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

Susie Demonstrating the modelling of facial features

Text-Isle Forum 2007

Yesterday was the first day of Text-Isle 2007, a week long series of workshops that are being held here in Launceston. The workshops have been organised by Adult Education Tasmania and the Australian Forum for Textile Arts. More than 140 people are enrolled in the 11 different workshops. I have always wanted to take a class in doll making with Susie McMahon who is a very gifted doll maker from Tasmania. I was lucky enough to obtain a place in her class and today was the first actual practical class. We spent the day making heads for our dolls from Paper Clay which is a special product made to use for making doll heads.

Launceston's Cataract Gorge

We returned to Launceston, and after having some lunch, we decided to visit the Cataract Gorge which is located between the city centre and our suburb, Trevallyn. Today, the Gorge was the site of the Australian Extreme Kayaking Titles. It was very exciting watching the competitors race through the surging water avoiding huge dolerite boulders.

Evandale

This morning we decided to go to the Market at Evandale. It is held every Sunday at the beautiful village that is located near the Launceston airport. It is an excellent market with all kinds of stalls including fresh fruit, vegetables, garden plants, preserves, cut flowers, trash and treasure , antiques etc. It was a beautiful day. After exploring the market we called in to look at an old church and graveyard on the main street . I particularly liked the naive style of a small angel carved in stone that sits on the top of a headstone in the Church yard.

Raphael is 36

Today was Raf's happy 36th birthday. He is our third eldest child. His birthday reminds me that 36 years ago we moved from Launceston to live in Madang, Papua New Guinea, where I lectured in Art Education for 3 years.

The second photo was taken on the Fox Glacier in New Zealand in December, 1971. We were on our way from Papua New Guinea to Tasmania for the summer holidays. Raf ( on my knee) was about 11 months in this photo. The other two children in the photo with me are Toby (now 38) and Caleb (now 37).

Dinner with Colleen

Our friend Colleen invited us to join with her and some other friends for dinner at her home in Trevallyn. She was using a new rice cooker for the first time, so she enlisted our help. Happily the rice turned out beautifully and we had a very entertaining evening.

Lunch with Alf, Hilde, Nick and Tahirih

Tahirih and Nick joined Nick's parents, Alf and Hilde for lunch at our place. They were on their way to Devonport to take the ferry back to Melbourne after having spent some time over the summer holidays with Nick's parents.

Edie

Our youngest grandchild is Edie. She enjoyed dressing up in her special fairy costume and had several rides on our old rocking horse. She also spent time playing with her new Xylophone.