Tuesday 19 January 2010

Invitation to an Imbolc Coffee morning

February is coming again - the month of new beginnings for woolly lambs, and a woolcraft@galgael event:


'Imbolc' is a name for on old Celtic country festival, where the women, and men!, gathered to celebrate womanhood, and all the good nurturing qualities that we like to see to come with it: skills in making garments and food, tools and decorations, giving birth, and also protecting the family or clan. The patroness for that has always been 'BRIGHID', a figure mythical and divine in all times and for all ages, and at this time of the year especially for the young woman.

Somewhere there is in all of us a young woman, an eager to learn, bright and fresh part of our self. Now is the time to remember her clear vision, keen senses and clean hope, and to recommit to her. Around us here in the Northern hemnispshere the little snowdrop is a symbol of that cold withstanding fire of life, as well as the fire in the hearth. In the Outer Hebrideans Imbolc (1st of February) was the day when the hearth was cleaned and for the one and only time in the year it had no fire in it so it could be freshly lit. Later traditions placed the candles instead of the heartfire as the centre of celebrations.


 
One ancient craft symbol, the woven reed cross, Bridghid's Cross, symbolising the balance and perfect movement of all things, also still remains a much loved staple of making and saning at this time of the year, Imbolc, or Oimelc, 'the first flow of ewe's milk'.


Wednesday 6 January 2010

slow in catching up


 
To all our dear readers -
a very happy New Year to you all!
time has just flown this last half year - and also some dear 'old' members have flown away to new work and other countries, and the new members are still learning how to weave on the blog loom here, being very busy with getting down to woolocrafting first of all. You can see that also from the picture above, our new bothy cupboard - a very inviting sight to encourage the many Galgael visitors to stop and dream (and to buy maybe too :-)?), and the newcomers of our growing group to get hands on. You can always see more up to date updates on our famous picasa site
 http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/woolcraft.atgalgael  

And soon there will be more catching-up-posts here about the happenings of the past months, such as the Christmas Fayre, - see here :