Joanne has been intrigued by wool since childhood and enjoyed knitting and involment in wool from an early age. From living in Holland, South Africa, Mozambique and Belize and experiencing beautiful surroundings, Joanne developed the ability to strike unique colour combinations in her work. She is based in New Zealand since 1974.
She attended a full time comprehensive course in all aspects of weaving at the Arts and Crafts Department of the Nelson Polytechnic in New Zealand. There she learned the craft of weaving from professional weavers who obtained their craft skills in pre-war Europe and all about colour combinations and garment design from artist tutors at the Polytechnis's design school.
Over time Joanne moved away from weaving general garments in pure wool to making shoulder wraps, shawls and scarves in exotic yarn and wool combinations. She is however still making kneerugs to satisfy continuing requests for these items. She loves to work with the luxurious Possum-Merino-Silk fibre combinations and the amazing colour absorption ability of these yarns. She currently is weaving light weight possum scarves and shawls in many colour combinations. For featherweight shoulder wraps, shawls and scarves she weaves in Alpaca yarn in seven colours. Beautiful heavier shawls and scarves in ten colour combinations are woven in wool-mohair yarn.
Joanne operates from her own weaving studio in Nelson New Zealand. She is the sole person involved in procuring, hand dying and handweaving yarns into cloth for shoulder wraps and into shawls and scarves. In addition she hand spins all the yarn for the weft for knee rugs. She also mills the cloth after weaving and prepares the garments for sale by sewing on lables and knotting the fringes.