In the last few days I have been tearing around getting ready for several weeks travel, to Aus(family, business) and then up to the US (QN07, SAQA and SDA and family) At the last minute a few curly Qs requiring a bit of computer work to settle problems re an exhibition later in the year meant time doing what I had not planned to do! But I did also manage to get some good photography done with avery good Montevideo photographer, Eduardo Baldizan, which will enable me to get slide dupes done (better) in Perth. So, at last, en route, greetings from Santiago de Chile where I am obliged to spend a few hours.

Over the past couple of days on the quiltart list there seems to have been a larger number than usual of people wondering about technical questions and whether or not it is appropriate for ArtQuilters to do things this way, or that. IMHO it really doesn’t matter how one finshes an edge, or whether one burys threads or leaves them hanging, so long as that fits with the integrityof the work. At times the heated discussion has showed how nervous some people are about just trying it and seeing what the effect is….one of my pet peeves being how the sense of exploration, of experimentation, seems to have been forgotten, and perhaps is not being encouraged by current teachers in the quilting world. I thank my lucky stars for having come under the influence of the(late) great English embroiderer, Constance Howard, the english expat Cynthia Sparks and Meg Douglas in Australia – these three in particular encouraged an approach of try it and see…. SAMPLISING, in other words.

I am looking forward to picking up some new Aus books while there, and with this in mind have brought none with me -I always watch at least part of a movie and then go to sleep on the plane anyway, so I’m just catching upon a weekly bit of news reading in the Economist. If needs be I will buy a magazine or book when I get to NZ in the morning. Also, some of my close quilting friends are having their monthly get together, joined this time by myself and Ilze Ivaks who will be visiting Perth next week to teach. It is a long time since I met her back in our Denver days, and I am looking forward to hearing and seeing more of what she has been doing and teaching. Well, what they have all been doing in the last 8 months since I was there.

On the way back I am having a week in NZ with my two sisters, first time it is to be just us 3, sans kids, grandkids or husbands, in 20 years. And so its about time, but we are all so far flung from each other. This will officially mark my 60th birthday late last year, sort of like the Official Queen’s Birthday, which is quite different date from her actual one, which is I dunno when.