Today we have moved on to the tale of the Third Branch of the Mabinogion, in The Mab it's known as Happily Ever After, or in Cymraeg, Hapus am Byth (u is pronounced with sound closer to i, so this would be said Hapis). This, after all, is the traditional end of fairy tales, or at least the ones that have been sanitised to not give children nightmares. In this case though there really is a happy ending. You can find a retelling and further discussion of the story online here. As part of this story our protagonists, Manawydan, Rhiannon, Pryderi and Cigfa had to leave Wales, and earn a living in England. They take up numerous crafts, and every time are forced out of business by the existing local craftsmen. This was quite typical of the time, you couldn't just turn up and set up in business. At the time of the Mabinogion the Guild structure was well established in British towns, Guilds controlled who could and couldn't trade, and effectively operated a price control system and quality control system. One of the crafts that Manawydan and Pryderi try to practise is saddle making. The story is incredibly specific about the kind of saddles that they were making, Manawydan created pommels decorated using blue enamel, a skill he had learned from Llasar Llaesgynwyd. After they were forced to leave the town they then set themselves up as shield makers, again using the beautiful blue enamel. Predictably, when that also led to them being ran out of town they set themselves up a further time as shoe makers. This time abandoning the blue enamel, and instead using the best Cordovan leather and using gold filigree buckles. This might well be how they made these shoes. There's lots of this beautiful orange called Hapus in the shop should you feel the need to top up your 12 Days Sample, or just fall in love with the colour.
As many of you may know we live in an old Welsh cottage, it definitely dates back to 1840, but a bit of research we've done recently suggests it's probably older... A key feature of many of these older Welsh dwellings is the central chimney and fireplace. Running up the middle of the building the huge stone chimney effectively acts as a giant slow release heater, once they are warm they carry on radiating heat keeping the building pleasantly warm. In the central hearth would have been a large open fire, this would have been the source of heat and where all the cooking was done, a giant cauldron would have hung over the fire and provided a rotating variation of stew and soup with various meats and vegetables being added for every meal. Our fibre for todays 12 Days of Christmas is called Cauldron, and is inspired by the Second Branch of the Mabinogion, in my companion book, The Mab, this is the story of Branwen and the Cauldron of Rebirth. If you'd like to listen to this story you can watch a telling of it here- If you'd rather read a copy then you can find a version of the text here. This tale features a magic cauldron, one that can bring the dead back to life. It is used by Matholwch, King of Ireland to try and defeat King Bendegeidfran, his brother-in-law. Bendegeidfran gifted the cauldron as a wedding gift when Matholwch married Branwen, his sister. The story tells the tale of her abusive marriage, the defeat of the powers of the cauldron, and her eventual return to Wales, where she turns in to a flock of starlings, along with her son Gwern who was mortally wounded in the battle. For the colour I've chosen a rusted iron shade, as most household cauldrons would have been made from that material. Cauldrons were important status symbols however and could be made form far more precious materials and heavily decorated. You can read more about cauldrons in Celtic households and myths here. This is the Gundestrup Cauldron, it's just over 2000 years old and is made from 9 separate panels of silver and gold, weighing over 9kg. It was found in Denmark just over 100 years ago. It's exceptional, but archaeologists believe that others of this style and size probably existed in Celtic cultures, what makes this one unique is that it survived, most others would have been melted down and turned in to other precious objects by our less sentimental ancestors! I love this colour, so got hold of a big batch of it, so if you fall in love with it you can find it in the shop with all the other colours of Superfine Merino & Silk.
Today we're going to start to really dig in to the stored of The Mabinogion, at a rate of 1 each day, as very helpfully there are 11 stories, to accompany our 11 special colours of Superfine Merino and Silk. This is the First Branch of the Mabinogi, in my companion book, The Mab it goes by the name Rhiannon, Pwyll and the Hideous Claw. Here's a retelling if you would like to hear how to pronounce Pwyll... If you'd like a bit of audio background and some explanation this podcast does a good job... though I think the pronunciation of some of the names is a little bit dodgy. If you'd rather read the story for yourself there's an online version here. The fibre todays is called Pryderi, which means care, and that rather gives away the ending of our story. The narrative is one of the classic changeling child. Pwyll falls in love with Rhiannon, and she gives birth to a baby boy. That night the baby is snatched away, and her serving women blame the hound sleeping in the corner of the bed chamber (there are certain resemblances to the legend of Gelert in this story.) In reality the monster that snatches the baby actually ends up leaving him at a different household. They raise him as their own, until they hear the tale of what happened Rhiannon and Pwyll, when he's returned to them they change his name from Gwri to Pryderi. The 12 Days of Christmas parcels were so popular this year that I don't have much spare of some of the colours of fibre... what tiny amount there is left is now in the online shop. If you miss that and want something with a similar feel Flamingo features streaks of grey and brown but is a cooler shade of pink, or Shell is a very similar shade of pink/peach but with no variegation.
Welcome to the first of our Twelve Days of Christmas Posts. Every day there will be a new post introducing you to the fibre at the inspiration behind it. Each day was inspired by a different story from the Mabinogion, so I thought today was a good time to let you discover what The Mabinogion is. I like to listen to things in the background, so I thought we'd start withe the BBC Radio programme In Our Time, and covers the information pretty well, though unfortunately the main presenter makes a bit of a mess at pronouncing some of the Welsh names. This is available globally. The history of the Mabinogion is as oral stories, told by bards without the need for them to ever be written down. They are a record of a way of thinking and living that predate the Norman conquest of Britain, with the tales in the form we know them now dating to the late 11th and 12th centuries. Our main source manuscripts date from 1350-1410, making these probably oldest written-down stories in the British Isles. The two main sources are Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch (the White Book of Rhydderch) held by the National Library of Wales and Llyfr Coch Hergest (Red Book of Hergest) held by the Bodleian Library. Digitised versions of both books are available. The stories themselves are hugely different, sometimes funny, sometimes romance, sometimes scary, sometimes tragic. They philosophise, and also fantasise. There's no one individual author, and characters and versions of stories vary in the differing surviving manuscripts. It's also worth pointing out that this narrative is all in cymraeg, that is to say Welsh, which would actually be closest to the language spoken by most of Britains population before the Norman conquest. The first translations were done by William Owen Pughe who split the tales in to several episodes in journals in 1795, 1821, and 1829. The first full translation was authored by Lady Charlotte Guest in 1838–45 bilingually in Welsh and English. I'm using a modern retelling called The Mab as my guide. Like Lady Charlotte Guests original publication it's bilingual, but doesn't take itself too seriously, aiming to bring introduce the stories as being the sorts of tales you could tell to children, without dumbing them down, and occasionally changing them slightly to make them more pleasant for our modern ears. These stories were never set in stone and would have evolved over many years of oral storytelling, so I see no problem with them continuing to evolve. Each day will feature a different story. The stories themselves are split in to 2 different groups. The first are a series of 4 tales called branches. A character called Pryderi appears in all 4 stories, though not always as the central character. Four Branches of the Mabinogi
Today we don't have a Mabinogi tale, but one in the same narrative style introduces this kind of traditional story nicely, and is set in an area very local to me, so I thought it would be a nice thing to listen to on Christmas Day. If you're in South Wales then Pontypridd Town Council have a children's activity trail that travels through the towns open places inspired by my main companion book, the Mab.
The fibre today was a hand dyed braid of Superfine Merino, Yak and Tussah Silk, and for the first time this year I've dyed up some semi-solid companion braids, using the same colours that are in the fibre. You've also got a drinks coaster handprinted here in Wales showing the Hounds of Annwn, these spectral dogs belong to King Arawn, who features in the First Branch of the Mabinogi tomorrow. If you want some companion braids, just head to the shop and you'll spot them... each day the limited edition blend of Superfine Merino & Silk will also be available. Oops. Where does the time fly when you're having fun. For fun, read stupidly busy and trying to make sure you do all the really important stuff, which means thenon-essential blog writing stuff is continually shoved to the bottom of the to-do list. Since my last sighting I've been back in the south of England teaching a workshop, which was great because own my free afternoon I got chance to explore Lewes, a place which had popped up in lots of the historical fiction I enjoy reading, but had never been to. I might have expended my stay, but the royal funeral threw a spanner in to those plans, so instead I made the most of the very quiet roads to head back to Wales. Looking back at pictures like this one from September, looking north towards the Llyn peninsula it feels like the season has really shifted in the past month. It's been unseasonably warm here, the Dahlias are still flowering in to November, with no sign of a frost to kill off the foliage, which has meant the garden is in something of a holding pattern, so for now we enjoy the last gasp of blooms. One of the reasons the past few weeks have got away from me is getting this years 12 Days Christmas up for sale. I'm now in to the very final stocks of fibre, so if you don't have yours, or you know one hasn't been purchased for you there's only a very limited opportunity left. I am very much looking forward to writing the blogposts for these this ear as the theme is the Mabinogion, ancient stories from Wales. This last weekend I managed to get away to Shropshire with a group of friends, which meant Nellie had a weekend with her friend Sprout. The two are polar opposites, small and white cross breed who loves people, compared to large and black working breed dog who thinks people are rubbish, but they love each others company. I made the most of an opportunity to stop in a place I normally only drive through and went to Stokesay Castle, and enjoyed a lovely morning wandering through some very, very old rooms.
Creatively I have lots of gift projects on the go right now, so they're all staying under wraps, and anything else isn't quite finished yet! In mid-November I am teaching another online evening series of workshops, these are going to focus on British wool on the 15th and 16th November via Zoom. As before they will be recorded, and then you'll be able to watch it back for up to 2 months, so even if you can't make it live you can sign up and watch along in your own time. As ever there will be lots more to these sessions than just spinning, I'll also be sharing all sorts of historical detail to entertain you as we spin. This quilt has been a long time in the finishing... hand stitching is not my forte, and once I committed to adding some hand quilting I had to keep going and do the whole thing. It's taken me forever! It's also huge, king sized, but is now finished and covering one of the sofas because it's easier to wash a quilt than it is to keep taking the covers off. This month we also finally paid a visit to St Phillip's Church which is just north of Dolgellau. It's now under the care of the Friends of Friendless Churches, and is utterly beautiful. The church was built purely so an Oxford College don could have church services in English, rather than in Welsh at the local Anglican church. The building is very European in feel, utterly unlike most other Gothic revival churches being built at the time. Well worth a visit if you are in the area. There have also been trips to the beach, Meg in her old age has finally discovered that swimming is not an impossibility, and Nellie loves being able to charge around like a lunatic. Less fun was the volume of rubbish four of us picked up off a 2 mile stretch of beach less than 2 weeks after we'd last been along doing the same task. In the end we ran out of space in the bags to carry everything. The fishing waste is a year round problem, we pick up this amount nearly every single time we visit the beach, but the rest of the rubbish is nearly all as a result of it being tourist season. Our meeting at Monty Guild this month saw us head out to a members house and do some natural dyeing. I've dabbled with natural dyeing in the past, but it's not something I really do a great deal of. I much prefer my synthetic dyes, but this is why guild meetings are great, I'll never bother with growing dye plants on a large scale, but as a group activity it's fun and enjoyable to try new things. Adventures in weaving have continued, this is a crackle draft, and yet more tea towels for the present pile. This type of weave structure uses a thicker yarn for the pattern picks, which gave me a chance to use up some handspun ramie. The ramie is great for tea towels, incredibly absorbent, and gives a lovey contrast thanks to the slight shine. This was plied so a great substitute for a 4/8 cotton. I'm currently experimenting with some hand dyed ramie which I'll leave as a single and that should work as a 2/8 cotton substitute. The baby chickens are definitely not babies any longer. I'm pretty certain we have 3 girls and 3 boys in this clutch now. The boys are going to be Eric, Ernie and Ronnie, Eric will be the biggest boy, Ernie has the silver feathers and Ronnie is the other one. As the boys are named after male comedians the girls also needed names, so they're going to be Dawn, Jennifer and Victoria. The girls are impossible to tell apart at the moment, all have the lovely little head tuft which makes me smile every time I see them hurtling around the place. I've also finally washed and twisted up all my skeins from this years Tour de Fleece. These are the past 2 years of the 12 Days of Christmas, plus this years Tour de Fleece colours, all Superfine Merino and Silk. We'll ignore the bag I just found with one of the colours I was missing from one the 12 Days of Christmas sets! Which leads me on to this year. I am already well advanced in the planning for 2022, fibre is ordered, bag design is developed, then I get dyeing and packaging. The price this year will be broadly similar to last year (£40 ex VAT), I still need to do the final sums with the components, but I have a feeling it might be a couple of pounds more as everything is just slightly more expensive... They will go on sale in October, and this year there will be double the quantity to try and make sure they don't sell out too quickly. In this past month I've also been busy filing lots of videos for a new online fibre dyeing course. This will be ready to launch very soon, I've got one more video to reshoot, because I managed to do a whole section and block the view to the camera, and then it just needs tidying up and checking. I've been loving letting you in to my studio filing the dyeing livestreams for the seasonal changes packs. The filming style for the course is slightly different, but should give you lots of ideas to try dyeing for yourself. I think this photo sums up my July quite nicely, spinning, intense heat, and inspiring surroundings. Earlier in the month I headed down to West Dean College for my first solo holiday since 2019. The drive in 30 degree heat in a van with no air con was not pleasant, but once there I had to most lovely week in beautiful surroundings being creative, with nothing to think about other than what I was making. By the end of the week I'd made this panel, which is now in our sun room. Whilst I was busy working on this in the day I could spend the evenings walking through the gardens, and pinching myself about how lucky I am to be able to go and do things like this. Closer to home the summer has been about getting out and seeing things. This crane is leftover from the quarry workings above Ratgoed not far from Corris. We've been going round updating all our geocaching circuits, and also creating some new Adventure Labs in the local areas... which if you've got kids you're trying to entertain are great ways to get out and explore places for nothing more than the cost of your transport. My Tour de Fleece spinning was interrupted by going on holiday, but I just about managed to get all my oddments of this years team fibre spun, and the Tour de France Femmes came to my rescue so I could carry on working through all the leftover from the past 2 years of 12 Days of Christmas. Which will be back again this year, I am busy planning, and they will be available to purchase later in the autumn. I've carried on live-streaming the Dyeing of the Seasonal Changes packs, this time with no technical hiccups, this video is for the August colourway. That means I have no more excuses, so I have made a start on creating a self-paced online fibre dyeing course. It's still a work in progress at the moment, but the first bit of filming is done, it just needs editing and adding in to the written lessons, but hopefully it will be available soon.
I've now had nearly a full month of using the new studio, and the old caravan feels like a distant memory. It's so much better for stock storage and organisation, and dyeing has been an absolute dream. As I now have an internet connection over there I've started to experiment with doing some dyeing live-streaming, with a view to test out the different platforms, work out camera angles, and hopefully start doing some online dyeing workshops or set up a self-paced course on fibre dyeing. We'll see... for now I am busy enjoying summer and my hopefully my first solo holiday since 2019. This was a livestream of the June Seasonal Changes pack, I originally streamed this via the Fellowship of Yarn, and then had to to upload it to You Tube to fix the fact that everything was sideways... This was the July colour choices, which didn't have the best of straits, when the video I scheduled wouldn't start and I had to set up another one quickly.... skip the first 5 minutes unless you enjoy watching me look increasingly puzzled and then have moments of dawning realisation. For the July colours, they're still not right, so I will be re-dyeing a couple of them before the end of the week... if I feel brave I might set up another livestream and see if I can be slightly more technologically competent. Anyway, the reason for doing all this messing around is so I can get all the teething problems out of the way before anyone is paying anything for any content, once I'm happy with everything there will be studio related teaching stuff happening... The Tour de Fleece starts on Friday, and I have got all the daily posts ready and waiting. These give you a bit of flavour of the areas the race is in each day, bits of culture, architecture, and food. This year there is a recipe for every single day! You are of course very welcome to come and join us, no matter how much you're able to spin, or what you are spinning. Earlier in the month I took Nellie to try out Agility, which she loved, though did get a little too excited at one point and we had to go to the naughty corner to calm down... we go back tonight for an 8 week block of classes, which hopefully will go better than the trick classes I tried to do with her over the winter, which mostly consisted of me sitting on the floor and a stubborn collie dog determinedly sitting with her back to me! I also caved and decided to hatch some eggs again this year. Juniper has been laying clutches all over the garden, which I have been discovering as soon as she went broody, and in the end I felt so sorry for her that I thought I'd let her hatch them out. Except the eggs needed moving to a safe spot, in to a house that could be locked at night... at which point Juniper decided she no longer wanted to be a parent. Mummy Indigo to the rescue, and she now has 6 chicks, who are no longer as fluffy looking as this, but are busy rampaging through the garden. I will be in need of name inspirations for these, at least 2 are almost certainly boys, and I have a horrible feeling I am going to end up with several very black feathered chickens that are hard to tell apart at a glance... which is how I ended up with 2 cockerels with called Monty Don. Mum and I also went to Claire Austin Hardy Plants Open Garden via the National Gardens Scheme, in particular to enjoy the national collection of Bearded Irises and Hybrid Peonies. These had just been moved to a new spot so weren't quite as stunning as last year, but we still came away with a wish list as long as our arms and a desire to win the lottery... I've also been sewing things... a wool pinafore dress, in a move that was designed to make sure we had a beautifully long hot summer! And these pair of trousers. The pattern popped up on my Instagram feed and I thought they looked interesting, and then when I read further I saw that they were a zero waste pattern. Every single pattern piece is designed to fit together to result in no wasted odd shaped pieces. This size (F with increases in the front and back darts, and at the side seams to reduce the waist measurement) took just 2m of 112cm wide fabric!
It was my first proper zipped fly, and the pattern made the process so painless that at the end of it I literally went "oh, is that all there is to it!" The pattern is Jones Trousers, next up, a pair in fabric I actually like... I have no idea why I have pink denim in my stash, but it will do for work trousers! Writing this post has been on my to-do list for most of this month... but there has been rather a lot going on. I arrived back from Wonderwool and was straight in to painting and plumbing, most of which was done in the evenings after work so I wasn't in the way of the people who I was actually paying to do a job! However, I am now tentatively saying that everything is finished. The electrician does need to pop back and extend a light cable, but aside from that it's a fully functioning studio. It's just over a year since I made the decision that I had reached end of life with my converted caravan. It had been patched up for years, with more repairs to the roof to try and stop it leaking than I care to think about. Most of the floor had been replaced due to it being rotten, and it was freezing cold in winter and boiling hot in summer. The business finally felt like it was in a position to pay for something which felt like an extravagance... I explored lots of options, most were too expensive, or the wrong size and shape, at one point there was even a consideration of buying another second hand caravan and stripping it out as I had done the last one. But fortunately there was a local option that is actually perfect. Will from Woodlanders is about 20 minutes drive away from here, and he builds wooden cabins from scratch using as many locally sourced materials as possible. So I could have a space that was fully insulated, with windows and doors where I needed, to the dimensions I needed, and I could afford it! As we're in the Snowdonia National Park I had to jump through quite a few hoops to get planning permission, even though we were only replacing one temporary structure with another. That took up most of last year, and at one point it was touch and go if everything would be in place for the planned start date. Whilst most of the outside was new, inside is a lot of reused things form the old studio. It would have been lovely to buy things so they were all pretty and matching, that's just not how I like to do things. If something was still functional and working it was kept, so inside is not a pretty studio for Instagrammable shots. It's my work space, and that means efficiency and cost effectiveness over prettiness. Where possible everything from the old studio has been reused or sent for recycling. The aluminium outer and steel frame were picked up by a scrap metal merchant. The plywood and chipboard was take to the local council recycling centre, and the wooden frame has been cut up and will be our kindling wood for the next decade! What there is now space for, is all the stock to be in one place... previously it had to be split between 2 different areas, and there's space to actually move around as you pick items. A giant work table gives me space to put things that are works in progress. It's nothing fancy, just a piece of plywood on top of drawer units from Ikea (purchased years ago and now discontinued). Covering that are some giant vinyl banners I had made for the stand when we were still going to shows like Woolfest and occasionally needed something sturdy and colourful to disguise an ugly piece of cattle market! The floor is lino about which I am not precious... it already has a few marks from moving around furniture. It is so nice to be able to quickly hoover over it and gather up the fibre tumbleweeds! The shelving is nearly all made from offcuts, often from the original caravan. Some of it is a section of the plywood originally used for a replacement floor, and others from the panels on the walls. I have a lot of things that I use when I go out to teach, or that I only use once in a blue moon, and they're perfect for shoving up and out of the way on shelves like this. The walls are painted OSB wood, so the shelves are easy to move in the future, just undo a couple of screws, fill the holes, and reattach where I need them. In the other half of the cabin is the new workspace, where at last I have a "golden triangle" of work table, sink and oven. I also now have a window to look out of as I work. The shed I previously used for drying everything is no longer needed as I've now got a giant ceiling airer where I can hang up damp fibre and pull it up out of the way. That's now going to be moved, and will be the storage for our winter firewood and the spare grid walls and tables I use at shows. That means the view from the house is much nicer (at a lovely wooden building), and the view from the studio will also be more pleasant. The old gas oven has been replaced with a new electric oven... which has many features, of which I shall only ever use one setting and one temperature. I am very tempted to try the rotisserie function to cook a Sunday roast one day though! The bucket I use for the citric acid solution is another example of function over form... it's a brewing bucket with tap, and needed to be raided up so sits perfectly on an empty salt lick bucket. These are everywhere in this part of Wales, we often end up picking them up out of hedges where they've blown when empty, and are universal solution to just about anything that needs a plastic container! This corner is one of my proudest moments of revelation in the planning process... Previously anything wet and drippy had to go outside, which often meant that I got rather wet and drippy in the Welsh weather. Installing this giant shower tray was a bit of a nightmare given it was me, my 65 year old Mum, and 66 year old Dad doing the heavy lifting, but it so amazing to be able to do wet, splashy stuff and not have to constantly wipe up. The spin dryer can also sit on it, and drain directly on to the tray, freeing up space on the draining board of the sink. I also indulged in a new double sink, which means I can have one space devoted to hot water and rinsing fibre, and one where I can empty cold and dirty things. The old gas boiler has also gone (sold via Facebook to someone who will use it for spare parts, the old sink also went to a new home to carry on being used) instead there's a small electric water heater, which does the job very well. I did the plumbing, and getting this installed with the appropriate safety features and not getting any leaks was an absolute nightmare. I have spent hours sat under this sink with a pair of spanners! I've also got a new storage system for dye stock solutions. Previously I used 1 litre plastic tubs and measured using a syringe, which was a real pain for larger quantities, with repeated use of the syringes often leaving me with sore hands. The final system isn't quite set up as we still need to drink more fizzy pop, but swapping to these bar optics has been great. I can still measure out quantities, but can also use them to add splashes of colours to create a palette of shades. It also frees up table space so I'm going to be able to dye in larger dyelots, which will make those of you who want bigger quantities happy! The existing decking has also had a tidy up, with some planters made from offcuts of the larch cladding, and the wood used for the internal framing. The guttering runs in to a giant water storage tank hidden around the corner giving us increased capacity for water to use on the garden during any dry spells. The larch cladding will slowly fade to a lovely silver colour.
Someone commented to a friend of mine that I was very lucky to have such a nice space, and whilst that's true, I am lucky to live in a home with enough space for me to build something of this size, I have also worked hard for ten years to be able to afford to build this. For years I haven't taken every penny of profit the business made, leaving myself a cushion to be able to afford to do a grand project like this. This building represents ten years of hard work, and it will allow me to work for the next ten years in conditions where I can be more efficient, and enjoy working even when it's hot, cold or rainy! The only ones who seem to miss the old caravan are the chickens. They used the underneath as a dry space to hang out during the day, and this new cabin sits flush on the old concrete slab... so no chicken hang out! I suspect some of you are reading this and thinking you'd love to visit, which alas isn't possible. One of the conditions of the planning permission is that it's not a space used by members of the general public, and our property insurance also doesn't allow it. What I do now have is internet in the studio, so as the summer goes on there's the possibility of some live dyeing sessions, or online workshops. PS. The fibre on the table is this years Tour de Fleece fibre, which I have been waiting to arrive for weeks! As a result I've not announced it with as much of a fanfare as I might normally, because I wanted to get it listed online and posted out to people as soon as possible to make sure it arrives internationally in time. Thursday is a public holiday, so the next postage day is Monday 5th June, and if you would like to join in, you can find the full selection here. Most of the past month has been taken up with all matters dye studio related. There have been some adventures, the photo above was taken on Harlech beach on an exceptionally windy day, which had pushed the sand in to these amazing patterns. It took us a week to get the old caravan dismantled, though I had already done some bits and pieces over the past month, and have also been ruthless about getting rid of the things I'd been holding on to "just in case". The main structure of the new studio is now in place, and I'm starting to make plans for plumbing and electrics. Fingers crossed the bulk of the work will be done by the end of the month, and when we come back from Wonderwool we'll be able to move everything in again, and I should be mostly back in full flight by May. The weather in March has been glorious, dry, warm with lots of sunshine. We had a beautiful walk down the Dysinni estuary, with stunning views back up the river towards the mountains. My preparations for Wonderwool are nearly complete, as Covid regulations have relaxed they announced that there will now be a limited number of on-the-day tickets available, though only until the venue capacity has been reached. You can buy online tickets right up until the event, and the ticket booth on the gate will be cash only. If you're not sure about attending I recommend coming along on Sunday, the second day of a show is always much quieter, and most stands will still have a huge amount of stock for you to choose from. Before Wonderwool I'm also running another live online workshop this time focusing on Non-Wool fibres. Like the last one this will run on 2 evenings, again with the option to do either session or both. Monday 11th April will focus on Animal Fibres, namely Kid Mohair, Cashmere and Baby Alpaca. Learn how to create soft fluffy yarns, from these fibres.
Wednesday 13th April will focus on Plant Fibres, looking at natural and synthetic plant fibres. Discover the joys of Ramie, learn how to put enough twist in to cotton, and learn how bamboo viscose is made and what sort of yarn it produces. Just like before the Zoom call will use live auto-generated closed captions, and the session will recorded and uploaded online for you to watch back again for 2 months. If you can't make a session live you can just purchase a ticket and you will automatically be sent the link to the recording. And with that I am off to carry on looking at sinks and planning possible layouts, I now have so many lists that there is even a master list of lists! |
Archives
January 2024
Categories
All
|
Hilltop CloudHilltop Cloud- Spin Different
Beautiful fibre you'll love to work with. Established 2011 VAT Reg- 209 4066 19 Dugoed Bach, Mallwyd, Machynlleth,
Powys, SY20 9HR |