Tira wood

In Rimatara we visited the local technical high-school, where they teach handicrafts. I was very impressed with their wood-carving. They are using traditional Austral Islands motifs and hand carving some amazing pieces, mostly using tira wood, Melia azederach commonly known as Indian lilac or Chinaberry in english. It's a tree related to mahogany and has attractive, fragrant lilac flowers and poisonous fruits.

I'd never noticed it around in Rurutu much, but it is pretty common in Rimatara, it is clearly a nice wood for carving, but it is also used to make head-dresses out of the pith, Matotea is very obligingly modeling hers here....

Where did september go?

I apologize to those of you who have been waiting for the next installment all this last month. We've been busy with the september rush, and somehow I just never got 'round to updating. So now I'll give you a bumper edition. September is always a fun month, the start of the month is full-on whale season and as it's not yet the school hols so we get an interesting variety of international guests, here especially for the whales, among them Dutch, German, Czech, Japanese and Canadian visitors, it gives me a welcome opportunity to practice my English! Not to mention the metropolitan French and Swiss contingent. We celebrated Tuati's birthday with a BBQ with Pascal the Dutch anesthesiologist and Marek the Czech mathematician. Towards the end of the month we made a quick dash to Tahiti for the salon du tourisme to meet our public (three-quarters of our guests are already based in Tahiti, so it's worth the hassle of a 48h stop-over before we get back into the half-term fray), we bust a gut trying to get some rosewood bowls ready for display. I also launched my new soaps and sold out of jam whilst there!
In between, Matotea got a chance to hang out with some other girls at the guesthouse, and even did a horse-trek with Papa.

 

Heimana is transitioning into a 'terribly cute terrible toddler' (who said anything about two years!). We have the tantrums and everything, we're pulling Matotea's hair and giving as good as we get, if not better!

Work in progress.....

 Here's a  breadfruit  bowl that  we're working on at the moment. It 's not quite finished, but I think it already looks quite nice.

Our new hobby

 We've both been playing around with various arts and crafts since we've been back in Rurutu. Viriamu made some penu (taro pounders) out of limestone for the salon de tourisme in february and more recently he's been focusing on woodwork.

 For this year's heiva we made some umete (bowls) in miro (tahitian rosewood) and purau (wild hibiscus) with carved motifs, inspired by traditional Rurutu and more generally polynesian designs. Viriamu shaped the bowls and I did the carving - I'm by no means an expert, but I have been enjoying it a lot and am getting better.....

We sent five bowls along to the heiva, and have already sold three. I think we may have hit on something .....I've always fancied myself as a sculptor, so maybe we've both found our callings.....