I’ve been having fun working on a number of projects lately.  Family history research, designing two websites, making an e-textiles wall hanging and learning to draft a pattern for a skirt for myself and making the skirt too.

This is the website I’ve designed for Deja Vu Beach Cafe, my cousin’s new cafe which opened yesterday in Christies Beach, South Australia.  I will also be making her restaurant website too, The Vault Food and Wine, that’s this week’s job.

A couple of months ago I was asked to research a piano which I thought sounded like an interesting thing to do and it was.  The family wanted to know if their ancestors had brought it with them from England to Australia as that was the story which was passed down.

Ernest Gabler was a well known piano manufacturer in New York so there is a lot of information available about him and his brother who was also a piano manufacturer.  From the serial number on the piano’s frame I was able to find out that the piano was manufactured in 1882.  The family in question came to South Australia from England in 1884.  Gabler pianos were being exported to England and also to Australia and South Australia in particular at this time.

Unfortunately I was unable to determine whether the family brought the piano with them to South Australia on the S.S. Port Jackson or purchased it in South Australia as there is no remaining ship’s manifest listing the ship’s cargo that I could find.