New Zealand is pretty much road trip paradise – every drive is spectacularly beautiful, there is something interesting every hour or so, and even at the busiest time of year you can get accommodation with only a days notice, so you can go where the road leads you, or, as the  case happened with my post-Christmas road trip with my sister, where the weather might be better! The week after Christmas is the busiest time on the roads in New Zealand, as everyone takes advantage of the public holidays.  It’s also notorious for having bad weather – the Murphy’s law of vacation time. Road trip week with my sister was no exception.  I left Wellington in damp drizzle, and arrived in Christchurch to pouring rain.  The weather report predicted 6 days of rain on the normally drier eastern coast of the South Island, and 4 days of rain and 2 days of sunshine on the usually wet, wild and windy West Coast. Obviously, two days of sun being better than none, we picked the West …

I inherited a bunch of vintage patterns from my Grandmother, and more from an honourary aunt, plus I’ve bought plenty, and been given even more by other lovely people, over the years. I estimate that my collecting is nearly 1,000 pattern dating from the mid 1920s, to the 1980s (plus there are the modern patterns I own!) So how do I store and care for all of these patterns? There are lots of posts entitled “How to store and organise patterns,” but really, there is no one right answer.  This is just how I do it. First, each pattern goes in its own, individual, zip-lock bag.  I pay $14 per 100 bags in just the right size (and try not to think about the fact that I’ve spent almost $150 in storage!). The bags protect the patterns, and keep the envelopes, some of which are fragile or torn, or coming apart at the seams where the glue has failed, from further damage.   I’m working on transferring the collection to acid free comic book bags, …