Wool and craft
December 30, 2024
Traditional craft is rooted in the place it comes from. The human hand turning raw elements into something functional and beautiful. This was so apparent everywhere we went in Scotland. Without even seeking them out, we saw so many beautiful things made by human hands. As a way of transitioning from vacation mode back to the things I usually talk about on this blog, I’ll stick to the ones we can file under fibre. Specifically wool fibre.
Sheep are everywhere. Literally everywhere. They are in the fields, on front lawns, in ditches and often in the middle of the road. It’s hard to believe the variety of things that are inspired and made by the fleece. If I had spent the entire two weeks of our vacation searching out as many examples as I could get my hands on, I would have only begun to scratch the surface.
I loved this display highlighting a school project where the students learned about how woollen thread is made. They learned all of the steps from shearing the sheep to spinning the yarn. Then they foraged for the plants needed to dye the wool and transformed it into all of these beautiful colours. I would have LOVED this project when I was in school. It’s the kind of project that would have stuck with me forever.
This knitting confection is a post box cozy. We found it in the village of Kincraig. It took me a minute to make sense of what I was seeing. It’s not every day that you find a knitted ship sailing in a sea of yarn while being attacked by a woollen octopus perched on top of a red letter box. It’s an impressive display of skill and I love that it was out in the open for everyone to see and enjoy!
This beautiful (and I’m guessing warm) quilt is on display at Gladstone’s Land in Edinburgh in a room that’s set up to replicate a boarding house in the early twentieth century. The amount of work involved in turning a sheep’s fleece into a woven piece of fabric makes each scrap worth saving. I always think of quilts made from scraps as organized chaos and this is a really beautiful example.
We all know that I like to sew and knit so it makes sense that my favourite souvenirs are yarn and fabric. I love reminiscing about my trip while I’m in the midst of making. And once it’s done the memories come flooding back every time I wear it. This yarn is from Shilasdair on the Isle of Skye where they naturally dye all of the yarn they sell. The ball on the left is undyed. The middle was dyed with cutch and madder. And the ball on the left was dyed with madder. I already have a plan for what I’m going to make but we can talk about that another time.
Some of the things we saw and did while we were in Scotland were things that we researched and planned to see. Others were things we didn’t know about until we were there. Skye Weavers was one of the latter. I’m so glad we found out about this place. Their home is in an idyllic village: fields, sheep, ocean, lane ways and sweeping skies. Out back they have two sheds. The first shed houses their bicycle powered loom and the second houses everything they’ve made that’s for sale. Roger was pedalling away when we poked our heads in and he immediately invited us in and encouraged us to give it a go. That’s me on the loom in the photo! One thing you can’t see from this picture is how loud the loom is. It was really difficult to hear Roger explaining the process to me while I was pedalling but it was so interesting I still heard every word. Visiting Sky Weavers and pedalling the loom was a serious highlight of this trip for me.
There was no way I was leaving without a souvenir. I was tempted by the blankets. I was tempted by the bags. But then I saw the yardage and everything else faded away. In the same way that the yardage outweighed the blankets and everything else, this gorgeous green diamond tweed outweighed all of the other yardage on offer. I fell head over heels in love with it. I bought one metre. That’s not a lot. I have a few ideas about what to make but one thing is for sure, there won’t be any waste. Every square inch will get used. It’s so precious that if there are any tiny scraps leftover they will be making an appearance in my next quilting project.