Tag: Spotify

  • Spotify this week

    Each week the blog features a curated playlist of audio on Spotify, the streaming platform. The playlist is related to the articles on the blog. To listen, click on the Player above or head over to Spotify where you can search for “Music to read a blog by”. The lists appear with a date after…

  • Walking Two Worlds

    In these days of climate emergency, fashion can be a platform to raise awareness. Quannah Chasinghorse, an American supermodel who is from Oglala Lakota and Hän Gwich’in tribes, has been taking the fashion world by storm. With her distinctive looks and Yidįįłtoo tattoos, the model has been the face of campaigns from Ralph Lauren and…

  • Peter Collingwood in New Zealand

    In 1984, Peter Collingwood, the British weaver who was the first living craftsperson to have work exhibited in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, visited Auckland. The New Zealand Spinners, Weavers and Woolcraft Society toured a British Council exhibition of textile art that included the weaver’s work. The exhibition in Aotearoa included local weavers from Auckland,…

  • Textile song, work and memory

    Weaving has been associated with music and rhythm for centuries, a strong connection that helps guide the weaving itself and also makes evident the links between personal practice and growth in the Indian Subcontinent. From mystics, who use weaving as metaphors in verse for Buddhist philosophy, to women who gather together to spin cotton while…

  • Irene Sharraff

    Costumes are always an important ingredient in making a successful play or musical. Meet Irene Sharraff. Irene trained in fashion illustration and excelled in colour and historical details, employing these to brilliant effect in musicals such as West Side Story and Call Me Madam. Her work was recognised in 1993 when she was awarded the…

  • The Spotify playlist

    In this, the first of the playlists for 2025, a selection of audio pieces has been collected to go along with the blog. To listen, click on the player above or head over to Spotify and search for “Music to read a blog by”. Paying subscribers to the platform will hear all the audio without…

  • Natural colours

    To the first-time visitor New Zealand Aotearoa seems to offer little in the way of natural colour, especially in the heavily wooded South of Te Waipounamu/ The South Island. Green is the predominant hue. Many different shades and tones of green, but green nevertheless. However, there is plenty of colour around, and possibly none more…

  • Janet Frame House

    56 Eden Street, Oamaru, was once the home of Janet Frame, the famous New Zealand author. The Janet Frame House has been restored and is opened in the summer months for visitors to experience. It is a pretty, uncomplicated building, filled with charm and crocheted bedspreads and rag rugs, a sewing machine and a typewriter,…

  • Touring the South

    Over the Christmas period we took a tour of the South of the Te Waipounamu/ the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand. The trip took in the West Coast route to Haast with an overnight stop in Ōkārito, another in Haast (specifically to have a fish lunch at Jackson Bay at the end of the…

  • The last blog for the year

    Hello, dear readers, It is the end of another year and the last posting for 2024. What a year it has been. We have been lucky enough to travel and also fortunate enough to have stayed home. It has been a year of creativity, a new studio space, singing in waiata groups and with choirs,…