Hello Shortest Day

Tonight is the Winter Solstice here in New Zealand, making this the shortest day and tonight the longest night.  It takes about a month for us to notice that the days are getting longer, but there is a psychological boost when you know that the Shortest Day has passed.  In the South Island, particularly right down south where I now live, we have many very dull, cold, dreary days when the sun doesn't shine.  This time last year, I was in France, and missed 2 months of winter.  This year, I have to suck it up and be here.

The up side of winter (and there IS one) is that I was able to take these photos of roses in the Queens Park gardens -

These are the images I have chosen for my final Photography 1 asssignment, have printed them out at 8" x 10" size.  They are being exhibited (along with my classmates' photos) on the ground floor of our campus building.  Apparently, the exhibition is attracting favourable comments from staff and students.

Warning...contains actual quilted matter

Sample quilt made this weekend for the upcoming landscape class that I'm teaching.

Happy birthday, Queenie

This was the last long weekend we have until late October.  Of course, it's not really the Queen's birthday this weekend, but we like to pretend it is.

I spent quite a bit of time taking photographs in and around Invercargill.  It's pretty flat here so the city lacks dramatic landscapes - I had to make the best of what I could find.   Here's some of my favourites -

 I tried out my telephoto lens for the first time at Bluff.

 There were some quite strange clouds on the way back.

 Looking at Riverton bridge.

 Windsurfers at Colac Bay

 The pond by the aviary in Queen's Park

Roof of the winter gardens

The fountain at Queen's Park.

Miscellany

It's hard to find time to blog at present due to the demands of study and part-time work, so here's some photos from that part of my life.

 A drawing of the Railway Hotel turret - my drawing isn't great but it's getting a bit better.

 These photos are form our latest class excursion out into the CBD to take street photos.  The idea was to take photos from more unusual angles. I was standing on a  chair for this photo of the woman with pink hair.

 This is a pigeon's - eye view from the first floor of the Library.

 I went up to the 3rd floor of  a building and asked to take photos out one of their windows.  Here, the automatic focus landed on the street light pole instead of the pedestrians, so I've faded out the photo edges.

Just an ordinary shot of the SIT arcade, with sepia tones added.

Photography is our main class this term - you can tell, can't you?

This and that

The photos in the last post were taken just prior to a spell of bad weather - thunderstorms, hail and heavy rain.  Here's what the hail looked like in my little back yard on Sunday night.

 

I have only just today taken the dogs back to by the river as I feared that there would be flooding of some of the ponds, as indeed there was.  To my surprise, the whole river must also have come right up on the other side and would have flowed over the grass where the dogs are running in that last photo down to the ponds, which are still very full.  The ground is also sodden. The dogs don't care, though.

Despite being really busy with my studies, I am knitting this capelet, though mine will open down the front.  I want it to be a little something I can fling over my shoulders to keep warm.  It has big fat cables and dropped stitches.

This is actually a raspberry colour which I find really hard to photograph so that the colour is correct.   I'm about halfway up the pattern, then there's the big collar bit.

  I'm hoping to teach some classes at the LQS, so last weekend (during aforementioned bad weather), I made (but have not yet bound) this Salted Peanut table runner using reversible quilting methods.  Of course, the table runner is just a way of practising the actual technique, which I quite enjoy doing.

Something old, something outside..

 Tree of Life

 Radiance

 The weka statue in Esk St, Invercargill

 Some scenes of the wilderness area near the river where I take the dogs after work.

 There are a number of ponds..

..some with mini islands.  There are mown areas, and the dogs love it there.

A walk by the river

 I started Photography 1 last week, and this is the main subject this term, with the emphasis on composition.  On Wednesday, the class went for a walk by the river to take photos.  Here are a few of mine.

 I took quite a few shots involving rust.

This is my classmate Ben adding a focal point to some broken windows.

All these were taken with my lil' point-and-shoot Sony Cybershot, a 4.1 megapixel camera.  I'm unsure how far I want to go with photography but I really enjoy it.  I'll see.

Gifts

Now that I'm a student, money is tight; so when a gift is called for, I'm making them where possible.

 This is a cowl made from dyed and knitted cotton (by request) as a birthday present for my son's girlfriend, Catherine.

And these raspberry merino handwarmers are a Mothers' day gift for my mum who has arthritis in her hands.  These will keep her hands warm without limiting the use of her fingers.

Symposium classes

This time around, I taught 2 classes, each 2 days long.  They were "Pole Dancing with Shibori" and "Faux Batik - Using Resists".  Following are examples of class work.

 The above photos are all from the shibori class.  We also discharged fabric (took the colour out) as you can see in the last 2.

This is Jenny from Australia, who did both my classes.

 A piece of silk shibori - the colours come out quite differently from cotton.

Here we were using paste, glue and commercial resists to pattern fabric, then adding layers of dyes and paints.