This is my favourite ever family photo, taken by the photographer from our day trip to the Great Barrier Reef, in March, 8 years ago. Jacob was 12 and Heather was 10. I think I have mentioned before that we took them out of school for 6 months and took them travelling. The fifth country we visited (after Singapore, India, Thailand and Cambodia) was Australia and the kids LOVED it. We stayed in Cairns for a week, then rented a car and made our way down to Sydney. Australia is so similar to Canada and they had been in Asia for a while. Asia was a bit difficult for them, with the constant worry about water and food hygiene. It was nice for them to be able to have ice in their drinks, etc. I think it was also eyeopening and difficult for them to see kids their age begging and working to scrape by. We live in a neighbourhood that, while not affluent at all, is not poor either.

I am primarily a knitter these days, but there was at least a decade where, if you asked me my main craft, I would have said ceramics. I got a diploma in Ceramics from George Brown College in Toronto. It was a two year full time course and I had already taken numerous part time classes when I started. This is a teapot I made in a workshop during my pottery days. It was influenced by the workshop leader, whose name I can’t remember, but if any of my classmates had had to assign a name to it, it would have been mine. I have recently reconnected with one of my classmates from this course. She, of course, attended MANY crits with me and knows my pottery really well. She claims that she could have picked out my hats, because my aesthetic remains constant. If you follow my throwback Thursdays, you can judge for yourself. I am going to go round my house in the future and pick something to show each week.