Macrame' Installation

Gather's Macrame (supplied by Spoonful Design) installation at The Autumn Salon event last Saturday night at Aroha. 

The Autumn Salon

The Autumn Salon is a showcase of fashion, food, music, poetry and art for girls only this Saturday night / with new collections in store Zambesi, NomD, Karen Walker, and Me, held at Aroha on Saturday 1st March.  This will be an amazing night out in Napier, + I will be creating a special Gather autumn installation for the night.  More information and tickets here.

New Years Eve Outdoors

Set up camp in greater Hawke's Bay to celebrate NYE and cooked up an outdoor mini feast.  We had sun, thunderstorms, wind and rain then more sun all in 2 days.  Whewhhh!!

Aaaahhh, some time off....

An hour and a half drive north east of Napier leads to the Kaweka Forest where we parked the car and followed the track to the Mohaka River.  An hour's walk opened up to a perfect soft patch of grass for a picnic amongst the wild flowers and kereru and a fresh water pool swim amongst the trout.  Don't have any Kinfolkesque action shots,  but you can see the landscape through my lense. Pretty amazing spot to unwind.

Urbis Magazine story on Hawke's Bay

The new Urbis Magazine has a spread on Hawke's Bay featuring it's famous Creatives and our usual haunts; David Trubridge, Leanne Cully, Blackbarn Gallery, and Mister D's (my morning coffee spot). I'm chuffed to get a mention from Aroha & Friends as; Things To Do in the Bay "Shop at Gather for Textiles and Homewares", amongst trout fishing in the Esk River and surf at Waimarama Beach.

For more than a snippet of Hawke's Bay life, follow the House of Aroha blog.

Mr D

An exciting addition to my street is Mr D, a great new restaurant and bar. The danger is it's only a few doors away from the shop; I'll have to resist the temptation of daily breakfast,lunch and dinner there. It's pretty hard to because a morning coffee accompanied by the Mr D doughnut served with a syringe of foamy vanilla custard which you inject into the doghnut is pretty awesome. The lunch/dinner menu is also provocative enough to lure you back in there again; my favourite dishes so far are the Pulled pork, white polenta, apple salad, fennel pollen salt; and Risotto of braised duck, cavalo nero & pine nuts. The kitchen is open to the restaurant, so you see the roast ducks stacked on racks as they come out of the oven (and the doughnuts). Nice wine list with a mix of Hawkes Bay, Spanish and Italian. Great interior and graphic design; same design team as The Depot in Auckland. This place is making me miss Melbourne less.

Balmy Autumn Nights & Fishing

We're still hanging on to the last remnants of warmth on our balmy autumn nights in Hawke's Bay. We often head to the beach on dusk, throw a fishing line in, light a fire, open a bottle of red, & watch the sun disappear, after foraging the beach for good driftwood pieces. Unfortunately I lost the light before I got a photo of some mussels being cooked on the fire. And we are now convinced - yes, NZ mussels are the best!!