Nelson, New Zealand on South Island

 

We spent one full day exploring the town of Nelson.  

Claudine was able to find the fibre cooperative, yarn and local fabric store.  We have a tradition in our family that we frequently get Christmas ornaments to remember our family trips.  They seem to keep the aura of many happy memories with them.  This time we found a hand-felted spotted kiwi bird.  It is also light and won’t break!  

 

 

One of Claudine’s favorite spots were a local yarn shop  called “Cruellas” and had its own line of yarn made from locally grown wool and alpaca; sheep dot the countryside everywhere we drove.  They also had their own line of patterns all knitted up, so customers could try a style before making the commitment to purchase the project (highly unusual, even incredible!).  She exercised restraint and purchased only one small skein of locally grown, spun and hand-dyed New Zealand Merino Artisan Lace in the Wedgewood color way.   

The fabric store had unique fat quarters with New Zealand birds on them.  Evelyn picked out the pukeko as her favorite.

An interesting stop was seeing the jewelry store where the “one ring” from the Lord of the Rings was created.  They had a very kind staff member there that told us all about the ring types created for the movie, showed us the prototype, which they still own, and explained how rings of many sizes were used for filming different sections.  One of them was HUGE!  She let us hold them and try them on.

(Yes, we had permission to take photographs.)

 

Evelyn and Julia loved the bead shop filled with many treasures.  They were convinced we needed to purchase the entire store and ship most of it to Stephanie Magleby and the other section to their dear Judith Jespersen.  They still pick up things in every store we go into and sigh, “oh I wish Judith could see this,” or “I wish I could bring this home to Judith.”  They really miss you Judith; you are their big sis.  This is the heart Evelyn wanted to take a picture of to show how much she loves you!

 

Mark’s favorite stop was the glass blower, Anthony Genet.  He runs flamedaisy glass design, and is a wonderful artist.