Learn From A Local 2026 – Recap
Jumpers and Jazz 2026 – the best ever?
We think you will agree. 2026 was one of the best years ever for yarn, music and all things jumpers. The trees, the bunting, the dancing in the streets. At Stephanie’s the vibe ran all week with class after class of inspiration.
In our third motivating year of Learn from a Local, we learnt new things from our talented local ladies. The idea is we invite our customers to come along and run a workshop for an hour or two, showing us the thing they love. It’s about getting a little window into someone else’s world, and seeing different lifestyles to our own. This year we peeped into art, mind body wellness, and food and travel. Read on to hear about all the things we discovered at Learn from a Local 2026…
Monday began intently, as we gathered to challenge our fingers with strong cord and large crochet hooks. “Pullen Threads” is the catchy business name for Tobey Pullen’s distinctive atelier producing practical and beautiful “containers” used as bags, storage and more. After we conquered the “magic circle”, crochet’s oft used starting point, it was onwards and upwards, and Tobey expertly helped us manipulate and create a totally new look for crochet.
Change of pace to a much more delicate operation came on Monday afternoon and Tuesday with Antoinette Andersen. In fact Antoinette’s speciality is a light touch. She ran two classes for us – resin earrings and watercolours. Her colours are soft and pretty, her look is fine and delicate. Antoinette was a charming teacher, who introduced us to her particular style of art with patience and clarity, making us all proud of our creative results.
But, there was no delicacy when Susan Shaw started breaking tiles and mixing grout on our second day of workshops. Her popular mosaic workshop ran for three hours, and step by step, Susan took us through the messy and colourful task of making ceramic pictures. To make it do-able in the short period, the goal was to make a small plate sized picture, within a given layout and framework. This worked a treat, and the group managed to accomplish so much following Susan’s step by step methodology.
Many have noticed how Enchanted Garden Nursery is thriving under the new ownership of Anna Bowman, so we invited Anna and her resident plant expert, Cath, to put on a workshop for us about garden styling. This was a laid back session where we discussed garden dilemmas, and workshop solutions based around plant choice, pots and furniture, light and shade and colour. Like all our sessions, we couldn’t wait to get home, and put the ideas we learnt into practice. One of our lovely attendees, Hope Keen, cooked and shared nibbles for us in this class – her yummy chocolate and ginger slice.
The natural vibe continued in the afternoon, with Jes Kerle, who started her class sitting cross legged on her floor mat, talking us through her simple but disciplined mind body lifestyle. Jes lives and breathes a healthy mantra, based around diet, movement and relaxation. We ran through an hour of floor exercises, as Jes introduced us to some fundamentals of her yoga practice taught at her local studio, Essence of My Heart. This session helped us tune into our inner quietness, and see the benefits of stopping, feeling and breathing.
Our final artist of the week was well known teacher, Sue Keong from Freestone. Sue’s friendly and encouraging style with acrylics, took us carefully and quietly through colour blending, shadow and light, and perspective. This was a peaceful and happy session, where we all felt very satisfied with our artistic talent. We loving seeing how everyone’s paintings were so different despite the same still life stimulus of vases and gum leaves.
A little way down the road from Sue in Freestone, is another talented local, Jennifer Hill, who moved to Swanfels a couple of years ago. Jennifer entertained us for two hours with her Central Asia travels tales – tall and true! – as well as recipes and food tasting. Jennifer, who has attending cooking schools overseas brought us samples of her excellent risottos and curries. More inspiration and ideas that definitely broadened our horizons.
Although every workshop was terrific, we still had a standout class left on Friday morning. A studious group of ladies sat down with published historical fantasy author, Bernadette Rowley to talk about how to get a story that is inside you down on paper. When Bernadette is not writing she is a country veterinarian – so we were delighted to have her give us her time to talk books, stories and publishing techniques. This was an intriguing and thoughtful workshop where we wrote sample paragraphs and impressed (ourselves!) and each other with our impromptu pieces.
And if you noticed our beautiful crochet bunting in the store this year…thanks to Kim Siebenhausen for the famous crochet curtain in our window that draws so many photographers, and to Dr Leith Geisel, who loaned us her delicate doily bunting. Leith upcycled hundreds of hand made doilies in a satin ribbon binding originally for her daughter’s wedding, and we loved having the lacy effect decorating our store this year.
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