New Zealand road trip: Day one

(Unimaginative title, I know. But I figured if I waited and ruminated on a suitably witty title, the blog post may never get written...)

First stop on the trip itinerary was Archway Books: one of our favourite second-hand books shops, located on the way out of town in Pukerua Bay. 

We'd not managed to visit the last couple of times I'd been in the country, so I was looking forward to seeing what treasures they had waiting for me to find. For this reason,  I'd specifically not brought any books with me to read on the trip (even though I knew that was tempting fate by doing that...)

I was in luck. So were The Parental Units. Here's our combined book stack on the first night of our trip:

(Only the bottom four are mine. I say 'only' ironically, as three of them were both the heaviest of our finds, and the most expensive. But how could I leave behind a biography James Walter Chapman-Taylor, the New Zealand arts and crafts architect who created a house we were planning to visit later in the trip? Or one on Len Lye, the New Zealand kinetic artist whose work we were also planning to visit?)

Oh: and that deliciously mid-century-modern lounge? Our Airbnb choice for our night in Whanganui.

 Which contained

 lots of

miniature inspiration, 

Speaking of miniature inspiration: my first miniature purchases of the trip were two screen-printed wooden brooches by Russell Brown, which I found in the Sarjeant Gallery gift shop, and which I hope to use as wall art in a miniature scene very soon...