Christchurch Earthquake Auction

Originally I'd planned to spin something, and I still may later, but at the moment I have my hands full with my family, all the extra work we need to do to keep them safe after the earthquake and my actual paying work which I'll be starting tomorrow.   Instead I decided I'd go stash diving and find something that people will like instead.   I decided to go with some Vintage Purls yarn, it needed to be old enough to not be affected by the failed superwash issue that came up (I kept the yarns that I had that were affected by this).   The yarn I came up with is from the Winter 2009 sock club.   It's for the yarn only, but it's beautiful yarn.

It's called "Taimi".  Now the way this works is you bid using the comments.  I'll close this off 5pm Friday 04th March NZ time.  I'll post it at my cost to the winner, but not until the winner has provided me with an emailed copy of the deposit with the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal, this can be done by credit card, or over the counter; more details are here: http://www.christchurchearthquakeappeal.govt.nz/

I figure this way I know the donation is definitely made, and you know that I didn't pocket it.   I will send anywhere in the world, not sure on timing as of course it's dependent on when my local post shop is open.  

All bidders need to put an email or Rav name in the comment as well as the amount they are bidding.

quick knitting post

Not been doing much knitting over the last few days; been trying to work but my concentration is a bit fluffy.  I have made a decision about the Open Windows socks I was knitting.  They're coming out too big despite being on gauge.  I've decided to change to the Alpine Glow pattern which is very pretty and should look really nice in my handspun.

what a mess!

We'd not been able to get hold of my brother and his wife or Thomas' parents so went out in the car this morning.  No photo's as I left the camera at home; but what a mess!   Most roads have at least some damage, either surface liquefaction, or the humps from where it didn't break through.  There are stretches with no damage, but they're fairly short.
Luckily everyone we were visiting was fine, their phones came back on while we were on the road which was good.   My brother and his wife have no power or running water, but luckily have plenty of drinking water.  My In-Laws do have water and power, so they're lucky in that respect, though FIL is mourning the loss of both his TV's, and one computer that's disappeared under a pile of stuff in his computer room.
Thomas and his sister went on to help out a friend who has liquefaction on his property, they're biking back, which may well be quicker than the car trip home was.   Brougham St was down to one lane while heavy machinery was cleaning up the worst of the silt, so it was barely moving for several blocks.   We got caught in that, and our own street was backed up a long way too; luckily some kind person waved us through into our drive.   Most drivers are being careful and courteous which is great; I think I got over 40km/h a couple of times, but was mostly keeping to 40 or below.  Some were going along at about 60km/h which I personally think was a bit stupid.   I went with careful and getting home in one piece with the boys.

Post earthquake, again

Yesterday was not a nice day; today is also not nice and it looks like things won't be good for a while, and for some people never again.

At 10 minutes to 12pm yesterday we had another earthquake.  This wasn't as big in magnitude as 4th September, but it was shallow and centred near town.  It felt worse than the original to me as I lurched from the sewing machine into the bedroom (less stuff in there to fall).   Our house coped ok, my hot chocolate didn't so the keyboard is now full of sticky stuff.  Cleaned that up quickly, my neighbour was home for lunch and he came to check on me which was really nice.  They were staying out of the house.   After I'd cleaned up the hot chocolate and a couple of hazards from the floor I ran down the road to the school to pick up the boys from the school field.   Yesterday that field was full of children and teachers; today it looks like this:

You can see the liquefaction at the front, the little grey bits on the field at the back are where the kids were yesterday.   Today we went for a walk down to the local dairy.  We passed a lot of liquefaction on the way, I didn't take any photo's of the worst affected area as that would have been infringing on the privacy of the people living there; but you can get an idea from the following 2 photo's of the road near there:

the bottom shot is of the hole you can see my husband pointing at; it's a sinkhole about 2 feet deep with a lot of water in it.  Someone had put a rubbish bin next to it so no-one would drive into it.   On the street I previously mentioned my husband saw a car sunk into one of these up the top of the hubcaps, my father-in-law drove my sister-in-law's car into one of them during the earthquake; the car is stuffed, but he was ok which is all that matters.

When we got to the local dairy there was a queue which we joined as we were out of milk and now that power was back we needed some more.  He was getting very low, had already packed the milk into bags of 2 to 4 bottles.  We only got what we needed which was 2 bottles and a small pack of jellybeans for the boys.  I didn't get anything else luckily as I had to pay cash which I was getting low on.    On the way back there was another aftershock; there's been a lot and some have been over 5 on the scale.  

We dropped into school which was closed to show Ian his bike was safe, he's not happy about it, but it's safe and sound

His is the green bike, so safe and sound, even if out of reach.   There's a security camera nearby so it should still be there when school reopens.   I don't think it's going to be this week though, water has only just come back on at 1.30pm and the pressure is rather low and we're on boil notice so not suitable for school to open yet.  I hate to think what the lunchboxes will be like when we get back to school, but I'm sure it'll be able to be washed.

But annoying as all this is, we're lucky! No-one hurt and minimal property damage.  We know everyone is safe; so many people do not have that luxury.

I've not got much crafting done, was in the middle of sewing quilting patches when it started and the power went.

Will post more crafting photo's once things are a bit more normalised.   That might take a while.

Tidbits

Still a couple of days before we're back with broadband and it's running really slowly, so I'm just posting a quick update.

1.  I've lost weight!   1.2kg in the last week; hope that continues.   I have been eating better and also exercising more; went for a bike ride as soon as I got home from spinning today.

2.  Have got past the thumb for my mittens and they're looking really good.  I'm keeping notes and have decided to decrease every third row for the thumb gussett as every second seemed too steep.   Once it's finished then it'll be available free for a while; or at least until I've worked out a couple or so more sizes and had those test-knit.

3.  Citron is looking beautiful, working really well with the handspun yarn

4.  Open Windows is about to start on the chart, will check my gauge first though; love the yarn.  

5.  Finished spinning the Yak down.  It's a little overspun and underplied, but it's my first long-draw using such a short fibre so I'm not unhappy.  It'll be a cabled hat, might work something out from top down to make sure I use all the yarn.   I wonder how "blue barf" would look with it?

6. EQC.  Still waiting on a visit, also waiting on the payout for my damaged Lilliput Lane cottages etc too, will check again in 2 weeks as it seems they were waiting on info from me, but hadn't let me know.  I've now given them that info.  As an aside the Xbox is being a little less temperamental, but still having issues with 2 player.  We've found more house damage, I would be very surprised if we don't hit the $10,000 threshold for a managed claim with Fletchers.

7.  Quilting has been revisited.  I've cut out 300 little squares of 2.5" fabric to make a start on our king-sized quilt and have picked up the backing fabric.  I still need to get the batting, but I'll do that rather later.  Wish me luck!

7.

No Photo's for about 8 days

which I think is when we get our new broadband allowance.  We're not sure what happened, but a huge amount of our allowance was used up in a couple of days earlier this month.  We have a secure wireless connection so not sure what happened; but we're monitoring it.

In the meantime a few things are going on.  Thomas is still suffering with his injured shoulder, I'm thinking I may have to force him to go back to the doctors; we're wondering if he actually broke his collarbone.

I've picked up my new bike yesterday, it's nice to ride, though a little harder on my legs because it's actually set up correctly; will post a photo once I can.

Been tidying up in the hall cupboard today and yesterday; it'll take a couple of days yet though as there's a lot of stuff there; and we've discovered cracks in the floor from the earthquake as well as some crumbling concrete outside the house.   EQC hasn't come yet so will be interesting to see if they pick the cracks etc up.  I have a list of things we've noticed which I can point out if they miss them.

Knitting:   Finished Whisper cardigan, it could have been longer but I'd had enough; it's slightly longer than the original pattern.  Started a pair of socks out of my handspun, also a Citron shawl.  I've also got to the thumb on my mittens which I'm designing the pattern for and using Morag's Bug Out charts.   Got to work out the decreases now, once they're finished I'll be getting the pattern test knit after working out a larger and smaller version.

Implausible Yarn

Is having a giveaway here.  In the meantime I'm thinking about what I should do for my next giveaway.  Please comment as to whether you'd prefer some handspun or a commercial or indie dyed yarn.

A big step towards fitness

I went down this morning and put the deposit on a new bike.  I have 3 months to pay it and the bike rack off, and I don't get it till it's paid for, but at the end of the day I'll have a new 21 speed road bike with front basket (for shopping) and a bike rack that can carry 4 bikes so we can go farther afield as a family.
It's not the bike I'd originally thought I was wanting, but after trying a similar one to that and also the one I'm getting I decided it was worth spending a bit more.

Straight from their website here it is, the Discovery 1.0

The reason for this?   My old bike was bought 27 years ago and it's showing its age.  Bearings need redoing which FIL is going to do in the meantime, but all the nuts and bolts are getting difficult to adjust as the aluminium has corroded a bit.   I'll probably end up selling the old one in the end if I can.   I've already got the second bike on Trademe; I don't like that bike, it's never been comfortable though the only thing physically wrong with it is a little surface rust.  Hope someone wants it, I could do with the space and the money