In which I have been thinking!

I've been thinking - never a good sign, my DH would say! Anyway...you may, or may not, know that New Zealand has 3 official languages - English, Maori and sign language (I think there's a "proper" name for this but it escapes me at the moment). Of course, I am fluent in English but I only know a few words in Maori (and probably murder the pronunciation!) and even less in sign language. Here in the South Island there doesn't seem much need to know much more Maori than this.

What I was thinking about was last year our daughter was on a European tour and visited the New Zealand memorial at Anzac Cove in Gallipoli. There were four New Zealanders on the tour, including her. As is normal in these tours, they stood at the memorial and sang the National Anthem (God Defend New Zealand). The three guys were from the North Island and only knew the Maori lyrics while our daughter only knew (more or less) the English version. I thought that this was a little sad on both sides.



(image courtesy of my daughter!)

I like to think of myself as being a fairly patriotic Kiwi. I was brought up with Anzac Day parades where our whole school would assemble in the school grounds and march down to the memorial about 200m down the road from the schoo. Each class would place a wreath on the memorial and listen to the trumpet playing the Last Post. We would also sing the National Anthem. Our National Anthem was also sung at assembly each week. I'm not certain this was normal, even in my generation, as I know that a lot of my peers would have no idea of the words to God Defend New Zealand.


However, my thinking brought me to the conclusion that I need to learn the Maori words to our Anthem so I have challenged myself to learn them. By when? Not sure, but learn them I will!


I have been making some progress lately on my knitting. Of course, not the knitting I should be doing ( my DH's jersey), or the knitting I had started a while ago (my Cul-de-Sac vest) but the lacy, frothy little Mystery (aka MS4) I began at the beginning of the month. Ta da...

In reality, the colour is not quite so green and a little lighter. I am really pleased with it even though I think I should have gone down in needle size. I have never before made anything quite so lacy or using such a fine yarn and am rather enjoying it. Progress has been made since these photos were taken and I have almost finshed clue 3 (am at row 120 of 132). The images here show me at about row 30-something. The spinning of the merino/soy silk is also progressing slowly but I won't bore you with a photo more brown yarn on a bobbin.

Spring is warming up and the equinoxal (is that a word?) winds are here, although not nearly as strong as were forecast. The weather this week has been absolutely beautiful - is it tempting fate to say this? Long may the good weather last, though. The weather has made me think of other things, as well, such as another raised bed in the vegetable garden. DH's has some half-rounds he doesn't know what to do with. Told me they were in the way of where he is planning on putting next year's firewood. To me, half rounds = raised bed. Maybe I can sweet-talk him into making it for me? Time will tell!