Art and Tart Time Again!

The annual Crossing Borders art trail takes place at the end of this month.

Hugh and I would be delighted to see you here at Chesters - there are new paintings in Hugh's cabin, a whole new room for me and my textiles and a pop-up coffee shop full of craftwork and cake!

Each day from 10 am until 5pm - look out for the wooden sheep signs

 
You can pick up an Art Trail booklet at venues around the Borders, or download one here

Frustration

..brought about by deathly slow broadband in Chesters. We are struggling with download speeds of about 1MB and uploads generously displaying as 0MB which is deeply frustrating. Complaints lodged with BT. Answers awaited. Sigh. 

Meanwhile, in other news, it was a gloriously sunny couple of days at the Border Union Show where the Tart was happily ensconced in the Wool & Water Tent with great textiley friends. The crowds were sometimes a little less than impressed at the humidity levels in said tent but Saturday was more comfortable than Friday for us and wool-related sales did still happen.

And my workspace is filling up. Here (with gracious broadband acquiesance) are some highly selective arty shots while it still looks half empty and tidy.

Good intentions

Ooops, where's this month disappearing to?
I nearly have an operational new workspace. This will be really exciting and uplifting and generally A GOOD THING. At the moment, though, there are too many tasks preventing me getting in there and enjoying it.
 

Posh Dublin breakfast

For example - housing everything. The simple fact is that I have too much stuff. I am trying to be realistic but sentiment gets in the way of quick decisions, and good intentions slow things further (I could use all that salvaged junk to make a really cool something or other, couldn't I?)
However, the recyling wheelie bin is full to bursting and Selkirk's Scrap Store will become a major beneficiary next week. 

So, when it all looks lovely and before I start to make a creative mess in it, I will post some images up here. Meanwhile, here are some images from Ireland!

And do come and visit at the end of August during the Art Trail, and see for yourself

Perfect welcome for visiting tarts

Stephen Pearce, potter to the stars - his empire is rather larger than the shopfront suggests

Ballymaloe Cookery School's garden

Breakwater beach art

 

Overseas

Just back from an all-too-brief trip across the Irish Sea. 
Blessed with pretty fine weather, we drove from Belfast right down to Co Cork and stayed a few days in a perfect little converted barn. These images are just a taster of the many I snapped as we walked and drove around.

nearest neighbours

can you smell them?

no wonder we were loathe to leave

waiting at Ballymaloe Gardens

Kilkenny Castle, where we stopped en route north

Ballycotton Bay

There's so much to see even in the one county that we will definitely be going back for major explorations.

Glorious June

How easily we all slip into summer mode - expecting to wake each morning to warm dry days. I think we are well practised in the art of relishing every minute, knowing only too well the huge variety of alternative climates we will wake to the rest of the year...

 Hedgerow and home

I was in Peebles for a few hours on Thursday, meeting my Working Perspectives hosts. Hugh grabbed a lift and went cycling off along the quieter roads for a while.
Peebles – Creative Place is a year-long programme of events which aims to bring creative work into public spaces, work places and private houses so that everyone living in, working in, or visiting Peebles in 2014 has unexpected chances to experience the arts.

Working Perspectives is a project that takes individual artists into all sorts of businesses and workplaces in the town. I have been paired with the Castle Warehouse and I love it! On Thursday I met lots of the staff and saw behind the scenes. Everything from attic offices to cellar storerooms, and even a secret painted vennel. So much scope for inspiration. 
Over the next few months I will travel up and down to the town as I work on the pieces I want to create. I may give you sneak peeks if I am brave enough.
 

Home again and Hugh has set to work to create a doorway into what will be my new workshop. This is hugely exciting for me. Tart HQ has been quirky and fun to work in but this space will suit me better. The caravan will be up for grabs in another month or two (ideal playroom/hideaway/spare accommodation - wired and with working gas fire and hob...)

Off out tomorrow. A long long awaited trip to Bridge of Allan to the one day wonder that is World Textile Day - Scotland. A handful of highly regarded traders and a couple of talks which promise to intrigue and inspire. My pal and I are heading off early to ensure we get seats for the first talk!

Cut and punched

.. and folded and assembled. All in a day's (entertaining) work at Roberton on Saturday. 

I led a thoroughly enjoyable workshop at the Forman Hall. It was a claggy rainy day - no fun for gardening, or sheep clipping, or much else outside so we were all pleased to spend our time creating masterpieces from salvaged papers.

We started with simple notebooks punched and bound with bamboo skewers and elastic bands, and proceeded to fold-out books with covers and ties, and folded album pages which linked together, ready to display photographs. The most popular were the zigzag constructions; the inventive group were soon adapting them to all sorts of purposes and conjuring up new ideas.

As the afternoon progressed everyone seemed to work faster and faster - such industry! Maybe it was the chocolate digestives. 
Normally I am pleased when participants go away with one finished object and another in progress but this gathering produced stacks of impressive designs between them.

Elsewhere, spinning continues and button packaging, and decorating of the cottage. None of the latter is very photogenic but I will being showing it off as and when rooms merit it. After all, you may want to stay there some time and enjoy a wee break in this lovely part of the world.

Here's another yarn-in-progress to be going on with.

Textiles Rock!

So much good stuff happens round textiles, it's uplifting. Maybe it's a very basic human need for warmth and reassurance; sometimes it's an equally powerful need to make, to be creative, to conjure something beautiful from the mundane. 
Whatever, it's there in abundance when you look closely.

Back of the sample hat I have knitted in indigo dyed chunky merino

At Dingwall's Highland Wool Festival I had a great time yarning with all sorts of happy people who flocked to the event. My handspun sold, my buttons sold, but what I particularly loved was that my indigo yarn was so popular. I foresee much dyeing in the next few months as well as planning of the online shop for my website.

Recently I had an e-mail from B, a lady more normally creative in other fields. She had seen my Indian block print packs and kits and wondered if I would sell bigger pieces. She went on to order enough to make herself a quilt, to fulfil a long-held dream to recreate a quilt she remembered from childhood.

The multi-talented Pat Douglas attended a Warped Workshop run by Ali at the weekend, where she learned to block print on fabrics. Before you could blink she was home and stitching into her newly created linen fabric, and loving it!

This weekend too, I had an e-mail from a Finnish lady enquiring about my handspun yarn - so pictures will be wending their way to her tonight.

 

 

Yesterday I spent a happy afternoon in the garden with two dogs for company, spinning yarn. 
Simple pleasures...

Northern Exposure

Heading up to Dingwall on Friday with a jam-packed car in readiness for Saturday's HIGHLAND WOOL FESTIVAL. Such a wealth of textile talent will be on display, and as makers keep posting sneak peaks of their products online I find myself saying 'must go and see them.... and their stall and ...ooh, look at that, I just have to meet that weaver, that stitcher, that dyer...'
Fortunately my good friend will be there to help The Border Tart so I can make sorties out to other stalls during the day.

I was delighted by sales of hand spun at Art@Ancrum but it does mean that although I have spun for long hours in the last fortnight my stock of skeins is not overly generous.

the yellow skein on the left only just made it in - it was still on the line at 3pm

On the other hand I have dyed a lake's worth of indigo so Blue Moon yarns will be well represented. And I have lots of lovely buttons, of course, including some delicious new lampwork glass buttons that I collected from Laughinglass today right here in the Borders.

I made the momentous (for me) decision to cut up the fabrics I brought back from India into fat quarters and half metre lengths, and they are heading north with me too. I wonder if Dingwall is ready for block prints...

Today has been...

...a mixture of some of this

chunky merino yarn emerging from indigo dyebath

    
and this

lightweight blockprinted cotton tied, indigo dyed and drying on the line

 and a little of this

washed skeins of handspun in the breeze

 and quite a bit of this

grateful thanks that some things here happen by themselves

Tomorrow will be more of the same and getting organised for an early start on Saturday. Warped will be off to the North East Embroiderers Guild Regional Day with our wares. 
Little plug - still some spaces left on the Warped workshops coming up next Saturday 31st, both involving block printing so lots of opportunity to get messy....
And on Sunday a Woolgathering -  It will be lovely to catch up over stitching, knitting and cake!

Washing Blues

So happy that it was dry and breezy today. 
Twenty two blue skeins hanging on the line, from palest 'summer sky with clouds' to deep ocean shades. All had a fine airing and are almost ready to twist together and label up. 
A batch of new indigo products was also drying quietly but I am not ready to reveal them yet..... ;)

Last weekend was great! I had a fine time at Art@Ancrum, welcoming a wide range of visitors into the little barn beside the shop. Lots of oohs and aahs at the pile of indigo yarns on display but some lovely appreciative comments about my framed artwork too. I spent my days spinning and chatting, with occasional forays to the shop for coffee. All of the artist participants were pleased at the sheer numbers of visitors and I was very chuffed by surprise visits from far-travelled textile friends on each of the three days. Thank you all for coming to see me!

Hugh had a strenuous weekend of biking and hiking for Maggie's Cancer Care Centres. He and his team mate managed the undertaking in a very creditable time. He suffered no ill effects except tiredness and is now considering a different bike/walk challenge for next year...

Ready to Roll

 

Work is framed, 

labels are made, 

lists have been written 

and ticked off, 

and added to, 

and scored out,

and rewritten....

so it must be time for Art@Ancrum!

 
I had to be at least semi- organised because we were away for a long weekend, to indulge in a grand family get-together. Hugh's cousin had booked a big house at Symonds Yat (on the River Wye) for us to share and it worked pretty well. 
On Sunday morning Hugh and I finally had a go on segways...and I didn't fall off - not so much as a wobble.

The previous day we'd had a great walk alongside the river then up through wild-garlic-smelling, bluebell-hued woods.

 

 

 The journeys there and back for the weekend were less lovely - long hours of rainy motorway stop-start driving. As we headed north and the roads became quieter and infinitely more beautiful, it felt good to be homeward bound.

So, Friday's private view then a long arty weekend for me, while Hugh zooms up to Fort William to do his bit in the Maggies Bike and Hike.