What Katie Did

The morning after the Wool Event of the Week (Decade?)

Exhausted! Such a full on day of making with nearly 100 people. This drop-in workshop attracted people who were just passing by on their way to the library or the cafe, or people who had booked a day off work and travelled for miles to take part and everyone in-between. 

We said we would be demonstrating and involving people with carding, weaving, spinning, felting, knitting, crocheting, needle felting, sewing, and luceting and we did, including threading-buttons which a granddad did with his 2 year old grandson.

 

twins working well together

two friends really got the hang of peg loom weaving!

rolling that wet felt

we knit with this yarn as soon as it was made!

 
This was the 'before' picture as we were setting up in the gallery of the Queen's Hall. I haven't got an 'after' picture. We were too tired - seven hours of full on workshop. We will be doing this, or something like it again in the Winter, Spring and Summer. And we will show you what everyone made when we have collated it all in a week or two!

Thank you to everyone who gave up time to take part, but mostly thank you to Ellie who was a joy to work with!

One Day Only

the Wool Workshop is TODAY

try to get along if you can - it is going to be fun!

Wonderful Wool Workshop

The cogs have been turning and the plans have been hatching and now I can reveal that the greatest idea since Darwin (not really, but it's quite good) will be taking place in Hexham, on 30th October, in the Queen's Hall Art Centre with a lot of WOOL. Ellie is a felt maker and I just have a lot of stuff. We are going to collaborate to make something rather lovely. These nice people are funding us and it will be amazing. You are invited of course. Ellie and I will be playing with fleece all day long! I can't imagine anything nicer!

 

And this Sunday we'll be at the Auction Mart in Hexham from mid-day running two smaller drop in workshops - Ellie with wool, me with papper! I may even do it with a French accent.

Have you any idea what I'm talking about? check out the Youtube thingy on the next post!

Camera Mended. Big Happy Weekend. Lots of Pictures.

My camera developed a fault and was away being repaired. The last two weeks posts have been the result of me digging into my past photos, of which I have thousands. It was interesting posting like that rather than taking photos as I live my life and deciding what to write - the other way round for a little while. But now I am back on track with the weekend just past recorded in detail!
Lovely weekend too - a Family Skill Sharing weekend at my friends community nearby. Turn up for the weekend, bring a tent and sign up for workshops - or ... offer to lead one - I offered felt making on Saturday and making little books on Sunday. There was kite making, dry stone walling, bread making, blacksmithing, cob building, more I can't remember and fairy buns - a good way to start
lets have a closer look
ginger and orange - very sophisticated!
Lovely food. Russell is a raw food cook and uses this book as his own personal guide. He made food for us all weekend, mostly raw and delicious and sometimes cooked and delicious too

pizza for about 60 folk with a bit of dough left over for these dragons eggs
this is a marvellous way to cook!

Notices like this here and there in odd places - this one in the communal bathroom. Right next to the answer!

Camping fun, dancing to the wonderful ceilidh band, chatting round the bonfire, little children, 

 

friends from near and far
 
All working together to complete the heavy tasks - here the framework for a green roof over the clay oven - all hands required

blacksmithing while the baby sleeps
So for those of you who wanted sunshine after that rainy sitting down cow, can you feel the sunshine here?

Wear Your Curtains

At the weekend I ran a workshop called Wear Your Curtains where a bunch of us got together with a whole load of old curtains and duvet covers and made aprons, trousers and bags. Fun. This book was very useful and so was this one. Two sewing machines and an overlocker, an iron and board, lots of scissors, pins, thread, needles, patterns, coffee, biscuits and a mighty fine lunch on the opening day of this cafe ... well - what better way is there to spend a day?

I can't think of one?
the best thing about having curtains and old jumble sale finds to work with is the pressure is off to create something amazing so you can just concentrate on having fun instead of worrying about spoiling expensive fabric.
And being in a large space like the Village Hall means that you can s-p-r-e-a-d o-u-t and have acres of room. I didn't get enough photos of the things everyone made, but there were some great aprons, bags and a wonderful pair of jammie bottoms for Joe who is two.
Result.

Keeping hens for eggs and fun and a few puppets - this blog is getting very birdy!

So - that last post had a few of you going! I hope Matt's links (see comments in last post for reference) were useful to people who share my grumpy dislike of other people's music.
I have been getting ready for a few workshops lately - all bird related. First, with the Humshaugh Theatre Group some bird puppets with Louise...

we were making Fire Birds with sparkly fabric and willow

But today the birds were the real feathery kind at the course at the Garden Station - Keeping Hens for Eggs and Fun.
learning how to hold a hen - one of my girls here being very patient!
This was a very comprehensive course designed with my Dad - who has more poultry knowledge than anyone I know. Here is one intrepid participant wondering if I really mean her to check out this hens bottom...

before lunch too! We had quiche and cake made with the girls eggs and if anyone was in any doubt about the joy of fresh eggs, this soon dispelled them!
Another bird workshop tomorrow!
Its all go here!

Paper making with five year olds - it can be done!

Hello! I set Typepad to post a Secret Santa every day while I was .... WORKING ..... and I was a bit disappointed when I checked in on Saturday morning and there was no new post! I enjoyed being a spectator on my remote controlled blog!
Anyway - work! I was doing a week of paper making and book binding with a class of Year One kids for the school project - Inventors and Inventing. It was magnificent.
The kids are five and six years old.

Tearing - we used old envelopes with lovely blue patterns which gave the finished paper a blue tinge and some tiny bits of interesting patterning
Pulling a new sheet of paper from the pulp
Couching - a bit of cooperation here - they worked well together

Drying - thought it would never dry!!

Binding - such concentration! 30 kids made new books from old scrap paper - result! And now they are going to put freshly minted stories into these amazing books - what talented kids. A joy to work with.
Five and six remember!
I got them to tell me their favourite jokes

Q why did the toilet roll fall down the hill?

A - to get to the bottom

this caused a huge amount of hilarity - wonderful

Now - we have a lot of January ahead of us and new things to do - not sure what yet - I'll be back to let you know. Thank you to all who call by and leave comments - I love them! Secret Santa was such fun and has been voted a hit all round - so we will be doing it again next year!
Happy week!!

Batik Workshop - or - I need a new hobby like a hole in the head

Pete Winstanley makes amazing batiks - there is an exhibition at the Station and today was the workshop to show us how to do this technique. I have never done this one before - a textile art I have not tried! As usual - you give people the instructions and the materials and then be amazed by the variety of what is produced.
Louise is amazingly talented- this is her 'doodle'!!
This is mine ..... hmmmm
The courses at the Station are such good fun - lovely lunch, expert tuition, as much tea and coffee as you can drink and a very good atmosphere - and something to show for it, though in my case - not very expert something. I have plans to make my efforts into a diary cover and you never know - I might actually manage it and post the result here.
Has anyone who reads here tried this?

 
messy, interesting, productive. All good.

ironing the wax out of the horse.

another talented woman who is not me.

Making Paper at The Garden Station

Yesterday was one of those magical days where everything goes well. I was teaching a paper making workshop at The Garden Station. All the August weather seemed to have GONE, only lovely people sign up for courses at TGS, and making paper is a very satisfying thing to do. You have to do lots of ripping and pulping and the technique is easy to learn. This means that after you master the principles you can quickly get onto having fun with tweaking!
We made five vats of pulp and called them all names. You had to be there to appreciate the one called Saturday Night which sat alongside Candyfloss, Skyblue, Toothpaste and Pure. More colourful than I was expecting I have to say. When you add tissue paper to pulp it gives up its colour really easily so we had a bit of ripping and mixing that got a little frenzied at one point!

This is the Saturday Night vat and Katie getting to grips with the mold and deckle

Here is Toothpaste in the foreground and Pauline pulling paper with Loiuse at the Skyblue vat. Below is Kirsty making Candyfloss paper.

After a lovely lunch - thank you Mike - we experimented with adding things to the wet paper, embossing with old lace and laminating two sheets with various things trapped between. Kirsty chose this text from an ancient Bible with very thin pages and the white pulp (Pure!)

Here is a boxful of stuff, including some seeds, silk scraps, ribbon and mulberry silk fibre. The old crochet doilies add texture when paper is made onto it and then carefully removed when dry.
I had been hoping to get some paper dry in the sun, but alas that was not to be. Everyone took their wet paper home with drying instruction. But I'll show you some finished paper from a previous workshop made using my favourite recycled paper source - old white envelopes

which have fantastic blue patterns inside, the dye makes the pulp a lovely pale blue colour. I leave bigger bits when I am pulping so that the end result has an echo of where it came from
 

ready to write a letter! Look carefully and you can see the feather trapped in the dried paper! Yesterday we put seeds onto the wet paper so that you can plant your letter after you've read it!
All very wonderful! Then Martha and Matt cooked tea so I could collapse in a heap on the sofa!

Keep to the left

When you leave Scotland to drive into England, as I did yesterday, there is a helpful sign in many languages to keep you to the correct side of the road.

But they drive on the left in Scotland, even though it is a whole nother country. So what were you doing before? What are those languages anyway?
One of my treats in the beautiful borders was a visit to The Border Tart, where I discovered a number of things - courgettes bigger than mine, two beautiful dogs, one of whom has her own blog? a very friendly welcome and a good old blether and that I am not very good on ladders.
I love sky and here is some of the stuff I saw one the way home

that's a rabbit surely (edited to add - comments suggest this is a reindeer - I think I tend to agree - so - rather crazy reindeer it is!)
and this is a telephone of course

and here are a couple of trees

Is anybody reading this?
Today, at the Garden Station I led a workshop about basic book making, which the lovely lasses who turned up grasped with nay bother and between them made 28 books of various sorts.

Jo getting serious with the drill here making our version of Japanese Stab Books

Twenty eight books! And lunch! a good day all round I think.