Countdown time again!

Well, it's that time again. My family has recently been tortured with the "in two weeks from  now" and 'two weeks today' refrain, and we’re about to hit the one week mark! My week was rather enhanced by the invitation to the Australian High Commission in Wellington for a champagne breakfast to celebrate the success of the Australian designers in being selected for the World of WearableArt. The icing on the cake was ‘would I be the speaker’? Errrr, yes! What a wonderful way to start Matts’ birthday, culminating in the awards ceremony that evening!

On Saturday I enjoyed catching up with all my friends from ATASDA, and was much buoyed by their confidence in me and well wishes! It was lovely to see the interest in my leatherwork, as well as in my sample piece from Pam de Groots’ workshop. It was also heartening to hear that quite a few of them are reading this blog! We all enjoyed a comprehensive talk from Tricia Smout on her recent year as Artist in Residence at the Mount Coot-tha Botanical Gardens.  

The Flowers of Friendship Hangings were impressive, as were the lovely works comprising of ‘Grevillea Grandeur’ made in collaboration with Joanna Faber, where photographs of Grevilleas were printed on handmade paper.

Before lighting, the oven was the perfect
place to leave the dough to rise

It was also wonderful to catch up with Janet de Boer for the last time before I go off to WoW and she goes off to run the fabulous workshop programme of Geelong Forum Textile Retreat.  On my return, it was straight into the making of many batches of pizza dough, in readiness for  

the first public firing of the oven for the boys’ 15^th birthday. What a workout! I've got to teach the others how to do this or I'm going to be stuck with it forever! Many fine pizzas were created, and congratulations to Matt for his fine handling of them!

Sunday I got to play in the studio, and with Matts’ assistance created yet another space – this time a photographic area to simplify those times when I need to take photographs of my work. We used some shadecloth screens I had bought at Reverse Garbage with this in mind to create a blockout for the backdrop drape, some beautiful fabric bought of course, from Trads! This blockout also shields my table from the breeze that usually comes up when I am trying to do a felt layout! As does the one now enclosing the studio along the outside of the house. StudioSvenja has evolved again! I still need to work on the lighting, but it's certainly a step forwards! I'm hoping this will make it easier for me to photograph my pieces to put in my Etsy shop StudioSvenja, which currently languishes emptily. That is my task for this rather melancholic and miserable Monday! Can I just say that in one week from now I'll be posting my last blog before we got to New Zealand?!!!