Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

I feel very honoured this week to be featured in the Coffs Coast Polyclayers Newsletter Winter 2010 edition , the brainchild of creative friend, Hector Vera of Vera Designs.  Hector makes fabulous jewellery and teaches interesting and innovative workshops in his Bellingen studio. I met Hector when we completed the Contemporary Clay Instructors Program and we often meet at workshops in Sydney. Hector is far more productive and creative than I am with polymer clay and precious metal clay. I recommend visiting Hector’s blog and I am sure you will agree with me. I am not sure where the last week disappeared… perhaps days of grandchildren-sitting, Rotary volunteering, organising farewells to our exchange student and ambassadorial scholar who are going back to Canada and Japan respectively in the next few days. At least, we have been doing “out of the ordinary” things like packaging up a didgeridoo to be posted, ensuring it met the under 105cm limit. (At least, that was bett...

Riikka Uusamaki from Finland has come to stay with us for a few months. We are delighted to host her as part of the Rotary Youth Exchange Program and will try to ensure that Riikka has an enjoyable year in Australia. I am particularly happy to host a Finnish student as I had such a wonderful time in the south west of Finland in 2001, as a Rotary Group Study Exchange leader, and have such great memories of everything Finnish. We have also had such positive experiences from hosting students from other cultures in the past and love having such special young people as part of our family even for a little while. We met Riikka when she came to Australia last July, and have taken her on a whale watching cruise from Nelson Bay (only one whale sighted that day) and spent time with her at various Rotary functions and meetings. Many thanks to our friend, Pam, who was Riikka's first "host mother ' for organising so many things like school, bank accounts, health card etc for Riikka in...