coming through the cataloguing dept in the late 1970s .There are photographs by Clifton Firth of Allen Curnow and ARD Fairburn, others of Lee Grant of the Mercury Theatre, John A Lee's scrapbooks with photos and cuttings stuck down with bits of sticking plaster. I seem to recall him gifting those to the library in the the late 70s or early 80s too. Whina Cooper came in too and gifted a beautiful cloak. This year I will have been in the library 30 years (1oth of July this year!) I digress. The middle picture is of the winning garden plan for Western Park, then called Central Park. It is still a great big park with huge trees going from Ponsonby downto Auckland Girls and beyond.

The last picture is the southern end of Waiwera Beach, a watercolour by Thomas Ryan, 1892.

We have another picture of Waiwera, a watercolour painted by Dieter's friend Sir Riga in the 1950s, one showing the big rock and a pier that used to be there. I remember the Waiwera hotel which was the place to go in the 1960s, before or after a hot swim. Those were the days...

Anyway however there are the beautiful manuscripts, rare books, even a handwritten translation of St Luke's Gospel in an aboriginal language, done by a missisonary L E Threlkeld in 1857. Sir George Grey had it bound and had it illuminated like a medieval manuscript by Annie Layard, the wife of his private secretary.

Other collections represented are bookplates, music (God defend NZ) , Maori manuscripts, first editions. The book contains even more information about other collections, I didn't even know the library has - for example old tokens. Dieter has quite a few of these, sadly being sold off by me on Trademe, with his consent of course. You can't keep everything for ever can you.

Finished off a pleasant afternoon with coffee at the library cafe, Real, then paid a visit to Smith and Caughey's sale, where I bought a cute little floral torch which I will keep for myself to take on holiday with me. We are going round the East Coast in a couple of weeks time and up the Danube from Bulgaria to Germany later in the year.

Knitterati

For the past year or so the knitting group at Art Station has been knitting blankets for an exhibition in May. The theme of the exhibition is shelter and the blankets are going to be given to the Red Cross for refugees once the exhibition is over. Most of our knitting has been at home but we meet once a week at Art Station to knit, chat and go to local art galleries and see what is new. Last week we went to one across the road and there were a couple of interesting knitted pieces in an exhibition by up and coming artists - a large length of knitted fabric made out of plastic bag strips in different colours, and a similar length of "material" made of very finely rolled pages of fashion magazines. The middle photo is one of my blankets and I am in the third photo knitting at Leys library - we go to public spaces and knit!

Pictures of the bach at Orewa, and Motuihe trip

A week or so ago we went to this island in the Hauraki Gulf on a day trip with the Silverdale Historical Society. We got the boat from Westhaven, chugged around the harbour and then made out to sea, passing Browns Island and getting to Motuihe in about an hour. In the olden days Motuihe was a common daytrip for Aucklanders aand there was a regular ferry service. I hadn't been there for about 40 years! One man on the trip was there last as a 10 year old over 70 years ago when he was sent to the health camp there in the 1930s!! It is also famous for being the island where Von Luckner was held after being captured in the Pacific during the first world war and from where he made his escape, distracting attention from himself by setting a fire in one of the barracks. He ande 10 other men slipped away under cover of darkness and escaped in the commandant's motorboot, for which they fashioned a German battle ensign out of flour bags. They were recaptured off the Kermadecs a few days later and returned to Motuihe.

Motuihe also served as a quarantine station during a smallpox outbreak in 1872, and flu epidemic of 1918 and there is a small cemetery where casualties were buried. We walked there past trees that Sir Logan Campbell had planted there when he farmed the island between 1843 and 1858. We passed the remnants of the naval station HMNZS Tamaki which was in operation from 1941 to 1963. Now most of the buildings are gone, just an old water tank remaining.

Had a nice walk up the other end of the island and back along the beach before gettingthe ferry home agaian. We went back to Orewa with the group stopping along the ay at Browns Bay for an icecream and spending part of the weekend up at Orewa. Took some photos of the bach which I will post here having forgotten my digital camera on the Motuihe trip.

My new Picture - 3 melons by Clare Dargaville

Went to a lecture on NZ art last Sunday with a friend. Clare Dargaville spoke about three artists - Charles Goldie, Frances Hodgkins and Evelyn Page with a brief mention of Peter McIntyre, telling us a bit about their lives and their work and their influence, showing a lot of their pictures in the process. Then she spoke at length about her own career as an art teacher and artist. She was widowed early on her married life and brought up 4 young children on her own, fitting in art, mainly pastels, as they were portable and easy to clear away when the space was needed for family life. Her husband was Maori from Pangaru and her paintings reflect the influence of Maori motifs such as the paua and kete. Over afternoon tea there was the opportunity to view an exhibition of her artwork some of which was for sale. And so I bought one for a bare wall in our front sitting room. It does look rather lonely there so will put up some of Dieter's artifacts to keep it company.

Me Again

Hi all, Nobody has been more bereft than me without a computer for 11 days or more. No Trademe, no scrabble, no email, no blog , a very boring existence. The old one packed up and the new one has taken days to get installed. However I have my music on the MP3 player and other niceties so that is good, a nice new layout and everything is quicker to load. Have done lots of interesting things over the past fortnight and as soon as I can see how to load my pictures and scan things I will be writing about them.

Took the picture of Sir Ed's statue in Hillary Square, Orewa a few days after the the funeral, which I watched on TV. It was a state funeral. Lots more people and flowers there after he died