A Humble Knitting Machine
The World of Wearable Art
Textile Fibre Forum
Feral Knitting
Exploring with Friends
Playing with Images
Off to Market
The 1990s heralded several exciting new themes in my life. For the first time I travelled to the UK, Ireland and Europe, later to Japan, then a short visit to Hong Kong and mainland China. We continued to visit New Zealand regularly and Queensland whenever we could. Just as exciting and stimulating was getting to go to TAFTA Fibre Forum in Mittagong each Easter and linking up with textile artists. A group of us decided to meet regularly to explore new ideas. I learned the basics of spinning and joined the Canberra Spinners and Weavers.
Discovering the work of Kaffe Fassett in the 1980s had launched me into whole new realms of knitting augmented by the astonishingly wide range of exciting yarns that had become available. But it was realising the potential of a simple knitting machine in Scotland in combination with new learnings in classes at Forum with world class tutors that sent my knitting ideas into orbit and some garments I made to the World of Wearable Art in Nelson NZ.
I didn’t yet own a digital camera but we bought a home computer and I did courses in manipulating digital images. It was time to get a website, the website needed a domain name and I needed a label, Women of Fibre.
On the home front the kids moved out into their adult lives ……….. and visited often. At work I cut back to three days a week.