Whether you use the American date system or the normal one (ha!) doesn’t matter. It’s 11/11/11.

These days I’m temping in an office with people I used to work for 5 years ago. Spending my days thinking about blogging and jewellery and food. My sister has been visiting for the past few days with her friend so I’ve eaten out for lunch and dinner for the past three days.

The weather has been windy, scarily so, but today the sun has finally come out.

11/11/10

November 2010 I was 25 and looking for a house to move into with Brend and flatties Kate and Jason. Our old dump was falling down around us and we didn’t like having to live with an extra single person (and I don’t think single people really liked living with our coupled up selves either). I was temping at the same place I’m temping at now. I was getting excited about going to my first midnight movie screening and booking a bach with friends for new years.
Kate and Jason had been on their honeymoon to America and Brend and I were serious about our own travel plans.
I had started doing Couch to 5k with Kate, which was a disaster because, as I later found out, I have hypermobile knees.

11/11/09

Back then I was 24 and blogging almost every day. I had quit my job in June and was being supported by my ex while I worked on the jewellery business. We had a little apartment of our own in Mt Victoria and had been living there almost 3 years. I had been a pescetarian for almost 3 years as well. My how things change in two short years!

I met a lot of new people in October and November 2010, almost everyone I’m good friends with now! Thanks to twitter I secured myself a larger group of best friends than I ever thought I’d be lucky enough to have. I spent November gossiping with them, replacing dead phones, and stressing about the ex’s workplace being downsized to 4 days a week.

I also spent a lot of time stressing about where our relationship was going. I was well ready to get engaged, and he, well, wasn’t.

11/11/06

Before blogging! Before twitter! Before Facebook! Before I joined Flickr! I was 21 and was 3 weeks into a new job. Wellington had been my home for almost four years and Sol and I were living without flatmates for the first time in a shitty little basement bedsit that had windows but no light.
I was getting involved in the internet in an obsessive way around this time thanks to My Chemical Romance, the MCRmy, and MySpace. I also bought a bass and amp with my birthday money and started trying to play.

Where were you?

This stuff is so good. Prior to the Asia trip my body couldn’t handle caffeine, I always figured it had something to do with my colitis, and while disappointing it just meant I couldn’t have coffee or coke like EVERYONE ELSE.

But, something magical happened in Vietnam. I tried the coffee and it was so delicious that I decided it was worth the stomach pain…and then there wasn’t any stomach pain. In fact since going to Asia my stomach has been the least sore it’s ever been in the past 10 years! I don’t know how or why, I just know that my medication is actually working really well. (I’m probably eating about 80% less dairy products as well.)

So, back to the coffee. It was delicious. In Vietnam your coffee is served with sweetened condensed milk in the bottom of the glass which you mix in to your liking. You can have it hot, ca phe sua nong; or over ice, ca phe sua da. We drank it over ice in the hot hot Vietnamese weather.

Vietnamese coffee is incredibly simple to make, a lot like plunger coffee. You’ll need a Vietnamese coffee filter that comes in three parts: the main pot, the lid, and the screw down damper; a glass; Vietnamese coffee; and sweetened condensed milk (though I have my hot coffee black now).

• Put a tablespoon or two of sweetened condensed milk in the bottom of your glass.
• Put a heaped tablespoon or two of coffee (Trung Nguyen is a good brand. You can get it at Yan’s in Wellington) in the filter and shake it down so it sits evenly. Screw the tamp on so it’s snug but not tight.
• Sit the filter on top of the glass with milk in it.
• Put a small amount of water in the filter and wait 20 seconds for it to swell the grinds.
• Fill the filter with water and place the lid on top.

• Coffee will drip through fairly slowly. It seems like everyone does it slightly differently depending on how strong they want it, so don’t worry too much if it seems like it’s going too fast or slow. If it tastes not quite right you can adjust your method next time.
• When all the water has dripped through take the lid and put it upside down on the table. Now it’s a tray for your filter! :D
• Stir the condensed milk into the coffee and then pour it over the ice if you’re having it cold.

Yum.

On Saturday I took my very first trip on the Overlander, the train that runs from Wellington to Auckland. Mum is in Hamilton so our journey wasn’t quite as far as Auckland, but still a good 10 hours.

Thankfully I’d had a bit of train practice in Asia. In Asia we bought cheap tickets and ended up with a) seats with no leg room, b) hard sleepers, which are planks of wood with thin covers and bed bugs, or c) plastic chairs. There was none of that in the Overlander. Lots of leg room, some bigger couches in a lounge at the back of the coach and clean enough toilets. Though in typical train fashion the door to the toilet was extremely awkward to get through I’m not sure that anyone much bigger than me would have been able to manage it.

Our carriage did come with the requisite “conspiracy theorists” though. Grow From Here on twitter was kind enough to explain to me how odd people are assigned on public transport: “they are allocated by the travel people – sometimes you get screaming kid instead- or paper rustling snarler”. Pleased to say I only had to deal with a guy explaining to me how an Egyptian prince and a Jewish Princess were married way back to broke a deal between feuding families (etc etc on and off for 10 hours). Cool story bro.

But thankfully no screaming children.

Waiting for 7am to check in // My favourite stretch of highway with views to Kapiti // You can see the South Island in good weather, that faint shape in the distance // Ohakune for a pie and coffee break (shit coffee good pie) // Art in Ohakune // Crossing one of the tall viaducts // The windows were annoyingly reflective // What NZ does well – farms

You may have noticed the sudden up turn in posting frequency? Maybe not.

The reason? I’m attempting NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month, for the second year in a row. The challenge is to publish a blog post every day for the month of November. Last year I managed 23/30 posts in November 2010. Fingers crossed I’ll get closer this time.

I’ve never been any good at writing fiction, perhaps because I’ve never attempted it. Perhaps because I’m a little terrified about what’s hiding in my brain, or that someone would actually read it! So doing NaBloPoMo is my answer to Brend’s second year of NaNoWriMo.

I’m using the wordpress editorial calendar to keep track of my post ideas and it seems I’ve actually got a few. Unfortunately most of them involve copious amounts of photos and I’m a notoriously slow editor. Well, maybe not notorious.

Are you guys ok with all the photos? Particularly the ones I’m taking myself?

I’m following the lead from a few of my favourite blogs to share some of my favourite things!

1. The number 9.
   
   + / + / + / + / +
2. Unusual light fixtures. Chandeliers made from mason jars and tea cups. Yes please!
   
   + / +
3. Parks and Recreation. One of those shows I watch that I find so funny my laugh changes. It’s weird and probably pretty annoying for everyone I live with (sorry!). Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson should be everyone’s idols. I’d like to live like Leslie and Ron by eating breakfast foods at all times of day.
   
4. Bright pants. And everything else on the Wear Color Tumblr. Wear Color was recommended to me when I complained, once again, about pastels, and about wanting the pastel trend to die and be replaced by brights. Success.
   
5. Cake. Forever.
   
6. Shop Sweet Lulu.
   
7. Coloured keyboards.
   
8. MIA swinging above New York.
   
9. Super bright art in all of my favourite colours. I must have the iPhone case!
   

There’s quite a bit of cute to be had at this time of year with all the puppies, kitties, ducklings, lambs, and whatever other cute baby animals get born in spring.

About a month ago I took a trip to the Wellington SPCA and spent some time cuddling the puppies and kitties. It breaks my heart to see so many animals there, but it’s very nice to know they will be looked after as long as it takes to rehome them. LOOK AT THOSE PUPPY DOG EYES.

I spied the first lot of ducklings in Waitangi Park and bottom lot in the Hamilton Gardens. Squee!

From Ha Long bay we traveled by bus, then boat to Hai Phong. It was around this point in the trip I finally felt like I was in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese people were fascinated by us whiteys, a couple of ladies gave me frights by putting their fingers in my stretched lobes, and guys on the street stopped their conversations to stare at us as we walked past. We only saw a few other tourists while in Hai Phong, it was really hard to tell we were in the third most populated city in Vietnam. (Though there is 4.5 million between Hanoi – the second most populated – and Hai Phong.) I was totally unprepared for white people to still be a ‘thing’.

After getting ripped off by a taxi driver, staying in a hotel for a couple of nights (with the added bonus of bed bugs for Brendan!), and discovering our first bar covered in sunflower seed shells we trekked over to the bus station to book a ride to the next town with a train track. I think the guys hanging out at the bus stop were even more fascinated by me than the ladies on the bus. They asked me, in the international language of sign language, if my tattoo was real or if it would come off. They delighted in our poor pronunciation of Ninh Binh when asking for bus tickets, apparently the ‘nh’ sound is more like a g!

Bonus memories: The pretty gardens running through the center of town; string cottage cheese at Big Man Bia; watching guys do round house kicks on the shuttlecocks while playing jianzi; trying Vietnamese coffee for the first time; seeing the huge town square full of small communist children doing a choreographed dance!!

See Brend’s memories of Hai Phong.

Brendan was determined long before arriving in Vietnam that he would eat pho for breakfast everyday while there. Once we finally arrived it was neither hard to convince him to stick to his plan or hard to find tasty pho wherever we happened to be.

Brend ended up loving pho so much he bought a shirt that says so.

I however am not a big fan. It’s fine, it’s just not something I seek to eat. Plus almost every recipe I’ve found for pho requires you to make stock from scratch with bones full of marrow. As if.

Thankfully I stumbled across a much quicker pho ga (chicken pho) recipe that just uses store bought stock and shredded chicken meat. It’s less traditional but brend still liked it and this is one pho I could eat often!

Pho Ga for Two

Ingredients
2 star anise
2 gloves of garlic
2cm ginger
600ml chicken stock (the better the quality the better it’ll taste)
1 Tbsp fish sauce
small onion (finely sliced)
1/4 tsp corriander seeds
A few cloves
1/3 cup water
pinch of salt
200g chicken thighs

Extras for serving
150g cooked rice vermicelli
sliced spring onion
bean sprouts
finely diced red chilli (chilli flakes are fine too)
Asian basil (regular basil will do if you can’t get Asian basil)
coriander
a lime or lemon cut into wedges

• Lightly fry the star anise, garlic and bruised ginger in a dry pan.
• Add the rest of the ingredients except chicken.
• Bring it to the boil. Add the chicken and simmer until cooked.
• Remove chicken and shred. Divide the chicken between two bowls.
• Cover with broth and add the extras to taste.

Pho is a dish that you really get to experiment with and everyone has it differently.
I like mine with lots of corriander, basil, and a couple of wedges of lime. Be careful when you’re adding chilli, it really gets into the broth and punches you in the face if you add too much.

I’m looking forward to modifying some pho bo (beef) and pho thit lon (pork) recipes using store bought stock instead of the undoubtedly tastier but far more painful way!

Saturday involved another trip to the food mecca that is Petone, and a final cheese toastie at Cultured (their store is now closed D:), a bag of biltong from OnTrays, licorice from the Dutch shop, and a hanging planter for Brend. The planter is the only new thing I bought in October that wasn’t food or entertainment! A present for someone bought from a store owned by someone I’ve met in real life totally doesn’t count as failing Buy Nothing in October.

While in Petone we popped in to Sweet Pea, a new high tea place that looks so fucking cute. I absolutely adore Martha’s Pantry in the city but Sweet Pea was really spacious and felt like it would be more relaxed. When I’m next in Petone and not full of cheese I’ll definitely try it out.

After drooling my way around Petone I drooled all over the awesomeness at Craft 2.0 and then dragged myself home in the hot sun to finish the icing on my Halloween party cookies! They had scary words on them like ‘Babies’ and ‘National Government’ and ‘Feminist’.

Hungover on Sunday meant french toast and reliving the costumes from the night before. Best dressed went to Tim as Ron Swanson that time he got back with Tammy 2 and ended up in prison with corn rows; and Fiona dressed as Al Swearengen from Deadwood. She wore a chest merkin, and kept a glaring scary look in her eyes. We managed to not die before seeing Drive at the Embassy, where we also sighted John Waters in the wild!

Also I never used to understand the Ryan Gosling hype, but now. Daymn.

I’ve been temping again for the past month (with another month on my contract) in order to get some dollars ready for xmas and new years and all the fun things that happen without me when I’m not getting much money in. And as always the reality of being cooped up in a cubicle sent my brains into over drive and all I wanted to do was make all the things, and photograph all the things, and write all the things.

But I can’t do it all so I just made a few of the things:

Ampersand necklaces in Quicksand, Baskerville, and Futura fonts

Creep

Bunting in pink white and blue

Black bone bead necklace

Faux 3 finger rings
There’s only one finger hole and the bar sits above your digits, way more comfortable and allows heaps more movement than a true 3 finger ring.

Futura ampersand brooch

Heart rings and mini heart brooches

More things soon

I’ve got a few more new designs that need to be photographed and listed so look out for another update in a week or two. Expect bows and anchors and bone beads in more colours and ceramic hearts.

Xmas Shipping

Unfortunately my super dooper laser machine friend is moving cities in a couple of weeks so the laser cutter will be out of action for a while. I can still get things made but there will be a 2-3 week turn around instead of a week (max) turn around. This means custom xmas orders for pretty much everywhere need to be in by mid November! Not long! How is xmas so soon!?
You have a bit longer for jewellery in stock. Those orders don’t need to be in till the end of November if you need them to arrive by xmas.

Ozzies have till the around the 20th of November for custom orders and till December 9th for jewels in stock.

Kiwis have till the start of December for custom orders and till the 19th of December for everything else.

If you’re buying gifts I can send them direct to the recipient with a note! And even if you’re buying for yourself your jewels will be packaged with tissue and ribbon and love.