december 25, 2010

so we're not so traditional when it comes to christmas but we do have a few regular happenings for the holiday. my favourite is pancakes for breakfast with maple syrup, strawberries and banana. they take forever to make but so, so, so worth it. another is jayzien's invention; chocolate in the bathtub. you know, just 'cause. this one didn't actually happen this year but i'm sure we can resurrect it for 2011. sorry family, i forgot the camera so no photos of our adventures this time. the photos here are shamelessly stolen from the black sheep sanctuary website.

being away from my home town and only having just moved we decided that it was too stressful and expensive (like serious face expensive) to travel home for christmas this year which marked the very first time in all my 26 years that i didn't spend the santa party with my family (i know, whinge whinge, whinge). so instead we ventured out after midday to the black sheep animal sanctuary where we spent the night with marvelous lovely friends including this marvelous and lovely pair who are very unique and individual, i promise.

as well as swimming in the coldest river there ever was, eating, playing games, eating, making new friends and eating, we got to meet the sanctuary's newest additions which includes 4 calves (!), a trio of goats, 2 rescued kittens and a whole lotta roosters. so so so cute.

our stay was lovely and relaxing. we were surrounded by beautiful country, good friends and amazing vegan treats so i barely had chance to feel sad about not being with my loud, crazy, chaotic, huge, but marvellous family. so to sum up; awesomness sprinkled with deliciousness.

besides, how many cows can you boast about meeting on christmas that were not part of your dinner?

making...

as my 2 year old niece would say; ta da! my first ever serious cross stitch attempt. cute no?

i made this little piece of robot love for my lovely robot obsessed partner as a christmas gift. while we don't really celebrate christmas in a traditional way (no santa, jesus, hyperconsumerism if we can help it), we still give each other thoughtful, practical gifts and make each other stuff from other stuff. more on the marvellous december 25 we had with friends later.


i inherited all the thread from my awesome dirty joke telling grandmother who passed away in 2009. she was so supportive of my interest in traditional crafts and gave my books and yarn and other useful things when she was still here. i think she would have been super proud of my slightly wobbly, uneven and unpracticed finished project.

but! the cross stitch itself! i was seriously inspired by the work of rayna at radicalcrossstitch and i made the pattern from this image i found and altered it to make it what i wanted.

then i used this super easy tutorial to make the image into a cross stitch pattern. i had no real idea what i was doing the whole way through and so the finished project came out larger than i thought it would. the robot obsessed boy has yet to decide how it will be used, whether it will end up on a hoodie, bag or in a frame but he adores it either way!

and look! at my cross stitch! that i made! and it worked!

23 weeks

just like the title says... and yes my pants are totally undone in this picture. shameless. i have actually completely given up buttoning my jeans now. the comfort is totally worth all the weird looks i get.


if anyone has any more thoughts about the size of my 23 week belly (along with all the people who deem it appropriate to make comments, even if we've just met, or never actually met at all) i would just like to say pfffffftt. whether or not my stomach lives up to your expectations of what it should look like at this stage of pregnancy isn't of any importance to me and at my last midwife check i was measuring 1 week bigger than expected. so yeah, vegans do it better.

my apologies for the crap photo quality. i took this myself in front of my not-so-clean mirror.

listening...

the do. on my shoulders.



love this song. love this band. i'm just all about the love.

m to the inge

so last week we (my lovely robot obsessed partner and i) went out of the house. at night. without the kid. it was a rather momentous occasion and the reason was primarily to see the show 'minge' at bats theatre here in wellington. the other reason we went was to be all romantic and disgusting and do things like hold hands in public. fyi, the hand holding? it was awesome. we'll probably totally do it again sometime.

minge is a great name for a show, is it not? i would however, prefer cunt, it has such strong connotations but that has kinda already been done in the vagina monologue entitled cunt. for more cunt love go here.

the show itself was freakin hilarious and far, far more radical than i had expected. so that was a nice surprise. the other nice surprise was when they handed out cookies to the audience. nom nom nom. with a couple of little exceptions the characters were well developed and well acted and like i said already, freakin hilarious. the m.c was amazing and the show touched on some relevant and challenging issues while still being entertaining and fun. all the characters were white, educated, young and able bodied womyn, but they began the show by acknowledging their lack of diversity and the narrowness of the group they represented. nice save.

my most favouritist bit was when the m.c said a spiel about how to avoid rape, entirely directed at men and would-be rapists. it included recommendations like "if you think you might want to assault or rape someone when you go out, ask a caring friend to lock in your room for the evening" and other lovely gems like that. damn straight.

my only disappointment was the way the show addressed fatness and fat phobia. there was a strong vibe of fat acceptance and self love, regardless of size which was great. but unfortunately the message got weakened when they brought the 'health' thing into it. i'm sorry but fatness has nothing to do with health and the idea that it is totally ok to be fat, but only if you are healthy/eat lots of vegetables/have 'fat' genes is ridiculous.

along a similar vein, when one character was reflecting on abortion. she said something along the lines of "when you are having an abortion, you can eat all the mcdonald's you want". uh huh. because pregnant womyn who are carrying their fetuses (is that a word? should i say feti perhaps?) to term should not eat mcdonald's. or anything greasy or fatty or sweet or delicious or 'bad'. i don't believe in good or bad foods and i certainly don't think that there are any rules as to what womyn should be eating. pregnant or not, food should be satisfying and tasty, not guilt inducing.

those things aside, it was terribly, fabulously exciting to be able to see a show, made up of an entirely laydee cast talking about sexuality, fatness, rape, consent, expectations, queerness in a funny and entertaining way while still challenging the way we think about these things.

in a word; minge-tastic.

awesome

i live by the beach...

...and it kicks serious ass.

making

ha! thought it was going to be me showing off another crafty project didn't you? nope, this time i'm showing off something of a different nature entirely. this is me, this week at 21 weeks pregnant with the second human i have decided to make. this one doesn't have an in-utero name yet, but is sometimes referred to as robot-fetus. pretty much cos we like robots and we quite like this wriggly little fetus.

this one's for you mama, now i'm sharing the baby love, maybe you'll feel less sad about us moving to the other end of the island? xx

making

while i still maintain that crochet is by far the superior craft form, i have managed finally to not only starting a knitting project but finish it too. this hat is for greedy greedy me but i think i will make some for my etsy shop seeing as how i love it so damn much.