Happy New Year to everybody.

We have just had New Years Eve in Sydney with the usual spectacular firework show. Here is a little taste of it. I'm off to bed now but the rest of Sydney is still partying.

The video was put together with the help of the very nice people at the Apple store in Sydney. My trainers were Peter and Max who have such an amazing knowledge of what can be done on a Mac. I have been taking advantage of my One to One lessons that I bought along with my lovely Mac Pro. It's amazing what fun you can have with a few photos and some buttons to press. I hope you all like the finished product.

The Three Tenors

Melbourne December 5 2009

I am at the last meeting of the year of the Victorian Feltmakers in Melbourne. They invited me to come and talk about my work and about the IFA. A lovely group from all over Victoria. I was staggered to hear that there were over 200 members just in Victoria. These r very fine felt makers and so they should be with all that lovely Australian wool available.

Just finished my last workshop before leaving for Australia.

We had a felt slipper day with Maggie, the serial felter, Roz who will only use black and white, Theresa and Vivienne, who had the day as a birthday present from Theresa.

We made a last of our feet using plastic bags and brown vinyl tape and then drew our feet onto brown paper before making a plastic resist. The slippers all came out beautifully. Here is a picture of them. It will be twinkle toes (and cosy toes) for Christmas.

I have just come home after an exhausting two day workshop with the wonderful Jill Denton. She gave a workshop on making a nuno felt waistcoat or vest. We had participants from as far afield as Mongolia, Siberia and Canada.
It was a wonderful two days. We laid out our chosen fabrics after we had all made patterns with Jill's help based on her lovely designs. It's quite a worrying process as the pattern has to be 50% bigger than you want the finished item to be. It's all well and good if you are sylphlike and pixie faced but some of us (and I have to include myself in this category) are well endowed in certain areas and therefore our patterns were frighteningly big.
Once we had got our fibres down on the fabric it was time to start the felting process so we were swimming in a sea of soapy water. Just when we thought that these big baggy pieces of fabric were never going to shrink the magic happened and we all finished with our chosen designs beautifully shrunk and felted. I for one will be wearing mine on the flight to Australia. With any luck the air crew will be so staggered at the beauty (the waistcoat not me) that I will be whisked up to first class.

Here is a picture of the group at the end of a long weekend. Feltmakers rule OK!

www.jilldenton.co.uk

This gorgeous photo was taken by my lovely husband Ray in our garden. He has become besotted with autumn leaves and drives around going 'look at those colours there, look at those colours here." In fact he does go on a bit too much about it. But he is right, the colours this year have been fabulous. This is a photo of the Acer we have in our garden, such a surprise that it was going to turn into a sunset!

She's leaving home

The late autumn weather is turning in. The season of mellow fruitfulness is all but past. The clocks have changed and soon it will time for sitting around the log fires listening to the winds and rain outside.

But for me I will follow the sun. Three months in the southern hemisphere. I'm off to Sydney to babysit and catch up on my nursery rhyme recitations. I am going to visit the Victoria Feltmakers while I am in Australia and catch up on all the gossip with my mate India Flint. I am available to give workshops out there if anyone wants me. Three months without a bit of wooly tops between my fingers is too long. So if anyone on that side of the equator is reading this 'just call on me and I'll be there with love from me to you.'

See you on the far side.

Improvers workshop

Yesterday I gave an Improvers workshop. Although some of my students were completely new to feltmaking they all produce some wonderful work. We made some very pictorial felt using an upside down method used by the Turkish felt carpet makers. Then we went on to talk about nuno felt and to experiment with different fabrics and fibres. I finished up with a felt flower demo over an orange. Here is some of the work that my students produced.

Just had a lesson at the Apple Store at Brent Cross with Grace. We had such fun editing a film clip I made earlier. And then we published it on You Tube. Crazy really. Where will this advance in technology take us? We will probably evolve into beings with video cameras implanted in our heads so that we can record life as it happens. Now there's a scary thought.

Check out my first effort at You Tube. It's called In the garden. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7_R9A1b1dY

Suepearlative jottings

These are the first entries into my blog. It's very exciting to be joining the blogging generation. What would my mother have thought, all those times I tried to hide my diary from prying eyes and now I'm publishing on the web for the whole world to see. Crazy really!

I hope to be adding things that move me, things that excite me, things that please my eye and wonderful things created in my workshops by my students.