Surely, being picked to place latex outfits into the World of WearableArt competition was an honor. Then being at the event to witness such a spectacular global outpouring of camaraderie, in a word, amazing! But touring New Zealand and then managing a wild adventure on our flight back, this trip was unprecedented in Dawnamatrix history, and as you have read here, we have been lucky to have hit many fantastic spots across the world. I thought Iceland was fantastic, and it was, but in New Zealand, the greens were greener in ways I have never experienced. I must say though that when we touched down and felt that cooler wet air, felt the rain, Ben and I looked at one another and said, “Hey, this feels just like Seattle.”
In the back of our minds as well, we knew runways as much as Hobbits were in our future. So I will take this first travelogue blog and try to impress upon you all that magic that feeds your very body and soul when you get out and about on the Hobbiton Tour.
If you don’t know, Peter Jackson filled “The Lord Of The Rings,” and his Hobbit films, on a ‘living’ set built into a family farm in Waikato, New Zealand. In fact, Jackson’s WETA workshop was one of the sponsors of WOW and awards their own prize at the show.
We took the Evening Banquet Tour. This included a guided walk through “The Shire’s” 12 acres, which for fantasy movie nuts is akin to traveling to Mecca. It is so easy to look at all those hills; the colors, the details of the little houses and imagine you are actually in Middle Earth. I had to catch myself too many times just wishing we could stay there and set up Dawnamatrix studios in one of the wooden-doored houses. You can make alternate fashions anywhere, right?
The tour’s next stop was The Green Dragon Inn, where we partook of a meal you can’t believe (see the picture below). The traditional Hobbit fayre left us stuffed.
At the end of the meal, for a walk we certainly needed after all that food, we wound our way back through The Shire’s paths, illuminated as they were.
I’m not sure the word magical sufficiently sums up this experience, but it was simply another gem in the full crown that was our visit to New Zealand last week.
More about our travels in the next blog.
