Sunday, October 2, 2011

The honour and the glory

The Royal Melbourne Show is on. It is where the country comes to town and we all get to understand it a bit more. It means more than rides and show bags. It is a demonstration of living crafts, the skills of the working dog rounding up sheep, the assessment of the quality of fleece, the breeding of animals, and cooking/baking skills.
There are also cabinets of lace work, spinning, knits, decorated cakes that are truly labour of love and obsessions. I have read about how the strict the rules are for the baking entries, the consistency of how even the fruit is spread out in the fruit cakes, the swirl of the colours in the marble cakes, and perfection of the shapes, etc.

I have noticed that the categories for weave have been slowly decreasing and the number of entries fluctuates. The amount of display space gets smaller. As a result, I try to put in at lease one entry each year, to demonstrate that there are still weavers out there, that weaving can be done with fibres other than wool. This year there is one cabinet. It is a terrible photo, the lighting is bad and it is in a dark corner.



However, luck is on my side, and I am proud to say that this year both of the Pic to Picks pieces were awarded prizes. The other entries are beautiful too and I would hate to be the judge.

The P2P piece was awarded first prize and best exhibit in its category. It was displayed in a separate cabinet that was brightly lit. I wish the other pieces could have had the same treatment! The P2P2 piece was awarded 'high commendation'.


PS: I did visit the cat pavilion and there is a 'pat a cat' stand. I could not resist! I do miss my sweetie so much........

4 comments:

neki desu said...

congratulations and thanks!
i guess weaving is declining because there's no instant gratification to it.you're doing something wonderful in keeping the trade in the public eye.it may inspire others to follow, albeit the hard work.

Meg said...

Congratulations, indeed. Great to hear about others who inspire outside our comfortable circle.

sampling said...

Thank you both. I first entered in 2008 and never in my wildest dream would I have thought that I would win a prize at the Show!
I really like spreading the word with weave........
Thanks Meg for organising the Pics to Picks!

Donyale said...

I'm so proud of you and after having seen some of your work I know how lovely your work is.