Roots & Heritage woolcraft Tuesday sessions at Galgael

week ending 6-3-09: lots happening!

Meet Jerry, who has been looking after John's Hebridean flock on Iona this wild winter, and who is over the moon to see how we are processing their fleeces into beautiful rugs. So we got straight down to fulling one for him to take back to Iona:

Which, at this Friday's Stakeholder meeting, meant Galgael Stakeholders were able to have a go at it as well!

Having a go at rag-rug weaving was the interest of many folks that day too. Here is a good old friend, Miriam the murial artist, looking close as Laryna demonstrates.

And then, inbetween, it was time for a song or two by Jerry, paying homage to the Hebridean fleeces - that one there is right now being processed (stitched & needlefelted, the stage after the washing and before the fulling) by Ali, and this one here is for Barmaddy, the Galgael venture in Argyll.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLu4fCqfNnI

watch a wee clip of Jerry's homage to the Hebridean fleece by clicking above

And whilst you are on you tube, you might also like to catch a brief glimpse of Laryna dancing her heart out at last and some others too. {Just click on the embedded links!)

Or you might like to take the opportunity to more fully see that very special event of this Friday, the poem-song writing, music making, performance gig of Luke Concannon with Manjinga 7 at Galgael. Click here for the youtube playlist and here for the photos.

This Friday was really a wonderful opportunity to collect and display our creative projects, too, such as Jackie's Hebridean felts: the mittens and the baby booties.

Laryna's luxourios green bag and the stylish wristwarmers:

This beauty here, young David's vessel (remember him from the felting at Liz event last November?) we finally managed to capture -

You can see more shots of it and the other modest and mighty master pieces of our members on the photoalbum here:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/woolcraft.atgalgael/March2009#

And here over to Laryna: who wrote:

We had a great day on Friday the 6t in GalGael. I loved especially the afternoon activities with the gorgeous band from Bristol. Such talented guys and full of inspiration, joy and love. They inspired us guys from GalGael to make our own songs out of words we gain by a brainstorming process written on a huge piece of paper. "There is so much talent in the room!" inspired us to do our very best. Later the band on stage was brilliant and eventually Luis was the first dancing and pulling everybody on the dance floor. I had great fun dancing. Then it became very noisy, because everybody was playing an instrument, mostly percussion ones. Fun was in the air!!!! I could feel the love and the joy and the fun of everybody.
GalGael, I am happy to be part of you!
From the wool ladies Anneruth, Alison, Lynsey and me have been there in the afternoon. Verene needed to go to another dance event with Biodanza.

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woolcraft log 30-5-08

Who came along today?
Anna, Flora, Mary, Ruth, Sarah,


Anna started to weave the second part of her pegloom cushion, now perfecting the rolling-folding method via a chin clasp Laryna had shown her.

Flora and Mary brushed the fire side fleece rug we felted last week, and it hangs now displayed over the stylish wooden bench in the foyer waiting for customers! So far it only attracted admiration, though.

Sarah started to knit another gauge with handspun wool and has a good look at the books with knitting patterns Ruth brought along, and made some photocopies for potential projects (simple pieces for baby wear and blankets). She plans now to buy some wool, as knitting with the precious handspun wool proves too expensive for a first project (apart from the fact that there is not that much choice of colours so far).

Ruth, Flora and Sarah washed a couple quite messy (full of grass and thorns) Blackface fleeces from Gravir (Lewis) to possibly felt as whole pieces. Sarah's first experience of washing and handling raw fleece, she took to it with flying colours, learning the gentle but firm touch too.

Towards the end of the day, when Issy came in to have a look at the patterns and knit a bit of the swatch for the single thread with the Jacobs chunky wool - and when Ruth tried to learn one of the Spinning songs, a bunch of people came through the bothy who had been practising their filming skills by filming Galgael today (help! not another one of them!), and wanted to film Ruth singing (even more HELP!) and telling about the Hebridean Sheep. Issy then let herself be persuaded to demonstrate plying on the spinning wheel, but Ruth made a good old mess of setting up the wheel and it took ages - all the while being filmed and hating every second of it! - before Issy finnally got her chance, yet another one I should say, as the movie star she deserves to be.

Remember: there are more photos here.

woolcraft log 23-5-08

Today came Anna, Anneruth, Flora, Laryna, Mary, Ruth, Sarah, Verene

Part of the team got on with wet felting the next Hebridean fire side rug. This time we did not prefelt the part-patches (thin places in the fleece) first, but went straight into putting soap over the whole fleece, and then rolled it up into 2 windowblinds (thanks Anna, for bringing your window blind along!) for the 'The fulling with the feet' part of the action.

Young Shaun had a look at how a fleece rug looks after it has been through the mill so to speak!
Here he finds that the half size one is just right for a good beard. :-)

We were also looking at some beaded jewelry Verene had made and plan ahead to explore felted jewellry next time ;-)

Mary had a go of trying out our Kromsky spinning wheel - and she got it to work for her!

As there was lots of white wool left from the event last week, and as the wool was a different white than the first rug on the big frame, Laryna started a new raw fleece rug with her well proven method of preparing the strips of wool from the batt. To her great surprise she really enjoyed weaving on the frame, as previously she had thought she would find it boring as she is used to the big foot pedal loom to do the fleece rugs in Germany.
The new rug is thinner in texture now than the one Anneruth started. It is good to have different types of rugs to show.

(see more picture of today's action as part of the May photoalbum)

wool craft log 2/5/08

Flora brought back the 3 neck wraps she has knitted: a white one from the good Ullapool Shetland fleece, and two black ones with different highlights from the Iona Hebrideans.
Jackie got quite inspired seeing this handspun wool knitted and took the rest of the wool home to knit a few gauges to see what she can make with the wool.

Today we decided to wet-felt the half fleece of the Hebrideans. Flora, Mary, Anneruth, and Jackie were gathered with just enough time for this shorter rug felting project. Later Verene and Sarah-Jane joined up, too.

The first bit of the wet felting - trying to bolster up the thin bits - did not go too well today: first Anneruth rubber gloves caused the wet wool to stick to the netting - and then (after the whole felting was done) we discovered that the most wool we had felted on painstakingly was coming off again because it had not bonded, even with all the firm fulling we did (= the rollling). The reason for that seemed to be that the wool on the underside of that fleece was more wirey than the previous fleeces had been, and thus wouldn't felt properly, even though we had carefully used selected soft wool for the wet felting part here. This now means that we will have to do some stitching up or needle felting again as part of the final touch.

The felting process this time was very community building again :-)

The workshop was quite empty as the trainees were out on a boat trip. But there were a few guys about who were being hauled in for the waulking part of the job. See for yourself
on the new picture uploads
or on youtube, as here are the links to a few video clips of the felting action today:
hey hey the felting is on: for the rolling bit we had Sarah-Jane with us trying to learn with us a Hebridean waulking song (the un-traditional way: from a song sheet!)
guys can have a go at the felting, too: young Shaun ges a surprise how strong we women are, and so do...:
senior guys can have a go at the felting, too : see the old guard sweating (and they thought it was easy!)
and here are Sarah-Jane and Verene taking their shoes off and get rolling, and then Sarah-Jane opts for the singing and Mary is taking a turn

Verene and Sarah-Jane then washed the flelted fleece out and we laid it to try in the yard over the new wool drying stand, which Davey done for us!

It is so great to have more knitters on board - it inspired Anneruth over the weekend to experiement with Heather country wheel to card and spin the Jacobs wool (single; for chunky knitting or weaving) and spin & ply chunky Blackface wool from the Pentlands:

wool craft log 22-2-08

Who was there?
Anna, Anneruth, Flora, Heather, Laryna


What were the preparations for today?
Anenruth had put the last needle felt bits onto rug #2, and Flora started her 2nd shawl knit


What did we do?
Felted Hebridean rug at last! With 4 and then later 5 folks that was great fun in the big workshop! You best view it in full on http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/galgael.news/WoolCraftAndOtherFunFromFriday22ndFebg #2

or you can now also listen and look teeny wee bit:
felting the 2nd Hebridean fleece at Galgael and more hands on felting the fleece


......... maybe someone of the other members would like to describe exactly how we did the felting?
You can do that in the comments section below, or if you have co-author access to this blog you could replace this paragraph with your description? :-)

The now rose scented fleece got then washed by Heather and Anneruth in the bathtub upstairs and left there, in the bathroom, to drip clear over the weekend.

In the afternoon Heather and Anneruth looked through the surprise find of lots of sacks of raw wool in the sail loft. Tam had tidied up there and found them where the big loom is laying wating ot be assembled again, once the sail loft has been done up (we can't wait, by the way, as the bothy is getting now too small really for the woolly things and folks!). There is Shetland fleece up there, seems washed, and we dont know where it is from. One sack with Blackface needs washing urgently, and has may be moths; we put it separately. the other sacks seem clear.

In the morning we also had a good long chat with one of the trainers on possible ways for getting wool craft modules acredited on a national level. We will have now a good look at some ScotVec modules from the 90s, such as 'intro to weaving', and 'mechanical loom related weaving', and see what could be adapted to serve as a step towards the ultimate goal: Galgael own certificates in various craft, nationally accredited.

The day and week at Galgael ended with dance again, this time the 'sword-cross' was of wool, and the music was in the feet and inner ears only! have a wee peep in...

work to prepare:
Anneruth to spin some more wool from the Hebridean wool for Flora to knit on the second neck wrap: it needs more grey hiighlights in the wool and Anneruth took some wool from upstairs for that in the hope it will work.
Laryna to prepare her input in the Bellahouston nursery as of next week (see separate entry on that job to be done :-) :-)