Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

Home from Brisbane on Sunday night after a few days in a luxurious hotel with my mum and aunt - a special treat for my Aunty Jeanie's 70th birthday. We were fortunate to choose dates when the Craft and Quilt show was on. I did some great workshops - especially lucky to get a place in Prudence Mapstone's Experimentation workshop and Catherine Howell's embroidery workshop. Other projects were the Shiva stick bag, felted pouch and the fabric postcard. I figure if I'm doing workshops I'm not buying stuff I really don't need - that's the theory but it didn't work this time and rarely does. Here are some photos of what I did in Brisbane.

Today was Hello Dollies in Newcastle - a great group which meets at Anne's Glory Box once a month. Here is my doll ( right) for the Hello Dollies Challenge 2008 - we were all given a "saying" to interpret. Mine was "Love is Blind" and my intention was to finish making this Patti Culea doll I started in a workshop last year ( yes, another unfinished project!) and to add a very ugly boy friend. I had already made his head ( photo left below) - really ugly but lovable! Unfortunately that was as far as I got, so she wears his photo in a heart shaped locket. Love may be blind, but absence makes the heart grow fonder . I made a journal of the process and it looks great. perhaps if I hadn't spent so much time with the journal I may have had time to finish the ugly boyfriend. Anyway, I did think in the end, having a photo in a locket was less cliched. All the other creations were just so imaginative and everyone had researched so much and as Vicki said " this w

The completed classrooms - last day in Mando Me and newborn at Goroka Hospital Our PNG "home" I am starting my new blog to share the amazing experience of being a Rotary volunteer in Mando in the Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. Mando is an absolutely beautiful village, in the mountains about 2000 metres above sea level, and approximately 60 km from Goroka. How did this happen? A few years ago, I met a remarkable woman with a vision, Wendy Stein, who wanted to make a difference and bring hope to people whose life expectancy was the second worst in the world. I promised to help her project to bring better educational and health facilites to this village and last month, my husband Jim and I were part of the Highland Dream team. Essentially, Jim was involved with building three new classrooms - no mean feat without a supply of water and electricity. I established a women's support group and taught classes in jewellery making, knitting and crochet in an effor