Entries from May 2009 ↓

It’s official – stuff.co.nz reports this morning

“An antarctic blast of snow, hail and sleet ushered in the first day of winter, bringing snow to sea levels and the first flurries in downtown Wellington for 14 years.”

With the weather being so wintry we thought we’d make a big cauldron of hearty soup, and settled on minestrone. We had to give in and get a giant bush of celery though so will have some to use in the chicken and rice pilaf.

The recipe called for cannellini beans, which we knew were white beans, but had to decipher many tins of Italian beans in Moore Wilson’s before we found them – trick for young players – when you come across tins and tins of haricots blance with not a cannellini bean in sight, just turn the tin around! Different writing on each side!

Made a mean carrot, celery, onion and garlic base,

Added tomatoes, cannellini beans, macaroni and boiled the lot in chicken stock.

Very good and hearty and plenty of left-overs to have after a cold day at work again tomorrow. The ‘S’ indicating wind direction on the weather this evening was practically horizontal – gale force southerlies.

Is that snow in Wellington? Is it?!

Have been watching rain and hail outside my office window all morning and I’m sure there was actual snow just before! Man it’s cold today! Jiff twittered that he’d seen snow so it must be true – he’s from Chicago after all.

Update – 2 hours later

This time I’m definitely sure and positive that it snowed. Just for 20 seconds, just long enough to get a reasonable photo. The Mister ran downstairs to catch some but by the time I got there it was over and he was standing there with a little lump of hail in his hand.

For everyone who brushes off Wellingtonians when we say “it’s so cold I’m sure it’s snowing” – the Metservice today has issued a snow warning for the region!! I’m sure it won’t be in the city but still, when do we ever have the hail/snow graphic on our weather page?!

And right now, Metservice reports the wind chill as -1 C! About to head out to work in an hour so that’s going to be horrible!!

Today we had the crazy idea to make Beef Wellington because we had some pate in the fridge that needed to be used up. Never made it before but just imagined we’d slather beef in pate, wrap it in pastry and bake it! Which is pretty much what we did – seared it first.

Tasted very good with a cauliflower and broccoli in cheese sauce accompaniment.

Unfortunately there were quite a few dishes. And we ate so much we probably won’t be having a piece of delicious spiced apple cake while it’s still warm for dessert.

A while ago, after knitting my tree cosy in the Cuba Street Carnival, I saw on the Outdoor Knit blog that knitters were being called on to help create a knitted ‘installation’ called Yarn Forward at the Manchester (England) Craft & Design Centre. So I followed the instructions and sent over a knitted orange strip of the required size.

I’ve been following their blog for a while and have seen pictures of where the strips end up – they’re being sewn end to end around the balcony railing in the Manchester Craft & Design Centre – but when I posted mine off I never thought in the hundred’s that they’ve been receiving that they would name me and my strip and put a photo on their blog! But they did!! Am delirious with excitement. Over a bit of knitting. Sad I know!

So here’s the Yarn Forward’s blog post

And the photo of my orange moss stitch strip!

My Office Buddy has told me about 1-day.co.nz before, a website where there is a one day sale of one item only – something totally random. Today the item on sale is ‘a bag of crap’ for $11. I don’t think it’s literally crap, but rather some random items with a minimum value of $11.

So I went to the site to check it out. And it’s overloaded. But they have such a cool error message – they basically just say upfront that the site is overloaded and you have to try again, but while you’re sitting there refreshing the page, random pictures of overloaded things are displayed to keep you occupied. The one I like best is this poor little donkey …

… how on earth does he get down? I guess he’s just up there braying and flailing his legs around until they slowly lift off the boxes until the cart is light enough to lower him down. The unloaders would have to be careful not to take a big heavy item off and lower the cart too quickly!

Ommigod, while I’ve been tying this she’s gone ahead and bought a bag of crap! Wonder what it’ll be …

When we walked up Cuba Street this weekend I noticed that our knitting, including MY tree cosy, had been taken down from the trees outside The Matterhorn. I’d always wondered how long knitting graffiti stayed around for and who eventually took it away. Someone snapped a council worker in action removing the knitting last week and sent the picture into the Outdoor Knit blog.

The rain and southerlies have been pretty relentless over the last few days and the weekend was particularly cold and nasty.

Here’s an amazing shot that I captured from a video making the rounds on Twitter at the moment of the storm yesterday – I’m pretty sure this is looking across Lyall Bay from the airport to the houses on the hill in Kilbirnie/Melrose – that wave looks enormous and as though it’s going to hit the coast road at full force!

We’ve arrived to Gotham the last couple of Saturdays by coming along Harris Street – gives a different view through Chews Lane to Willis Street. You can see the shell of the building still left standing at the end of the lane, in the building site between Willis and Boulcott streets. Seeing as they’ve carefully taken out all the windows it must be staying.

And bit by bit they’re taking the scaffolding and netting off the Chews Lane apartments. They’re pretty dominant on the Willis Street skyline now.