Hespa and toys

We have enjoyed having our grand daughter Hespa visit us along with her parents, Deb and Caleb. Hespa had a wonderful time playing with some of the toys I like to collect and have around the living area for visitors to find and play.

Where we live

Here are a few snaps taken around the exterior of our house. Although we live just a few minutes from the centre of the city, we have lots of trees, parks and a recreation area close by as well as the beautiful gorge just up the street.

Princes Square

This is another beautiful park right in the city. The centre piece is a beautiful fountain with decorative figures. Today the water was not in evidence although the pool was beautiful with fish and waterlilies.

City Park Cottage

This is the beautiful old building that is the home of City Park Radio FM 1o3.7

Launceston City Park

We always enjoy visiting this beautiful green oasis quite close to the city centre. On this visit we saw our cousins Brian and Jan who were minding some of their grand children.

Pockets & Corners

This is an unusual and beautiful book about Tasmania. It is by Penny Carey-Wells and Diane Perndt. According to the information on the dust jacket :

Tasmania is a place where the hearts are warm and the kisses are many.

Pockets & Corners invites you to take an exhilarating frolic, with an artistic twist, into Tasmania's special places. A traveller searches for the mysterious Thylacine and finds romance, rejuvination and a thousand beautiful treasures.

Read it as a love poem to this unique, heart-shaped isle.

This book is also a must for anybody at all interested in the book arts.

I reconnect with Leonie Oakes

In the early 90's I joined a group of people in Hobart on a weekly basis to work in paper making and book construction. The group was tutored by Penny Carey-Wells (who has recently jointly authored a fabulous book about Tasmania with Diane Perndt, titled 'Pockets & Corners'). Leonie remains an active member of the original group so it was wonderful to reconnect with her at the Text-Isle Textile Forum.

Janet and Peter

Some more friends from the world of textiles

Meeting friends at the Text-Isle Forum

It was great to meet and chat with many good friends who are connected through the arts.

Dorian and Hespa

Family visitors from Melbourne and Hobart.

This afternoon, our second son Caleb along with his partner Deb and 7 year old daughter, Hespa arrived from Melbourne to visit Tasmania for a week. A grandson, Dorian ,who lives in Hobart and is a gifted musician, called in to our house for a short visit to see his uncle, aunt and another red headed cousin (as well as two of his grandparents!)

Janet de Boer O.A.M.

It was wonderful to meet up with Janet today. She visited each of the classes with Jude. What an inspiration she is. Janet is the Executive Director of The Australian Forum for Textile Arts, Ltd (TAFTA) as well as being editor of the magazine TEXTILE Fibre Forum which is an excellent quarterly journal that has beautifully illustrated articles about contemporary textile arts in Australia.

In the class called 'Dolls - out of a box!' with Susie McMahon we continued with refining the dolls heads and then we began constructing the bodies and other details that different people decided to try. Here is an image of Susie demonstrating the construction of hands and fingers for a doll.

Wednesday at Text-Isle Forum 2007

Today was another busy day at the Forum workshops. On the way to class I met Jude who was in the process of creating another of his spider webs to be installed in another tree.

Jude Skeers with one of his spider web creations

Spider Webs by Jude Skeers

Jude Skeers who is a textile artist from Melbourne is attending the Text-Isle Forum as representative of the Australian Forum for Textile Arts. He attends Textile Forums all over Australia. For the past 20 years he has been constructing amazing installations based on the spider web structure at most Fibre Forum venues. Here are photos of 2 of his webs that he has created in the grounds of the Launceston Church Grammar School which is the venue for the Tasmanian Text-Isle Forum.

Some dolls by Susie McMahon