Goodbye and Thanks for all the Fish!

You know there is a part in every story where they all live happily ever after and it finishes?

Well, that's where I think I've got to with Magpie Chic.

I've come full circle really.

I began at Easter two years ago,

although it feels like about ten years worth of events have taken place since then!

It began a little bit like Lucy finding her way through the back of the wardrobe into Narnia.
Instead of a snowy landscape and Mr Tumnis,
I found a whole parallel universe of kindred spirits.
Exactly what I was looking for at the time.
I didn't know that, but once I found it, I knew it instantly.
It felt like coming home.






I had found a way to process my thoughts, which at the time were bound up with a heavy burden of grief.
Amongst a world of gentle kindred spirits.


And you opened your creative lives and invited me in unconditionally, just like Mr and Mrs Beaver, Jemima Puddle Duck, Mrs Tiggywinkle and Little Grey Rabbit would have done.
I am so grateful to you all for allowing me the experience and the privilege of a glimpse into your lives.
And for allowing me to share mine with you.
Thank you for all the lovely comments, and for taking the time to care.
I will still be reading you and thinking about you, and enjoying your creative exploits, and just your world view.



Real life has taken over for me to the extent that I feel that I have said all there is to say, and made everything I'm ever going to make for a while.
But in a good way.
My real life now is a place where I am happy to be.
It's a very busy place.
I have a job where I feel as if I am making a difference. Where I feel valued as an integral part of a team.
Something I'd never experienced in nursing before, and something I never hoped to find there.
I almost gave up on it for good.
Mostly I work 10 hr days and come home exhausted. But it feels right, and I am happy to feel like that.
The other days are filled with gardens, lawns, washing, the Granny's exploits, "Mummy Lunch" once a week with "she who is proficient at separating eggs" - that kind of thing.
And it is a good life.





The grief modifies itself gradually into a way of living with itself.
When I began Magpie Chic I had just lost my brother in a heli-mustering accident, and my plan to save my son by giving him a kidney had just been knocked out of the water.
That was to happen again six months later, but this time for good.
Earlier this year he had a cerebral bleed.
High blood pressure is a common issue associated with long term dialysis.
I have had to accept that I cannot save him.
We just get on with it and he manages beautifully.
I am so proud of him.






"She who is proficient at separating eggs" continues to be proficient at everything and has just bought her first house.
I am so proud of her.

Life goes on. I feel like I am making a difference. I have endless lawns to mow, gardens to do, roses to prune, lavender hedges to cut, but what a beautiful setting in which to do it.
I feel really, really blessed.
The Granny living here has added a whole new dimension to life.
I love the fact that we so often have a house full. Three generations worth.
My kids still want to come home for the Easter Egg hunt.
I have less and less time for making things.
I always have something on the go, but they are all done in stolen moments now, so there is a long time between starting and finishing.
Way too long for gaps between blog posts.
So the time has come to say Goodbye from that point of view.
I've put a little piece of video on below my final sign off, so you can meet the members of the Magpie Chic Cast.
I will post photos of the Granny Studio when it is completed - especially for the Australian Aunties.
But apart from that, we have come full circle Blog Chics.
So it's time to say Goodbye - and thanks for all the fish!

Another Flock of Sparrows.

I always notice the sparrows.

Have I got the collective noun correct Blog Chics? Can you have a flock of sparrows?

Are sparrows even large enough to be referred to as a flock?

I have no problem with the implied reference to cool eighties pop groups either.

You can take that or leave it.

In fact, as I have found Frankie magazine, an eighties nurdy try hard reference is appropriately cool.

I'm back in the hospital cafe scene Blog Chics. Communing with sparrows.

The Waikato sparrows have chutzpah!

They are aggressive, ask for what they want and are not afraid to just take it right off your table!

They are Gen Y sparrows these lot.

If sparrows were people they'd definitely read Frankie.

(this image from Lilac and Snow at http://leeloo.co.au/)

I discovered Frankie at the airport a few months ago. What a piece of serendipity that was!

It really "speaks to me". Now hows that for a really cynical use of pretentious self reference?

I'd be laughed out of town by the people at Frankie with that one!

It is such a cool magazine.

But not for the feint hearted if you are offended by a bit of bad language.

Don't give it to your Nana to read probably.

All the articles are interesting, some are quite thought provoking, most are incredibly funny.

But if you find the whole,"f*** yeah Granny square" thing
confronting, then probably don't go there.

But most of all I love the adds.

The whole vintage retro clever art kid design vibe makes me feel like a kid in a lolly shop.

(this image from http://luflux.com/)

I have made clothes like this for myself, but somehow I've never quite plucked up the courage to wear them down the main street of Hawera.

When I read Frankie I just want to put them on and make more!

(this image from http://francesbaker.co.au/)
Which leads me back to the reason why I'm back here communing with sparrows.

My boy had a brain bleed about 6 days ago.

His blood pressure must have gone through the roof (one of the complications of end stage renal failure and life on dialysis) and popped a fufu valve in the occipital region of his brain.

But we have yet again been so lucky. After a few stressful days immediately afterwards in the HDU in which he had some seizures and various CT scans and lots of medical intervention,

today we are back to observing that it is difficult to have a conversation about the zeitgeist of 2011 with your hairdresser, cos mostly they only discuss whats on the telly or where they went on their hols. And we're going home.

Back to Taranaki for rehab with the good physios and OTs at Hawera Hospital.

He has made a very rapid recovery. Not fluent yet on the guitar or the nintendo DS, but he can do it. He says it's like being dyslexic though, it's not coming out how he wants it to yet.

But he's lost that "possum in the headlights" look.

Still gets very tired.

Home for some TLC.

As for the whole hairdresser dilemma. Do you think that hairdressers have those conversations because they think that's what their customers want? Or do you think that they are so weary from the whole repetitiveness of it all that they just want to be on auto pilot?

It's an interesting question.

I bet some of them are just dying to launch into their theory for the Road Map to Piece in the Middle East.

I hope that this is the year they break free from convention and just do it!

Hopefully no hairdressers were offended in the reading of this blog post.

These are just the observations of a bored Mum trying to "internalise a complex situation in her head", engage my son in same, and reading too much Frankie magazine.

Perhaps I should just stick to I'm Elmo And I know It on YouTube!

Ciao Blog Chics.

A Bit About Cats.

This week it was time to say goodbye to an old friend.

It became time to call the vet out for my old ginger marmalade cat.

The Magpie Cat went peacefully to heaven on the nice vet's knee, cuddled up in her blankey.

I didn't want to put any pictures of her here, but I did have these lovely ones of the Tail Cat helping me trim the lavender hedge a few days ago.




I had to choose a day when I was at work to have the vet come out.
The Granny was good enough to supervise it all and to tell me all the details later,
because of course, I wanted to know, even though I didn't want to be there.





All I could think of that afternoon was that she wouldn't be there on her spot on the couch , asleep in her blankey when I got home.
And I felt wretched.

But the vet said it was well time.

Her kidneys had failed and her blood pressure had gone up so much that her retinas had detatched and she was completely blind.

She would have just wandered off into the paddock and died if we hadn't watched her so carefully.

As it was she had a lovely life, and a comfortable and stress free old age, and there isn't a lot more you'd wish for them.

But I still find myself rationalising it here because I wish it wasn't so.

R.I.P the Magpie Cat.

Riding Shot Gun.

This is my version of the seventies "Love is ..." cutesy cartoons.

No cute Holly Hobby dresses and love hearts sorry.

This is "love is riding shot gun in his race car, and only closing your eyes in the really scary bits!"

Actually this one is my dad's race car, and Hubby is taking it out for exercise at Taupo because it's for sale.

Actually you feel really safe because you are all harnessed in.
It's the other cars that appear to be coming in through the passenger side window at a hundred miles an hour that make me slightly nervous!






The helmet hair is pretty dreadful too.
Today I am about to chuck all my material all over the floor and make a bag or two!
So long since I've done anything, I can't find my scissors!

Country Living Rhubarb.

A little bit of Country Living cooking this weekend.

I am always so inspired by the beautiful photos in the pages of Country Living.

Do you think mine looks anything like the real thing?

They remembered to take the knife away, and they have a nicer tablecloth, but all in all not too bad an effort. And it tasted fantastic.

I think most of it must have been consumed by the Granny because there wasn't any left by the end of the day - and it wasn't me because us weight watchers chics are only allowed one piece!


It was from this issue of Country Living, which I have just bought.
We get them a couple of months after the UK.

It's uses are many and varied. Pillows for old cats being amongst the most useful.

Am still arranging things in my house. This is a bit of a "Nana crochet" corner I think.

Hope you all had a good weekend where ever you are.

Counting My Winter Blessings.

Hello Blog chics. Thanks you for your lovely comments on my last post. It reminded me to count my blessings, and that there many to count in the winter.

We haven't had our first frost yet, so I can still get photos like this beautiful dew laden nasturtium.

I can spend all morning snuggled up in bed reading my favourite magazines, and moving some things around on the dressing table to create a new vignette to photograph.

And I can look out the window on a winter's morning and see the work of many spiders over night, adorning the hedges.

And this! because she can climb up the pergola and get onto the verandah roof!

And there are still the last roses of autumn hanging on.

And I don't have to stress about watering the cuttings I have transplanted from the other house, because it just keeps raining!

And my red geraniums are doing well, sheltered under the eaves.

And I am planning the beginnings of a bluebell wood here by the woodshed.

I dug up some bluebells from the other house today and put them in.

And the cats are keen gardeners, never minding the rain, posing happily for blog pics by the woodshed.

I'm putting it all to bed until the spring, when it should be wonderful.

Until then I will enjoy the spring and summer in other people's gardens. Thanks to the magic of the blog!

I'm scared of the Cooker!

Today is the first day since I've been here that I have been able to stay home all day and just enjoy it.

I began with some baking. For every day lunch box fillers you can't go past the institution of the Edmonds Cook Book.

This book remains on the best seller list year after year. It's been published since the early 1900s I think, and every Kiwi Cook has a copy. I was going to say housewife, which would have been the case for most of its history, but I don't think the "housewife" really exists any more.

That sounds fairly straight forward you might think. But I have a small confession to make.

I'm scared of the cooker! It's so flash! And the hobs are gas, the nobs are different, and I'm slightly scared to twiddle them in case it self destructs in 10 seconds!

I managed to work it all out without anything going bang, and made vanilla biscuits with chocolate drops and no raisins! A lot of the recipes in the Edmonds book can be modified to suit your larder. The ones I make I have made so often that I know all their little idiosyncrasies and tricks for doubling the recipe etc.

So I've been sneaking round taking pictures of small vignettes that are different in this house, but at the same time very familiar.

Autumn is beginning to set in. Daylight savings finished last weekend.

I have been lighting the fire at night.

But today I lit it in the afternoon and sat there writing a letter to my friend Debbie in Tauranga, whom I haven't seen since 2003, but who has recently discovered my blog, so we are back in contact, which is lovely.

Debbie wrote me a real letter. I re-discovered the joy of the letter that day, and promised to write her one back. So today was the day.

I have another friend who writes me real letters on special occasions.

Hello Fi, if you are reading this post.

There is just something special about a hand written letter. It says the same thing as "handmade" to me.

Somebody values you enough to take the trouble.

And my cats STILL only drink from china cups. As soon as I put the cup and saucer down on the back veranda she went straight there for her customary "cup of tea".

The Magpie Cat is getting old. She is appreciating her new cat door. It's a big step up for an old arthritic cat, but it means she can stay inside out of the cold.