Woolly Winter in Somerset

I had a pressing sense of getting on quickly with some personal learning this winter.  Never for one moment did I imagine how precious those winter hours would be.  My mission started on a glorious Winters day high up on Exmoor, when spending time in very good company pin pointed my direction of travel.  I find sheep such endearing animals, and my interaction with this particular kindly faced lady reaffirmed loud clear that all things woolly was the direction I was still heading.

My woolly pursuits easily fell into place in the days that followed, starting with a very practical project, a winter hat.  I knew exactly the women to help me create what I had in mind - professional milliner and fibre artist Silvia Prandini.  Based at the Red Brick Building in Glastonbury, Silvia has many years experience of making beautiful wool hats and teaching others.  She warned me that wool hat making is physically demanding and after my first 2 hour evening session moulding and pinning wet wool around wooden blocks, I could see what she meant.

At the following session, Sylvia started me on the hat construction - requiring the tiniest of hand stitches to edge the brim and make an internal band with Petersham ribbon.  I unwittingly added to the intricacy of this task by opting to work with black thread and black ribbon on a black wool base.  Luckily I like a challenge and digging deep for patience, I raided every extra light source I could lay my hands on to increase visibility.

Slowly and surely something that looked like a hat started to emerge in my working hands.  There is no doubt that good quality hat making is a time consuming process.  The up side of this was that it gave me lots of thinking time to ponder other different ways that the techniques I was learning could be applied.

What a immense sense of achievement I felt on the day that I finally completed by hat and I have loved wearing it every day since.  In these fast moving days of uncertainty, it now feels a little indulgent.  All the same, it will continue to make me smile every time I wear it and that has to be a very positive thing.

My next woolly experiment was a decorative one, giving me a great opportunity to use wool from a local rug making company that would otherwise gone to waste .  I was delighted to source British spun carpet wool in these lovely earthy colours and with a welcome extra pair of hands, the sorting out became a very fun task.

A mini niddy noddy was the tool of choice for the many hours of skein making that lay ahead.  As arduous as this sounds, using the 500 plus year old tool is actually a very meditative activity and the results are most satisfying.

And then came the happy day starting another new woolly craft with a long historical background - rug hooking.  Unlike latch hook rug making with short wool lengths, this technique requires a long length of yarn to be laid beneath hessian and hoops are pulled up through the hessian with an open hook.  The subject matter for my design was an easy choice and was most pleasurable for my fingers to work.

Working with a small hook, thin wool and fine hessian took a little while for my fingers to settle into rhythmic and relaxing hooking.  My initial design morphed as I worked to reflect the undulating Exmoor landscape that had first inspired me.  I opted to keep to a modest 7" square size for a sooner rather than later sense of achievement and here is my finished piece hanging on my Spring Farm studio wall - another winter achievement that will keep me smiling.

My third and last woolly winter activity started just a week before all our lives began to change at pace.  A lampshade now feels a touch poignant, as keeping brightness in our lives in the days ahead will be so crucial.  My long pondered idea for using wool as a base fabric, came to life in one of those cuppa lightbulb moments and after choosing some beautiful blended fibres from John Arbon in South Molton, I fired up my trusty embellisher machine to see what I could achieve.

I particularly liked that my idea for felt making was less strenuous than traditional wet felting - just a little hand washing was required before the lampshade construction.  The completed shade with a little hand stitching have a lovely soft effect and it has the added advantage that wool with its natural fire retardant properties is very suitable as a lampshade fabric.

And so as we head into unprecedented Spring weeks, I reflect back on my woolly winter days and feel glad for the memories of magical making.  Each of the techniques I have tried has masses of potential and at a time of reduced mobility and more time to think, working my fingers with luxurious wool will be both calming and life enhancing.  I am now looking at increasing ways of sharing creative ideas and will  keep posting in the weeks ahead.  I give thanks again to the blessings of nature and my capacity to work with my hands.  I know that there are many others who will agree with me on this.