I love swaps!!!!!!!

My new friend in Tasmania, Gay Mckinnon (silvergum studio) who is an amazing glass artist and accomplished illustrator was kind enough to agree to a swap of works. I love her illustrations and asked if she could as a special favour make me one of her glass pendants using her avatar of a cute koala. She agreed and I sent her a couple of my cards and some etegami she had admired.
Although she was not very happy with the koala, I love him and the shell pendant she sent along with him, I think it is so special to have something made just for you so I will treasure them always. They were accompanied by one of her cards, can you find THE koala?

The problems in Japan have not gone away even though the media have moved on to other news but they still trouble the minds of etegamists ( if there is such a word) and I recently received this one from my friend Mayumi expressing the hope that we will all support the Japanese people through their troubles. It was accompanied by this whimsical rabbit (it is the year of the rabbit) card.

Now about that government watch list I am on...........no I am not an agent for a foreign country but I do have friends who send me postcards made out of material other than bleached paper (the owls above are a case in point) and this makes the Quarantine Service very nervous. In Australia we have very stringent quarantine regulations in order to preserve our isolation from many of the bugs, animals and plant diseases that plague the rest of the world, consequently I have had quite a lot of my mail opened. As traditional Japanese aesthetics embrace a rustic ideal, in many cases some of the materials I have been sent are in their natural state and that makes them interesting to the quarantine sniffer dogs. Quite a bit of my mail has arrived with bright yellow stickers on "opened by the quarantine service". I hope they are doing as good a job with other substances, though I guess the people importing the 'other substances' get more than a yellow sticker!