Abby
LightNews LightNews
banner
yabbya.bsky.social
Abby
@yabbya.bsky.social
110 followers 190 following 95 posts
Loitering with good intent in Aotearoa NZ. I like big books and I cannot lie (actually, any kind is fine). I say very little here. Pics are mine & not AI. Hope you're well.
Posts Replies Media Videos
yabbya.bsky.social
#SecretSantaAoNZ Calling all Santas, secret or otherwise: Blackwell's DO send w/ free shipping, lickety-split! And in AoNZ, Unity send The Cat Operator's Manual with similar urgency. Delighted! Thanks @QueenOliviaiii.com and @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social and also Tom's Mum for the wonderful linocuts.
A brilliant qeek for parcels. The image shows Tom Cox's book Everything will Swallow You (and it's signed!) which Blackwell's shipped for free to NZ, and Queen Olivia III's Cat Operator's Manual, along with some very cute cat linocuts made by Tom's clever mum. An orange cat called Morrie, who isn't supposed to be on that mantlepiece at all, imitates Tom's Mum's linocut (linocat?).
November 27, 2025 at 5:38 AM
yabbya.bsky.social
Santa, remember when I was 3 or 4 & Mum made me dictate a wishlist, & I sounded like a small, materialistic psychopath? Well, thanks for that carpentry set. Soz for so few hints recently. Wd still go a Machine Man. (See alt text for historic List of Demands.) #SecretSantaAoNZ #NotapsychopathIpromise
A picture of a note that reads "Dear Santa, Could I please have a carpentry set, and a Mr Fruity and a Machine Man. I do not know if they will all fit in my father's sock. I will think what else I do want by the way. If they all don't just fit in the sock, you may put some in the beanbag or the wardrobe. Love, Abby ...PTO... ...Don't forget the magnet that you will find at Gourley's and the shovel and the goggles." Like, I don't know what I was planning, but it sounds sinister and my brother should have been very worried.
November 24, 2025 at 6:59 AM
yabbya.bsky.social
Very similar vibe at our house today, #cU6, minus the cute little fang.
Their Majesties Max and Morrie (2 orange cats) deign to grace the sunny path with their respective presences. Not a chore day, apparently.
November 22, 2025 at 2:58 AM
yabbya.bsky.social
#SecretSantaAoNZ Jewellery: I only wear a silver ring and a glass pendant, and have no piercings. Clothes: women's small (eg UK 5.5 feet). I wear (opshop) t-shirts and like wool (incl on my small noggin). Back to books: love non-fiction (history, science, language) as well as funny/quirky.
A silver ring, and a glass pendant depicting sun rays, mountains and a body of water.
November 20, 2025 at 11:47 PM
yabbya.bsky.social
#SecretSantaAoNZ Dear Santa: no stress, anything will be great. I like snacks (must avoid the Tyranny of Gluten, but like everything else), love 2nd hand or vintage, funny books (Douglas Adams, Tom Robbins sorta styles), things with birds or trees on them, or donate to a charity - all good.
This is normal. (Max the long haired dryland water kitty in his happy place: lying on his back on the lawn, in company.) This is normal. (Morrie the shorthaired rabbit kitty sits in a grocery bag. Of course, he also like to hide in boxes. Santa, I don't need any more cats, thanks.)
November 19, 2025 at 6:41 PM
yabbya.bsky.social
Colours? Working towards wearing less Ōtepoti black (but hate clothes shopping. Opshopping, can do). House is getting more orange/yellow/red these days. My brain...I struggle with the concept of 'favourites'. But ok blue.
I love the blues in this very much, I love this painting very much, and I loved my granny, who made it, very much, too. (Full credit to her: Elizabeth Stevens. She made things like that AND the best after-school sandwiches you can imagine.)
November 19, 2025 at 8:34 AM
yabbya.bsky.social
I play music, garden (ok, I weed the garden to make space for new weeds, & just vacuumed whitefly off a houseplant). I cycle, potter, collect dust, stones, and (shamefully, but getting there) unread library books. I dabble in printing & love local, handmade art, esp nature-based. #SecretSantaAoNZ
An etching plate made by my grandmother, of a gullied, rolling, or folding-into-itself Otago landscape.
November 19, 2025 at 7:59 AM
yabbya.bsky.social
Am unfashionably (as ever) late to the #SecretSantaAoNZ party: please brace for incoming me-spam. I work in a library so yes, I have cats and like tea (and coffee...and am not afraid to have 3 beverages on the go, 2 of which will get cold and be consumed hours later).
Pets: Max and Morrie, brothers. No malice in either, although Morrie can be cheeky and has a whiteboard in the basement with physics equations on it. I'm afraid to ask. Normal librarian stuff. (A woman in motorcycle gear with a red cat on her back. We don't really go for rides like this but only because we haven't yet found the right goggles for Max.)
November 19, 2025 at 6:45 AM
yabbya.bsky.social
I'm really sorry for your loss and hope you're not too hard on yourself. We all wtf ourselves sometimes (eg me, right now). I don't know you but really appreciate your presence here - you're bloody awesome. Sending you good thoughts. And a bumblebee, for no good reason.
A bumblebee hangs below a purple borage flower, sipping busily.
November 8, 2025 at 10:57 PM
yabbya.bsky.social
Post you from a different era.

Here I'm four and about to enter my miserable phase of actively avoiding having my photo taken. Forty something years later, I still dress like this but need to get back into stripes.
A little kid with a satchel and stripey hoodie sits in tussock on a sunny day Central Otago day in the early '80s, all smiles.
November 8, 2025 at 3:42 AM
yabbya.bsky.social
We are the table. Or something.
November 7, 2025 at 10:09 PM
yabbya.bsky.social
My favourite painting by my granny. Maybe not for everyone, but I feel lucky to get to see it every day.
A painting of deepest blue (almost black) with a textual circle and, slightly off-centre, a strip of light running vertically, like daylight seen through curtains where they don't quite meet.
November 7, 2025 at 9:23 PM
yabbya.bsky.social
Dave, best wishes to Ellie. Just wondered if there's any update on the length of Freya's legs? Still short? Good. Aotearoa NZ is still talking about this issue, non-stop. Warm regards from here.
A small orange cat, Morrie, sleeps under a blanket, legs sticking out. He says hey to Freya. Hopes her legs are still short and that she got the extra biccies we talked about. A fluffy orange cat, Max, sleeps on a ledge thing, doing a Pteradactyl thing with his front legs. Max also says hi to Freya.
November 6, 2025 at 11:17 PM
yabbya.bsky.social
Last night's moon, full. This morning's sun, bright. Sunrise in Ōtepoti.
November 6, 2025 at 6:15 PM
yabbya.bsky.social
Not a pretty shot but: light, sans tunnel and oncoming train.
Train tracks, meeting at a vanishing point, illuminated in orange by the light from a sunset over hills, with a bank of cloud above.
October 25, 2025 at 8:41 PM
yabbya.bsky.social
Correct, spidey. O is for Ocean and for Ōtepoti and for Oh wow, long weekends are the business.
A spiderweb in a garden on a beautiful morning, with a harbour (I'm a broken record) in the background. I have a friend whose harp makes wonderful harmonics in the wind and I wonder if the wind in this web makes them too, ones that I can't hear. Maybe the spider or a passing bee will tell me one day. Good morning, wonder. Wish I had the wind's light touch. Still. In time. Catch me.
October 25, 2025 at 8:07 PM
yabbya.bsky.social
A cloud-filled and vortexy sky over hills and harbour. It felt like you could be hoovered up any minute. Air and water churn If ever a sky was made for jumping into
October 17, 2025 at 10:01 AM
yabbya.bsky.social
A calm harbour with hills in silhouette and, at the low horizon line, a touch of orange where the sun will soon rise.
September 18, 2025 at 7:28 AM
yabbya.bsky.social
Blimmin' sun's gone and had babies on the lawn again.
The pics don't do it justice but this one is of dewdrop-topped blades of grass, in closeup. The sun is catching in the droplets. The blades kind of look like a cheerful, pointy-headed crowd leaving happy after a show. A slightly wider shot of an unkempt lawn, again with dewdrops refracting the light, looking like many tiny suns. (Photosynthesis: new theory.) Yes I could learn to focus my camera better but that wouldn't bring to mind Pete and Duds and Greta Garbo nearly so much.
September 12, 2025 at 11:42 AM
yabbya.bsky.social
Man I love weekends.
Against a blue sky, a roiling cloud obscures the sun, but a beam of light escapes and an aura is cast. An out of focus photo of water falling. As it does, at a waterfall. Both peaceful and energising. And a wonderful soundtrack. The sun, more or less overhead, seen through a forest canopy, casting beams to left and right. A lightning-shaped schism in a vertical rock face.
September 7, 2025 at 4:31 AM
yabbya.bsky.social
Big Tree at it again. (For scale: it's massive.) Taken at dusk.
A big pine tree against a blue sky at dusk, with a light shining overhead.
September 3, 2025 at 10:56 AM
yabbya.bsky.social
The ride home.
A night scene, with lights reflected in a harbour. Streetlight refracted, looking toward the night sky.
August 22, 2025 at 12:00 PM
yabbya.bsky.social
Ōtepoti, just being its usual amazing self.
A unicorn in its natural habitat (ie the harbour cycleway in Ōtepoti Dunedin, NZ), as the sun sets.
August 21, 2025 at 5:28 AM
yabbya.bsky.social
Big Tree says have a great week. In the '50s my granny took my tiny Mum along to hug it daily. Here it is as Little Tree. dps.otago.ac.nz/delivery/Del...
A view looking up the trunk(s) of some massive pine trees, with the branches splaying to form a canopy. The trunks are close together so it looks like separate trees, but of course they're all one. It's very cosy. The link shows Big Tree when they were little, in the 1890s, in Dunedin, NZ. Big Tree will have seen some things (incl beautiful sunrises and sunsets).
August 17, 2025 at 7:39 PM
yabbya.bsky.social
Wish I could give you more than just a clip of Max singing along to Lou Barlow's Ballad of Daykitty, but here we are, in random internetland. Hoping everything goes well for you and that what now feels like being adrift soon turns into a lovely, cosy, recreational paddle/doddle. 💜
August 16, 2025 at 12:30 PM