pinku

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

One of the highlights of our trip was a visit to Liberal Kansas - it's the nearest big city to Beaver (this means it has a Walmart and is home to three major meatpackers....). I had never been so I suggested to Daz that we visit. I mentioned jokingly that we'll definitely have to visit Dorothy's House while we are there. Then much to my surprise Daz tells me that Dorothy's House really IS in Liberal Kansas. So perfect.

When we turned up we took some photos of me outside the recreation of Dorothy's House and then of us as munchkins, but little did we know that you could not only tour the inside of the house but also the Land of Oz for a mere $5 each. Um yes thank you.

Me and our tour guide, Dorothy

Here's a close-up of those awesome red shoes

And here is Dorothy and Toto inside the Land of Oz exhibition

So if you ever happen to find yourself in Liberal Kansas, here is my recommended guide of things to do.

1. Tour of Dorothy's House and Land of Oz

2. Eat Mexican - there's a massive Latino population because of the meatpacking industry.

3. Visit the Et Cetera thrift store - I bought a ton of stuff there

You can check out all of our photos here.

tens of thousands of miles later

We're back in Tokyo safe and sound. Our trip was awesome - we caught up with so many friends and family members. We managed to spend some quality time with everyone. Thanks to everyone who made this trip so special - Zane and Sarah and the rest of Darin's rellies, Shane, Erin and JD, Jason and his family, BJ, Amy, Hogan, Michael and Allison, and Jim. The weather was fantastic - sunny and warm....until the last day of our trip when the weather turned nasty and the temps dropped more than 20 degrees in one night (from 26 degrees celcius to ZERO). We were planning to visit the Space Center in Houston but we decided to hunker down in our hotel room and do some final shopping nearby....I am so glad we just missed the brunt of the terrible storms hitting the US right now.

I managed to knit two hats and a scarf during the trip. I cast on and finished one of the hats on the flight from Detroit to Tokyo. My hands were aching. I knit Darin's hat on the trip to the US.

We drove a total of 1536 miles (or 2471 kms).

We ate lots and lots of food especially on Thanksgiving. There were leftovers for days.

You can check out all the food we ate here.

We enjoyed the big sky over Oklahoma and some amazing sunsets.

We went to about a million thrift stores and I bought 10 pairs of shoes!!! Only 8 are pictured here because the last two wouldn't fit in our luggage. Not to worry though they only cost me $1 a pair.

There are many more photos to come. Still trying to sort and edit them. We are happy to be back and we even managed to go to our buddy Martine's birthday party only 45 minutes after we had arrived back at our apartment from the airport. Just enough time to shower and change. This photo was taken by Martine herself - we look so tired and jet lagged - happy birthday love!

Happy (the day after) Thanksgiving!

Hey everyone,

Just a quick note to say that we are fine and well and enjoying some unusually warm weather here in Beaver Oklahoma. Yesterday was Thanksgiving and I ate....and ate....and ate. It was all super delicious - there was homemade bread, cinnamon rolls, and lotsa turkey. I ended up wearing a stretchy skirt and since the eating was spread over the whole day, I managed to not feel completely stuffed. I hope everyone had a great day.

I've been to Target twice so far (thanks Erin!), about 10 thrift stores and one yarn store.

We'll start heading to Texas in a couple of days, but will be stopping off in Norman, OK to visit one of Darin's friends and to visit Kayne's boutique, Southern Charm - as you can see my priorities are in the right place.

I hope he'll be there.

Anyway, I hope that y'all are doing well....and I'll see you soon in the blogosphere see with LOTS of funny photos.

Big adventure far from home

My big adventure far from home started when I was 17. I couldn't wait to leave and begin my new life in Japan as an exchange student. Today my little brother, Chris left Australia on his big adventure. He'll be doing a road trip around Europe for six weeks with two of his buddies and then he will look for work in London. Best thing about all of this is that he's coming to visit me first and he's actually ON the plane right now. I'm so excited. There's something super duper extra special about family visiting when you live so far from home. His plane lands at Narita Airport in two and a half hours - I've been watching the real time flight information updates.

Here he is at Brisbane Airport with his best friend Ben - Chris is on the left.

Here's another two people that will miss Chris when he's gone - my niece and nephew - Mia and Jack. My sister told me that they want to know whether Uncle Chris'll be back by Grade 3....cute.

I miss those crazy kids like crazy

Two thousand and six!

Hey everyone, I made it back to Japan in one piece except now I have a chest cold. I guess that's what happens when you expose your body to a 30 degree temperature change in 7 hours. I didn't miss the internet or blogging at all - can you believe it? But I must say that since I have been catching up on everyone else's bloggy news, I am psyched to get back into it all.

Our holiday in Australia was, of course, wonderful. We caught up with family, old friends, went to bbqs and parties, swam almost every single day, lazed at the beach, and we went on a one-week roadtrip (Mackay to Cairns) where we saw a platypus in the wild - seriously! On a side note, I am Australian born and bred but I seriously thought the platypus was a much bigger animal - they're tiny (grow to a maximum length of 60cm!!!)!!

Bowen QLD

Brisbane experienced the hottest December on record and I don't think it went below 30 the whole time we were there. For some reason though, when you are on holiday sipping cold beers on big airy wooden Queensland verandas it just doesn't seem to matter. The only thing I didn't feel like doing was knitting. I finished off squarey for my mum for Christmas but other than that - nothing except for knitting a London Beanie on the trip home. Why would I want to knit when I could swim?? Seriously.

We had a great Australian summer xmas full of eating traditional turkey dinner while sweating, playing in a kiddie swimming pool with water guns (well, that was darin), and opening presents in the middle of a murderously loud thunderstorm.

Here's my cutie niece Mia cuddling her favourite xmas present, Charlotte the care bear!!

I was able to don my wedding dress once again for our family wedding dinner at the Merthyr Bowls Club in New Farm. I wish I had some photos for you but they are stuck on my brother's hard drive in Australia. I think we'll get them soon. I was also able to celebrate my 31st birthday in sunny Cairns eating fresh papaya and orange juice for breakfast and spending the day by the pool.

This holiday was full of firsts:

• Darin and I went to Gold Class for the first time (we saw King Kong) - thanks mum!
• We visited Far North Queensland (FNQ) for the first time and had a great introduction when Julie picked us up at Cairns airport to drive us to Port Douglas on our very first day in Australia for a sausage sizzle by the ocean - it was magic.
• Both Darin and I scuba dived for the first time
• We slept on a massive pontoon right next to Hardy Reef which is part of the Great Barrier Reef
• We saw a platypus for the first time but we luckily didn't see a cassowary.
• We did the XXXX Brewery tour - thanks Julie!
• Darin surfed for the first time
• We got upgraded to business class for the trip home (for some unknown but very welcome reason)!!!

Our first glimpse of the Whitsundays from the car

I already miss my family, my friends, the warm weather, swimming, crazy Aussie animals and wearing flip flops, short skirts and my bikini top all the time. I do have some photos from our road trip so if you wanna see them, click below!!

Queensland Road Trip 05/06

Happy Holidays!!

Thank you all so much for your congrats - we had a great first anniversary and being married still sometimes so surreal - a good surreal that is! Santa even came to our house to congratulate us on Monday......um and bring us pizza. How cute is that!

So we leave Tokes today and are flying to Australia where we'll be catching up with family, friends, and doing a road trip from Mackay to Cairns to spend time here:

The beautiful Great Barrier Reef and Whitsundays

Dude I can't wait! Happy holidays to you all! No doubt I'll post a couple of times while I am home.

with much love from pinku xxoo

More about Noo York

So I just went and added all the necessary links to my New York post, so you can find out where we ate, the famous people we saw, where we went, who we visited, who I met, etc.

Quick link here.

I really need to be working right now, but my latest translation is a bunch of IT stuff and it's killing my braincells and creativity faster than I'd like (the jet lag doesn't help either).

So for further procrastination, here are the yarn stores I visited in the US during my trip:

The Yarn Company in New York - I was warned about this store and how bad the service is, but Mindy told me about their yarn sale so I just had to go. Here I bought some koigu (of course) and some Manos Cotton Stria in a dark fuschia - so pretty. A couple of staff seemed nice enough, but the lady at the register was indifferent to me spending a crapload of money there - shame!

Downtown Yarns - this was a small, but cute store in the East Village in New York. I went with Kay and Stephanie and had a grand ol' time fondling a bunch of yarns that I'd heard of but never touched. Feeling guilty about my previous yarn purchases, I bought nothing.

Knit NY - I just popped in here quickly as I was in the area so to speak. Not much was going on and it's kind of out of the way. My recommendation is to just go straight to the Point.

Purl Soho - I made it to this supercute but TINY yarn store in Soho on our second last day in NYC. It seemed chatty and very friendly. I couldn't resist and bought yarn here.....

The Point - When the NYC knit girls told me they were having their meetup the day after Teva's book launch I didn't think I could make it, but Darin convinced me to pop in anway. I am SO glad he did because all of you girls are really really really great (I know that you all weren't at the Point but I did meet you all at Teva's book launch. If I forgot anyone I'm sorry...had to add a lot of reallys). I think I like The Point the best - it's in a great location in the West Village, it's airy, you can drink a latte and stare at pretty yarn in wire baskets on the wall.

I wanted to but didn't make it to School Products, Seaport, etc. You can really only do so much yarn shopping. It really is so much cheaper to buy yarn on the Internet.

In SF, I only went to Artfibers. I think I touched every yarn there. Unfortunately after eating $13 sandwiches (we didn't know they cost that much - doh!) at the 2nd ave deli in NYC and successful thrift store shopping in Milwaukee, I had no money left to buy any of their delicious yarn.

Will update my galleries with ALL of our photos soon. Yet to come are updates on SF, the Napa Valley and being shown around the Coppola winery and the Coppola guesthouse by the extremely funny and friendly Porous Walker who is currently working here - I am soooooo jealous.

I leave you with Darin's panorama of the Salvation Army thrift store in Milwaukee

Episode 2: Meet the Parents

The Bendalls are back safe and sound in Tokes albeit slightly beaten up by so much flying, jet lag and the after effects of spicy South Indian food (gets me every bloody time). I have so many emails to type, photos to organize, work to do, so I may be a little slow in contacting everyone I need to contact. I also need to follow up on the pinku secret hair accessories swap. First I have a story for you.

That's actually a picture of us in Milwaukee where I met my father-in-law and his wife for the very first time. Have you ever seen that movie, 'Meet the Parents' where everything that could go wrong does go wrong when poor ol' Ben Stiller meets his fiancee's parents? Well, I pretty much did a Ben Stiller when I was in Milwaukee. What did I do, you ask?

I broke my in-laws toilet less than 24 hours after meeting them for the first time. Here's the proof:

Read the extended post for all the gory details....

Episode I: NYC

We have two days left in NYC and the thought makes us sad. We love the diversity of the city, the food, the people, and if it was spring all year round - we'd totally move here, seriously. The weather has been almost perfect. So here's a very brief photo recap of things we've seen and done and the people we've met.

p.s. For some reason I cannot insert any links, so they will be coming later.... This is also an image heavy post, so click the link down the bottom for the extended version!!

We met the locals in Queens.

up, up, and away

Thanks for all your help ladies! I think I am going to leave Tina (that's what we call my laptop) here in Tokes. It's kinda heavy anyway and the last thing I really want is to lug an extra 2 killos around on holiday. Now we are three hours away from leaving our house, then we get on a bus that will take us to Narita Airport and that takes 2 hours. We then wait 2 hours at the airport and then fly direct to NYC, which takes 14 hours crossing 14 time zones. I have my comfy yoga pants to wear on the plane, a refreshing facial spritz and some colourful sock knitting. CAN'T WAIT!!

ok. I seriously gotta go finish packing now!!!

I leave you with a pretty pink pic of Joy's gloomy bears. Thanks Joy and see you next week!!

ps Darin left a comment on pinku yesterday:

Katherine says noone will like my jokes, but I made a page of a couple knitting related ideas I had yesterday: www.bendall.biz/stinku.html

Just for the record I did find it funny.