December 2009

I know this is headed December, but it's about what I did last month. It started with a few days' teaching at Denman College - silk-painting with some design thrown in. It was a two-night course which only allowed for a little experimentation as all students were absolute beginners. Everyone worked extremely hard and achieved some impressive work; the aim was to make at least one finished scarf from a personal design idea. Scarves were worked on silk crêpe de Chine with steam-fixed dyes. Students were taught how to use water-based Cern'O resist and hot wax. They selected the technique they preferred for their finished piece.

I think they were surprised at how much they managed to achieve in such a short time.

On the right you can see the group wearing their twist-tied shibori scarves, which I taught in the evening session. This was an "extra" to the main scarf they each made. I'm the one without the scarf!

I teach several times a year at Denman College; it is the residential college of the Women's Institute but you don't have to be a WI member to attend a course. Food and accommodation are of a very high standard as are teaching facilities. Find out more about it here. To see when I am teaching next, you can go here.

Thanks to my group of Northamptonshire-based students for their cheerful attitude under my cast-iron tutelage.... and for allowing me to use this image

A bad cold and the Larsson effect

I don't think it was Swine 'flu but I was certainly hit by a pig of a cold this month and the after-effects still drag on. Fortunately, I had the entire Larsson trilogy onhand. I demanded grapes to be peeled and hot toddies to be brought while I feverishly turned the many hundreds of Larsson's pages. You just can't help it: it's not great literature but you just have to find out what happens next. I wish I had some of Ms Salander's more esoteric skills - but then I imagine she would have had limited uses for a tjanting and a pot of hot wax. Come to think of it, maybe I'm wrong there.

Before I caught the cold I went up to Wistman's Wood on Dartmoor in teeming rain and high winds. You can't see the rain, but it was there in lashing bucketfuls. Legend has it that Wistman's Wood was a sacred Druidical grove and it is certainly a remote and mysterious enough place to harbour many such legends. Personally, I don't find it sinister, just extraordinary.

I have done some dyeing this month and this is now at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen for the Christmas period.

One of the stunted, lichen-hung oaks that form Wistman's Wood with moss-covered rocks below