Day 2 in New Zealand: A Whole Day with the Hobbits

Want to know what an absolutely peak breakfast in New Zealand looks like? It looks like this!

That's a microwaved savory pie from the Newmarket grocery store, instant coffee, and some Whittaker's Hokey Pokey. Basically the same thing that I had for dinner the night before, but then I substituted Scrumpy for the coffee, ahem.

Now, onto Hobbiton!

In all of New Zealand, the prettiest thing I saw was sheep grazing on a hill:

Much of the North Island was clear-cut to make pastureland for them, and everywhere we drove, often on both sides of the road, there were hills full of sheep. Usually some would even picturesquely silhouette themselves on the hilltop for our special enjoyment. 

They don't photograph especially well, alas, at least not for me, but they were inevitably charming and delightful, and are my favorite thing about New Zealand.

This, though, is probably my partner's favorite thing about New Zealand, and for good reason:

I told you before that I wasn't real sure about the part where you can only visit Hobbiton via a guided tour, and I was less sure after seeing the size of the tour bus, and therefore tour group, we'd be with:

But actually it was awesome! The tour groups were far enough apart that I could take photos without anyone in the background, something that never would have been possible if we'd all been set free to wander at will:

So please pardon me, because I DO need you to see every single photo of every single lovely hobbit hole we visited:

Spring has to be the perfect time to visit Hobbiton. All the flowers were in bloom, so much so that you couldn't see some of the hobbit holes behind their owners' verdant blossoms. The weather also could not have been more perfect:

The entire place is set-designed to look like a busy hobbit village. It's a little disconcerting in that everything is left exactly as it would be if all the inhabitants had recently been Raptured--

--but, again, you can't say that it's not charming!

Our tour guide took this photo of the vista, including the adjacent farmlands--I imagine that getting to play with other people's cameras adds a little bit of fun to the process of taking forty tourist's photos in the doorway of the same hobbit hole five times a day:

There isn't actually an "inside" to these hobbit holes, but I love how all the smoking chimneys and busy windows set into the hillside make them look like there's a whole household inside every single one:

And of course, at the very top of the tallest hill is the most famous hobbit hole of all:

Every detail is book-perfect!

You can't really tell from my photos, but depending on where we were on the hillside, the hobbit holes were built to different sizes. Some are 100% human scale for the actors playing hobbits to interact with, some are 90% human scale, which I think is so the dwarves can look at little outsized(? Please correct me if I'm wrong, because I SUPER want to know!), and some are 60% human scale, which is for the actors playing humans to interact with, as the average hobbit is 60% the size of the average human. I think these next few hobbit holes are the 60% ones:

But you can't really tell from the photos, right, because regardless of the size, all the details are perfect!

Here's where Bilbo celebrated his eleventy-first birthday party. I, personally, wasn't really on the tour for its movie set-ness, but rather its book set-ness, but we still got lots of good gossip about what it was like to film the party scene here, including the secret ingredient to keeping small children party-wild over the course of an overnight film shoot: SUGAR!

And here we are making our way past the outskirts of Hobbiton and on towards the Green Dragon:

I don't really understand how they keep all these details looking so lovely out in the weather. The outdoor stuff looks appropriately worn, but little details like books left open on benches and newspapers inside mailboxes look perfect!

At the edge of town is a 90%-scale hobbit hole you can actually go inside, with book-accurate set dressing that makes it look exactly like the home of a busy, well-to-do hobbit family that just got Raptured.

Also, it turns out that I, too, am 90% scale, because I was perfectly comfortable here:

Lol at the emergency exit sign!

Now, time for a drink at the Green Dragon!

This view from the Green Dragon, across the pond and back towards Hobbiton, gives you a nice perspective of many of the hobbit holes, differently sized but still looking correctly proportioned to the viewer:

I don't know if you'd enjoy it if you didn't know the books, but I thought the whole place was absolutely enchanting.

DEVASTATED that this dish in the cafe was not named "Second Breakfast," however. Such a lost opportunity...


Pro tip for international travel destinations: if you want to encourage your most frugal travelers to buy souvenirs, get your airline that flies there to give them a free checked bag. I bought hardly anything in England last year, on account of we brought only carry-ons, but Air New Zealand gave us each a free checked bag, and so somehow this turned me into a cartoon version of myself, just absolutely tossing money at cashiers and filling my bag with chocolate bars and books and a Hobbiton hoodie and ciders and Jaffa cakes and yet more books. Don't tell the kids, but they're each getting an awesome illustrated copy of The Hobbit for Christmas! To be honest, I also really wanted a copy for myself, but presenting THREE identical copies of the exact same book to the cashier just felt like one copy too crazy, you know?

Even with eating lunch at the Shire's Rest Cafe and looking at every single thing in the gift shop twice, we had more time than we thought we would after Hobbiton. On the beautiful drive back to Auckland--

--my partner reminded me of the signs we'd seen at the Auckland waterfront the day before advertising a Lord of the Rings musical. Was it playing that night, he wondered?

It was!

Could we get tickets at the door, we wondered?

This was one of the best things we did in New Zealand. Y'all KNOW how I feel about musicals, and yet for whatever reason, I had no idea that this musical even existed! I don't know what the other productions might look like, but this Auckland production was chaotically, delightfully unhinged. The set looked sweet and homey--

--and at about 20 minutes until showtime I was just about to turn my phone off and put it away, when all of a sudden the cast came out in character and proceeded to go absolutely feral in the audience:

It was bonkers and hysterical, Gollum was like a circus creature but also weirdly hot(?), and by the time the show was over I was exhausted from joy.

The show itself wasn't the best musical production I've ever seen--there are serious pacing problems, most of the songs did nothing to forward the plot, a few parts were decidedly corny, and Galadriel gets way too much stage time--but it will absolutely remain one of the most fun musical productions I've ever seen.

Which actually does kind of make it one of the best!

As fun as it was, by the time the show was over I was about ready to lie down on the sidewalk and die, I was so tired, so before we left our downtown parking spot my partner parked me inside the rental car and ran across the road and got us Domino's, of all things. Thank goodness our hotel parking wasn't the nightmarish hellscape it was the previous night, so 20 minutes later I was in my pajamas eating pizza and Scrumpy in bed and staring befuddled-like at rugby on the TV.

Forty minutes later, I was sound asleep!

Tomorrow, I see the BEST thing in all of New Zealand: my daughter!

Here's the rest of our trip!

Day 1: Auckland

Day 2: Hobbiton

Day 3: Driving to Rotorua

Day 4: Glowworms and Kiwis

Day 5: Driving to Wellington

Day 6: Weta Workshop and Te Papa Museum

Day 7: Wellington to Pancake Rocks

Day 8: Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers

Day 9: TranzAlpine Train Across the Southern Alps

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Day 1 in New Zealand: Jet Lagged in Auckland

I don't know if it was the anxiety-ridden mess that I am or the Girl Scout that I also am, but I felt like this vacation required an "In Case We All Die" set of instructions for my younger kid.

And what WAS my younger kid supposed to do if we all died?

Call my calmest mom friend, of course! 

Stay in college, no matter what.

Keep our family home so she has a home base that isn't a relative's or friend's house.

Ask one of my other mom friends, or one of my other other mom friends, to adopt Luna.

Ask her best friend who loves cats as much as she does to foster Jones and Spots while she's at school, and then she can get them back on holidays.

It occurs to me only now that we're back home that what I probably should have actually been telling her is how to get into the bank accounts and where to find all our important documents, but let's be honest--I barely know all that info, myself. It takes all the combined mental powers of both my partner and I to remember every semester how to get into the kids' 529 accounts to pay their tuition, much less how to log into our insurance stuff. 

Actually, do I even have life insurance? I'm pretty sure I don't. Bury me as cheaply as possible, Kids!

Mental note that organizing our finances into something reasonably discernible should probably be one of my spring projects...

Second mental note that I still need to pay the older kid's spring tuition!

ANYWAY, with all the important "in case of death" decisions made, my nook loaded with books, and my phone loaded with music and podcasts, my partner and I stepped onto the big plane in Houston--

--and then he immediately fell sound asleep and left me to my own bored devices for the next 14 hours. Here's a selfie that I accidentally took about 6 hours in while I was trying to plug in my earbuds:

And here's evidence that it's actually kind of boring outside when you're smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, although I don't know what else I expected it to look like:

I got a LOT of TV watching done, which is pretty great. I watched Our Flag Means Death, which I've been VERY excited to see since it was TikTok famous back in the day--well, shit, Amazon says that there are two seasons, so I guess what I mean is I watched the FIRST season of Our Flag Means Death and I'm still looking for the second season, sigh. And Quiet on Set, whose claim to fame is that my partner woke up, looked over, saw me watching a scene of a kind of graphic retelling of a child assault, was all, "WHAT are you watching?!?", and then fell back asleep as peacefully as a lamb. And then I was stoked to see that they had the new Walking Dead spinoff, but it turned out to basically be a copy of The Last of Us, so I wasn't sad when we landed and I had to abandon it.

I LOVE airplane TV!

I don't travel internationally very often, but Customs in Greece was really nice that time I was there, Customs in England was really nice that time I was there, and Customs in New Zealand was really nice, too! Mind you, they did have a ton of signage about how they were going to charge you 400 bucks if you accidentally brought fruit or honey or dirty hiking boots into the country and it made me really paranoid that what if I HAD actually put a honey bear and a Granny Smith into my backpack and then forgot I had, but I hadn't, and everyone was pleasant.

It makes me think that maybe USA Customs and TSA are so mean all the time because it's part of the ambience? Like, you know how there are those novelty restaurants where the gimmick is that the waitstaff is super mean to you and that's part of the fun? Is that part of the fun of visiting America, knowing that the Customs person is going to act like you're trafficking antiquities and the TSA person is going to scream at you for having/not having your bag of liquids outside your carry-on?

Whatever. Time to pick up the rental car and hit up my all-time favorite tourist destination: the local grocery store!

Check. Out. This VEGEMITE DISPLAY!!!

I'm probably constantly starved for B vitamins or something, because I LOVE Vegemite. My favorite breakfast is a piece of toast spread with a thin layer of Vegemite, with half an avocado squashed on top, and a liberal shake of Everything but the Bagel seasoning covering it. It is SO good.

My partner was not impressed that I insisted on buying the giant jar of Vegemite as a souvenir, but dude. They do NOT sell GIANT JARS OF VEGEMITE in the States!

You know what's even better than a wall of Vegemite, though?!?

Duuuuuuude.

Specifically this:

DUUUUUUUDE!!!!!!!

Do you remember last year's Great British Love Affair with Cadbury with Popping Jellies!?!? I honestly never thought I'd see it again! I thought it was a limited edition! 

The fried chicken chips were disappointing--

--but the Whittaker's chocolate was fucking AMAZING. Probably better than Cadbury, if we're being honest, but if we're being really honest, I pretty much spent my time in New Zealand with a Whittaker's Hokey Pokey in one hand and a Cadbury with Popping Jellies in the other.

It was still pretty early in the morning by the time we finished our grocery run, so we took our breakfast with us on the 45-minute drive west of Auckland to Piha Beach:

And we ate in the comfy car while it finished sleeting outside!

After that, though, it was actually pretty decent--not actively spitting down freezing rain, but just windy and dramatically cloudy--so we happily spent the morning stretching our legs in the fresh air:

We didn't see any penguins... but we did see several dogs:

It's not a national park, so thus marks the beginning of the rock collection that will disconcert this year's TSA!

The day brightened up considerably on our drive back into Auckland, so much so that we had actual blue skies at the waterfront:

And since by then I'd been in the country a whole seven hours without stepping foot in a single museum, you know I was starting to sweat! Better get into the New Zealand Maritime Museum before my brain starts rejecting itself!

If you don't have a favorite type of map, you should think hard about that topic until you DO have a favorite type of map. As I've often monologued, my personal favorite type of map is the Marshall Islands stick chart:

I thought this shark fishing rattle was pretty cool:

You'll be as disappointed as I was to learn, however, that New Zealand STILL fishes shark, and in fact it's often the fish in their fish and chips. Combine that with the fact that cattle are ruining the local watersheds, and that I don't love lamb, and I pretty much lived on eggs, flat whites, and chocolate.

This was new information, and very interesting!

It's the last habitable place to be settled by humans, and yet it's not as out of the way, I wouldn't think, as someplace like Hawaii is. And there are so many islands there in the South Pacific--my kid sailed to Vanuatu, Fiji, and Tuvalu before she sailed to New Zealand, and it just blows my mind to think how tiny they are in comparison and yet they were settled first. 

Reddit has some more context, but I don't think anyone has a definitive explanation.

The museum also had some interesting artifacts about European immigration to New Zealand. In particular, check out my other old friend, the clay pipes!!! Last year on the Thames, I mudlarked some bits and pieces very similar to these beauties:

Books are also my friends:

This was pretty cool--that little whaleboat was built in New Bedford. I was just IN New Bedford!

I found one of these knot-tying displays in every museum I could muscle myself into in New Zealand, and I am OBSESSED with them. I want to learn ALL the knots now!

The monkey's fist is thus far my favorite knot:

This exhibit on Customs in New Zealand cracked us up, although in retrospect we might have just been hysterical from the long travel, because it's not *that* funny to find an exhibit on Customs 10 hours after going through Customs, ahem...

Anyway, look! It's bootleg DVDs that got seized by Customs!

I guess you're also not allowed to import your own pre-built genuine Scottish whiskey distillery? Looking at it was like being back halfway across the world, going on a distillery tour in Kentucky and learning about the owner's ancestor's once-booming Prohibition-era moonshine business.

Not shown is the New Zealand Emirates Team America's Cup yacht because it was just too stinking big, but now I know a weird amount about yachting and I feel a shocking amount of mom guilt that I did not put my children through an organized progression of children's yachting classes, including letting them compete in P-class yacht races. 

Just... it's a whole life of yachting opportunities, just gone. Even if the kids started now, they'd never be able to truly compete with people who'd been yachting since they were children. So weird and fascinating how geography guides one's life in all these ways you'd never even think about.

After absorbing SO much maritime information, I ate the first of MANY meals of eggs--

--we wandered the oceanfront, trying to guess where the kid's ship would be docked in just a couple of days and enjoying the ambiance--

--and then put ourselves through the living hell of driving through Newmarket to get to our hotel with the narrowest parking lot with no visibility down a one-way street so if you chickened out of making the turn since you couldn't see what might be coming at you, you were punished by then having to make a 20-minute series of right turns taking you THROUGH FUCKING NEWMARKET AGAIN and I swear to god the next time we did not even care what might be coming at us, we were NOT doing that again.

On to a hot shower, a grocery store within walking distance, and a 7pm bedtime!

Tomorrow, we go see Bilbo!

Here's the rest of our trip!

Day 1: Auckland

Day 2: Hobbiton

Day 3: Driving to Rotorua

Day 4: Glowworms and Kiwis

Day 5: Driving to Wellington

Day 6: Weta Workshop and Te Papa Museum

Day 7: Wellington to Pancake Rocks

Day 8: Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers

Day 9: TranzAlpine Train Across the Southern Alps

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Sewed a Christmas Tree Skirt, as Requested

How did we ever get by without a Christmas tree skirt?!?

It looks so pretty, and now I think the tree would look naked without it, but until my older kid suggested one last year, it had never occurred to me.

Although my kid has a sort of contentious relationship with her memory, so by "suggested," what I actually mean is that when we were decorating the tree, she dug through a couple of bins and then said, "Where's the tree skirt?"

I said, "We don't have a tree skirt."

She said, "What about the tree skirt we used last year?"

I said, "We didn't have a tree skirt last year."

She said, "Yes, we did."

I said, "No, we didn't."

She said, "Yes, we did."

No, we didn't:

Merry Christmas 2023 from Spots and Jones!

Nor did we in 2022:

How about way back in 2016, maybe?

Merry Christmas 2016 from Gracie, the best of cats

Nope! Although that was the year that I ran Pappa's train around the tree and it was ADORABLE.

Just between us, I think she's misremembering the red and white quilt I have on my bed, since I generally just pull it out as an extra warm layer in the winter. 

Anyway, to mollify her I told her that a tree skirt was a wonderful idea, even though I secretly didn't think so, and that I'd definitely make one for the tree this year, even though I secretly didn't want to.

My kids are right and I am wrong so often that it's kind of starting to get on my nerves...

I did dutifully spend most of the year low-key checking out tree skirt ideas. This one from Gathered is really pretty--

Christmas tree skirt image via Gathered

So is this one from Sewing with Scraps:

Starburst tree skirt image via Sewing with Scraps

I also really like this Dresden skirt pattern from Carrieactually on etsy:

Dresden tree skirt image via Carrieactually

At the very last minute, I happened upon this Nutcracker tree skirt pattern from The Weekend Quilter--

Nutcracker tree skirt image via The Weekend Quilter

--and I almost went for that one because you KNOW how we feel about The Nutcracker over here, but I still haven't taught myself FPP, shame on me. I've looked at a lot of YouTube tutorials, but honestly I think I may need to just get a book on how to do it.

But then in one of my quilting Facebook groups, a group member posted a photo of the tree skirt that she'd made by altering the Chroma Quilt pattern from Taralee Quiltery, and I was sold.

To alter the pattern from a traditional quilt to a tree skirt, you pretty much just have to omit the center octagon from the pattern and then cut through one side of the finished quilt. Sewing the first set of triangles is a little fiddly without that octagon to anchor them--

--but after that you can continue the piecing exactly as the pattern indicates:

I did not do my neatest job on the piecing--tbh, I was basically just throwing this quilt together since I'd promised I'd make it AND I had to get it finished before I could start putting presents under the tree--and to me, the misaligned points and general messiness are very evident, ahem. But everyone else swears that they cannot see a thing wrong, even when I make them look at the very worst bits, so although I may not have perfect quilting as my legacy, I do have a perfect family.

The quilt is entirely sewn from stash, although that's a bit of a cheat because I generally always buy 100% cotton solids and abstract prints when I see them in the remnant bins at Joann, so a lot of the fabric comes from that--I dithered about buying those three different shades of green when I found them in the same remnants bin, but I don't regret it now!

The holly fabric is a true scrap, though, as I have NO idea where it came from, and the quilt back is a white sheet that somebody gave me at some point and has been just kicking around my fabric bin for years:

Pause for a festive shot of the Christmas tree in the background!

That giant back deck grill eyesore was my Christmas present to Matt in... 2020, maybe? So it's thematically relevant!

I pieced together a couple of cuts of batting to get the correct dimensions. The next time I make a quilt, I'm going to have to splurge on new batting, grr!

So festive! Especially because in this shot you can barely see the giant back deck barbecue grill! My favorite part of our Christmas tree is that a good 98% of the ornaments are handmade, and another 1.5% are vintage ornaments from childhood family trees:

After that, all I had to do was bravely cut straight through the quilt I had just painstakingly pieced and sewn and backed and quilted--

--and then bind it with some stash binding, sandwiching three sets of ties in between the binding and the quilt:

And here's this year's Christmas tree, exactly the way that my older kid dreamed it should be:

It's kind of a nightmare with the robot vacuum, but it looks so pretty with the presents.

Now I want to make a proper Chroma quilt, lining up all my points and everything!

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, updates on my sourdough starter, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!