Hobbies more recently.....

In my fifties

Floral Art – Gael and I went to Floral Art classes once a week for about 5 years: Katrina and Marilyn came some of the time too.  It was an ideal activity – even though we were all busy with BCMA things – it was so relaxing to focus on the arrangement and then take it home afterwards!  Our teacher was so good at guiding and  encouraging us: we even did a demonstration one year at the Royal Easter Show!  As a result I did the church flowers once a term for quite a few years, arrangements for Emmaus Weekends and also helped with a number of wedding arrangements.

A groups of us who had become friends through the BCMA held our first meeting of ‘Serendipity’ on November 23^rd 1998. Then we met every Monday morning in term time: a number of us wanted to learn different crafts and each of us had a skill which we passed on to the others – it was great fun and we also raised money for Bear Cottage.  We dabbled in mosaics, cross-stitch, French-knot embroidery, ribbon embroidery, candle-wicking, folk art, decoupage and patchwork.  As a result of trying the folk art with Marilyn, I agreed to go with Gael to classes at Edgeworth David Hardware shop in September 1999.

Folk Art – I continued doing the classes for the next five or so years (Gael gave up after a term!): Jenny was such an excellent teacher and I really enjoyed her classes….. I was able to try lots of different styles of painting with Jenny’s patient help.  As well as paints, brushes and pattern books the Folk Art section of the shop also stocked decoupage papers, and we learnt how to include that into our painted articles: and I also found out how to do decoupage with good quality paper serviettes.

Patchwork and quilting – I did a course in machine quilting; experimented with a number of different blocks and made a quilt-as-you-go flying goose quilt.  In May 2003, I stayed with my parents in Frome as Mum recovered from a broken hip: during that time I used Mum’s little Husqvarna sewing machine and made a quilt for her to go with the cushions that were on the settee in their living room: it had hearts appliqued onto diagonal squares.

Photography – Vern bought a digital Kodak camera on one of his trips in 2000, but it only worked for a  couple of years.  I bought my first digital camera, an Olympus, duty free on my way to the UK in April 2003.   Before that I enjoyed taking photos, but with the instant feedback of a digital camera it was much more fun – and much easier to go on taking photos until you had a reasonable shot!  That was, as long as you weren’t trying to capture a special moment with one of the grand-children.  Although they caught on pretty quickly to the fact that the photo showed up on the back of the camera – so after a ‘big smile’ they’d say “show me, show me”!  Compare that with my parents’ reaction – Dad had been a very keen photographer since his late teens, but had slowed down considerably before digital cameras… when I showed him the image on the camera screen of him and my mum taken a few moments before, his comment was ‘Don’t believe it!”.

In my sixties

Interior Design – During the year that the house was being built at Wingham my painting, patchwork, wool etc were all stored away—just as well given the humidity of living on the coast at Old Bar.  (I did go to some classes though and learnt to do heat-embossing!)

About the only ‘hobby’ I had was the planning for the new house as we worked out bricks, roofing, tiles, windows, doors, curtains, blinds etc.  I also spent a few months working out the paint colours for the various rooms in our new home, using numerous sample pots testing them on small canvases—one for each room.

Sewing and Knitting—I did a bit of both of these as we settled in to our new house: made a quilt for Owie and also finished off a quilt-as-you-go log cabin pattern quilt for Jake’s cot.  However I had problems with my left eye in 2010 and found it difficult to sew for long periods of time.

Scrap-booking – I had started making Christmas gift tags in December 2004: then when I needed more supplies I went to the scrap-booking shop in Hornsby which offered a course in January: I didn’t have much else planned so I signed up!  (Despite having looked at my daughter’s albums the previous year and commented that this wasn’t something I wanted to do!)

It was so much fun so I did another course in North Turramurra at the Scrapbooking Burrow.  I ended up doing a number of courses there that year and thoroughly enjoyed them.  Looking back at those layouts now I wish I had been more disciplined with myself – I still like the competed ones, but I left a lot without journalling or titles, and now they seem so incomplete!  However during that time our friend Marilyn got married and a group of us made an album which we gave as a surprise present to Marilyn and Murray – and I had been in charge of organising that.  I think that was a good challenge to do because I set myself higher standards – doing it for someone else, and I think I surprised myself at how well it turned out!  (I even did a smaller version for myself using the same photos and similar layouts!)

After we moved to Wingham I was excited to find a scrap-booking shop in Wingham  and another couple of shops in Taree—as well as Spotlight.   Soon afterwards on one of my visits to Sydney I saw Beth’s scrap-booking album and found out she was a demonstrator for Stampin’ Up: I joined up in June 2009 and never regretted it—I found their combination of co-ordinating colours, stamps and punches made it so easy to make layouts that ‘worked’.  I did a few courses at Scrapsidaisy, but I also started having ‘classes’ in my craft room, teaching the basics.   I signed up to Big Picture Classes and found their courses very satisfying, and a great encouragement to develop my own style.

I have found this a very satisfying craft – combining design, journalling/story-telling, texture, colour, and photography – and family history, too.  It worked very well with my eye problems, too, since it doesn’t need you to be constantly focussing at the same object or focal length, so my eyes don’t get too tired.  But I have to confess that I have accumulated quite a lot of supplies…. I console myself that my daughters at least, will benefit eventually!!