{ Mu'Mu }

Crafters from the Outer Hebrides

I toyed with the idea of keeping this find all to myself. But that just wouldn't be right. Good things should be shared - and good handmade things? Well they are worth shouting from the rooftops, I'd say...

A while back I stumbled upon Scalpay Linen blog - you might have seen it in the sidebar. It held a fascination for me - blogging from the Outer Hebrides from real weavers and spinners - from a woman who makes Harris Tweed for crying out loud! In a world full of crafty bloggers who blow their own trumpet for sewing two lines together, here at last was a real craftwoman to put all others to shame - spinning wool from her own flock, weaving linen and tweed - grappling mountain lions with her bare hands, ripping sinew out with her bare teeth to use as thread before going back to her real farm house croft thing to start a real fire with maybe flint and sticks  because there is no electricity.

I might be lying about the mountain lion thing. Anyway along with her own shop on Etsy Sheila also linked to the store I bought this yarn from - Calana Crafts (blog HERE). And it is a gem.

There seems such a concentration of crafters from these wonderful places; in a world that seems to be getting faster and increasingly more meaningless, dislocating people from the land, their families, even their ownselves, it is a real treasure trove to find people still weaving by hand, who still live in the place they and their family were born, keeping ancient crafts alive. I wonder if they realise how amazing their lifestyle is? How lucky they are?

And I think we, as UK crafters, have a duty in some respect, to support homegrown crafters too. The plight of  Harris Tweed in recent years has shown how little importance we in Britain place on our own heritage - if these people were in any other country I am sure they would have received World Heritage status by now and received some form of grants to ensure their survival. It is an indictment of our society when some arse like Brian Haggas can undo aeon of tradition based on nothing more than spurious market forecasting. {Spurious because evidently the man is a complete dick. Allegedly.}

Many of us have taken a pledge to support Handmade, but taking it one step further, how about supporting Homegrown Handmade? And not just homegrown, but Heritage Homegrown Handmade (that's a lot of H's)?

The yarn is gorgeous (I say that about yarn a lot, I know) and I fully intend to go back when my bank manager allows, and RAID the entire store for my stash. All of it. Mine.

But that would be greedy, and so I share the link with you all. All I ask is that you leave me some, OK?

And when Scalpay gets the Harris Tweed in that's mine too. Just saying.

A little bit of sunshine to keep those winter blues away... support Heritage Homegrown Handmade!

Getting reaquainted

After a long while of relegating this to the craft equivalent of a back-burner I have dug the drop spindles out again and am trying to master the art of spinning.

Aided by excellent tutorial videos like this, I've been giving it my best shot. (And there are a lot of great tutorials on YouTube if you want to search 'drop spindle')

I know, however, that I've got a long way to go.

The good news is - help is at hand! In a few weeks the local spinning and weaving guild is meeting up and they've asked me to go along to meet up - and hopefully be given some help!

I can't wait for the day that I 'get' this, and that I can spin and knit my own yarn. Not even when my man comes in and gives me 'look at the iddy biddy crazy English girl' look and announces we have machines for things like this now, and how about he make me an up-to-date spinning thing with his drill do I get disheartened. One day when I can spin yarn from carpet fluff and knit him a sweater he'll adore me.