Simone Quentin de Manson

I walked down to the local park after work today, took some photos in the divine light. Here are a few.

Have I mentioned Autumn is my favorite season yet? Well its my favorite season.

I have been sewing up and knitting a wee bit lately. I have one photo of the hat I knitted for winter from yarn leftovers. A few more to come.. so stay tuned.

I went to a wedding this weekend. Due to the overwhelming amount of Photographers I didn’t bring my camera out, so no photos of the lovely people and gorgeous wedding things unfortunately, all the same it was nice not to be behind a camera and to take it all in. We stayed in a lovely lodge called “Pudding Hill Lodge” where we had a bunk room to ourselves and a big fireplace with sofas you could fall asleep on, looking over Pudding Hill and Mt Hutt, framed by autumnal trees. In the mean time here are some photos from a day walk we walked the day before. There is more on flickr..

For those of you who have asked here are my camera details: Nikon D80, with three main lenses I use.

1. The first multi purpose lens I brought: Sigma DC 18 - 50 mm 1:2.8

2. Landscape lense: AF-S Nikkor 1:4.0 12 -24mm

3. Portraits: 50 mm AF Nikkor 1:1.4 D

A friends birthday was celebrated in true outdoorsy adventure styles by hiring out a house and meeting up in the middle of nowhere to take ourselves off for walks, biking and whatever else takes your fancy is the idyllic mecca. As for myself and Kylie we took our time driving and stopped at numerous places for me to take photos. Semi happy with the results. Would like to have a more full on walking no cars adventure soon tho. Feeling the itch to really get away.

Check out the set in flickr.

The Beautiful: http://www.jumnakao.com.br/ci_colecao.htm

The Funny (really only for web geeks): http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2008/04/01/chuck-lewis-seo-rapp

I want to do that too!: http://www.ponoko.com

Last weekend I went into photo and video with Kylie to buy him a new lens. He got one, then the salesman showed me a few lenses I would have fun with on my camera. OOoo and am I. (Lets just say spare cash from selling car is bad… it stayed in savings account for about aaaaa… 2 weeks)

The play starts with photographing our preserves making epic/s. LOTS of apples. I also found a cool tutorial on photographing food from photojojo, nice and easy to read full of easily implementable suggestions…. fun! I kinda enjoy the light and coziness of photos that are yellowed by interior lights tho, helps one remember that they were up til’ 11pm, jarring those apples…

(kylies photo)

The recipe found for the cinnamon looking preserve (can you say Apple turnover, apple pastry aaand apple… yum yum) the original is here, but for your pleasure its also here: (with changes) we doubled the recipe to fill 3x 500ml Jars.

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Dutch Apple Preserves

1 kg Granny Smith or cooking Apples (that’s 1kg after peeling & coring!)
1 cup sultanas
3 cups water
Juice of 1 lemon
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1 cup light brown sugar

To prepare:

1. Pour water and lemon juice into a large pot.

2. Wash then peel and core apples, then slice them into small pieces. Cast the apple into the pot as you go.

3. Add the sultanas and bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce to a good simmer.

4. Add remaining ingredients and continue to simmer with the lid of the pot off.

5. Simmer for at least half an hour. Stir regularly!

6. Wash 3 500ml preserving jars, place on oven tray and bake in oven at 120 - 140 degrees Celcius for 20 minutes. Whilst they are baking (to sterilise them) wash and dry the screw bands and set aside. Wash and prepare lids according to manufacturers directions.

7. When all is ready. Quickly ladle preserves into clean jars. Wipe jar rims and threads with dry clothe.

8. Cover with two-piece lids. Allow to cool completely before checking seals. Label and date.

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Stay tuned because its autumn (my favorite season) I am all amped to take lots of pretty piccies!

Its taken awhile but here are the photos from my Mt Cook Easter adventure.

The drive and visit to Ashford Craft “village” Yes, this place has more than one craft shop! I brought some lovely blue and teal Carded Merino Fleece for spinning. (photo not taken of that yet). The first day was over cast and a bit wet. We had cloud covered mountain views.

We passed a convoy of old Valiants (?)

Cloud Covered Mountains

And more breaks and stopping to admire views

We get to Mt Cook Camp and set-up tent and have some dinner. After a quick walk around the immediate area. Still covered in cloud, there is No mt cook to be seen.

With Mt cook Village in the back ground we play with taking photos of the torch lit tent, then go to bed.

In the morning the cloud is still about, however as I inform Kylie… “it is surely thinning.. Look.. that cloud’s sorta blue-ish” After porridge it does start to clear, i run around with Camera in one hand, coffee in the other very happy with the world.

After coffee was finished, we went walking to various different glaciers, had lunch up near tasman glacier and generally took lots of photos

I think this is my favorite photo.

More in my flickr set

Do you have some hand crafted items you wouldn’t mind selling to some well paid (usually) computer geeks? Some very famous and very cool geeks are coming down to run some workshops with the Christchurch people on Monday and Tuesday (so excitied.. hope i can go!) then the seminar section (where craft stock have tables) is on Tuesday evening.

Webstock is a web geeky conference thingie. The actual one (instead of a mini one) is held in Wellington is is always booked out. Webstock Mini Christchurch is bringing down Craft 2.0 with them to host some tables at the tuesday evening conference, this has been advertised so people will hopefully be bringing cash. If you would like in on the tables, put some pictures together of your work and email them to Sue at Craft 2.0. The tables cost nothing and no-one takes any cuts.

Ok so heres so motivational speak… Christchurch craftsters have to represent! Our stuff is awesome so no telling yourself its not good enough. Its all about handmade man! Its the new cool… web stockers know it. nuf said.

In the computer geek world Google is said to be the coolest place to work and the best company to work for. The link has been circulated around our office of the latest album of images of their offices in Zurich.

This image here has gotta be my favourite space, alothough the slide down to the cafe and the pods were coming in as a close second. Work space is so important to me and this image is like a wee dream… If it was somewhere I worked, every time I walked into it, I would smile.

The latest plot or project might just be some wee curtains and pot plants in my studio….

I love to think of what the office would be like if Google had some open in Christchurch. I like to think it would have a cool New Zealand style. Showing not only the native/unique design stuff, but the wonderful mixture of Asian and European cultures aswell. I mean really, how could you NOT be creative working in a place like this?

I have recently developed a website for a local Apaca Farm, I got this job because my mum saw an alpaca farm sign on a main road outside of christchurch saying “Styx River Farm, Alpacas and Alpaca Products” so she took me along with her to investigate. We found a fabulous couple, had a cuppa tea and left with some bags of carded fleece for us to start spinning with (we had just started together, since then i am still spinning my first batch and mum has gotten on to her 5th I think?) and a website job.

When I went to their place again to finalise some website bits n bobs I asked to see their alpacas and new babies. Here are some of those!

Alpaca Yarn is so soft and and wonderful to knit and spin. The next planned project is to dye some merino (managed to pick up about 1kg for only $25!) out of this I want to get some white alpaca and start dying that and seeing how I go combining it. Here are some links that have inspired my spinning, dying and knitting.

Apaca with a Twist

Craft Sanity Podcast interview with the pluckfluff creator Lexi Boeger

HOW exciting.