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If you'd like to start again at the beginning, I have updated the previous posts on the trip with more photos and links. (Navigation to the next post in order is down the right side.)

Christchurch - Sydney

Sunday started off clear and sunny and I headed into the city to the Arts Centre for the Sunday Markets. They were not as busy as the Nelson Markets had been. As well as the market stalls, there are many shops, galleries and studios. The Christchurch Guild of Weavers and Spinners have their guild rooms here. I am jealous.



At Wool, Yarn and Fibres (downstairs in the same building as the guild) there was an awesome range of fibres and yarns as well as made garments. Two lovely ladies were in charge of the shop and I had a chat to them as I decided on what to buy.


They had some lovely merino fibre, but I have so much Aussie merino... I came away with some natural grey alpaca blended with silk and merino. I browsed at a lot of jewellery and woodworking shops, but nothing 'must have' came my way. I had two hours on a parking meter, and when that was up there was little parking nearby to be had, and a parking ranger was busy booking cars. A cold change with possible hail was forecast, so I decided to grab some lunch and head back to the hotel. I spent a lazy afternoon doing little and watching the weather become wild outside.

On Monday the weather was fine, but it was windy and cold. It looked like it could be 20 degrees outside, but it was nine! I drove to Hands Ashford for a look around the shop. They had a good range of yarns, though it was still small. Lots of other crafts were also represented. By this point I feared being able to get everything in my suitcase and wasn't willing to buy anything much.

I took a bus into the city and returned to the Arts Centre to finish off seeing some places I hadn't had time for on Sunday. I visited the exhibits on Sir Ernest Rutherford in Rutherford's Den, then made my way across to Canterbury Museum. There were many families at the museum since the school holidays had started and the Great Museum Santa Search was underway. Various toy Santas, big and small, had been hidden among the exhibits, and the children needed to locate all of them. One, among the bird exhibits, was quite obvious, as was the one over the North Pole (I think it had a sled too) on a globe of the Earth. I spotted another within an environmental education exhibit that was a bit more tricky, but I wasn't really seeking them out.



By lunchtime the weather outside was a little more pleasant and I ate my lunch by a pond in the Botanic Gardens. I then strolled across the city (actually further than I thought it would be) to get to Knit World, a knitting chain store (I also visited the one in Dunedin). This place was large and had the biggest range of yarns of all the places I had visited. I nearly bought some Zealana merino/possum/cotton lace weight yarn, but the possum content put me off (I don't like possum fibre much). I took a bus back to the hotel and set about packing my suitcase and finishing off the last of my cherries.

Tuesday was a nice day and having squashed all my things into my suitcase and backpack (it would have been very hard to have got more in), I checked out of the hotel. My flight home was not until the afternoon, so I went to Riccarton House and Bush to kill some time. The fragment of bushland here is surrounded by a fence to exclude predators of the native birds and animals and you had to pass through an elaborate double-doored enclosure to enter and leave. Having almost always lived close to bushland in Sydney, I find it bizarre that the tiny remnant of bush at Riccarton is the only native vegetation left in all of Christchurch.


The Kahikatea trees are impressive and the bird life was prolific. After the short walk around the bush I spent some time with the ducks by the river. They were very hopeful that I was going to feed them.

After some lunch I headed to the airport and returned the rental car. I was very pleased to learn that as I'd paid the extra excess-reduction amount for the car, the damage to the windscreen would not result in any charge.

The flight home was much smoother than the flight over. And I finally got to see those pesky mountain peaks that had been hiding in cloud for so much of my stay.


The flight landed early and Customs and Quarantine were both almost empty. Quarantine didn't even want to see all the fibre I declared.

Some Statistics
The total distance I covered by car was 2680 km.
Total number of 'stash enhancement opportunities': 28.
Total stash enhancement: 6 skeins of yarn: 900 grams; 4 bundles of fibre: c. 1.56 kg.
Miscellaneous purchases: assorted beads/jewellery, silk skirt, hat; chocolate fish; DVD box set (and yet my suitcase was supposedly only 2 kg heavier, which is not possible).
Photographs taken: 258 stills, 4 videos on Sony camera; 93 stills, 2 videos on Apple iPhone.

Dunedin to Nelson

Back on the road again, heading North. I stopped at the Moeraki Boulders, where the tide was out and there were tourists all over the place.



At Oamaru I stumbled across Enterprise Beads and bought some strings of beads for knitting and some spinning wheel charms I will make into earrings. Nothing else terribly interesting on this stretch, since I'd visited Ashburton already coming South. On Wednesday night I stayed in Rangiora.



The Jaywalker socks reached the turning of the heel.

Thursday morning was clear and sunny. I made a last minute decision to take Lewis Pass to Nelson and return on Saturday by the coastal route, rather than the other way around, because the weather forecast for Saturday was not looking good. Mind you, the mountain tops were still hidden by cloud (it's a conspiracy against me!) and road works prevented my stopping at one scenic lookout.

At Brightwater I visited Hallblacks - another supplier of natural coloured fleeces, but she has also got a good range of commercial yarns, and, if it's your thing, lots of novelty yarns including some I've never seen before (maybe that's not hard since I don't usually look for 'dead muppet').



I chatted to Mary, the owner, for quite some time as she is a former English teacher and we were discussing education systems (among other things). I bought a prepared half fleece from a Lincoln lamb by the name of 'Curious'. Apparently the other half of Curious's fleece was purchased by a Melbourne chorister.


After a quick visit to the Visitor Information Centre, I checked into my hotel in Nelson. From my room I had a lovely view of the Church spire.

- Originally posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Dunedin

Monday morning in Dunedin I took a walk down to the Octagon and Visitor Information Centre then visited some (rather forgettable) yarn shops. Then I headed to Otago Museum.



I had the most decadent caramel slice and latte for morning tea at the cafe, to defrost from the cold outside, before looking around the museum. The museum exhibits were excellent and included odd measuring instruments on the stairwell, exhibits on Maori and Pacific Islanders, geology and natural history of the area, as well as travelling exhibits such as on Charles Darwin and a rather interesting one on dinosaur eggs. The museum has lots of hands on stuff for kids. I spent well over two hours and could have easily spent a lot longer there.

While back at the motel for lunch, the rain changed briefly to small pellets of hail. Once it stopped, I headed to South Dunedin to suss out a few more (again, forgettable) yarn shops and a Spotlight, just to see if it was much different to Aussie ones (it wasn't). Then there was more hail. I had a fantastic lamb burger and kumera chips from Velvet Burger for dinner. And it hailed some more. The hail in Dunedin was small, but further north at Timaru they had golf-sized hail that destroyed crops.



Tuesday's first activity was a tour of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory. This included climbing many stairs, eventually reaching about mid way up that purple tower, inside which we had to yell 'chocolate' loudly to trigger a fall of liquid chocolate to be released. Splattering chocolate everywhere - erk! I bought a hat and lots of chocolate fish in the shop. I love chocolate fish....



After lunch I took a drive to the Otago Peninsula. First stop was Clifton Wool n Things, which was down a ghastly steep gravel driveway. It started hailing again, and I wondered if I would manage to get the rental car back up to the road. It was well worth it though as the shop had piles of yarn hanks, fleeces and sliver as well as garment and so forth, all of natural coloured wool. I would have loved to have taken home some sliver, but it had too much VM for me to be confident of getting it through Australian customs and quarantine. So I came away with three hanks of 8 ply in 'Gull Grey' and a shade card.

I successfully negotiated the driveway back up to the road (it helped that it had stopped hailing) and continued on to Taiaroa Head. I photographed penguins and other bird life in the rain and enjoyed afternoon tea in the Albatross Centre.





- Originally posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sydney - Christchurch - Te Anau

Wednesday started with a 5:30 am walk to the railway station for the trip to the airport. I've done the trip to the domestic terminal many times, but not the international terminal - I haven't been out of the country since 1999! The flight to Christchurch was fine until it hit turbulence over Arthurs Pass. I didn't enjoy that bit at all! Christchurch airport was busy with a ginormous queue and Border Control NZ were filming (the looked like they were following some issue with a couple that looked like they had done something the authorities didn't like). And my empty passport remained empty as it wasn't stamped at either end of the journey.

I collected a rental car at the airport - a Hyundai Getz that I don't like very much. It is red but does not go fast. I also picked up a local sim card for the phone so I could keep connected without the high cost of international roaming.

The motel I stayed at was great and I cast on a Jaywalker sock in Kaffe Fassett Regia yarn.

Thursday started off rainy. I drove south, first stop Ashburton, home of Ashford. You can't miss the big spinning wheel on the main road. There are three big wheels in total.



I first visited the Ashford shop, and after much browsing, chose some Alpaca/Gotland fibre and some silk/Merino fibre to come home with me.



I also browsed the shops in the craft village and hit gold in the Eastside Gallery with 500 grams of natural chocolate coloured Corridale sliver. Yum yum!



At Geraldine I visited The Giant Jersey and the Alpaca Centre but didn't buy anything except some cherries from a street stall.

More driving - a rock thrown up by a car at Lake Tekapo cracked the windscreen of the Getz. Cloud prevented any view of Aoraki (Mount Cook). I stayed at Omarama for the night.

Friday started with better weather. First stop was viewing the Clay Cliffs just outside Omarama.



Just before Cromwell I made a detour to Clyde to visit Touch Yarns. Here I bought a skein of undyed fine kid mohair - merino laceweight yarn, a skeing of natural coloured alpaca boucle and a hand-dyed skein of merino boucle.



I doubled back to Cromwell, continued to Frankton near Queenstown (where I stopped briefly in 3G coverage to catch up on emails and tweets) then continued on to my next stop, Te Anau. Here, the rain started up again. I was in another good motel and had a lovely roast lamb dinner at a local cafe.

- Originally posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Today was Guild Open Day. I was there for more than half the day. I was there when they were still setting up:



I spent some time on the Guild information table, meeting quite a few people as they arrived, but also some time eyeing all the lovely fibre. Below is Helen and Glenda from Waratah Fibres. I was eyeing off Helen's drop spindle from Petlyn Alpacas.



I met up with Sharre, Camee, and Eclectic Rose and we went around all the traders and bought quite a bit between us. Below is my haul.



Merino/Kid Mohair blend from Freelance Fibres, a mini niddy noddy from Sue's House of Wool and some milk silk combed top from Wooldancer (which came with a little badge). I'm now in a dilemma as to which fibre I should spin up first - from the stash or my new purchases?