General

Knitting for penguins caught in Rena oil spill

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Off the coast of Tauranga, the oil spill from the Rena is having a disastrous effect on wildlife and the environment. A number of little blue penguins have already been caught in the oil and there are growing fears that more will be affected. Sabine of Curiouser & Curiouser and the team at Skeinz are rallying the crafty troops to help with the penguin rescue effort by knitting penguin jumpers, which help protect the birds and prevent them from preening their feathers and ingesting the toxic oil.

Container Love in Sumner, Christchurch

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When you don’t like the way your surroundings look, you have two choices. You can either live with it, or you can do something about it. Technically speaking you could also move, but that’s not an option for Christine Reitze who lives in Sumner, Christchurch, because she loves being near the sea.

“I was looking at the containers which are being used to protect our streets from falling rocks and finding them really unattractive in that context. Normally I quite like shipping containers, but in Sumner they are just an ugly reminder of the June earthquake, when the cliffs started to come down. I decided I needed to do something,” says Christine.

The woolly walk along Devonport Wharf

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Guerrilla knitter Knitty Graffity has pulled off a spectacular project on Devonport Wharf in Auckland. Covering 75 metres, the Woolly Walk Along is a glorious global collaboration with more than 90 knitters contributing from around the world. As well as a large New Zealand contingent (including Zippitydoodah, Happy Go Knitty and Cotton Kiwi), sections of this extensive urban embellishment have been sent in from Australia, Sweden, England, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, the United States and Canada.

Spring is in the air!

Spring has sprung here in Christchurch and we are being treated to a profusion of blossom, magnolias and kowhai, and families of tiny ducklings on the Avon. How about the rest of New Zealand? Is it looking gorgeous where you are too?

Good times with nursery rhymes

Did you know that in 1945 a typical child had a vocabulary of 10,000 words, compared to the 2,500 average of today? Children’s book author Victoria Jones is passionate about teaching children literacy skills and uses child-friendly text, rhyming words and bright images to help children engage in learning.

Emerging from disaster

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mudbird.felt.co.nz

Ceramics artist Gillian Weavers of Mudbird is making the best of a bad situation. Her Woolston property, like so many in Christchurch, has taken a hammering in the recent earthquakes. Silt flooded her property in February and again in June, swamping her garage and damaging her kiln. However, Gillian isn’t one to be put off by a spate of natural disasters. She took the silt and made it into something beautiful.