H Art and Upcoming Events Before Christmas

 

It has been a busy time here at Hillside Cottage. We were delighted with our first h. Art event!

What a wonderful week!

We had a mini heatwave, the sun shone every day, perfect for all our lovely customers to relax in the garden, purchase our  handwoven and wood turnery work from the Cabin. Lots of them enjoyed the weaving demos in my studio and signed up for some "learn to weave workshops".

Pop over to our Woollen Tree YouTube video to view.

(13) h.Art 2023 Venue | Woollen Tree - YouTube

We will be opening again for H. Art Christmas Open Studios the weekend of  2nd to 3rd December from 10am to 4pm. There will be a different feel to this event as the Cabin will be cosy with the little stove lit. The shelves will be filled with items to buy special gifts for the festive season. The garden will be decorated with fairy lights and weather permitting the Jovi tent will be in place again to offer a hot cuppa to customers as they browse and shop.  

Home | Herefordshire Art Week (h-art.org.uk)

We are now heavily into the pre Christmas season of craft fayres and shows so ;

Before our event at Hillside Cottage, Woollen Tree will be attending two more shows.

The first is Orleton Handmade and Gift Fair

The following is Made in HR6

 If you are in the local area we do hope to see you there!

We will be stocking our online shops over the coming weeks too, so please click on our links to view our Etsy, Folksy and Ko-fi sites (right hand column on web view site of our blog)

H. ART HEREFORDSHIRE ART FESTIVAL 2023

 

We are holding our first Open Studio Event at Hillside Cottage 

as part of 

H. ART HEREFORDSHIRE ART FESTIVAL 2023

The event runs from Saturday 2nd September to Sunday 10th September.

We will be open every day from 11am to 5pm 

Sue Wright | Herefordshire Art Week (h-art.org.uk) 

We are looking forward to showcasing our work, our new "Creative Cabin"  will be full of items to purchase, the studio will be open for demos and the garden an ideal place to relax and be inspired.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

The Creative Cabin- New Studio

We have been busy at Hillside Cottage, building a new studio for Woollen Tree.

So pleased with it. Named it The Creative Cabin!

 A fantastic space and so very versatile. Great to hold my weaving workshops in, giving me more of space for teaching small groups. 

I am enjoying kitting it out with everything I need. In this photo you can see my weaving studio and the new creative cabin together. Along the wall I have laid my latest batch of organic cotton handwoven cloth which will become T towels.

The other exciting news is Woollen Tree is taking part in H Art - Herefordshire Art Festival this year! The event runs from 2nd to 10th September 

and 

we will be opening the studios and garden for folks to visit and of course our new creative cabin will be filled with lovely items for people to buy. 

I will let you know more details closer to the date, meanwhile I hope you enjoy watching our You Tube and if you are interested coming to weave in the new cabin please get in touch via my ko-fi or Etsy shop. 

Thanks for your interest.

OUR NEXT CRAFT SHOW IS AT AYMESTREY FETE 15TH JULY

 

 

A Visiting Loom - At Woollen Tree Weaving Workshops.

A visiting loom

It's been an exciting time at Hillside, there's plenty going on to keep us busy. Renovations continue on the outside of the cottage with the chimney repointed, rendering repaired and new guttering and facias fitted.

But most exciting of all is that I have been able to start my weaving workshops.

The two workshops this month have been working on 4 shaft looms. It has been great to welcome fellow weavers to my little studio and get stuck into making warps and weaving patterns together.

This dear vintage Dryad loom was warped up with 8/2 organic cotton to weave a set of T towels.

I love to see a loom dressed and ready to weave, it always looks so much happier, its character awakes, I feel it just wants to be used, to be creative and do what it has been designed for- in the same way a yacht looks so happy when it is all rigged ready to sail, waiting for you to take it on the next adventure! 

The next adventure happening here at Hillside is the building of a new studio to use for

Woollen Tree Workshops

I will blog more about this soon 

And of course must just round up this little post to show you the lambs which have arrived in the field next to our orchard. So cute! We love to watch them, very entertaining as they get up to mischief.

Spring is here!

 

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.

  

 

Harvest at Hillside

Elderberries

So we near the end of September, our first year at our lovely Hillside Cottage. We have been enjoying a bumper harvest from our garden, despite the "heatwave summer" the UK has been experiencing, we really have had an abundance of fruit and vegetables to keep us well stocked. I have been making jams and chutneys.

 The joy of walking down to the veg garden to select something for our lunch has been immense. We are fortunate to have a variety of fruits- cherries, apples, plums, damsons, raspberries, blue berries, black currants and blackberries. all giving us their treasure each in turn. We have been growing all our veg and salad crops. As we take care of our garden it takes care of us. Organically, no-dig, permaculture system.

The result is tasty food, lots of flowers, insects, bees, butterflies, birds and wildlife. The only battle we seem to be having is with all the wild rabbits! they, given a chance nibble everything- even things they are not suppose to like! luckily our vegetable beds are well fenced so as they can't get in but the terrace up near the cottage and the flower pots are all easy pickings. The baby rabbits are so sweet though hopping around the clover on our lawn. Next year we will build a few more fences to protect our specimen plants on the terrace. 

I made some elderberry cordial this year, perhaps next year I will see if I can make some wine?

Damson Jam

Damson jam is so delicious, shhhh I think a few jars will make perfect Christmas presents for the family  

Craft Fair

We also attended a lovely craft fair at the nearby village of Orleton. It's great to showcase our work and sell locally.

Hand Woven Throws

 It's been a very busy year at Hillside Cottage, so much so that our blog here hasn't been able to keep up with all we would like to share with you.

 Please remember that our Woollen Tree on You Tube is available for you to view along with our

 Ko-Fi site where we plan to chat more and open a little shop on the site too. Thank you for your support.

We are looking forward to producing more work in our Woollen Tree workshops/studio once all the harvest is "safely gathered in"

Meanwhile check our Etsy and Folksy shops to purchase new stock for the new Season.

Natural Dye - Dandelion

 

In the Orchard area at the bottom of our Hillside Cottage garden we have an abundance of dandelions! So I decided to brew a little dye pot and capture a little of Nature's colour  growing there.

I wanted to use the flowerheads only for this dye bath. I placed them in a pot of water and boiled them up on our little camping stove. It was good to sit in the orchard, enjoying the spring sunshine and watching the wild life around me, baby rabbits squeezing under the hedge nibbling the long grass, kites circling above and the garden birds singing their many songs.

 

After about an hour of extracting the dye from the dandelion heads, I strained the liquid from them and added a couple of iron nails to the pot to help lift the colour a little.

My pre mordanted wool skein, 

 Shetland fleece handspun-alum mordant 

Then I added the wool to the dye bath and gently simmered the pot for another hour until the wool had absorbed all the colour 

Hanging the skein up to dry in the tree.

The pale yellow colour achieved is gentle and almost a soft lemon.

This wool will be used in my Saori weaving, when woven with other naturally dyed yarns it will give me a way to highlight, lift and lighten a piece of cloth.

This is my first natural dyeing at our new home - Hillside cottage.

It is thrilling to be able to source my colours from my garden. 

We have been busy creating a Weaver's Garden. A place to brew my colours on the firepit surrounded by home grown dye plants.

We will show you more over on our  You tube channel

shortly.

(63) Woollen Tree - YouTube