Author: Joanna

Let’s go shwopping!

Cross­post­ed from Pret­ty Pret­ty Pret­ty, because I can.

It’s been a while since our last Pret­ty Pret­ty Par­ty cloth­ing swap, and giv­en my cur­rent home­less­ness, it’ll prob­a­bly be ages until the next one, but nev­er fear! If you need to fresh­en up your wardrobe, you can still get your swap on, next Sun­day:

The Big Shwop

• Sun­day July 25
• Venue: The St James The­atre, Courte­nay Place, Welling­ton
• Time: 10 am — 2.30 pm
• Tick­ets: $20 from our web­site or just turn up on the day
• R 18 event as alco­hol is being served
• Bring up to 20 items of cloth­ing

Tick­ets are $20, but because there are strict rules for what peo­ple can bring in, you know that the clothes will be good. Also, there’s all kinds of added good­ies on the day.

Film festival frenzy

 I am not going to see a sin­gle film at the Film Fes­ti­val. I’m not much of a movie-goer at the best of times, and the idea of hav­ing to decide where I’m going to be weeks in advance in order to avoid hav­ing to sit with my knees around my ears in the back row some­where just does­n’t appeal to me at all. But I know that there are peo­ple amongst us who love the fes­ti­val. One Welling­ton­ista has tak­en two weeks off work to attend as many films as pos­si­ble. Anoth­er’s going to see The Room in Christchurch and Welling­ton. You crazy kids and your hula hoops and your mov­ing pic­tures! 

But appar­ent­ly not all is run­ning smooth­ly. We got a copy of an angry let­ter an acquain­tance is send­ing to the fes­ti­val, and I thought I’d post it here to see if any of y’all are hav­ing sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences.

To whom it may con­cern,

I write to you in response to the chaos I wit­nessed this after­noon whilst lin­ing up to buy a tick­et for a pop­u­lar film at the Embassy the­atre. I know it was sil­ly of me to expect to get a tick­et on a busy Sat­ur­day half an hour before the film starts, but some peo­ple choose to make these choic­es. What shocked me was the lev­el of com­pe­tence involved at the box office. The whole thing seems very inef­fi­cient. I have an idea that you may find use­ful or not. Why not have three sep­a­rate lines lead­ing to the three sep­a­rate con­soles using dividers? I used to work at the Embassy and I know they have these dividers in the base­ment. If the lines are orga­nized you can then make things a lot smoother dur­ing peak times. Make one line for advance book­ings, one line for tick­et col­lec­tion from pre-orders, and one line for the imme­di­ate screen­ing. You can even go a step fur­ther by using a sign stat­ing the title of the film about to screen and whether or not it is sold out

Have a wander around some wool

There are craft mar­kets that hap­pen occa­sion­al­ly like Craft 2.0 and the Knack, which we get suit­ably excit­ed about at the time, but anoth­er mar­ket that hap­pens every week­end takes place on Sat­ur­days in the under­ground carpark at Frank Kitts.

Usu­al­ly they have a mix of stalls, food and music, but tomor­row they have a par­tic­u­lar focus: 

“Won­ders of Wool” Mar­ket

Show­ing off the region’s fibre artists, spin­ners, fel­ters, knit­ters & weavers.

Includ­ing demon­stra­tions on spin­ning, weav­ing, cro­chet­ing as well as some specif­i­cal­ly for the kids.

Over 60 stalls, includ­ing:

• Felt­ed hats, scarves & throws
• Alpaca cloth­ing
• Hand­wo­ven nov­el­ty yarns
• Hand-dyed spin­ning and felt­ing fibres
• Cro­cheted items
• Meri­no cloth­ing
• Balls of wool, knit­ting nee­dles, felt­ing nee­dles etc

 The mar­ket runs from 10am-4pm, it’s under cov­er, and the organ­is­ers promise it’ll be warm, so if you’re up for some yarn, you should def­i­nite­ly go along and check it out, not least because my aunt will be sell­ing off her huge stash of weav­ing wool (we’re all about the nepo­tism here, of course).

Eat and eat and eat: win a voucher for Elements Cafe

We already told you how excit­ed we are about the upcom­ing Welling­ton on a Plate fes­ti­val, and now we’re even more excit­ed to announce that we’re work­ing with Pos­i­tive­ly Welling­ton Tourism to help you get the most out of the event. Yes, that’s right, you! Over the next five weeks, we’re going to be giv­ing away one $100 vouch­er each week to one of five dif­fer­ent restau­rants par­tic­i­pat­ing in Welling­ton on a Plate. That’s some seri­ous deli­cious­ness to be had right there!

First up, we have a vouch­er for Ele­ments Cafe. Ele­ments is a fre­quent nom­i­nee in our TAWAs  for Best Sur­bur­ban Venue, and with menu items like char­grilled lamb loin, lamb & porci­ni pie served with truf­fle mash on the din­ner menu, it’s not hard to see why. The ser­vice is warm and friend­ly, the set­ting in an old butcher’s shop is love­ly and the food is extreme­ly tasty. It’s well worth a trip out to Lyall Bay either for brunch, din­ner or their cook­ing class­es.  As part of Welling­ton on a Plate, Ele­ments are offer­ing a $35 two-course lunch, or a $40 three-course din­ner, includ­ing a glass of wine. Yum!

Undo the top button on your pants

It’s time to eat eat eat! The pro­gramme for Welling­ton on a Plate has been launched, and it is mak­ing us mighty hun­gry. At the same time though, it makes us a lit­tle frus­trat­ed, because we’re not sure how to book events, or how much they’ll cost, and the descrip­tions are often quite vague. Still, there’s a lot of events that sounds fun, from Steam­punk tours to mur­der mys­ter­ies, and there’s a range of spe­cial deals on at restau­rants (final­ly eat­ing at Mar­tin Bosley’s is in finan­cial reach!). Also new this year is a burg­er con­test. We dare you to try each and every one, and report back to us with your find­ings. So, you’re tak­ing us out for din­ner then, yes? 

I just can’t get you out of my garden

Here at the Welling­ton­ista we’d like to think we have a fair­ly diverse range of read­ers, but per­haps we don’t cov­er enough of the real­ly pop side of pop cul­ture. Luck­i­ly, oth­ers do so now we’re going to tell you what anoth­er web­site is up to.

This Fri­day July 9, AaronandAndy.com, along with ZM is hav­ing a par­ty with Kylie at the Gar­den Club (Appar­ent­ly she’s now just a one-word-won­der now though, so don’t be drop­ping the M word too loud­ly). 

Come along and cel­e­brate the release of Kylie’s hot new album Aphrodite. We’ll be giv­ing away Kylie posters, copies of Aphrodite, signed copies of X, and what­ev­er oth­er good­ies we can get our hands on!

It promis­es to be a fun-filled night — and don’t wor­ry, we won’t just be play­ing Kylie! — we’ve even got the country’s lead­ing Kylie imper­son­ator on hand to add to the fes­tiv­i­ties, and she’s still look­ing for some hot dancers if you’re keen!

Fri­day 9 July 2010
9pm til late
The Gar­den Club, 13 Dixon St, Welling­ton
$10 on the door, or find a fly­er for free entry 

Ghost in the hall

Over the com­ing week­end, the town hall will echo with the sound of New Zealan­ders com­pet­ing furi­ous­ly against Aus­tralians and Amer­i­cans to build a web­site for char­i­ty in 24 hours. There’s more infor­ma­tion about how you can sup­port your cho­sen team here, but if you’re not into com­pe­ti­tion, per­haps you’re into THE SUPERNATURAL?

At the same time as Full­Code Press is hap­pen­ing, there’s also going to be a Full Code Ghost inves­ti­ga­tion going on at the Town Hall. It’s a grand old build­ing (and also the sub­ject of my first ever Welling­ton­ista post back in 2005!), so they’re bound to find some­thing. Per­haps there might even be ghosts in the library next door…