Perth Voice Interactive

MAYLANDS crafty sort Angela Loucaides is urging more people to take up the old time arts and crafts before they die out.

Ms Loucaides learned needlepoint back in the ‘70s but has watched with sadness the number of Royal Show entries in her category, and many others, dwindle over the decades.

“In 1997 [when she first entered]… there was four or five different classes,” she says. “When I first started I thought I’d be lucky to be hung, there were so many entries in those days. Now we’re just down to one class and not very many entries.”

Back in the 1970s (and freshly here as a “ten pound pom”) Ms Loucaides worked as a mixologist at the Parmelia Hotel bar in the city, practising a very different craft — of mixing cocktails.

At the time the bartending world was still strongly old fashioned and women weren’t fully welcomed: “I went into the inaugural cocktail mixing competition in 1971 and I wasn’t allowed to win because I was a woman, and I couldn’t go to the Australian championships because it was men only.

“I couldn’t join the United Kingdom’s Bartender Guild because it was men only.”

Ms Loucaides picked up needlepoint because she had an impending operation at Mount Hospital and was going to be confined for a few days. A fellow bar worker suggested she do a little tapestry while bed-bound and she was quickly hooked.

She came away with first place this year but with her craft and many others becoming more rare she’s worried the skills will die out.

She’s urging people to pick up a knitting set or a hammer and chisel or anything else crafty to keep traditions alive.

“If we don’t, all these lovely old crafts will disappear.”

by DAVID BELL