Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

It was my birthday last week, so join in the celebrations, leave a comment  and  be automatically included in the draw to win this giveaway. The gift is a plaited wool scarf  and a pair of earrings. The scarf is handmade.  I bought the earrings to support a charity, so am very happy to include them in the gift  as a charity has also enjoyed some benefit.  ,   I will randomly choose a winner on Wednesday 7 August,  5pm Australian Eastern Standard Time. This is not a condition of entering this giveaway ,  but I would really appreciate it if you visited and  liked my Facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/Empress.Wu.Designs  ; or followed me on Pinterest   http://pinterest.com/empresswu/ or  occasionally visited my photostream on  Flickr    http://www.flickr.com/photos/empresswu/ Good luck!

With the weather becoming a bit colder, I decided to finish a scarf I started last year. I loved this pattern when I saw it in a Patons book, and a few of us at one of my dollmaking groups decided to make it - so you will probably see various versions of this around Newcastle this winter.     I enjoyed knitting the flowers and the leaves, but I did not enjoy the sewing up, so that is why the fifteen flowers and thirty leaves were all finished but not assembled. I wanted to wear this to my friend Connie's birthday last weekend, so took a couple of nights in front of TV to sew the flowers and leaves together.   I chose some sunflower fabric at Dollies last Saturday and had a pattern in mind . It's been made up into a little drawstring bag, constructed from a square, folded diagonally, and then the corners are folded in to create a pocket. What I love about this bag is that the lining and pockets are all made in one - the folding means that the outside fabric is also th...

Ever wonder what to say when someone asks what is your national food? Is it a meat pie? pavlova? BBQ? Vegemite? We settled for a lamington , so as not to assault the taste buds too much too soon ... This week, the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar from Japan arrived . Mayuko is a really delightful, confident and engaging young woman who will be studying for her Master's degree in Teaching English as a Second Language at the University of Newcastle. Have you heard of this program ? It is the world's largest privately funded international scholarship program which has sponsored, since 1947, nearly 38,000 men and women from 100+nations to study abroad, generally completing post graduate degrees. The purpose of Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships is to further international understanding and friendships among people of different countries and geographical areas. While abroad,the scholars serve as goodwill ambassadors to the host country, and upon returning home, the scholars share the exp...