Western Cape Woodturners Association Exhibiton at Kirstenbosch
26 - 28 November 2007



It was a bit of a spur of the moment decision to make enquiries about holding an exhibition of turnings at the Conference Centre at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens, but as luck would have it, the venue was available for a three-day period at the end of November, so the project was handed over to the committee, who did a Stirling job of organising people to bring pieces, and setting up the venue.

Here are a couple of impressions of how the exhibition looked in this most stunning venue.




































The Western Cape Woodturners have a poster depicting the "birth" of a wild olive natural edge bowl, illustrating the process from log to finished article - which holds pride of place next to the poster









A set of nested bowls by Dennis Laidler




A vessel by Peter Nicolle





The "wormy" bowl by Peter Nicolle attracted a lot of attention. The piece in the foreground is by Gert Ferreira




A vessel by Dennis Laidler that is now in France



Gert Ferreira often uses sustainably collected porcupine quills to decorate his work




Another winner by Gert




A Norfolk Island Pine vase by Thys Carstens




Sven Karth applied his imagination with this piece of sleeper wood




This large Norfolk Island Pine vase is by Dennis Laidler




Bert Parker is well known for his lovely segmented work





A first impression of the exhibition









This very large natural edge cork oak bowl by Dennis Laidler caught everyone's attention




Two examples of piercing by Peter Nicolle, with a natural edge piece by Thys Carstens in the foreground




Some more examples of Peter Nicolle's piereced work








A wild olive natural edge bowl by Ken Pilkington




"does it hold water?" Some challenging work by Gert Ferreira




Some resin-inlay work by Thys Carstens that grabbeda lot of attention, with a decorative rice bowl and chopsticks in the foreground by Peter Nicolle

As you can see, I have not had a lot of time for blogging over the past couple of months - I still have an ambition of completing the blog covering our wonderful trip to the USA in June/July 2007 ....

The last time I had "spare time" was when we were stranded in JFK on our first night in the States!

The Great USA Adventure June / July 2007



A chilly Cape Town winter's morning saw our departure on Saturday, 16th June


Bye-bye, Table Mountain,



Bye-bye!


This was a different view of Milner Peak Ridge, where we had climbed with Andi at the end of October 2006

and there was still a smidgin of snow on the Matroosberg


I found the aerial views of irrigated lands fascinating - there are some cool "landscape designers" out there


Twenty eight and a half hours, three airports and two different airlines afforded us a first "stolen" glimpse of Manhattan - we did not have window seats, so had to lean across the guy next to us for these shots




With about five hours to spare before our connecting flight to Salt Lake City, we decided we had to see something more of New York, than Terminals 2 and 3 at JFK, so we ventured forth on the Subway

We took the Subway to where the action is - Times Square and Broadway


The aspiration for many dancers...


and there was plenty of action on Times Square





In Times Square, everyone takes pictures....


"I'll take one of you, if you take one of us.... "





Then we encountered our first obstacle... The flight to Salt Lake City had been cancelled. Our luggage was well underway already, but we had to spend the night in JFK. Delta Airlines was able to book us on a flight via Baltimore the following day, and would accommodate us at their expense for the night at one of the Airport hotels.

This caused us a little stress, as we didn't have a cellphone number for Andi, who had travelled to Salt Lake City in order to be there to meet us on arrival and take us to Provo, so we decided to head for the hotel and muster all our resources to get a message to Andi. Luckily there was high speed WiFi in our room, and through the wonders of modern technology and a network of helpful friends, we were eventually able to get hold of Andi on a Skype call to let her know of our amended itinerary.


Therefore on Monday, after being subjected to a thorough search at airport security, including being patted down, and with "sniffer pads" passed over our shoes and carry-on luggage, we eventually boarded our flight 45 minutes later than scheduled. With barely two hours between arrival and departure for our connecting flight, things were a little tense, especially when we still dallied about another half hour on the runway, before finally taking off. We landed with scarcely 15 minutes to take off, and as soon as we were allowed off (apparently luggage must be removed before passengers can deplane), six of us sprinted across the tarmac, into the airport, and just succeeded in joining the last of the boarding passengers - to a special welcome from the crew.


Our first impressions of Utah and Salt Lake City