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…