New Zealand Dreams Come True
We are home and settled in at last - the last bits of jet lag are fading away (sort of trying to speak that into existence). They warned me that it would be about a day for every time zone crossed and they weren’t kidding! I don’t know how world-travellers do it on the daily.
I wanted to thank everyone who sent such nice comments and thoughts to us as we went on our trip; we were so pleased that folks wanted to follow our journey. I thought someone pulling out their vacation scrapbook was supposed to be a social faux pas, but nonetheless you were all so supportive and kind!
Since not everyone is on social media (good for you all honestly, you haven’t missed much) I figured I’d do a quick run-down on our days in the land of the long white cloud, and I’ll share the yarn goodies I got as well as some perspective on the sheep industry I gained while I was there.
It takes a couple days to get to New Zealand, which is distinct and quite a distance from Australia (they’ll have you know). Our trip required driving about 7 hours to even get to the airport to get us there! So you can imagine by the time we got there, we were quite exhausted. But I landed in New Zealand on my birthday, and every moment afterwards felt like some sort of dream. As promised, shortly after leaving Wellington we were met with sheep, sheep, sheep! SO many sheep. My favorite sheep I think was the one I saw in a very normal, postage-stamp, suburb yard sitting near the patio with a big bow around its neck.
The first challenge involved getting the hang of driving on the “wrong” side of the road. I typically don’t drive in towns to begin with, let alone completely backwards. This was my greatest worry in planning the trip, and I won’t say it was easy but I did get the hang of it eventually. It felt like when I first learned to drive all over again, except worse because if I ever relaxed, muscle memory wanted to take over! I was shocked to discover before the trip was over I drove 1,000 miles! During that time I only got mixed up once, when I had to pull into a driveway and back around - that was when I really had to fight years and years of driving. The speed limits are very high on twisty, mountain roads. Even as I got comfortable driving, I couldn’t drive as fast as the posted limits, much to the chagrin of every kiwi behind me.
Many folks on travel forums told me I was silly for going all that way and not seeing the South Island. And they were probably right - that’s where most of the magnificent fiords, waterfalls, and mountain ranges are. But the North Island has plenty to offer as well, and I was amazed at just how much of it I was able to cram into a relatively short period of time.
A woods Pigeon
Our first full day in New Zealand, we visited the Puhaka bird sanctuary not far from our motel. This was a fabulous stop and really felt like we got to experience the forests and animals in this way. My kids sent me on a mission to see as many native animals as possible. The story of New Zealand’s native animal population is a sad one, but with a silver lining. It is estimated that 70% of the birds were endemic only to NZ, but many species were lost with the relatively late arrival of humans (and the predators they accidentally brought with them). Some species once thought extinct have been brought back to life, and predator control is a hot topic.
The plant life has a similar story - we threaded our way twice through the incredible Rematakas, and our taxi driver told us that once the hills were covered in invasive gorsebush, but through replanting efforts it had been restored to “native bush” which is a mystifying mix of pines and palms. The whole island felt like all the biomes of the world condensed into one place. There were jungles, mangrove swamps, volcanoes, pines, plains, beaches, “deserts”, alps…you name it!
Ted talked knitting, wool, and Ravelry with us.
While sitting and knitting there, we met a man who showed us the socks his wife had made, and we were able to connect on Ravelry with her. She gave us some yarn shop and mill recommendations, and my hunt for New Zealand yarn began.
The next day we went to Castlepoint for my first real look at the Pacific. Despite all my complaining about the driving, to be honest the drives themselves are part of the treat, because they take you past beautiful, green, hills covered with sheep and cattle, storybook trees and forests, and innumerable hamlets with fairy-tail charm. If you’re someone who likes hiking, New Zealand is a treasure trove. But there are also plenty of accessible sites as well that can be seen from the car.
Castlepoint was one of those - a beautiful sandy beach with a white lighthouse that sits along a large and remote sheep station. There is a small “chip” shop with surf and fishing gear, and not much else besides a few kindly residents and stunning natural beauty. I got to sit under a tree here and knit some socks and read the Lord of the Rings…idyllic!
The next day was a crisp and rainy sort of early-fall day, and we did some yarn shopping around Masterton. The town we stayed in was very much where “real people” live - it’s not typically a tourist destination. The rental car man told me interestingly that Peter Jackson lives in Masterton. His house is apparently surrounded with a Mordor-like gate, but I resisted the urge to be the type of person that goes and drives by a famous person’s house!
Anyway, we discovered some delightful yarn shops right in town, and it was also nice to see how all the local shops had put out displays in honor of the Golden Shears. The exchange rate to US dollar is about 40% - so it was really tough not to clean out all the shops! As it was, we just barely got all our stuff home with the added fluff!
I spoke with Diane at the Embroidery Shop, a charming little store where I picked up lots of treasures. She was so helpful in explaining the wool industry in New Zealand. You see, I was in hopes that I may stumble upon just the perfect little woolen mill, a Pacific version of Briggs and Little that offered a different sort of yarn that would make it worth the shipping across the world for us to try. I envisioned, with all those sheep, that there would be lots of mills that would fit the bill. But they unfortunately have the same issues we have here - plenty of wool, plenty of people that want yarn, and not enough mills to process the yarn in a cost-effective way. While she was able to give me a couple leads, unfortunately the majority of wool is shipped to China for processing, and then sent out as either knitting yarn as we know it, but mostly in the many other forms in which wool is used in the world, from insulation, to fabric, to rugs.
Side note - what’s the issue with that? Well, certain countries have more rigorous environmental and (most important to me) humanitarian regulations than others. Although I don’t judge folks who do, I personally would feel conflicted selling a main product where I couldn’t guarantee that the product is free from forced or underpaid labor.
On this day my Dad was able to go practice judging at a sheep station near the beach with team Mongolia. Some of these sheep stations are massive - one the team went to had 11,500 sheep.
The thing that struck me the most was how normal it all is to folks that live there, and I love it! Agriculture is not a novelty there, it is so predominant that it’s commonplace, even trite depending on who you ask. The stereotype that sheep and cattle are everywhere is not exaggerated at all, and the animals enjoy the lack of predators and year-round grazing.
Because of this, there are big businesses surrounding every aspect of the sheep industry, from shearing, breedings, fencing, soil maintenance, butchering, lambing, even data analytics - all the things that in most of the world the shepherd is expected to take care of himself, can be contracted out. It struck me that the job of owning a flock of sheep may look more like an office job: primarily organizing who is supposed to be doing what and when. It was interesting to meet people who could be so specialized in just one corner of animal care, and contrast it with others who (like us) have to be “jacks of all trades” to keep their flock alive and thriving (and turning a profit).
By and large the advertising and billboards where we went were agriculture-related!
But despite the joy at discovering a thriving sheep industry after hearing for years about the declining American farmer (a topic that comes up a lot in our book club books), the locals informed me that New Zealand is also experiencing dropping rates of farming. The 20 million sheep currently residing on the islands represents a decline from the 70 million that used to live there in the 80s. It added a bittersweet edge to the joy of seeing millions of sheep with my own eyes.
The days went by quickly, and soon my Mum and I were off on an adventure - something very out of my wheelhouse - heading north to a bed and breakfast with a checklist of sights to see on the way. We were warned on the travel forums to avoid what’s called the Desert road, because - horrors - it may snow. I understand the caution though, it seems they don’t tend to snowy roads because they are infrequent, but rather gate off the whole pass. We missed all the snow though, and were treated to the beautiful sight of Mount Ruhepeka and Mount Ngauruhoe . The “desert” was an interesting mix of low scrub and beautiful, purple, blooming heather. I had never seen a volcano before, and I have a sort of morbid fascination with them. This perfectly conical one starred in the Lord of the Rings films as Mount Doom!
Mount Ngauruhoe
Mount Ruhepeka hiding her head.
After driving by Lake Taupo, the next stop was one of the most visited spots in the country, and for good reason. Huka Falls is an ethereal blue mass of rushing water, and we were enchanted. We spent some time there knitting and got a few approving nods. I consider myself to be hopelessly romantic when it comes to trees and grass and water, so this place brought me to tears. Not sure what all the other tourists thought but oh well!
Although we didn’t stop at any of the geothermal spots, we could see the steam from them on our drive. Overscheduling was a fear of mine, but we were surprised at just how much we were able to see on a tight timeframe.
Knitting Shark Socks (you know the ones that look like they're biting your leg?) for Elsie in the garden at our Bed and Breakfast which you could tell the owners poured all their love into maintaining.
We made it to our bed and breakfast, the Rose Lodge in Tirau and met our hosts, very nice kiwis with a gorgeous sort of quirky-victorian-themed room. This is a great place to stay near Hobbiton and Putaruru Blue Springs by the way.
The next day was hobbit day!! Now I must say, this was the first place we went that was really “touristy”. If you’ve traveled a lot you may know what I mean by this. It typically entails being packed in tightly with people of varying levels of social awareness, paying inflated prices, and being hurried past the sights. I realized (while standing there as the only one dressed in hobbit garb) that most of the people there had stopped at Hobbiton as a part of a tour group, and were not making a "pilgrimage" as super fans.
Don’t let me discourage you if you want to go though, because despite these things the experience was delightful. The buildings were incredible, the flowers and plants were enchanting, and the food was wonderful. In fact, this was the first moment I felt homesick, because the messy vegetable gardens and sheep wandering by felt so much like home. Perhaps the real shire is the gardens and houses we call home after all (aww).
In the homes they had built for people to tour, there were so many little knitted and woven things, and even a hobbit hole that was the dyer’s home, with strips of knitted swatches dyed with natural dyes. Who volunteers to live here?
After our hobbit feast of roast lamb, Mum retired to our room and I went on a solo hike to see the Blue Springs in Putaruru. This was the first time I had solo-anything in a long time! This, too, was such a serene and peaceful spot. I spent time knitting on the bench and overlooking the water that is so pure it looks brilliant blue.
The next day was certainly adventurous, we travelled to Waitomo which was a very dairy-filled region, and went to the underground glowworm caves! We were not allowed to take pictures, but I’ll include a couple taken from their website to show you. The caves themselves were filled with speleothems and an underground river. It was a totally unique experience for sure.
The rest of the day was spent doing a LOT of driving. But again, the scenery made the drive wonderful. My only dissonance was that I felt like at any given spot I could have taken my knitting and spent hours just sitting in the grass and watching the sheep and soaking it all in. To be forced to speed past all these little spots was difficult to bear! That being said, I got plenty of knitting time in wherever we went.
But move on we did, and the rest of our trip was filled with Golden Shears commotion and excitement. The stakes are very high for this competition! As I said before, sheep are not a cute novelty in New Zealand, but a big business. There are shearing contractors for whom trophies won at shearing competitions are akin to money in the bank, not to mention notoriety. For New Zealand, this is the NLF or the NBA. This is partly why I was very proud of my Dad for being calm and precise and really knowing the rules well under pressure and extremely long days.
My Mum and I did get a few chuckles here seeing what was a good slice of, as New Zealanders had put it, “true kiwi culture”. At the stadium, you might imagine they would sell hot dogs, pizza, or popcorn. But no, everyone was lining up for jam on toast and they were selling them by the hundreds. If you were in for something heartier, you could also get some sort of dry, chipped beef also on toast. Although I will confess - we were all quite done with “chips” (fries) before it was over. Just about every food you ordered included them. We did find some Pua (abalone) and it was delicious! Like our clams but way bigger.
This is a children’s playground made with fages of wool.
Within the shearing competition, there was also wool handling. This I found very interesting, because they have a type that really doesn’t come up too much here. Because the weather is mild, they will often have what’s called second shear. These are shorter fleeces that don’t hold together like a full fleece, so the method for baling them is different. It involved taking the wool and fluffing it very animatedly over your head until the wool is fairly uniform. It was quite fun to watch.
Full fleece wool handling is more what we’re used to - removing the second cuts and dags, classing the fleece parts based on where they came from on the sheep, throwing the fleece and gathering it up.
There were plenty of heart-pound and heart-warming moments in the competition. Team Japan, where the entire country only has 11,000 sheep, had worked very hard to put together a team that had enough practice to compete. They were very inspiring! Team Mongolia had up until a few months before the competition been using scissors to shear because that is what the nomadic shepherds had access to. Folks from New Zealand had helped them get blades and machine shearing machines. And of course there is the traditional Maori Pakeha competition - where teams of Maori and White shearers compete to show the spirit of unity on the islands. Over the course of the whole competition, 7,000 sheep were shorn!
After the excitement of the competition had passed, we had Sunday with nothing on our schedule. Part of me wished I had tried to schedule a ferry trip over to the south island after all, seeing as how we were able to fit SO much into our time there. We bookended our trip by going back to Castlepoint for a few hours, and taking in the laid-back, very quintessentially-Pacific feel of it all one last time.
That night, I had happened on a “star safari” on Google maps and decided to give it a go. My Dad and I set out to the middle of a sheep station down a winding dirt road where two scientists at Milky Way Kiwi had very large telescopes set out. Now, the exciting part was, we were able to see parts of the night sky we can’t see in the northern hemisphere! We found the southern cross, the “gems” and the “jewels”, Alpha Centauri, and so much more. It was a great way to end our time there. And who should pop out in the road, but a brushtail possum. My children had also put one of these on my list of “must see animals” so I was glad to check it off!
The next three days were spent travelling back home. The journey, of course, felt much longer now that the adventure lay behind us. But we made it with minimal travel drama (there’s always something isn’t there?) We had a long layover in LA that was made longer by plane breakdowns. However, I happened to sit next to a lady who had recently learned to knit from New England. We swapped knitting lore for a long while. It sure does make the world feel smaller! After lots of hoops to jump through, we were welcomed home happily by all our folks and animals.
Now, while I was there I knit three pairs of socks! Some of them are future patterns so they are hush-hush for now. But I also got some yarn while I was there, and I want to emphasize again what great self control I have for not buying it all. My Mum exhibited slightly less, and bought a spinning wheel directly from Ashford!! She only has five so it really was a need. We fit it in my suitcase, which did result in me hurriedly stuffing all my clothing into my Dad’s suitcase at the airport, but the important part is the wheel made it home safely, and with the exchange rate and no shipping she got a stellar deal.
I picked up a sweater quantity of Possum fur yarn for Elsie. I did NOT buy enough…but I have modified the pattern and HOPEFULLY will make it. I have a few options if I’m short, but I really hope it will just work out perfectly. I bought yarn based on the yardage for a Flax sweater (a little trick of mine when I want to buy a sweater quantity but I'm not sure how much I'll need) but the sweater she chose is one of those ones that is SO popular right now - rolled neckline with saddle shoulders and a loose body and sleeves...yarn eaters haha. But so cozy!
I also got this yarn to work on a sweater idea I have always had and never made. I want a black sweater with a tree of Gondor in white on the front. I figured it would be neat to make it with New Zealand yarn! I did buy more than pictured here.
This pink stuff I saw and, since my youngest is a fan of Gabby’s Dollhouse, it instantly reminded me of her pink chenille bolero and I thought how fun would it be to make her one. It is audaciously pink which is right up her alley. They haven't invented a shade pink enough to satisfy her. Quite the contrast to my oldest daughter whose favorite color is a slate blue.
I also got this fleece at The Wool Shed, which was a great little museum in Masterton. It is a Romney, which by and large the sheep there are either Romneys, Perendales, Corriedales or other strong wool/dual purpose breeds. I only saw one Merino flock (aren't they funny chaps?) but I am sure there were more somewhere.
I got these yarns in a sweater quantity as well. Very nice strong wool.
There were a lot of other goodies I got for the expressed purpose of giving away to you all in giveaways (have to call them drawings now on social media or the scammers will find me).
So did I find a New Zealand wool to carry? Well, not yet, although I did find a few leads. If anything comes of it - well you’ll be the first to know! I'll leave you now with just a few extra of the millions of pictures I took. Again, I can't say it enough - THANK YOU! You were all so patient with my hubby while I was away, and made this trip possible with your yarn purchases.
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