Pots in the Louvre

This is a picture of an ancient container that I took in the Louvre in Paris last November. I love its shape, particularly the spout but I particularly love its colour - so sublte in its shading. I suspect that it the original colour may have been much darker and over the course of several thousand years it has faded to wonderful colour it is now. But of course I am no expert on ancient pottery so I don't really know. Nor do I know its history - its hard to remember anything once you get home - except that I was looking through their islamic and persian sections when I took the photo.

Potted Olives and a new blog

Another of my Paris pictures. These were beautiful little olive trees - obviously pruned to keep them small but as a group they looked so inviting. This week I put a link to a new blog run by Liz Maidment who is a embroidery artist who lives in the near Avignon in the south of France. She does really beautiful work, of beautiful scenes of southern France. She has also been to Australia several times and has produced some really original interpretations of the Australian landscape. Her blog can be found herehttp://lizzie-artembroidery.blogspot.com/.

Cyber Fibre Exhibition

Last year I swapped an ATC with Susan Lenz to go in her Cyber Fibre Exhibition that is currently underway at Vista Studios, Columbia, South Carolina USA. I am amazed and astounded to find out that I have rated an honourable mention for this ATC. After mailing the ATC I promptly forgot all about it until today when I received a phone call from Doreen of Creative Meanderings to tellme that my ATC has received a honourable mention.

I just want to say thank you to Susan for all her hard work in organising the exhibition and also thank you to Ellen Kochansky for giving my ATC an honourable mention. I can not include a photo of it here because I forgot to take one before I sent it to Susan but there is a photo on the Cyber Fibre website.

I also want to say that Doreen and her grandaughter Ebony's work is featured on the Cyber Fibre site and is fabulous - such beautiful colours. You can see this work at http://cyberfyberexhibitioninvitationalart.blogspot.com/ Also lots of other beautiful work by other fabulous fibre artists. Well done everyone.

I have finished my first lesson in Creative Sketchbooks and even though I wasn't too sure about what I did the comments on the work were very encouraging so I hope all continues well with the next lot of work. This picture is a design based on the lesson.

This is a photo of a small town about an hours drive from Avignon in South of France called Goudargues. It is a beautiful little town where you can sit either side of the canal which runs through the main street to have coffee or lunch underneath the plane trees and listen to the water running by. Truly delightful.

Determination still on track

This is a photo I took in the grounds of Blenheim Palace in November 2008. It was a great time of the year to get some beautiful colours and reflections in the photos.

So far (it is only a week) I have kept my new years resolution. I have finished the first module of the Creative Sketchbooks course and sent the material for checking. I am not very sure how well I have done so it will be interesting to see the outcome. Aside from this I have been doing some family history research and have been corresponding with a second cousin I had no idea existed until this week. She has done a lot of work and even sent me pictures of my great great great grandfather who came to Australia in 1839. I am hoping that what I learn from the creative sketchbooks I can use in connection with my family history research, though that, I think is a long way off.

Happy New Year

My new year's resolution is to work harder on my textile and art work, particularly increasing my skills and creative ideas. I have started Linda Kemshall's Creative Sketchbooks online course and have received the first module that I am working on. Its interesting to find out that the more I do the more I realise I haven't done it very well or very creatively and it makes me want to start again. I guess I cann't do that everytime so I am going to work on improving my work incrementally with each unit of work. Determination to improve is my new year's resolution.

This photo was taken at Monet's garden at Giverny in November 2008. It is so easy to see where he got his inspiration to create all those beautiful paintings.