loads of stuff!

Been doing a lot of stuff recently. As I've said before, we're still having gorgeous weather, so we've been making the most of that by going out on the boat and doing a huge amount of diving. Sharing a boat with Si and Ali really is the best thing!

We've been doing really long dives, about an hour each time because the visibility is just so good right now. We've also got another trip to the Poor Knights arranged for next weekend. Very excited about that.

Just leaving the marina - yep, another crappy day in the Bay of Islands!

Ali getting kitted up for the dive. Lloyd being boat man.

And we're in! it's like a fish tank!

Surrounded by fish!

 After diving, find a nice sheltered spot for lunch - home grown egg mayo buns with a bit of rocket.

Last weekend we hired a log splitter and spent the whole of Sunday splitting wood. Si and Ali came over and between the four of us we split enough wood to fill 5 trailers and then filled up their ute. We've all got enough wood for perhaps 2 winters now, and it was such good fun. We had lots of tea stops and a lovely long lunch.

Excuse the terrible photos!

In the tractor shed - this gives no idea of the huge amount of wood we've got hanging around!

One trailer load down - 4 more to go!

You really can't tell how big or full the woodshed is from the photo, but take my word for it - it's stuffed! And it smells amazing.

After all our hard work we had a take away curry. There's a curry/pizza place opened in Kaikohe - well it's been there a while now - called Smokin' Hot, and it is AMAZING. The curries are authentic and the best we've had in NZ, and how lucky it's opened in Kaikohe!

What else...I'm still going to pottery. Was there yesterday and cleaned up some wee bits and bobs I made last week to get them ready for firing. 

There's another egg dish - this time I measured out the spaces between the holes so all the eggs should fit in nicely. A few wee hearts and another bowl.  I also glazed one of the ready made bowls Sandrine has there. It's the old fashioned Mason and Cash pudding bowl shape, so I'm really excited about that. 

Autumn is well and truly here. Lots of the trees are bare already. I do love this time of year, especially when the weather is still so lovely. 

 Here's Lloyd and 2 of the dogs, doing their favourite thing. ( Bob was with me taking photos! )

Kopi doing her favourite thing - which is nothing. 

We celebrated Simon's birthday. We went over to theirs and had a lovely dinner. I made a lemon meringue roulade as a cake. it was ok! This was supposed to have he cake in it too!

and finally... I am getting old! After years of feeling rather smug, as all my friends succumbed to reading glasses, my time has finally come. I was trying to go for the nerdy, brainy look! Failed miserably!! But man, it's nice to be able to read!

More Pottery

I'm still going to pottery and finally I've got to the stage that even though the things I make on the wheel are still a bit squinty, they are now thinner and you don't need muscles like Popeye to lift them.

I've been sticking to the pale colours and I'm having a bit of a dot fest!

The good thing is we really are using them all and I'm still loving it.

Here's some small unglazed stuff. The front three were made on the wheel and were just me having a mess around. One of them got mashed round the rim when I picked it up and another is totally squint - I could say I meant it to be like that, but that would be a big fat lie!! The back one is a hand made pinch pot to go with my rustic dotty ones that I made a while ago.

These are some dotty, finished bowls. They're actually quite big and I admit to absolutely loving them and being somewhat delighted that they look nice.

And the rustic dotty ones that I use all the time, so I'm going to make a set.  I just glazed the small one and I've got a couple of larger ones waiting to be fired.

 

Newly glazed pinch pot and what it should come out like once it's been fired again!!

And here's the squinty one. I painted wee blue flowers on it. It might be cute once its fired!

It's raining buckets today ( after a few absolutely stunning days where we've done loads outside) so I'm having an inside day. Glazing some plates and making macarons. We'll have to see how these come out as I haven't made any for eons! I've turned the kitchen table into some sort of odd work station!

where, oh where have I been??

I've no idea! But the time between posts has been for ever!
I can't even remember all of what we've been up to, so I'm just going to let you see a selection of photos and you can guess!!!

 

And for Charlotte - Banana!
Who is GREAT!


Did you guess right?

Answers are!

Pizza night at friends
A lot of dogs sleeping where they're not supposed to be
Baking
Roller Derby - my new favourite thing!
International Dinner - Mexican night!
Cafes
Auckland and yachts
Auckland and girls night out
The Script
Decided to sell my lovely car
More pottery.

As ever, it's all go!!!

No sign of a baby cria, but Cupcake is doing GREAT!
We're still enjoying tomatoes from the greenhouse and Lloyd is making enough chilli sauce to feed the whole of NZ.


Hope all of you are well and happy!

Glazed Pottery!

The second batch of pottery was ready to be picked up today. I was really excited to see it, as it included the very first ever bowls I made on the wheel as well as the newer ones.
Now, I'm aware that these are very lopsided and squint rustic and I could say I made them like this on purpose  - however I'd be totally lying, as, in fact, I would love to make a symmetrical, weighs less than a tonne bowl, but I'm not in that league yet!

That being said, I am really thrilled with these. They are in colours I like and are all usable.

First, these are small, hand made bowls out of white clay. I love how they turned out.

This is a medium sized bowl I  made on the wheel, out of white clay. I like it, it's lighter than the terracotta ones and less squint! ( the light is terrible today as it's pouring down so you can't really see the true colour)

The first ever wee bowl I made! I gave this a pourer and it works perfectly. It's a small bowl

 A terracotta bowl, this is SO heavy!

And lastly, I made these hearts towards the end of a class one day as a sort of time filler, and when I came to glaze them I had spent so long on the bowls that I just slapped some glaze on these, but I LOVE them! They've got holes in them, so that I can thread them to form a sort of heart chain.

I am loving this so much!

The Longest Summer

It's been a while since I last wrote anything, this is most likely due to the fact that summer is just going on and on and on and Lloyd and I are making the most of it.

Since I last posted, we've been to Waiheke Island for a wee holiday, I've been diving at the Poor Knights marine reserve, we've sauced and passata-d and gardened, done more pottery and yesterday we went over to the Hokianga for HokiFest. I've done all of this while dosed up to the eyeballs on painkillers. I've done something to my shoulder and am presently seeing a chiropractor and a voodoo lady! ok she's not a voodoo lady - she does cranial something or other and is a genius. After 2 weeks I think it might be on the mend. Which is great, because making do with only a few meagre hours of sleep, before being woken up with the pain is really beginning to get me down!

Anyway first things first - Waiheke Island.
In all the time we've lived in NZ we've never been, so a few months back we booked a 4 day trip. It was wonderful. It felt like we'd been abroad!  The sun shone the whole time we were there and basically we just explored. Highlights were a picnic on Palm Beach, watching the sun set from Cable Bay Winery,  exploring Stony Batter, Man O War Winery, Oyster Inn Restaurant, eating lovely meals and lying in bed looking at the view.

This is the view from our bedroom window - sunset on the first evening

Couldn't resist! Macarons by the sea - yum!

Picnic on Palm Beach

A fairly standard view around Waiheke! It's all pretty stunning.

Some washed out rocks

There are loads of vineyards on Waiheke - it's pretty famous for its wine.

Our last evening - at one of said vineyards - Cable Bay. Sunset.

We loved it. We'd love to make it a regular, maybe once a year thing.

Next!
The very next morning after we got home I had to get up at 5.30am to meet Simon and Alison and drive down to Tutakaka, where we were meeting a boat to take us out to the Poor Knights Islands. I've done a fair bit of diving here before so I knew how good it was going to be. And it was!
It's positively teeming with fish life there. Lots of sting rays, unfortunately no mantas, we'd been told they were around and had really hoped to see some.
I've said before how much I love diving. It's another world down there.

Two snapper following us around the place - they are incredibly tame.

I can't remember what this is called - but it's super cute!

A moray eel - this was a rather large one!

Simon and Pete having an underwater confab

I'm pretty sure  this is a large scorpion fish - its eye looks odd!

A long tailed sting ray

Alison rolling off the boat - I love this!! For non divers, the way you get off smaller dive boats is to sit on the edge with your legs in the boat and your back facing the water, and simply roll off backwards - it's great fun,

Now we've got pottery - I took some of my bowls and stuff home to glaze so that I can take it back on Tuesday to be fired - it saves time, and means that when I'm there on Tuesday I can make more stuff rather than paint glaze on.
 I also took home my wee buttons! They were just a time filler one evening, but I think they're very sweet so I sewed some onto the back of a white linen tunic I made to take on the Waiheke holiday.

 One of my bowls made on the wheel - ok not totally symmetrical! This has been fired once and has had the glaze painted on - once it's been fired again the glaze should be a glossy cream colour - we shall see!

These are just little hand made bowls - from white clay - again these will be cream with pale blue spots on them - I hope!

finally, my wee buttons

Today Lloyd and I picked the remaining tomatoes - there were actually still a fair amount left after we picked about 8kg - but by this time I am over them totally - we have about 20 litres of passata in the freezer! This'll last us quite some time. Anyway, because of this we took out the tomato plants that were left and fed the nice red tomatoes to the chickens. They were delighted! Then we chopped the basil down that's been in the greenhouse - I left the stalks as I'm fairly certain it will sprout from them. Then we set to work making another HUGE batch of passata - but this time it had a tonne of basil in it - I honestly think it may be the nicest one we've ever made.

You can really tell the difference between the outside tomatoes and the greenhouse ones. The outside ones are less sweet and also a lot more dirty! Greenhouse ones are super sweet and lovely and clean!

 This is the pile of basil - the pic really doesn't show how huge it is. These stems are about 1m long!

HOT CHILLI SAUCE RECIPE

Lloyd also managed to make the first batch of chilli sauce. The greenhouse has been amazing for the chillies. They're like flipping trees in there!  This sauce has a mixture of about 30 habaneros, 50  chilli fire, 50 anaheim, 50 hungarian peppers and 100 ceyenne oh and about  4 bhut jalokias.

Here's what was in the sauce as well as the chillies

200ml dark soy

100ml light soy

200ml cider vinegar

500ml dry sherry

and about 5 teaspoons sugar

brought to the boil and simmered for around half an hour -  turn off and let it stew for about another three hours.

Then blend it with a stick blender, mouli it and bottle it.

The trug with most of the chillies he picked

Lots of lovely greenhouse chillies! There's still about a gazillion more to come

Preparation, preparation, preparation. We also have a wee gas burner outside now. The catch in your throatness of cooking a million chillies really didn't do it for me.

Ready for bottling

Finished and labelled

( not great quality  - but the labels say Rather Hot Chilli Sauce)

This is the tomato sauce I made a couple of weeks ago.

on the left is one large bottle of basil passata to have in the fridge the remaining 100 litres is in the freezer!

So, all in all we've been rather busy. Sometimes I feel totally exhausted and others I feel like I'd could go for ever!!