Trip to Caldbeck in Cumbria

Rob, Brock and I had a day out last week to the charming Cumbrian village of Caldbeck.

This is the village green or commons, where sheep were grazing.

The beck running through the village. Our walk was around the surrounding roads and lanes, although there are longer walks in the area if you are feeling energetic.

A small bridge over Cald Beck, with overgrown steps leading down to the water.

There is a church, a pub, several shops and two cafés in the village. We went to the Watermill Café at Priest's Mill. There is a small car park nearby, or a larger one in the village. Unusually for Cumbria, both are free of charge!

Interior of the Watermill Café. I love the old, beamed roof and stone walls. There are preserves and flour and other items for sale. Rob had the quiche of the day with salads and I had a jacket potato with cheesy beans and side salad, with two coffees, the bill came to £22.50. The salads were very good.

There is a tiny shop called Little Crooked Tree opposite to the entrance of the cafe, selling a range of crafts and gifts. I bought a lovely sheep/patchwork card by artist, E B Watts; and then we visited The Wool Clip next door, which has a host of handmade, wool-related products for sale, including supplies, such as the darning wool I bought made or dyed by Wild Woods Wool (although, not for darning with!). They also had some beautiful handwoven scarves by Jan Beadle and tufted rugs and wall hangings.

An enjoyable trip, and it was fairly quiet now that the summer holidays are over, so it was a good time to visit.

Peace

A selection of items to wish you and yours a peaceful Christmas and New Year...

[Please click on the link below the photo to go to the item listing.]

Dove of Peace from Kate Rattray Mosaics, £55

Screenprinted Bird of Peace Card from Mellybee, £2.50

Peace Sign Copper Heart and Sterling Silver Necklace from Celtic Shore, £17

Happy Peace Angel from Thimbleville by Helen Sinder, £9

Tree at Iguazu, Original Painting from Steve's Art Shop, £375

See more items on the original pinterest board.

Gifted Exhibition and Craft Fair, Kirkcudbright

Rob and I went to see the 'Gifted' exhibition in Kirkcudbright Town Hall this week. The show contains some of the paintings donated to Dumfries & Galloway council and had several artworks by one of my favourite artists from the area, Charles Oppenheimer. The image below shows his painting 'A Sun-Dappled Pool'. There were even a couple of Henri Matisse screenprints, a Joan Miro lithograph and many other artists' work. Well worth a visit! The exhibition is on until the 27th August 2012.

Downstairs was a craft show featuring the work of local artists and crafts people.

Handbound notebooks from Anthea Robson of Borgue Books.

Pottery from David Alexander of Brackland Pottery. Rob and I bought these two beautiful dishes, which we will use for serving olives, nuts etc or individual portions of hummus, salsa etc. They cost £8 each.

Paintings by Kie Stewart. 

Mosaics by Kate Anderson.

A great place to get an early start on your Christmas shopping! We also bought some cards by artist Eddie Saul (three for £5) which are always useful to have on hand for thank you notes and birthday cards.

Heart of Gold: An Etsy Treasury

Here's a treasury I managed to nab on Etsy featuring items from the EtsyVeg Team.

Yellow Treasury For the EtsyVeg Team


I managed to glean a treasury for the EtsyVeg team today. I need some sunshine to brighten up a cloudy, rainy day!

I've Finished My First Rag Rug!

I started this rug last year after seeing the colourful autumn leaves blowing about in the wind.

After a quick sketch on paper, I transferred the design to some hessian with a large felt pen.

I bought four woollen blankets from charity shops and dyed them with various acid all in one dyes from Omega Dyes.

I dyed them in a large saucepan (used only for that purpose) and didn't agitate the fabric too much, so that I ended up with a blotchy effect on the fabric, with some darker and some lighter areas.

The hessian was fixed into a frame, and I used a shuttle hook from Debbie Siniska to do the hooking. I later learned that you should pull out one thread from each edge of the hessian to check that you have a perfectly straight edge to work from. My rug started becoming quite twisted because I hadn't done this and I had to go back and pull bits out of one edge and re-hook the other edge straight.

I rested the frame on a couple of trestles to do the work, although I see that most people work standing up when using this tool. The hooking is carried out from the reverse, so there is a lot of turning the frame to trim fabric ends and check that the design is going as planned. I tried to do no more than an hour at a time to make sure that I didn't strain my back or hands.

The strips of blanket were too thick for the shuttle hook to begin with: the thicker blanket needed to be just over 1/4", the thinner blanket strips nearer to 1/2" for them to run smoothly, otherwise the strip rucks up and gets caught under the point of the tool, and it is hard going on your hands and wrists. One tip is to try a few strips with your tool before you cut hundreds the wrong width...

As I neared the end, I could see that I was going to run out of the background fabric so I cut the design short by about a foot in length. Note to self - make sure you have plenty of fabric dyed ready beforehand - any extra could be used in another project or for repairs.

When I was finished, I cut out the rug with a two inch border of hessian. I folded over a one inch hem then folded the whole to the back and stitched in place by hand using a curved needle and strong button thread. I had checked with two professional rug makers about whether to add a backing or not, and whether to use latex to back the rug. Their advice was 'no' to both: apparently latex may damage the fabrics over the long term and a backing fabric can trap grit which then acts like sandpaper rubbing away at the fabric strips and causing damage over time.

After a few days of use and watching the dog surfing about on the rug over the wooden floor boards, I decided to add some rug grip tape from Lakeland. I tried hoovering the rug with the upright vacuum cleaner, but this pulled up a few stray ends, so I've decided to stick to the hand tool in future, and I've got my eye on a proper carpet beater listed on Ebay.

Now to get started on the next one...

Rag Rug Class With Rachel Phillimore

I am brimming with enthusiasm after a weekend spent learning the rag rugging techniques of 'prodding' or 'progging' and 'hooking'. The course took place in Featherstone Village Hall in Northumberland and was run by Rachel Phillimore. You can see some of her beautiful rugs and wallhangings at the following link:- http://www.racheltextiles.co.uk/index.htm

The event began with a talk from Maureen Morano about the history of rag rug making, from its humble beginnings as a craft of poverty, with the need to reuse precious pieces of fabric, to its more recent resurgence with the renewed interest in recycling. Maureen had brought along examples of some early rugs, with their typical dark borders, with 'hit and miss' inside, sometimes surrounding a circle or diamond of a more colourful fabric. One of the women attending the course had found a similar, very large rug, wrapped around her cold water tank in the loft! Maureen had some other rugs which had been more finely worked, using a hooked technique and showing a scrolled design or 'brickwork' pattern of different coloured fabrics.

After a pleasant lunch in the nearby pub, we got down to having a go ourselves. Some students had decided to try a simple pattern, like a row of knitting, or a heart shape within a border, others opted for a rose or a tree, a view of earth from space, and, in my case, a simple landscape of hills, water and sky. My aim was to try and make as many different looking areas as possible using the two techniques of 'hooking' and 'progging'. Hooking involves drawing a series of loops from a thin strip of fabric through the hessian background to the surface. When progging, you poke the two ends of a long thin rectangle of fabric through two different holes, from the back to the front of the hessian, producing a shaggy effect. All sorts of textures can be produced, depending on how long you make your loops, whether you shear them, which fabrics you use, how tightly packed they are and so on.

On the second day, we continued to experimented with a variety of fabrics, from fine silks to thick, textured tweeds and produced an astonishing range of textures. Everyone was delighted with their efforts and we were amazed at the variety of designs and effects that we had produced: no two alike!

Many of the participants bought tools, frames and hessian to continue their new hobby at home. I returned to my already half-finished hooked rug at home, with some good advice on how to straighten up the rather lop-sided edges, and how to finish it off properly.

We all look forward to the 'catch-up session' in January 2007.

I recommend the following website called Rugmaker's Homestead, which has a wealth of information about making many different types of rag rugs:- http://www.sandpoint.net/~rafter4/index.html