countdown

One week to go, and a full on one, party with the class girls on Wednesday then close the shop doors Thursday, packing and carting all the stock and fittings we are keeping to our respective homes. This all with some trepidation but lots of excitement.....
My friday foto, I am all dressed up and ready to go.
This week the Expertise Craft and Quilt fair rolled into town, this fair has been very disappointing the last few years, but Phillipa and I arranged to have a day out just in case it had improved and we where very pleasantly surprised. As usual the first two rows where the same old same old so we scooted down the back and started from there. Lots of fibre art stalls this time and a lot of knitting yarns in silks, hemp, cotton in fact very little in wool, beautiful colours, vibrant or muted, I was tempted, but no, I am not going there. Same with the fibre art, I just love it, but don't want to do it, but I can always find products to incorporate with my mixed media.

I didn't buy all that much but got heaps of inspiration. Above is my purchases, floral papers, a beautiful piece of heavy cotton fabric with lovely roses on, the girl serving on this stall Studio Mio
had made an apron of this fabric and washed it and it has faded beautifully, very aged shabby chic, this stall has all sorts of things for making handbags and I always buy a lot from them. They usually have lovely Japanese fabrics also. Next to this fabric is more fabric, amazing hemp fabric from Goergina Mavor this was her first time at this fair, other than the hemp of which I bought two pieces in different shades of vintage white the indigo cotton piece was also from her. I did mean to go back to her stall and buy some of the gorgeous sheets of paper she carried, big sheets amazing colours, but never made it. On the Indigo cotton some fake cameos, great for fabric journals. Finally a book "the art of polymer clay", looks really good. After the fair we walked up to St Georges Terrace (the money area of Perth) for a bite to eat, the food at the fair is over priced and average in taste, hence heading into town for lunch, well worth it too. We had a wonderful sisters day out, it was a lovely sunny mild autumn day. We caught the train in then walked to the fair, area's we hadn't been before, should of taken my camera, oh well.....

Tomorrow, granddaughter Samara, Joanne and I are going to the Art Gallery to see the exhibition by mixed media artist from Hobart, Patricia Piccinini, above is one of her sculptures, and yes the little boy is a sculpture, isn't it amazing, I am so looking forward to seeing them in the flesh so to speak. I am now going to have more time to do this sort of thing.
Have a great weekend ...

Saturdays

I have a little routine going on Saturdays, I call into the organic shop first to get fruit and veges. The reason I go so early is that they shut at 1.30 and I don't close until 2. Then its onto Galleria to get fresh bread at Bakers Delight and a cup of coffee to go at Aroma Cafe, nice coffee...... I open the shop and as its not usually busy on Saturday I settle down with my coffee, check and answer my emails. My blog is next and check up on my favourite blogs to see what everyone is doing, make comments because its nice to get comments. A couple of hours have gone by and now its my time to work on some art either for class samples or just for meWhen I am being creative I tend to make one helluva mess, pulling things out of this old suitcase (love my old suitcases) matching colours and textures, a bit of old lace here, braid there, scraps of velvet or linen and so it goes on, this can take me quite a while.
Only two more weeks in the shop and we will move everything out in that time, packing up paper packs, fabric packs and old metal packs to sell in the shop sale or have ready to sell at the markets after we shut shop, don't want to just lug it all home, will never find anything that way. I dont know what I will do on Saturdays when the shop shuts, guess I will form another routine, I am such a creature of habit, I am sure i will be quite lost to begin with, however we have Miss Johnson's Vintage and Handmade Market that we run coming up 25th and 26th June and I do want to make lots for that. We will be also selling a lot of our vintage peices from the shop and those I have stashed in the garage at home. Joanne will take most of the stock to her house, she has a converted attached garage that is her workroom so will fit a lot in there. I will carry all the workshop stuff plus the materials for making stock. It will be edging into the bedroom and sliding into bed from the bottom for a little while until that can be all sorted and taken to our market.

Mothers Day

tomorrow is Mothers Day, happy Mothers Day to all those readers who are also Mothers. My mother has been gone about 16 years and I miss her so very much. I was truly blessed with a mother who believed in everything I did (mmh not quite everything), was never judgemental, never believed I could do anything wrong. She made us the most beautiful clothes, show day we always got a lovely new dress, and I felt like a little princess, which was pretty amazing as most of the time I was this ferral skinny kid with wild curly hair and freckles. My dad was a painter and decorator and spent a lot of time away from home painting in the country, this didn't stop mum from taking us out at night, my biggest fears where at night (growing up in rural NZ with story telling sessions with my Moari friends on ghost's from their rich cultural beliefs, water spirits where the ones I feared most), I never saw any fear from her when we walked in the dark, with us four girls that close to her it was a wonder she could walk at all. In later years I realised how patient my mother was, we where constantly moving around, I never heard her complain about it, as long as she had her husband by her side and her four daughters that was where home was, she didn't really get a chance to buy nice home things and made do with what she could but it was always homely.New show dresses, mum and me on the right side with my auntie and cousins at the Gisborne show, see those cool vintage cars.
Love and miss you mum.....