These little samples continue to appear. From rust marks I feel it was stapled for years in a sample book – some of the others I have collected probably hav been, too. What does not show in the photo is the pencilled number 29.

This little needlelace insert worked on very fine handkerchief linen is exquisite. The diameter is aprox 6cm. Every petal has a different filling stitch, and I adore the delicate little loop/picot thingies on the zigzag cross bars.
I might have to get myself a sample book in to which to staple them all … 

Samples are important to me – to try out new materials to see how they handle is one purpose, but to begin the transition from paper/pencil doodling of ideas and word lists is another….samplising is a stepping stone.
Whether anything like one of these samples actually goes into a work is not the point; each of them tells me something, reminds me of a whole lot more, linking what is in my mind to something I either want to pursue or perhaps don’t, or won’t.
Anyway, this is a little of what faces me every time I turn round in my work room just now. 

This is a very small portion of gold leather on black, somewhat akin to the one I have in Across Australia, currently touring.Wth the leather hand appliqued from behind, I am much happier with the appearance of those segments.

I am tossing up whether or not to quilt more in addition to the grid currently stitched down in perle #8 in a thead which looks remarkably like the same colour as the gold – it isn’t – it’s a khaki, but very shiny.

I have put the whole piece aside, and perhaps putting a fine binding on it might be all there remains to be done. 

Yesterday we wandered into one of our favourite browsing stores here, and right now it is probably the same in many places around the world – easter eggs and other chocolate fancies and novelties piled high to meet the annual choc buying and eating splurge that so often presents as ‘Easter’ , blinding many to the real point of this particular Christian festival. We thought we had seen everything until we came across this chocolate fountain playing as a focal point of the easter egg display. The notice on the front of the fountain warns that the contents of this fountain are for display purposes only, and the stuff is not edible. I did a hand/heat test, touching the outside of the fountain from the other side before I read the sign, and it was quite cold. I am left with the appalling thought that by the time they pull the display down on monday, probably many little fingers belonging to people of below-reading-age will have taken a dip into the ‘choccy fountain’ while their parents’ attention is diverted. Easter greetings from Montevideo. 

I have been tossing up whether or not to put this one up; it has been haunting me a bit. Our guide explained how it is a memorial to all those who were imprisoned, tortured, died in custody or just disappeared as political prisoners in the long and brutal Stroessner dictatorship that controlled the country of Paraguay for 35 years up to 1989. Unfortunately it is an experience that most south american countries have had in their most recent history.

The sheer oppressiveness expressed in this sculpture reminds me that I and Australians of my age and younger, and our children, barely comprehend what it can mean to live through and survive such a period. I have talked with several Uruguayans over the past few years – they do not talk easily about their troubled recent past, and their faces still show fear and sadness while and indeed, if, they do talk.

Walking along the street here I am able to observe and compare the carefree young faces with some of the older ones – every now and then I see a remarkable face in front of me – I hesitate to try to capture on film the suspicion, fear or anxiety that seems to have marked that face. In Australia recently, I noticed how older people in airports, food halls, coffee terrraces and pedestrian malls showed more relaxed, open, and fewer worried faces. And no wonder – apart from a brief attempt by the Japanese up around Darwin during the WWII, we have never experienced foreign invasion, civil war, nor military dictatorship. Despite our pollies’ raucous haranging that passes for debate in our houses of parliament, and the heated commentary on the state of our nation in our media, the ups and downs of Life for most people in our country are due to fire, flood, drought, tempest or changed economic conditions producing changes in the work place. Undeniably traumatic to those involved, but fortunately only a portion of the nation is ever thus traumatised at one time. Australia IS a very Lucky Country.