A few weeks ago Michelle aka Arthemise put up a Halloween Giveaway. I love her stitching and have long admired her gallery, so I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to enter and (perhaps) win her work. Lucky me, I won! The parcel arrived a day ago, and I have been very restrained. I wanted to dig into those Skittles asap, but I had to wait for good lighting to take these photos first. Let’s get straight into them… All the items displayed. They all came packaged inside that too cute felt pumpkin bag. To say that I’m in love with all of it, is an understatement. The bag, the...

Holidaying in Mangawhai is an interesting experience. If you go there, don’t hold any expectations like I did. For an area with beautiful coastlines, it doesn’t really take advantage of it. Hard pressed to find any seafood to eat; at the local fish and chip shop I discovered (to my horror) that all the seafood was exported in. Huh!? Mangawhai lacks identity. It doesn’t know if it wants to be known for it’s famous chocolatier Bennett’s, a golf resort or just as a small coastal holiday destination. The local gallery had hardly any work for sale from people within Mangawhai...

I hate blog posts like this, so I’m going to keep this bit brief. I suck at updating. Why? Cause I have too much to write about, so I just don’t write. It’s overwhelming, I’m lazy, yada yada. So what makes things different now? Well I’ve decided to focus just on one set of interests, i.e. crafting. Everything else is an aside that I may or may not post about depending on how I feel. This includes anime/manga related stuff. You’ll notice all the menus have been updated with lots of links removed. While the content is still available on this site, it’s not the...

For the last six months I’ve been working on an intranet re-design project. I don’t like calling it that, because it’s so much more… but to explain the ‘more’ would take me a day (and I don’t want to let on to our competitors what we’re upto!) Let’s just say, that next year, we’re going to own the Nielsen Norman Group Intranet Design Annual: Year’s Ten Best Intranets and the Intranet Innovation Awards. That’s how passionate I am about the work we’re doing. The bonus is that it’s challenging me. Taking me places...

So maybe I should have already posted about my latest joy. My new Kindle 3. Love love love. I’ll post about it in the future, just felt that I had to say this now. Whitcoulls & Borders in New Zealand are very likely going to be closing down. Why? Various reasons. The question I have is how much of that has to do with the competition they face from eBooks? Kindles, Nooks, Sony Readers… so many variations, all do the same thing. Allow you to buy and download digital books to read on a device. Pros? Cheaper – don’t need to pay for all those pesky things like transport, paper,...

Ms. Creativity has struck again and I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking. Jen, Laura and I decided to do a Halloween Exchange together, and on the 31st we met up at the Dutch Delight restaurant for brunch and to exchange gifts. The restaurant was decked out for Halloween, adding to the atmosphere of fun. We ended up displaying our stitched pieces together while we ate, and quite a few people liked what they saw! Afterwards we went back to my place, watched a bit of Supernatural and chilled out together while waiting for the trick-or-treaters to arrive. I love Halloween so much I also...

Question: Does Zeb do anything other than cross stitch exchanges? You’d think I was addicted considering the number of posts I’ve been making about them lately. I promise this will be the… second to last one! The other one is for a private exchange I am doing with two friends for Halloween. I signed up for a bookmark exchange on the Cross Stitch forum, and while I had a great time choosing and stitching this design, I have to say that this particular exchange left a rather sour taste in my mouth. It’s one of those times where you realise that while you may put a lot of effort...

My first biscornu was practice for a Halloween Biscornu exchange I had signed up to on the Cross Stitch forums. Once I had that under my belt, I figured it would be a breeze to do the Halloween one… guess again! The stitching went fine, I picked a freebie design by Barbara Ana Designs called (imaginatively) ‘Halloween Biscornu.’ Enjoyed stitching this design so much, I will be stitching it for myself one day soon. Alas, when it came to stitching it up into a biscornu, I got cold feet. Thankfully, my luffly friend Laura came along to hand hold me while I did the biscornu up, and as you...

When biscornus first came into the scene, I kinda thought “Eh, cute but not for me.” Part of the problem was that there weren’t many designs available, and I wasn’t too excited by the ones that were. Over the years they’ve really grown in popularity, and they grew on me. So much so, I did try making one, and failed, miserably. When I came across the Cross Stitch forum and saw that they were taking sign ups for a Halloween biscornu exchange, I decided I had to give it another go. I love halloween, and the thought of a biscornu in a halloween theme had me tickled pink! Of...

Ever wonder what type of personality you are? You probably know, but are never too sure because you see many conflicting characteristics within yourself. I recently took the MBTI Personality Test, and was classified as a INFJ. Before the results were presented to us, we went through a series of scenarios to introduce us to MBTI, and were asked to classify ourselves. I initially pegged myself as a ISFJ. Apparently this is all subjective, and while I see myself as one thing, everyone else sees me as another. I’ll let you be the judge. If you know me… tell me which one of the two statements...