Flowers at the airport!

A very quick update to say that I got an amazing surprise tonight, I got back to Wellington, late in the end, it was 1am ish and ... Adam was waiting there for me at the airport with an amazing bunch of flowers!!! And a little card with Klimt's 'The Kiss' on it (one of my favourites!) and a message saying welcome home.


I got such a surprise, my mouth was wide open for several minutes I think, it was amazing, amazing, amazing and I am still smiling.


That is all for tonight, it is very late here :o)


xxx

Batgirl

Right.

Am in Sydney again! Did the ferry ride to the city, saw the opera house, did the botanical gardens and saw the trees, birds, flowers and bats. Again :o)

It's alright here, warm but cloudy. It's nice to be able to chow mum and auntie allie around as otherwise they might have got a bit lost. I'm pleased with how much I've remembered where everything is.

Tomorrow I'm having a shopping and pampering day after I've packed the girls off to do more tourist stuff. That will make me happy, shopping in a big city.

Also, I miss Adam! Only 3 more sleeps until I see him again. He has been texting every day and even came out to the airport to see me for 20 minutes during his lunchbreak on Thursday, when we transited between the south island and Sydney with 4 hours in Wellington airport. Isn't that nice?! And he even noticed my new earrings and... sorry, I'll shut up :o) Anyway, mum and auntie allie really like him also, which is a very good sign.

Speaking of the Macowell ladies, they have ignored me completely tonight and yesterday evening and they are just sitting there shouting at Andy Murray on TV in his tennis match. Boring!! I'm so glad Adam doesn't watch a load of sport.

Um... Adam, Adam, Adam :o)

xxx

Just a quick one to catch up with you all a bit....

I am currently in Wanaka with mum and auntie allie and we're having a great timne. We started by catching a ferry from Wellington to the south island on Saturday morning (22nd Jan) and then hired a car and drove to kaikoura. There you can catch vboat tours to see whales and dolphins, seals and albatrosses, but it was too windy the next morning so we didn't. From there on Sunday we drove across the island through the mountains for 6.5 hours and ended up in Hokitika which is a lovely little town and also very pretty. We went to Hokitika gorge the next morning and that was really gorgeous. From there it was a 2 hour drive to Franz Josef which is right by the mountains. I love it there. We visited a glacier that afternoon which was incredible and then a kiwi centre this morning. We then drove to Wanaka which is by a big lake and took about 4.5 hours. We were a bit hung over this morning so left late and got here about 7pm so just had time for dinner. Tomorrow is Queenstown which is only an hour away and then we'll relax and look around. It is the adventure capital of the world so I want to do something fun!!

We leave Thursday morning early and fly back to Wellington, have a quick lunch with Adam at the airport and then fly to Sydney where we'll be for the next 4 days. I'm back to Wellington next Monday and plan to do lots of lovely shopping in Sydney so I expect I'll need to rest after such a taxing few days :o)

The food here is really good, we have been eating out every night and unfortunately our tummies are beginning to feel it! I have a personal trainer lined up for when I get back and I am dreading it but it is the only way to guarantee I will get some exercise. February will also be the mopnth for finally, properly, giving up smoking, drinking much less (I thought not at all but am being a bit more realistic!) and dieting and generally being good. And boring, but healthy.

More from Sydney!

xxx

Hungover horseriding

So my mum and aunt are in the air right now!! Very exciting.

I had some sad news though; our cousin Isabel who is in Sydney, where they are due to visit on their way back, got in touch to say her mum is very ill and she needs to fly back to the UK to be with her family. It's such sad news and my thoughts are with her. However, it's such a shame about the timing. I know that Isabel has waited a long time for visitors from the UK and was very much looking forward to seeing them both, and I also know how excited they were about seeing Isabel.

So, we'll see what they want to do once they arrive. It may be that they decide to stay here longer. That would be lovely for me of course... but let's wait and see.

OK, short news today. I don't feel like I have too much to say really.

This weekend was very nice. On Friday I met a new friend who I found on Gumtree. Her name is Kat and I had a very nice time with her. Adam came along later and I got rather drunk. However, he looked after me beautifully, took me home, made me drink lots of water and tea and made me some food :o)

Saturday was hungover horseriding which was actually quite fun and I'd definitely do it again, although I wanted to go faster! Then the afternoon was a BBQ at a friend of Adam's. I wasn't really on top form for that, I'll admit. Although I loved the scooter ride there and back!

Sunday I made a roast dinner for Adam and his flatmate and they both seemed to really like it.

Today I am being lazy.

That is all.

Theft and a diamond ring

Luckily the two are not related!

The diamond ring first... here is the ring I made!! It is silver wire twisted around and around and soldered in about 20 places to hold it together, then beaten with a round hammer to give it a textured finish. Then I attached three small diamonds to it, they are all slightly different colours - the top one is a smokey colour, the middle is fairly clear and the bottom is a bit pinky. Also, I made some aquamarine earrings - I also made the silver wire hooks with them! The teacher says that the ring could sell for between 100 and 125 GBP. The materials cost about 20GBP! And it took me about 8 hours to make. There is a student exhibition and sale at the end of the month and I might put them in... maybe not for sale, but I could see if anyone likes them at least, maybe get a commission!! I might at least sell my first ring, that is too big for me. But I'm probably getting carried away... although I am going to sign up for a 7 week course for March and April and make more things and maybe I can sell some. We'll see..... Photos and theft story below...

So - theft. Today I had lunch with Adam in a cafe and a man came in and stole a bottle of wine and put it in his jacket and tried to walk out... he saw Adam looking at him and he said 'you didn't see that, right?' and Adam said 'I did see that, put it back'. And the man didn't want to but Adam kept on telling him and said he would call the police... then he said just put it back or I'll tell the people working here and after a bit the guy did, he said 'just don't tell them and I'll put it back quietly', which he did. I felt a little bit sorry for him as he was clearly an alcohoic and he did say 'I really need it' but that doesn't make stealing right. And I was very proud of Adam and I think he was very brave. Because the man was a bit... well, maybe not mean looking, but... unsavoury looking, you know? And afterwards the staff came over and they were two girls and they said thank you very much to Adam as they were too scared to do anything.

I have a brave, feisty boyfriend!! Yay for me :o) Yay for Adam actually...

So, what else? The weather here is gorgeous today, bright and sunny and warm and cloudless. I am going horseriding with my new flatmate and her colleagues tomorrow. Tonight at 8pm I am meeting a girl who is also new here, I found an ad on gumtree that she put up, basically saying she's new here and looking to make new friends. Perfect :o) Also, I replied to an ad from someone saomeone saying they were looking for 'Gurls friend' which I took to mean a girl looking for friends as it said the same kind of thing, new here, looking to meet people and make friends.... although the reply is from a man who has already said 'how lucky is your boyfriend' in response to the fact that I am generally not free at the weekends due to Adam. Hmm... I have written back to say, and I quote 'I am only looking for platonic freinds as I have a boyfriend who I adore, so as long as that is OK with you, then lets meet up'.

I am not 100 % convinced but am happy to give it a try. I can always just leave if it's not right.

And my mum and Aunt get here in 4 days!! So very excited....

Take care my lovely readers, and please let me know what you think of the ring. Flattery not needed, just honest thoughts on whether I could actually make more stuff like the ring and sell it? Because I'm really thinking about it...

xxx

NYE 2010

Hi! Just thought that I would post a pic from NYE of Adam and me... it's not a particularly good pic of either of us and I should add that my lovely Adam looks better than this in real life (not that he looks bad in this, just that he looks even better in person). But so do I. It's good to look better in real life than in photos as we're in real life far more often than photos!!:

My new hobby

Hi everyone!

So, here are some pics of the pieces I have made so far, which is a ring and two cufflinks. They are for Adam, (not the ring!) they are bottletops engraved with his nickname, Chico. I am very proud of them, you would not believe what went into making them!! So i am going to tell you:

I cut two discs out of a sheet of silver and tried bashing them with a hammer. It didn't work. So, then I annealed them (heated them up with a blow torch until the copper in them comes to the surface) which makes them more malleable. Then I bashed them some more with a hammer and still got nowhere. I repeated this once more and still got nowhere. I sat down and pouted and then asked the teacher :o) She suggested a sandbag... you put it on a sandbag, put a round solid metal bar thing in the middle and bash it with a big hammer to get the edges to curl around it but that didn't work either so she said we need to use the 'pitch pot'. It is, quite literally, a pot of pitch tar such as you might see on a road surface. You heat it up with the blow torch, wait for it to cool a little but so it's still malleable, then vaseline the underside of the disc, stick it in the pot and bash it as with the sandbag. This time it did work, although it took several goes and lots of bashing and more annealing and several heating-ups of the pitch.

After that I clamped a metal bar and stuck them on the top and bashed the edges down with a hammer, which did work as they had been bent already. Then I used some pliers of various different sizes and kind of twisted and crimped the edges. Plus more bashing and more annealing, It was quite a long process. Then I engraved the top, stuck them in an acid bath, and then soldered on the cufflinks at the back. Then more acid and about 1.5 hours of rubbing with sandpaper! Oh I forgot, I had to oxidise the top to get the letters black too. Then they got tumbled in a tumbler for polishing for 3 hours and then they were ready.

Phew!!!!

The ring is twists of wire, soldered together and bashed and flattened a bit. It's OK, but I can do better I think. It's a bit big.