2 years later

Almost 2 years after the last blog post, time for a change, time for some new beginning

Jellyfish experiment

Finally I am back to serious working after playing and experimenting for months.
I have seen recently a Youtube video by Yulia Badian showing how to make a jellyfish and it made me to try it out. I bought a little pack of Leicester locks years ago at a Creative Fibre area meeting from Helen Kinsella and thought I could use some of it for that. So I laid them out in a circle as the instruction said and covered the middle with a thin layer of white wool. I don't know which wool it is, some of my stash. I try to remember if I bought some more Lincoln in Germany, it behaves a bit like that.

I laid  a pattern with some linen yarn in

and then sprinkeled some soapy water on after covering in a net and started rubbing

it felted quite quickly and was stuck to the net already when I started to pull that off

then I rolled it briefly in bubble wrap

and found out after opening that the locks started to felt together. Hmm that what not was I wanted and I tried to pull them apart a bit. Then I just rubbed the middle to shrink it a bit and in the end after rinsing I put it on top of a ballon for drying.

Billy the cat looks a bit skeptical. We will see who everything is after drying and what I can do with it. I have to work more with locks to find out how to use them and not get them felted to themselves too much.

End of Summer

Truly summer has ended, last night the clocks were switched back to normal time. The weather is still amazing, hot and sunny with temperatures in the high twenties. The kids hardly left the pool yesterday and played in it until dark.
What a busy summer it was!
After the annual Art Trail I prepared work for a little pop-up gallery in which I showed my work together with 4 other Kerikeri artist friends very successfully. And I had work in 3 more galleries which also sold quite a lot of it.
So I had to slow down the last week, everything had become too exhausting and my body doesn't like that, hopefully more rest and a double up of medication will fix it.
I'd like to focus for a while on the knitting machine again to make some new garments for the coming colder weather. How it looks we will not travel to Europe this winter, the idea of another housesitter nightmare is not very tempting beside of all the madness all over the world. I'm sad not to see my son, but they live their own live anyway and we are not really part of it anymore, hardly hear anything from there and I wonder sometimes about being welcome at all, which is wrong of course. Life is busy for everybody and worklife in Germany is very demanding.
Well I am looking forward to cosy time at the fire in some month, not so much the mess of the firewood and lighting the fire in the morning, and lots of time to do new experiments.

Summer impressions :

a stall at the market in November

Fun painting with granddaugther

a little trip to Kerikeri wetlands

more experimenting on the knitting machine

a trip with the dog to Wharau Beach

finished my felted seascape

Pohutukawa flowers just before Christmas

Christmas party at the Carriage House

The hydrangeas gave us their annual great display 

Merry Christmas!

More flowers 

Billy likes the sun

and Girlie loves her ball

made more scarves

and another felted picture

Got my own car!

just before opening the gallery

The spring wallhanging at its final place at the customers house

Happy Birthday Storm!

First autumn flowers

finally finished the 'Persimmon Patch'

this little green bag was sold very quickly

wonderful pots given to us from friends who moved away

Work in progress

Easter at Taupo Bay

Housewarming party at my daughters new place

2nd Kerikeri Art Trail

Last weekend we had the second art trail in Kerikeri. A lot of people prepared for month and it has been great again. This was my display under the carport

Lovely visitors and lovely comments and even some sales. It has been a wonderful exhausting weekend. Thank you to every one who was involved.

As a preview for things to come all the participants had a exhibition in Kings Gallery in Kerikeri, amazing all the different work!

oh I loved him so much!

Now it is packed away again and makes room for fresh ideas and makings !

Last day of October

A long time has passed since my last post. I had the feeling there is nothing to talk about. In fact, I haven't been very well for a long time. I realize now after I threw out the cholesterol lowering medication how much I was limited by that. Slowly I start to think clearly again and I get some motivation back. I am sure the docs will not be pleased about me stopping the medication, but I feel so much better. I know it would be much better to loose some weight too, then I could possibly get rid of the blood pressure medication too...
Enough about that.

We had been to Germany again for 3 month. It is always lovely to see son and partner and all the neighbors and friends. It has been unbelievable hot this year, for weeks we had temperatures in the high 30s. In fact is had been too hot to do much, so we didn't do a major trip while we were there this time. We just enjoyed the garden, the nice food (always too good), long warm evenings and all the availability of things. Alex started a major project in the garden, the makeover of the planting at the deck

and I enjoyed felting together with the new young neighbor

We visited our usual favourite places

and enjoyed a last wonderful evening with the kids

before going on our long trip home

Now we are home almost 2 month, We were busy preparing for last weekends 2nd Art Trail, which was lovely again, more about in the next post.