All posts tagged: New Zealand

The Hawke’s Bay

The Naiad’s* time in New Zealand is almost up. For the last 4 months she’s been chefing at a fancy lodge in the Hawkes Bay. She’s just finished working, so I flew up to visit her, and to spend a little time seeing the Hawkes Bay before she flies off to spend a year on working holiday in Australia. I visited the Hawkes Bay when I was first in NZ, and had a lovely time, but other than two slightly disastrous road-trips through in the ensuing years, I really haven’t spent any quality time there. Time to rectify that! So what is the Hawkes Bay? It’s everything between the big curve on the East Coast of the lower North Island of New Zealand and the nearest range of mountains. The climate is perfect for vineyards, stonefruit orchards, apple orchards, berry farms, kiwifruit orchards, and every other sort of agricultural endeavor, giving it the nickname of the ‘fruitbowl of NZ’. In other words, Dreamstress heaven. I’m all about fruit. And the countryside. Which is what most …

Weta on a Wet Day

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week it was raining, and I was hurrying off to give a lecture on textiles. As I dodged raindrops down the sidewalk, heading for my car, I almost stepped on a peculiar New Zealand native, the weta. What is a weta? It’s kind of like an awesome, freaky, spiney, scary grasshopper. Oh, and some of them are 4″ long, and that isn’t counting their legs or antennae. With those they are almost a foot long. And they can weigh as much as a sparrow. And the males hiss and bite when threatened. Luckily, the weta I found was a more common, garden variety female Wellington tree weta (I think – my weta identification skills are pretty rudimentary), but even the garden variety weta need protection, so I reached down to pick up the weta so it wouldn’t get squashed on the sidewalk. Unfortunately for me, my weta decided it liked my leather gloves, and didn’t want to let go. What was I going to do? I had a weta on my glove that I …

‘Shrooms

Published by The Dreamstress

I love mushrooms. I love eating the kind you can eat, and I love photographing the kind you can’t eat. I mean, just look at how cute these things are! Some of them are more scary-gross than cute, but no less visually interesting Cute, creepy, or just fascinating. I want to make a mushroom inspired dress. But one that doesn’t look like a cartoon.