Here

I am still knitting the blue/green cardigan, and the advent socks are still not finished, so with the knitting not much has changed. Little cub (who is now 13 and not so little) had a sleepover a few days ago, and asked if she could use the family tent. Our house is small and that limits the invite list to one or two friends.

So we put up the tent in the back yard and she invited several friends to stay. It worked well. Really well, she set up the camp cupboard and dug out the camp cutlery and crockery. She even hug up fairy lights in the tent for a party feel. She had asked her friends to bring bedding, and snacks and we supplied savories, we bought frozen catering mini spring rolls, samosas, and pakora. Over a few hours we 'catered', delivering plates of mini-food hot from the oven. We heated enough for for us to snack as well. They talked and sang and did whatever new-teens do at tent party's, and in the morning little cub popped into the house for a jug of milk, and they all ate breakfast in the tent. We might even do it again next year.

I've been walking a lot more, really trying to fit more natural excercise into my day. I'm happy to head off for a swim, but I am not really a gym person, and when I pass people doing cross fit or something similar the people running carrying car tires or heavy weights don't look like they are having fun. This summer I have had nearly a month off work, so I decided to walk every day, and to walk where possible instead of using the car. Most days the walk is 5kms, some days I manage a 7km walk or longer. On Saturday I walked to town from home, and I went the long way rather than a straight path. I walked up the hill a little way, and then turned to town, to get to town I almost always walk through the town belt, a strip of green forest designed to divide the inner city from the outer suburbs, and each time I walk I try and take a different path through the green belt.

The other nice thing about walking to town is that it is pretty much all down hill, and the entire route lies to the sun. In most of the sections of the green belt there are recreational spaces, sports fields, playgrounds, walkways, and at one point the observatory. I love this view, over the top of the observatory (the small white building with the dome roof), there are views of the harbor, with the pensilula hills over on the other side.

Then after the open spaces, the walk gets a bit more forest, this is the section of that town belt is just above the pre-school and primary school my kids went to. When they were really little we used to drive this route most days and they claimed to see 'Bears', 'Lions' and other forest creatures as we passed large trees. I didn't see any as I walked, and New Zealand dosnt have any native land mamels like those. I do hear lots of native and non-native birds calling to each other when I walk.

Closer to the corner the city center is just visible, along with the blue water of the harbour, the beginning of the pensilula, and just a narrow band of sea the other side of the pensilula, and of course trees and sky. The day I walked and photographed my walk, the sky was blue, and there were fluffy white clouds. Most days it is like that, but often the days look warm but are cooler, we are south after all, not in the warm north.

Today I walked to town again, but used a different route. This one was also downhill, and had the same tree lined feeling, and slightly different views of the same harbour, the same pensilula, and the same slip of ocean beyond the pensilula, and even more white clouds in the blue sky. And as before, just before the harbour there is a glimpse of the city center.

Walking takes a little longer, walking to town from home, is 40 minutes for the short route, an hour for the long way, compared to 7.5 minutes by car. And I have to plan my way home, either bus or coordinate with someone coming to town for other things. Walking gives me a better understand of the weather, just it rains at times, but here it rains surprisingly in short bursts, pretty much if I wait for 30 minutes or so it clears enough to walk.

Normal knitting content will return next post.

Stella

 

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