We have been alpaca breeders since 1998 and very much enjoyed our time with these beautiful and intelligent animals. Recently we have sold most of our herd, keeping only a few old friends for company on our farm. We are located 15 kms from Marulan in the southern tablelands of NSW.
From the beginning I have had a particular interest in alpaca fleece, learning to spin at a weekend workshop and enjoying this very much. I have knitted since I was in primary school, a skill I learned from my mother and grandmothers.
Today I knit most days from my stockpile of alpaca yarns, both hand spun and commercially spun and mostly from our animals. I only process the very fine fleeces so the yarn is very soft and lovely to wear. I hand dye most of the coloured yarn from our white fleeces, although I use a lot of natural coloured fleece as well. Mostly I knit hats, beanies and scarves, a selection of which appear for sale on this website. If you have a special request for a colour or type of hat or scarf please call me on 0248415025 and I will try to assist.
From a young age I have frequented galleries as we had a few artists in our family. I have enjoyed drawing and painting over the years, but time was always in short supply and the mess and smell of oil painting was a bit off putting. About twenty years ago I decided to try pastels as there was no smell and packing them up was relatively easy. There was no need to finish a painting as it was easy to go back to it when time permitted.
My daughter Meredith and I have taken two trips since I retired, one to England and Paris where we visited every art gallery that time permitted and one to Africa where the stunning wildlife made a big impression. Since then I have been introduced to pastel pencils that are perfect for making realistic paintings of animals, even though they are very time consuming. I also enjoy doing landscapes from soft pastels and am pleased to be able to offer a selection of my paintings on this website.