back from Geelong

I am back home from a week at Fibre Forum in Geelong. A very good week apart from the dreadful food. There is no excuse for lousy food when you are paying good money. I do not like dried overcooked roast meat, lettuce all browned at the edges, soggy veges, over cooked eggs and copious baked beans. etc etc... The forum is probably like any good retreat, summer school etc. Workshops all week, talks and slide shows, traders, exhibitions and catching up with good mates etc.




I finished the first of my Shanghai vessels and started on a second - the construction part is keeping me busy. After I have unpacked and packed for London (the boxes go on Tuesday), I shall carry on working on them. As always when I am away, I have lots of new ideas to draw on. I had an embellisher and a sewing machine to work on and I made an embellisher vessel as well. Now I am thinking I might create a concertina book with the embellisher so watch this space.




this is my embellisher vessel - it needs a bottom but I enjoyed creating it without a thread or stitch in sight. Jacinta was teaching at Forum - a wonderful class to which she let me wander any time I was bored - and they did some dyeing the first day and she brought me over some threads and fibre so I used some of that.

I also got a nice surprise - Linda, who bought a Japanese screw punch from me, had one of the bits simply break up - guess it was faulty - and the people I buy them from replaced it for her. So she sent me a lovely handmade sketchbook to Forum and I have decided to challenge myself by doing a mark making exercise of some sort each day for a year. So far so good. Not involved - just choosing a mark or two.



I also got home to lots of parcels and a happy Ian t0 see me back to do the outstanding orders. It is a holiday here tomorrow (AGAIN!) so I should have uninterrupted packing. One of the things which came was a new book which I didn't even know about - Creative Recycling in Embroidery. I have had a quick look through and I can see it is going to be very popular.

The Weagles (West Coast Eagles) won the AFL premiership yesterday and my plane home was full of lots of very happy and noisy supporters.