Helen: C and I are now the proud owners of Pank crafted knives. Ok, so we had a bit of help, but I reckon we made at least 60 % of the knives ourselves - everything from forging the metal in hot coals and bashing the hell out of it on anvils (C was very good at this part - I was a bit pathetic and the man (with lopsided shoulders) had to come and help me out). Then we made the handles (from late 19th C wood no less) and spent hours and hours grinding the blades into shape and then polishing them. Mine is long and curvy and C's is short and stubby - you can definitely tell which is the girly one and which is the manly one. Unfortunately they didn't run a sheath making workshop too, so our beautiful new knives are now being stored in carboard tubes held together with packing tape!
Other than that we haven't done much exciting for the last few days - Greymouth was pretty grey and uninspiring and now we're in Ch-Ch, which, although not so grey, is also not very inspiring. You can punt on the river, and the botanical gardens are lovely - but they're not a patch on the real thing in Oxford or Cambridge. But...none of that matters too much just now as we have other things to keep us busy - Bob, Laura and Will arrived yesterday :) I don't know what the collective term for a group of Panks is, but we are now it. They are remarkably un-jetlagged and we're heading out of town tomorrow to start some proper sightseeing along the south coast.
Will write more when I've got something more interesting to report!
Hxx
PS forgot to tell you that when we were on the Abel Tasman walk we saw lots of marble. I know that sounds like a daft thing to add as a PS, but I think it's super cool - the whole of the park is made of limestone, but some of it got so pressurised in the earth's crust that it turned to marble, and now there are great lumps of it just lying around on the path - proper white shiny marble with veins in it - I just couldn't get over it, considering how expensive marble is at home - I wanted marble kitchen works surfaces til I found out how much it would cost!
PPS you'll be glad to know I now have another sewing project on the go. After all, as C pointed out what is an old sew-and-sew do do with nothing to sew... (I got some Maori print material to make a dress with sleeves - trying to get C to help me choose which print to buy was like pulling teeth. Getting material was the last thing on our very strange shopping list: pipe cleaners (for cleaning the camp stove), liquid fuel (for stove), red plastic (to help with C's colour blindness - if you look at a red light through red plastic you can still see it; if you look at a green light through red plastic it disappears. V important for sailing so you can tell which way the boats are going!), strong thread for fixing my shoes, some parcel tape and a big laundry bag).
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