Tea on Thursday 14 : Water Feature

What other sort of water feature would you expect to find at a tea plantation? This tea pot "fountain" is one of the courtyard attractions at the Longjing tea plantation, in Hangzhou, China. And while most gardens might boast of a few gnomes or classical statues, here, there is a statue of a renowned Tang Dynasry tea scholar Yu Lu and of course a few more tea pots leading into the tea tasting rooms.

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Giveaway - Gifts for You on My Birthday

Giveaway Gifts T his week is blog giveaway time! Last week I celebrated my birthday. I’ve had far too many to count the candles, but I had a wonderful party on the weekend with my family - with an indulgent birthday cake, favourite foods cooked by my husband and great company. ( In case you were wondering about the writing on the cake , Por Por = Chinese grandmother) I also got great gifts from my family and friends. There seemed to be a bit of a theme this year – with many of my gifts and cards depicting matryshoka ( babushka) dolls and tea drinking. As it is also winter here in Australia , it was easy for me to decide what I could offer as gifts in this birthday giveaway. All the gifts are handmade by me. Gift 1 - two little fabric matryshoka dolls Gift 2- a little bag made from colourful teapot and teacup fabric . The design is called a jester bag, but it is suitable for carrying s...

Fish and Sticks : Art Dolls

This week I've been working on fish and sticks .... The sticks are the message stick art dolls which were very popular, attracting some attention and a few orders at the Wise Women exhibition. Each of the message stick dolls are from the Wise Women series, each with her own personality and message of wisdom, handwritten on a handmade timber tag. I gather the sticks during my walks around my neighbourhood and the tags are made from special bits of timber, some collected by me or my husband or from off cuts gifted to us from another doll making friend whose husband makes bagpipes. These dolls start off very simply with a wrap around a stick, in the general shape of a body. 'Naked" message stick dolls - strips of wadding wrapped around found sticks. Then I usually wrap other layers of fabric, wool, and/or fibres, over which I do some simple embroidery. I sculpt or mould small face masks for these dolls. I really like using "sari ribbon" as w...

Arty Places 2011 #4

Newcastle Entertainment Centre became an 'arty place' when the Craft and Sewing Show came to town a fortnight ago. I heard some visitors say that there wasn't much there, but I found lots of fun things to do.... and enjoyed at least two different new arty techniques to try. I did a workshop on paper quilting with Michaela Laurie . I have made a few gift tags, but nothing quite as complex as this example of Michaela's lovely work (image jewelled elephant from the website ). I also purchased a kit for this little container made by weaving strips of Japanese fabric and I amazed myself when I completed it in one night. One of my favourite stalls was Wabi- Sabi Designs manned by Shuji Yamazaki from whom I bought a beautiful silk kimono style jacket. Wabi- Sabi Designs is based in Canberra and has a regular stall at the Old Bus Depot Markets in Kingston as well as online shopping...

Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

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