Pat's back!

Hurrah! My better half has returned from a week in New Zealand, what a lovely relief. Not least is the relief that he doesn't appear to have swine flu! I'm not one to buy into hype, but now that there's a wee baby in the house I'm discovering the world of maternal paranoia.

Anyway! To lessen my envy at his getting to go to lovely NZ without me (not that a week with only Babushka and I was not Awesome Girl Time), he got me a fabulous book - At Home: A Century of New Zealand Design, which I've been perusing oh so lightly while I wait until I have a cup of Earl Grey and good, quiet hour during which to devour it.
(the Mrkusich House)
(a Garth Chester chair)

Pat's stories of tiki torches in the workplace, rainy weather and a chain of vegetarian restaurants (how do we not have this in Australia?!) have only further ignited my curiosity and possible desire to move there. As has the recent discovery of a handful of great blogs from NZ:

Anemone
craftwerk
etsy-love
HOME New Zealand
hyena in petticoats
juniper
lily's make believe
ruby in the dust
So Tread Softly...
Swonderful
the design alphabet
world sweet world

So many crafty, talented New Zealanders! It's enough to make a girl want to up and emigrate, build a studio and spend the rest of my days painting and knitting and sewing and printing and embroidering... Although the creative juices aren't really flowing at the moment, these blogs are feeding that little part in the back of my brain that is storing ideas for when I finally have both time and brainpower to bust out and get my craft on. It'll be choice, bruh!