New Zealand Week 5

 My tour is over, we got into Christchurch yesterday.  The weather has been miserable for several days now, so our last few days were a bit confined as the danger of landslips prevented us from going too far afield - one of the roads we had taken just the day before was closed due to a slip. So nothing crafty to report from the west coast of the south island although I did see some pretty greenstone carvings in Hokitika.

However, Christchurch has made up for it as I found some good shops today despite the soggy weather.  The first was a branch of Knit World, a large knitting store only a few blocks from my hotel.  They had a big selection of Rowan wool, and then loads of NZ wool, with just a little acrylic, synthetics and cotton.  They had the Decadent brand, a lovely 100% NZ wool and I had just bought two balls of their lovely mottled 'Neutrals' DK at a farm experience we went to on the last day of the tour. It has a lovely sheepy smell as well. Since I am currently carrying around 4 balls of wool (plus my own knitting) and have posted some home, I didn't buy any more but enjoyed looking around the store which had a big patterns corner, some knitted samples, and some haberdashery as well.

I got the bus out of the town centre to visit The Tannery, a converted Victorian tannery complex now housing a variety of boutique shops and cafes.  I went there to visit Cushla fabrics quilting store, which I'd seen recommended online. It turns out it's been sold and is now Sew & Co. so it's still there and what a wonderful store!  Absolutely loved their beautifully  curated displays, the large quantity of sewn samples displayed with their patterns to purchase (which makes it so easy), the riot of colour everywhere you looked, and the staff were so friendly.  The store is divided into two parts, at first it looks really small but you go around a corner and it opens up into a much bigger room.  And they had loads of stuff on sale, I assume they are selling off older stock from the previous owners.  I thoroughly enjoyed looking around the whole store and bought a cute pattern for a teapot pincushion, some more Kiwiana fabrics, and picked up a huge bargain on a McKenna Ryan kit for the quilt 'Beach Walk' (reduced from $490 to only $200, which is only £100 for me).  I sold a kit for one of her other patterns last year because I'd had it forever and realised I was never going to do it, but I really like this one and it looks less complicated than the one I had.  However it is heavy, which is not going to help the suitcase situation.  They had a really wide fabric selection: lots of Tilda, American Jane, lovely batiks, Moda of course, loads of others and I really liked all of it - would have been quite happy to take the whole store home.

Also in the same complex was 'Bolt of Cloth' with an inhouse 'marimekko' shop including bolts of their iconic fabric.

And also The Fabric Store, which had a wide selection of dressmaking fabrics including Liberty Tana Lawn, and also haberdashery and leather. I think a lot of it might be deadstock, and there were some great 50% off sales going on.

Further along is the Wool Yarn Fibre store, a small store front selling mainly handknitted or handwoven items, but behind it is an enormous room which is the local spinning and weaving guild's treasure house.  It looked like a fantastic resource: they had a huge library of textile books, all kinds of spinning wheels, floor looms, tons of room - I'm very envious. 

On the way back to my hotel, I spotted these adorable smocked dresses, possibly in Liberty cotton, in a shop window.  I tried smocking a baby romper for my son when he was little, it was a lot harder than I thought it would be and not a great success.

I finished my sumo sashiko.