What a Week!

I have just had another week that has been so stressful to say the least, however I managed to get through it. I had a reasonable Good Friday Easter and Saturday playing with metalclay, left Bindoon to travel to Mandurah (two hours drive) to spend the night with a friend and help her selling baked potatoes at a fete on Sunday. On the journey down I was going from a 110kmph speed limit to a 90kmph speed limit and was just slowing down past the sign when a plain police car flashed me and pulled me over. I was doing 104kmph, so $150 fine and 4 demerit points on my licence.


I returned to the farm after helping my friend on Sunday. Monday morning, my farm worker didn't turn up for work, on Monday afternoon he still wasnt around so I looked through the window of his room..........He'd gone........Taken all his belongings and left. No notice, no explanation nothing!


This put me on a spot as I had a student arriving for a five day retreat on the Tuesday morning plus my normal carrot deliveries ( which my farm worker normally did). I phoned my daughter Ruth who lives in Broome, northern WA (two & half hour flight away), to see if she could help me out. Ruth said she could come down for ten days.


My student arrived on Tuesday morning and we had a good workshop with metal clay. She had not done anything with metalclay before but had done a silversmithing class. Tuesday night I drove to Perth and picked Ruth up from the airport.


Wednesday morning Ruth and I were up at 5.30am off to the carrot farm to collect 4tons of carrots(I buy the carrots that are rejects, old shapes etc). Back home by 9am and workshop again at 10am. My student is lovely so interested and so accommodating with my problem.

After the days workshop ruth and I were off to bag up the carrots. This means that the half ton bins of carrots are tipped onto a conveyor belt and from there they fall into a bag, when 20kgs are reached the bag is sealed and put on a palett. We finished bagging up by about 8pm.



Thursday morning we delivered them to the orders and I started the days workshop after lunch.



Friday early, off to the carrot farm to collect carrots for the Monday delivery. We put the carrots in the coolroom to stay fresh and then came back to the studio to do Friday's workshop.



Friday evening was a break and my student joined us for a meal at a local restaurant.



Saturday I had two more students join us in the studio for another workshop. This went well and they made some good pieces.



I took some photos of my retreat student's work and I'll post a photo here. She did really well, she had a good eye for design and learnt the techniques quickly.



Saturday evening I veged out with a glass or two of wine......phew!!!!!!!!
Total exhaustion........

Margaret's Work