I didn’t do much shopping in Hawaii: I spent all but two days of the trip on Molokai, which has very limited shopping opportunities, and the final two days were spent in Waikiki – aka: shopping hell (I lasted less than 7 minutes in Ala Moana).  So shopping opportunities were limited. Despite this, I still managed to bring home lots of stuff, because whenever I buy something that won’t ship to NZ I have it sent to my parents, and I also still have three large chests of things stored under their house (I swear the stuff multiplies.  Every time I come back to NZ I fill a suitcase, and every time I go back there are still three completely full chests…) So what did I bring to NZ? (I’d say ‘home’, but Hawaii is also home, so I’m having a definite crisis of home-ness) Millinery feathers!  A gift from Lauren of Wearing History, who was clearing out some of her stash.  I was a little worried about bringing these through NZ biosecurity, but they …

I mentioned in the slug post that there are ducklings on the farm at the moment, and of course I wouldn’t deny you a post about them. You can think about it as a bit of adorableness to balance the total-lack-of-adorableness of the slug post. Even though Hawaii is subtropical and doesn’t have a huge amount of temperature differentiation between seasons, spring is still duckling time on the farm. My parents have both khaki campbells, which are bred for egg laying, and muscovy ducks, which are ‘nanny’ ducks. Ducks can no longer be imported into Hawaii, because of worries that they will breed with the native Laysan ducks, driving them to extinction. My parents had a healthy flock of khaki campbells from before the ban, which makes any ducklings from their flock very valuable, both for sale within the state (which is allowed), and for continuing their own flock. Unfortunately khaki campbells are very poor mothers, and our attempts to let them hatch their own clutches were extremely disappointing. You can hatch khaki campbell eggs …