Twenty Twenty Three

 

Good Health Cheers

Well here we are already! The year is drawing to a close. Once again the year seems to have whizzed by.

All the good intentions of keeping up to date with this blog, so much I could have written, perhaps I will do better next year ;)

We hope our Woollen Tree YouTube along with other online sites have been of interest. Thank you for your continued support. 

We endeavour to bring you a little insight into our lives at Hillside Cottage, deep in the North Herefordshire countryside and love to show you our makes in our studios.  

2023 saw us

Building and fixing;  

Hillside Cottage has been having lots of renovations.

New heating system, external repairing and painting.

A brand new Creative Cabin studio in the garden.

Growing;

Garden harvest, bumper crops of fruit/veg

all pickled or made into chutney, jams and frozen.

Crafting for;

 Weaving workshops

Art Open Studios

Craft shows

Being inspired to continue; 

Weaving, wood turning

Spinning and dyeing

Handwoven cloth

Woollen Tree has found a good place to grow, its roots are deep in this beautiful place now. We are constantly inspired by the wonderful countryside around us.

I revel in all of Nature's amazing colours and try to produce handwoven cloth that reflects this. I have been growing plants and using them for natural dyeing in our garden.

Pete is enjoying sourcing local wood for his wood turnery. I will definitely be filming a bit more in his workshop so as you can see how the beautiful pieces are made.

Lots of plans for 2024 but for now, we have closed the Etsy and Folksy shops for the Christmas holidays and look forward to some family time. We will open again in January 2024

We wish you a very Happy Christmas time and a healthy and Peaceful the New Year.

 

Work at Hillside Cottage

Shadow Weave Project On the Loom

Lots of work going on at Hillside Cottage.

For January, work started on our cottage renovations. A new heating and hot water system has been  installed powered by a air source heat pump to run along with our solar panels. 

As you can imagine it has been a major upheaval to get this all fitted, every room needed new radiators. New piping and water cylinder fitted, all the floor boards up and dust and mess a plenty.

However this in itself has been so interesting, to see the "bones" of our cottage, beautiful solid oak beams and floorboards, they certainly knew how to build solid long lasting houses in the early 1800's

While all the cottage was full of workmen busy fitting the system I retreated to my studio and got stuck into some shadow weave projects. I put an extra long warp on my David loom and played with colour, pattern and texture.

The first scarf off the loom I used a muted colour palette it feels very vintage. I'm so pleased with it!

Shadow Weave Loom State

(Fresh off the Loom

unfulled or unfinished)

Old to New Radiators

It was so good to be weaving every day. for one thing it kept me warm! January is not an ideal time to manage without heating and hot water for a couple of weeks. My little studio is snug and warm, a little haven of peace and order while our cottage was in such a muddle. We do have a wood burner so that was wonderful source of heat and warmth in the evenings in the cottage, but in the day we were busy so we were fine.

Shadow Weave Twills 

 Now we are all cosy and snug. 

Having done an early Spring clean, tidied and put furniture back in place we are planning our next big renovation. (will tell you more in a later post). First we will be decorating the shower room (doing a little project) as we know very soon we will be out in the garden getting things ready for the Spring growing season.

Look already the snowdrops and daffodils are peeking through.

  

 

Aymestrey Village Fete

We have been living at Hillside Cottage for ten months and we feel so at home here. The village has an annual Fete and this year we have loved taking part in a wonderful day.

For such a small village it was a really well attended event, with people travelling near and far to be with us all on a beautiful sunny day.

All the usual  entertainments were set up to enjoy for kids and grown ups alike!

Classic car clubs paraded their vehicles and the farmers proudly drove their Vintage tractors around the arena. 

Competition a plenty of course, from dog shows, throw a welly, tug a war and duck races.

And of course there was a big marquee for the garden produce, home cooking and craft competitions 

Yeap! my handwoven throw won First Prize!

Woollen Tree also had a stall in the small craft marquee where we were able to sell our work. So pleased we made a roaring trade. 

We actually won three prizes in total 1st 2nd and 3rd.

Thank you for visiting our blog, 

We have been so busy lately with the house, garden and our crafts so if you would like to see and hear more about what we do please visit our other online sites.

You can click on the links from the right hand column or below.

Sue Wright Handknits- SWH and WT at Woollen Tree on Folksy

Wood and Wool Naturally Hand Crafted by WoollenTree on Etsy

 

Woollen Tree - YouTube

(3) Ko-fi.com - Your Ko-fi

 

A Day at Wonderwool Wales

 Now we live less than one hour's drive away from this venue it was great to visit Wonderwool Wales.

So much to see and buy! 

 I really enjoyed seeing the weaving that the students from the Carmarthen School of Art had been working on.

Jacob sheep and lambs were so friendly and seemed to be loving their day out too!

I came home with my little stash of goodies. Three extra large skeins of variegated dyed wools, a very big bag of coloured tops for blending and spinning. A soft lilac organic cotton spool to add to my weaving stock colours and a collection of paper patterns as I intend to start making my handwoven cloth into garments. 

That should keep me busy for a little while.