I started by flying to New Plymouth, Taranaki in the west of the North Island of New Zealand. On Saturday and Sunday was spent teaching the lovely ladies from this area in Eltham. They were a lovely bunch of ladies who worked hard and made great progress on their pieces. I taught them the needlelace technique of Aemilia Ars.
Since class I have been hanging out in the area. I have another class but on the East side of the North Island this coming weekend.
I have had a great time on my little mid week holiday. I have done some pattern digitising, stitched a load on my travel cross stitch piece. Visited and stitched with an Embroiderers' Guild and a Creative Fibre group and seen the sights, including some shopping and gallery viewings and the mountain (Mount Taranaki) - the photo above. I have had a great time.
Tomorrow I am up early to catch the bus to the other side. I am looking forward to this also as this is my first time travelling through these areas.
I am still stitching on my A Peacock, A Unicorn, A Badger (PUB) - it is my travel piece and because I am doing loads of travel in the next few months I am hopeful to get lots done on it.
My friend Nerissa has also twisted my (rubber) arm into joining her stitching samplers in the next 2 months. She is starting a new one each week so 8 in total. It makes me feel ill to start that many new pieces so I am stitching on samplers I have already started. My first one is the PUB sampler.
I have made good progress digitising some patterns that I need in a couple of months which is another job ticked off my list. It is one of those jobs that you need to do, but seems to take forever.
The exhibitions we visited today were excellent and very inspiring and it was good to have the time to go to them. Yesterdays weather was horrid but today was a lovely sunny winter day.
The first exhibition theme was Home and was a fine art one in Hawera. This was mainly a fine art one in which the exhibits were painted.
We then drove to Opunake and visited the beach (above) where we found these gorgeous shell spirals - we don't have these at the beaches I frequent down South. I'm thinking of using them in one of my future embroideries.
We saw the surfboard fence and had a yummy lunch. I had this delicious lemon meringue slice which was sufficiently lemony for me.
Then we visited Donna Dinsdale's exhibition at the gallery From Out of The Blue.
I loved visiting Donna's exhibition. Her pieces told a fabulous story and were stitched beautifully. They are made from upcycled old woolen blankets and I would happily wear one.
That was my last day in Taranaki and the next day we got up early and drove around an hour and a half to meet the bus that took me from Whanganui via Palmerston North to Waipukurau which is about an hour south of Napier.
In Waipukurau I stayed with another lovely lady and met another bunch of stitchers. We spent Saturday and Sunday together where I took them through how to stitch a Toadstool in stumpwork.
On Sunday one of the ladies drove me to Napier where I boarded my first flight to Wellington. From Wellington after a stop over for almost two hours I caught the next flight home to Dunedin.
The next Friday I then drove myself to Timaru to teach a lovely group of ladies there my Aemilia Ars class. Unfortunately I forgot to take any photos.
I get some home time for a while now before I head out around New Zealand again for some more teaching.
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