House plans

The first concept plans for the house have arrived from good friend Linda Vugler and we love em! All earthy and curvy as if it has grown out of the rocks around. We would like it further into the hill so we can walk into the garden from the front right terrace. It will mean we don't have to have a balustrade and have an uninterupted view out to sea. It is a small house, only about 170 sq m with lotsa outside areas and surprises so in winter we have only a small cosy area to keep warm but in summer it opens out with plenty of inside/outside living. The top left area will be a bedroom and a studio/bedroom opening out to a roof deck.

I suppose our excitement will be tempered when we start dealing with consents from the council because it is not conventional but at the moment I can't wait to start (it'll be a few months yet!)

Cooking classes

Thinking about how to explain breadmaking on this site has brought me around to starting cooking classes in our area. I have the first on Tuesday and the next on Saturday and have had a good amount of interest. They run for 3 hours over lunch and will be hands on making ciabatta bread, pizzas and focaccia. The venue is Flaxhaven Lodge a bed and breakfast place next door to us with a well set out kitchen and beautiful grounds.
With our moderate recession, jobs have dried up around here so we have to think creatively to keep the wolf from the door and help pay for the new house I'm going to build!
Never a dull moment!

Creativity

When my creativity is low (as it is at the moment) I realise I am trying to run my art separate from my life and it just doesn't work. I've been in the zone sometimes when life and art flow with no boundaries and it is exhilarating and very productive. Lynton Lamb has a great analogy below..



“For serious artists, painting is a permanent attitude of mind. It is a scheme into which the general run of experience fits. However difficult it may be to reconcile work and life there remains a sense in which, as Saint Paul said, “all things work together.”If painting is a relaxation quite separate from his ordinary living, it will not be strengthened by daily experience, it will be weakened by its contrary direction.It will become something outside itself, to be maintained by visits: like a distant allotment garden into which he occasionally inserts an artificial flower.Preparation for Painting, Lynton Lamb, 1954

Safely in Fiji

I did go sailing

We ate well

And arrived safely!

Good to be home though. Flew back yesterday, 3 hours compared to 10 days on the way up. Learnt that there is a hell of a lot of water out there and you are on your own. Lovely strong boat (48 Swan) but I think I will stick to my catamaran, more room and not so much rolling!

Fiji is struggling. With the recession and the military government the resorts are virtually empty and tourism is their main source of income. Wonderful people, tall and graceful with a great sense of fun.

I wish them well.

Fiji here we come

Sam and I are off sailing to Fiji this morning so my site will be silent for a couple of weeks.
There is a big anticyclone over NZ at the moment so the weather is cold but brilliantly clear and not much wind. I might have to change my book from Jonathon Livingston Seagull to War and Peace!
Keep well