Back home

 No blog post last weekend because I was in Tokyo for a few days on my way home, then flew to Hong Kong for one night to connect with my return flight to London. I made it home with only minor delays and DH met me at Heathrow for a very late return home.  As you can imagine, the last few days have been laundry, jetlag, catching up on post and emails, and today tackling the weed forest that used to be the garden.  It was a good trip, almost everything went according to plan, my tour was pretty good, I stayed healthy and my luggage made it home with me.  I enjoyed being back in Japan for three days, I liked Hong Kong and would go back there, and I feel like I got a great overview of New Zealand.

After Christchurch, I returned to Wellington for another full day and visited a bookstore/newsagent called Minerva on Cuba Street, which had been recommended to me. They had an impressive assortment of textile books including lots of quilting books, and also a wide selection of textile magazines from all over the world including a now-defunct New Zealand Quilter magazine. I had quite an enjoyable browse but didn't buy anything, mindful of my bulging suitcase.

My last day in Auckland, I visited the arty and quite interesting Ponsonby Road area where I stumbled across Prosper Yarn & cafe, run by a lovely woman who also dyes the yarn.  I picked up a nice skein of her fingering weight 'bach' in the colourway Taliesin, which contains 70 merino and 30 linen - she said the linen content will ensure a nice crisp block when used for lace knitting.

In the afternoon, I went over to the Auckland War Memorial Museum where there were interesting exhibits on the Maori and on Pacific Islanders, including another Cook Islands quilt.

Hung nearby were some large barkcloth or Tapa with printed designs which would make great quilt patterns.

On one of my Tokyo days, I visited some places I'd seen recommended by vloggers - one of these was a great stationery/homewares store called Loft in Shibuya. This had all kinds of neat stuff, including loads of wonderful Japanese stationery.  Here is one of the displays of 3D cards (of which some came home with me).

I also  found this miniature loom kit.  It came with some textured yarns and instructions in English and Japanese, and I thought it might work to weave small dollhouse carpets.  I'm trying it out with the yarns that came with it, but I think they might be too bulky.  I might try again with embroidery floss. A simple tool but it's working quite well.

I finished my plane knitting project on the flight home.  This is a picture before I closed the toes and blocked them - they are now all finished - I got the colour sequencing fairly matching on the uppers.

It's been a bit strange to be home again after 7 weeks, wearing clothes that weren't in my suitcase, but nice to have access to my wider craft stashes again.  I've cut out and sewn another little block for the Lori Holt My Favourite Things quilt.  I have one more block to go and then the centre will be complete.  And I've been doing some cross stitch again in the evenings.  I need to think about what I will make with my Kiwiana fabrics - they are pretty diverse so it will be a fairly scrappy quilt I think.