Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Let Out Early


Hi Dear Folk,

Escaped from work early, hop, skip, jump.  I'm so happy with my rearranged sitting room.



A little rearrangement of my desk.


We received some very nice calendars at work for 2015, so I bought mine home.  I might move it, but it sits here for now.  How about this little light find at the thrift.  I think it's probably sixties.


This little figure is call Fat Boy, Doulton, England, a fifty cent find at the thrift.  His name is obviously not politically correct anymore.  It reminds me of Thomas The Tank Engine.  In the English version there is a character called The Fat Controller, but over here in the US he is called Mr. Toppen Hat.



My cleaned up Chinese table, along with two miniature orchids.  They were just calling out to me from the shelf at Trader Joe's.



Ta-DA, my new Chinese rug, I love it and the room feels so much cozier with it.


A waffle breakfast together.


Beautiful sunrise.


Finished my crochet socks, my first pair ever.  A long way from perfect and a little thick, so I decided to make them into slipper socks, by adding the bottoms.


How about this crochet book, the depictions of crochet through the decades, is pretty bang on I think.



 




Watching Ladies #1 Detective Agency on You Tube, I have yet to find all the episodes.

Christy

Kualoa Park and Chinaman's Hat

Hi Dear Folk,

 Kualoa Park is on the North Shore.  We did get to put our toes in the water for a few minutes.

Here we are being greeting by the friends.  I found out later that the friends totally scrubbed down the public bathrooms at the park, so they were scrupulously clean for the visiting delegates.  That's a labour of love.



These young brothers were there to serenade us.


This is Chinaman's Hat Island and you can see why they call it that.  When the tide is out I believe you can walk over to it.

At this point I ran out of battery and that was that on the picture taking front and unfortunately I had forgotten to recharge my backup.

Christy

 

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Fumis, Oahu

Hi Dear Folk,

After the Dole Plantation which is central Oahu, we headed up to the North Shore.  Here we are gathered at a rustic take out, all seafood and excellent.  In fact there were several of these restaurants along the North Shore.

I went to pay for my lunch and was told that this was all covered.  In fact I wanted to share with you that all the bus trips that we went on were provided free of charge.  This is supported by world wide voluntary donations, which equalizes funds.  So if there is a need to build a Kingdom Hall, or a disaster both natural or manmade, such as recently in the Ukraine, where friends and neighbours lost their homes, or the mudslides in Hiroshima, or as we had in our area several years ago Hurricane Sandy all this is taken care of, because sharing unitedly world wide makes a loving international brotherhood.


Our visual menu.


Here we are with our little friend again.  I had the garlic shrimp and it was delicious, Barb had fish.



Friends we made, from the plains states.


These are the shrimp and fish ponds all along a large area of the North Shore.

Christy
 

Nu'uanu Pali State Park

Hi Dear Folk,

Here we are at the Nu'uanu Pali State Park, Ko'olau Range at 1,200 foot elevation on the windward side of Oahu.


This side of the island received much more rain and you can see that in the vegetation.  Chickens and their chicks seem to roam around wild everywhere.  There was even a very tame feral cat, and he didn't seem to be bothering with them, maybe he had already had his breakfast.



The views are spectacular.






Here I am enjoying the view, wearing my jade earrings from China Town.

Christy

Monday, December 29, 2014

Time Passes

Dear Folk,

Doesn't time pass so quickly?  The boy came home on the 23rd and is home until the second week of January.  So nice to have him home.  The fire has kept us cozy as we try and keep the thermostat down to 60F.  We have old cast iron radiators, which are wonderful, so if you just turn the heat up once a day and light the fire, the house is warm all day and into the night.

I asked Mr. B. if he knew where my candle stash was and he had a whole box of them gathered together down in the basement, so I routed around there and came out with several to light during the evening hours, which is so restful.

A friend phoned and said she still had a lot of items at her aunt's house to give away.  I think I mentioned a while ago that I went to an Estate Auction at my friend's aunt's house and picked up a few things which I love.

Well she had furniture left.  It seems that nobody is bothered with doing up old furniture anymore.  She also had a beautiful piano, but nobody wants it and we have no room for it.  I did get several items.  One was a kitchen hutch or dresser, probably from the 1930s it was her grandmothers and she remembers it always being in the kitchen.  It has a little metal pie safe inside, maybe added later.  I said that I could only use it in the basement for storage of my preserves, but B. didn't mind as all these things would just be trashed, even the Thrift Shop did not want to take them.

I also found a green painted wooden pot stand and a little stool also I would say circa 1930s.  An old patchwork quilt, made from wool fabrics, in need of TLC, I will have fun working on that.  Various old sewing machine drawers, odd pieces of china and some chandelier crystals.  Mr. B. found some old records he liked.  A little side table with magazine rack underneath and odd garden pots, couple of Dorothy Sayers paperbacks for a good read.  I almost forgot we found an exactly matching chair, to a chair we already have and we wondered whether the original chair came from B years ago when they gave us a bedroom set, when we were first married; how funny is that and I do think that came from her aunt.

B. said her house is full and they cannot safe one more item, so it all has to go and at this point it is to the skip.  She said they had to smash up loads of bookcases, nobody wanted them and old kitchen cabinets you can't give them away.  That all seems so very sad.

I have been working on a necklace, using a stone I picked up at the Black Beach on Maui.  It is a black volcanic stone with white quartz in it.  So I have wire wrapped that and wire wrapped a couple of little back oval stones I also picked up off the Black Beach.  I used other stone beads I already had of clear quartz, plus I will make matching earrings, I think it's going to look quite nice and will be a reminder of my trip.  Don't you love picking up natural things from the beaches and woods as a remembrance and just keeping them or making something out of them?

In any case this is the first time I have tried wire wrapping and I do not think it will be my last, it is such fun.  So I did this while watching the BBC 1980s version of Pride and Prejudice.

Also made some pseudo plum puddings, which to me turned out more like a very fruity bread pudding, but still good with whipped cream on top and would have been even better if I had had Bird's custard powder, to make a lovely custard, oh well!  I hardly think we ate a pie or any desert like that as a child without mum making a custard to pour over.  Stewed fruit and custard was another staple desert of childhood.

Stopped off at the thrift with The Boy and picked up some, what else books, which were all 50% off, one is a very nice crochet book and a 1970s sewing magazine, with patterns.  You tend to forget how crafty the seventies were, but I know as a young person back then I sewed a lot of my own clothes.

One more day off this week for New Years and then it's back to the grindstone.

Take care,
Christy
 


 

Dole Pineapple Plantation

Good Morning Dear Folk,

Here we are again back to Hawaii.  I will have to post at an extraordinary rate to have my Hawaii vacation Blogged by Jan 1st, I think that I said that I would do that.


Here we are at the Dole Plantation.  I had to take a photo of one of our lovely tour guides, Monica, because she reminds me so much of my friend's daughter in the UK.


When we arrived at the Dole Plantation see here it was absolutely mobbed, with lots coaches going around the island plus other visitors.  Here you can have a tasting of their wonderful pineapple ice-cream, but as soon as I saw the line in the shop and I knew how little time we had here, I decided to walk out and see the gardens, which actually were very quiet.  So here are just a few of my shots.




Since I was ready for a snack and well in time to get back on the bus, I decided to walk up to a little side restaurant ran by a Japanese lady, where I bought a very popular Hawaiian pastry.  Nobody was there and I sat very peacefully by this Koi pond and ate it.


This is a view of just some of the coaches on the tour.  The tour was lovely in that we enjoyed good friendship together and a lot of laughs, and received an over all picture of the East, Central and North Shore of Oahu, but all the sites would be worth revisiting again.

Christy

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Hanauma Bay

Hi Dear Folk,

Wednesday morning bright and early, a 6:30AM start on the coach.  I didn't look at my watch all day, but I would say we were at Hanauma Bay no later than 7:30 AM.  These were the three tour guides assigned to our congregation.  The Hawaiian brother and he is true Hawaiian decent, and I realized that I had seen him at the Makaha congregation the previous day, only not to speak to.


We traveled east out of Honolulu to Hanauma Bay.


Hanauma Bay is a nature preserve area known for it's snorkeling.


Just a few of the many buses taking the friends around the island on a circle tour. 


We ran into these friends again who had sat behind us on our flight out from Phoenix, they're from Atlanta, Georgia.


Now this was one of the larger beaches that I saw.


To me Hanauma Bay looks like the middle of a volcanic crater that has fallen in, it probably is, I will have to read up on it.  If you look at my landscape banner picture, you can see the whole shape of the bay.



Above and below is Koko Head see here  Somehow this is a name that sticks in my mind from childhood, no idea how.



I avoided this queue.


Ran into some friends, who believe it or not live within a twenty mile radius of home and attend the Chinese Congregation.

I am going to try and step up my pace on my Hawaii postings and try and have them complete before the New Year.

Christy
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