My art at the Archibalds

The beautiful lady in this video is the remarkable Eileen Kramer. Eileen is a 103 years old dancer whose portrait was a finalist in this years Archibald Prize. For those of you outside Australia this is our county's most prestigious portraiture competition. 

I've been privileged to meet Eileen on a number of occasions when she's called into my studio. Eileen has a wonderfully artistic and eclectic appreciation of clothes, probably coming from her years as a dancer on the stage. I felt incredibly flattered when she fell in love with my hand knitted shawls and bought several of them.

Last week the 2017 winner of the Archibald Prize was announced and there was a charming TV news item about Eileen attending the prize night and posing in front of her portrait "The inner stillness of Eileen Kramer". Her portrait wasn't the winner.

But I felt like a winner because I was thrilled to see Eileen was wearing one of the shawls I made! She looked gorgeous in the stunning mauve and blue fluffy and fringed knitted shawl. I usually make a batch of these shawls every Winter because it's just so enjoyable to sit in front of the fire in the evening with fat knitting needles and make a triangle shawl in 3-4 hours. Most of the yarns I used I buy from the local thrift store for a few cents each. Odd balls of yarn, colour mixed and matched are just the perfect thing. Sometimes I get the spinning wheel out and twine several of the thin ones together, or add in a bit of dyed roving to make unique fiber.