How to make a bag out of Fraggle Rock hair

Fraggle Rock may have been abandoned in a broom cupboard somewhere with lots of other bygone era children's tele but it's possible to resurrect these lovely but weird creatures and turn them into something useful. Ok, well before anyone cries, it's not actually Fraggle Rock hair it's felt but I had you worried for a moment.

This is yet more proof that the Kiwis spend a lot more time making things with their own hands. I've seen bags, purses, vases, cuffs, pots, scarves and badges made from the stuff. There's even different types of felting: wet and dry.
I spent what was meant to be a morning - but ended up being about a day (not having the necessary skills or imagination being an evil, big city dweller) - making a bag. I now have renewed respect for folk who make hand-made felt because it takes a bloody long time!

 

 (Above: a booty chest of supplies that all these crafty people seem to have. Left some beautiful felt receptacles that someone a lot more more talented than I made. Right: pulling Fraggle Rock hair, sorry, blue felt).             

(In descending order below: laying out the felt and dampening; rolling the felt; cutting the felt and retrieving the plastic template).

It's not a secret recipe (I checked) and you can look up a much more precise run-down of how to make felt on Youtube or a craft site but it goes something like this: lay your plastic template on a towel and net curtain or mosquito net; pull the Fraggle Rock hair out into very fine wads and lay on top of your plastic template to required thickness; lay net curtain over the top and dampen down with soapy warm water; flip over and peel off net curtain and fold edges over plastic template; pile up with more Fraggle Rock hair and repeat this process again twice then switch colour and repeat three more times; place the curtain net over the wet mush and rub with your hands; iron out any creases using soap and rub with your hands; then roll the mushy hair thing 50 times; turn it clockwise and repeat while continuing to turn until the felt starts to join; then pick up the felt mush and throw it onto the table lots of times (you could think of an ex boss while doing this etc etc); then eventually the felt starts to wrinkle and then you can cut a line where the bag opening will be and take out the plastic template; then you rub the cut edges so that they knit together. This whole process took about six hours (admittedly there was a lot of tea drinking, cake eating and

yapping going on). Now I just have to let it dry and sew on a clasp and maybe decorate it.

Here's one someone else made earlier....

The Lake District with a sea view...

This could be the Lake District - but this place has a sea view. You can even buy land here. The paths are marked really, really well (more like European walks) unlike in the Lake District, but then it would have to be as the maps here are totally rubbish having not been updated for... oooh a very long time. There are some great walking and cycling routes. We took a day's stroll around the Evan's Pass and Godley Head area, which was quite leisurely until my brother in-law decided it would be a good shortcut to walk straight up the side of the hill following fence posts... Along the way we also saw some gun turrets for anyone out there who'd like to play toy soldier.

 

One man's trash is another man's treasure

New Zealanders make-do and mend, they re-use more than they recycle so it's no wonder that the charity barn - a warehouse of a charity shop - exist here. Many of the items are free or very cheap and are not ridiculously marked up as is often the case in UK charity shops. At $2 a piece they can easily compete with the likes of Primark. I'm guessing more of the items of clothing end up being re-used here before being sent to textile merchants.

The council run banks are well ordered with the clothes separated-out according to colour but the charity run ones tend to have gigantic piles of clothes that you just have to roll up your sleeves and go through. I'm more at home with the sorted places and went on a mini 'spending' spree - picking up two tops and a pair of jeans for the princely sum of $6. I even got that 'buzz' you get after a fruitful day of shopping on the high street!  But the banks don't just deal in clothes they offer almost every household item you could desire and are true Aladdin's caves. It is in theory possible to kit out a whole household with the stuff available.

Mattresses, hard back chairs, stools, high chairs, old ring binders, rows of radiators and fan heaters, electric fires, all manner and colour of armchairs and sofas - matching and mismatching sets.

Usually somewhere in the background a radio plays sunny Saturday afternoon hits. CD racks, coffee tables, a shopping trolley full of miscellaneous items, record players, ghetto blasters, suitcases, rows and rows of glasses and cups with ill-matched saucers, novelty and not-so-novelty mugs, piles of books with inscriptions like 'Happy 7th Birthday Lucy' and 'This is Rebecca's book'. A hand written recipe book with instructions on how to a make walnut cake, steamed pudding and Lucia's tomato chili sauce.

Vases of dusty plastic flowers, a wicker recliner, torches, food blenders, thermos flasks, dishwashers, washing machines, ironing boards, a musty smell, cushions, bedding, dolls, dolls heads, plastic boxes and endless piles of bits of plastic toys. A bewildering collection of used skis, teddy bears, carpet, lampshades, projection screens, Venetian blinds, shelves, beds, bed steads, irons, empty biscuit tins, hairdryers, hoovers, television sets, ornaments.....and a single, forlorn-looking, pair of football boots.

Let's do the time warp again!

Time balls (see left the sphere at the bottom of the cross like structure on the top of the tower)  are the way that sailors used to tell the time. According to Wikipedia timeballs are usually dropped at one o'clock (noon in the US) so sailors can set the time. Five minutes before one o'clock the ball is lowered half way and then two minutes before one it's raised back to the top - so a sort of warning 'ready steady' for the ships' crew. I'd never come across timeballs until my last trip to the Edinburgh Festival, in the UK, when my friend Caitlin revealed her fascination with them and pointed the one out at Nelson's Monument. (She's very smart and has even written a paper about the subject look here).

The Time Ball station  pictured here is at Lyttelton and was completd in 1876 to house both the timeball and those operating it. You can't

go inside the building at the moment because it was damaged in the September earthquake, which is a real shame as there are apparently some good stories of seafarers, astronomers, and inventors. However, work is currently underway to repair the damage. You can see the kind of damage the earthquake inflicted to this part of town in the picture on the left.

Lyttelton is a little like going back in time - with its single highstreet and large wooden shop fronts it looks a bit like an old US frontier town if you ignore the concrete and 4x4s. New Zealanders do have a sort of frontier attitude - a can-do, fix-it-yourself approach as opposed to wanting to find someone to blame, which is a bit more British. There are some great coffee shops (surprise, surprise) and be warned about the lovely clothes and nick nack shop Himalaya. If you go in this shop you will leave a considerable time later with a purse considerably lighter!

Who's a pretty boy then?

Meet Tweetie - a tame Magpie! Tweetie is the happy ending to what could have easily been a very sad tale. As a little chick Tweets fell out of the nest after the 4th September earthquake and only having pin (baby) feathers he couldn't fly away back to his parents and safety. Usually this scenario ends in tears - at the mercy of a local cat or dog - but this was averted by one very determined lady and her family who took Tweetie on and nursed him up to adulthood as seen here.                 
Having attempted rescuing injured birds before (although much less hands on - I would drive them to the nearest wildlife sanctuary hospital) this is no mean feat. Often just being handled is enough to send a bird into shock and then they sadly die. Tweeties' rude health is an amazing story. But the twist is that the bird has now become part of the family and likes to hang out with the kids or play football with a scrunched up paper ball on the lawn with the family's pet dog. He's such a mischievous character that if you don't keep your wits about you he'll tie your shoelaces together (okay that's a bit of poetic licence). But he can almost say 'hello' and is able to sing parts of the tune to 'Old MacDonald had a farm'. The family have always intended to release Tweetie back to the wild and he is free to fly off at any time but at the moment isn't interested. He may now be too tame to go back into the wild but at least this orphan has an adopted and adoring family looking after him.