Moving on

It is now quite a while since I have posted on this site but welcome to anyone

who comes across me here.

I am still at the village of Reeth here in the Yorkshire Dales, a beautiful place 

and a fantastic community to be involved in.

Here is the village, nestled in the heart of Swaledale.

 It is very much a sheep based landscape as you can see!

  

I have moved on from the Museum itself and now work at some Craft Units situated

at the Dales centre just at the top of the village.

Here is my humble abode of the moment.....

.....though I can often be found at the unit next door too, keeping busy helping out there!

 I share this unit with another creative lady but here is 'my space'!!!!!!  :0)

Since being at the Museum I was inspired to keep moving forwards

and I am now a 'mature student'  (Mmmmmmm!!)

studying at Bradford Art College for an

HNC in Textile Design and weaving.

Definately hard work, trying to fit in the weaving with everything else 

that life demands but who knows where it may take me next?

If you find everything is quiet on this site please pop through

 and see me on my other blog www.ashbecreative.blogspot.com 

where I post about ongoing things:- spinning, weaving, knitting,

the countryside around me.....you are more than welcome.

If you are so inclined from there you can reach me on Facebook

and find my online shop on Folksy, or follow the links
to these places just at the top of this post, on the right there.  :0)

Hope to meet you soon, best wishes,

Ash.

Well, here we are! The seasons have turned yet again and we have now finished yet another phase at the museum and everyone is settling into the work behind the scenes for the autumn and winter.

I have had a wonderful summer meeting people and progressing my work in this lovely place but for the moment the museum blog is signing off - not that my work is finished. I am looking forward to working on through the winter and who knows what mught surface with the coming of spring!

Check in on the museum website opposite to see what is happening over the coming months, keep track of where I am at, what I am doing with my other 'ashbecreative' blog, please click on the icon opposite and call in on me, it would be lovely to hear from you.

So for the winter, very best wishes and hope to greet you all again next year on this site.

Ash.

Not just the old!

Another week has gone by, this time I was struck once again by how lively the museum was.
Each week I take over this lovely huge table in the archive 'corner' with whatever I am focused on in the moment - this time I had taken my heddle loom to catch up on some weaving but you can see some knitting had sneaked its way in too!
I had some lovely people stopping to talk, its a good space for that, people can stand by and we don't get in 'harms way' so can natter for ages if we feel the need!!


Downstairs there always seemed to be someone passing through, organising to be done - usually helped along by the lovely volunteers - no not a tea party, some lovely old china being sorted for sale to aid museum funds.....the tea party is this Saturday afternoon (27th) the community orchard in Reeth, drop by!

Thought I might show you some more of this years exhibits - knitting sticks and wool chains, each is hand carved and used by the inhabitants of Swaledale in the past as they knitted to boost household funds..

It was good to see that the knitting carries on today - another of the lovely volunteers helping to demonstrate the crafts and to talk to visitors.

Some shelving holds locally made quilts, well worn and loved and very much a part of our heritage but, I am pleased to say....

...this gorgeous tradition and craft is still alive and kicking!!

Another exhibit is of an old, handmade proddy rug frame. I am so very pleased that I own one very similar to this - made by my own grandpa and used over the years by my grandmother to make household rugs - no I haven't yet made such a rug myself but you never know!!

Yet again, here is the rug making craft still in action - hooky rugs in this case, another museum volunteer involved in making a miniature rug for the museum entry into the local Reeth show.

Isn't it wonderful to see so much happening, so many connections still being made in a dry, old, dusty museum. Hah!!!!!

Till later.

The seasons turn.

Here I was this week, on top of the world, literally and figuratively speaking! Last week saw much activity at the museum as the cycles of the seasons continued. This months knitting cafe at the museum passed in a flurry of activity and much hilarity as a newspaper photographer turned up to catch us in action so to speak - yes, fame at last!!! :) well, I and the museum ended up in the local paper for our moment of fame!!!
(www.northernecho.co.uk/features - Brilliant yarns
if you are at all interested!!!)

As for the photo, this was taken on one of my many trips between the dale where I live and the dale in which the museum resides. A great rainstorm had just passed through which gave rise to this rather brooding depiction of the hills but as you can see it gives rise also to some big, huge skies with wonderful cloud formations.

Drop back a little in perspective, and give thanks for the sun beginning to shine, and you can see that the heather is coming into bloom - unfortunately this means also that the 'glorious twelfth' is imminent and the grouse will be under 'fire' - without this countryside industry though there would not be the heather moors in this way - the rough with the smooth so to speak!!

Moving in closer still, as I love to do with my wondrous little camera, you get to appreciate the true delicacy of the heather flowers and their colour - a soft purple pink in this case.

This is such a big piece of the landscape in Swaledale that I think I can feel another adventure in yarns beginning ( now I have finished my short excursion with the colours of the moss covered drystone walls!!)
Watch this space and fingers crossed I might have some success in creating a yarn that describes the lovely spirit of the heather.

Yet another sign of the seasons continuing to turn was this image I captured of some blackberry flowers, already pollinated and beginning their change into the sweetness of the berries - another image to be shelved for use at a later date I think!

Which nicely takes me through to another image that has sat on my work-table for the last few months....
can I take you back to March this year when I first began my one woman journey with the museum and swaledale....... do you remember the coldness of the days, the mists, the lack of leaves on the trees?

...... do you remember where the predominant colour after grey was the yellow of spring, the catkins were hanging and the daffodils swaying in the march winds?

Do you remember my little foray along the banks of the river Swale and the images I caught back then of the play of light on the river surface?
Here is a little reminder.....

I was fascinated back then by the silky smoothness of the waters surface broken by gentle ripples and the river cobbles that make up the river bed. I loved how the suns light was gradually strengthening and making the water gleam and gave promise of the brighter days to follow - I hoped!!!!
I made a copy of this image, through the wonders of the modern world and home computers!, and it sat there, in various positions, on my work table. Sometimes it sat in clear view but most often it was buried beneath a pile of 'works in progress'!!
This last few weeks I have made a shift back to using natural colours in fibre, there are so many hues from cream, through greys into browns and ending in almost black - all from the wonderful wealth of sheep breeds we have here in Britain, I took a picture here of just a few of them.

Having spun a yarn in these soft natural colours, letting the different fibres through quite randomly and at the time thinking of the mists sitting on the hills these last few days - I then began to knit.
My yarn I had kept quite soft and fairly thick, I wanted to have a go at some aran patterns. Start off easy I thought and maybe I could encourage someone who has yet to try this form of knitting to have a go......

It was only as I had sorted out this easy design and begun to knit that my image of the river Swale drifted to the top of the pile in the stacking system I call my brain!! The easy flow of natural colours with its creamy, 'sunny' highlight expressed the image so well for me...

..... and the meander of the aran cable pattern was such a nice reference to the river flow, and how we and the river are inter-connected and the moss stitch pattern inbetween gave a knitted nudge to the cobbles of the river bed.
Its so good when these things come together and you find a way to express some of the beauty around you in the 'crafts' that we are all so fond of.

Thankyou for reading..

Better late than never......

Apologies for being a little 'tardy' in writing this next posting, I'm not sure where the time slips away to!!
Thought you might like another little glimpse of Swaledale - the weather was not over bright but that is not unusual in Britain is it and especially not up here in the Dales... the picture above is looking down across some grazed fields to the River Swale with the heather covered tops away in the distance. I am looking forward to the heather flowering - there just has to be some inspiration in that!

Getting down closer to the river is this lovely little view of Grinton bridge which is minutes away from Reeth itself. As you can see the water levels have dropped somewhat exposing all those lovely river cobbles.

A little closer still and there are so many lovely colours and textures. I love the way the ash trees have their own graceful flow across the water from the river banks.

....and then get your 'eye in' even closer and it is not uncommon to find the odd fossil washed down from the upper slopes and rolled along by the river. I believe this one might be from an ancient stem of a giant fern - but I am willing to be corrected on that one!

It was a lovely surprise to come across this sheep grazing amongst the more usual swaledale breed found around here. Again I could stand to be corrected here but I think it is a Masham sheep -'local' to the North of England. (The town/village of Masham lies not far away near Ripon.) Produced by crossing a Teeswater/Wensleydale with either a Swaledale or Dalesbred ewe. I haven't yet spun any of the fibre from this type of sheep but it is an ommission I intend to fill - it looks like it could be interesting.
That is one of the fascinations I have from spinning, all those wonderful breeds of sheep we have here in Britain the colours, the textures, the different properties suited to different uses - soemthing to be encouraged I think not lost to the needs of the mass markets.

At the museum itself there have been some wonderfully busy days - everyone seems to enjoy their visits, the memories from household implements, playing the old harmonium, listening to the local dialects preserved on the listening station and just enjoying the general atmosphere of the place. It is very much somewhere to touch artefacts, to talk, to reminisce stop for a cuppa and just relax - such a revelation on how I used to view museums!

Thankfully I have had some sales of my yarns and I had to re-stock the little display the other week. I love spinning, the colours the textures and how the hanks of wool I make can go on to make bigger and better things. Having had a wonderful time on the Knitting Day run by the museum with the norwegian Annemor Sundbo - I had bought one of her books. I have had time to do a little reading now and her view of knitting and yarns has had many echoes for me - if I may I'd like to pass on a few.

'Every work product, even a little fragment, displays the spirit it is made from and the time it was a part of'

In my work, 'the spirit' is derived from all the souls of the women who have put there love, cares and joy of creativity into their work as well as from the strong tradition that continues, like a transmigration of souls, helped by the hands.'

'Today, factories can only use wool which suits the limitations of the carding and spinning machines. No mechanical methods can duplicate the quality of the old handiwork.'

It is such thoughts that I find drive me to keep on spinning and to encourage the return to using and valuing these crafts and the raw materials, I find that like the history stores in the museum there is a whole host of memroies, feelings and spirit stored away in these techniques held on to by a few - but the numbers are climbing!!!

This last photo is from a scarf I have knitted inspired by the self same book. In Norway all the bits of wool and yarn left on the floor around the spinning wheel are known as 'suitors' - believe me, I know all about them!! According to folk belief over there, these small bits are regarded as parts of the life thread - an expression of 'spirit' as I have always felt. I have numerous bits of spun yarn left over and was inspired to make this 'suitors' scarf. Each row of the knitting is a different colour a different fibre - all the different threads that make up life maybe! brought together to make something warm and practical for the life we are living.

......here is the knitting a little closer, isn't it wonderful how all the colours just work together!

Hope you have enjoyed this slightly different angle maybe of the world I inhabit - of nature, the past, the present, the fibres, the colours.......just wonderful! :)