Textile residency

I have just had the most incredible trip to Iceland for the North Atlantic Native Sheep and Wool Conference in Blonduos. It was  such an emotional experience meeting not only our wonderful Icelandic hosts but also delegates from all over the world. The standard of lectures was extremely high, much more on this to follow on later blogs. We also travelled over a large area of Iceland visiting to name but a few, the Istex wool factory, the Ullarselio wool centre in Hvanneyri where we were tempted with beautiful wools and jumpers plant dyed and hand spun by the ladies of the area who join together to sell their crafts and the most memorable part of all, the end of the round up of 15,000 sheep from the Highland summer pastures. Some pictures of the round up and the beautiful Icelandic sheep are below. Many thanks go to our hosts, Johanna and Palmi, the people, including the Mayor of Blonduos and our incredible guide, Olafur Dyrmundsson who knew every patch of land we travelled and all the people working it. The Conference next year will be in September in the Faroe Islands.
There are spaces for residencies at the fabulous textile centre in Blonduos. See the link below.
 www.textilsetur.com

stitched butterflies

I bought an Indian handmade light box from the wonderful Fair trade shop Shakti Man, a link to this later. It reminded me of the boxes used by butterfly collectors so I decided to make handstitched butterfly brooches to go in it. These were exhibited in my recent exhibition 2 Connect at the Hodgson loom Gallery. As 2 were sold I have replaced them with 2 new brooches to go in the upcoming show that starts on the 9th October at the Isle Gallery. The show is a joint one with 4 other very talented textile artists. These are all based on actual butterflies from around the world and are hand stitched with single thread cotton using a beading needle. The bodies are made from wrapped wool, they also have beaded eyes and metal thread antennae. As the stitching is done on calico and wire, the butterfly wings can be posed in different ways. The link for Shakti Man is shaktiman.co.uk