We are really excited to be taking part in a new event for us called Wool On The Wall at Greenhead on Sunday the 10th July from 10 am until 4 pm.

This biannual event is run by a a group of volunteers who are passionate about British sheep and their wool and have come together to organise wool on the wall at the Hadrian's Wall Farmers' Market at Greenhead. The organisers all live and work in landscape of Hadrian's Wall and describe themselves as having a wide range of backgrounds and interests which include sheep farming, spinning, weaving, dyeing, felt making, knitting and all things textile! They are also all committed to trying to buy local, recycle and use environmentally friendly technologies as much as possible.

Stall holders include -
Ellie Langley - a felt maker who will have a variety of her hand made products for sale.
The Knitting Gift Shop will be selling their range of wool made with fleece which they buy from farms throughout the north of England and then have spun in Yorkshire. They also have knitting related gifts all produced by themselves or made for them by local County Durham companies.
Eden Gotland Sheep - selling raw Gotland fleece and carded Gotland wool.
Liz Reed - a designer and maker who makes delightful little people from driftwood and clothes them in knitted garments made from British sheep's wool.
Natural Born Dyers - a small indie-dying business offering high quality yarns and fibres dyed with natural dyes which they extract from plants that they grow themselves, harvest locally from sustainable sources or purchase in dried form from UK suppliers. 
Julie Owens selling her handspun wool.
Jennie Howes of skybluepinkdesigns will be selling her hand spun and dyed yarns that come from British sheep along with her own patterns, hand knitted garments and knitting kits.
Magali Pettier - director and film maker of 'Addicted to Sheep' to this year's event. Meet her life sized needlefelted Swaledale sheep. You will also be able to buy DVDs of the film, minature versions of needlefelted Swaledale sheep and lambs and other 'Addicted to Sheep' merchandise.
Tarset Shetlands (trading as Deneburn Meadows) will be bringing fleeces, yarn, carded wool and handmade items from their Shetland Sheep grazing at Wark and Tarset.
Janet Matthews of Hole House Farm Wensleydales will be seling Wensleydale and Wensleydale blend slivers for spinning and felting, together with dyed locks and batts. Janet will also have some black Blue Faced Leicester fleeces for sale along with some interesting crosses!
Sue Gill a small, indie dyer using UK wool for her fibre and yarns.
Lizzie Ross will be selling yarn and knitted items made from her Alpaca flock (Stony Pasture) just north of Hexham. 
There will also be demonstrations from The Tour of British Fleece and Spinning and Weaving interactive demonstrations with the Gilsland Fibre Friday Group and their friends. There will also be sheep from Moss Peteral Farm, Greenhead.

We do hope you will join us to learn about all the things you can do with local Northumberland wool and, of course, buy locally grown food and crafts from the Farmers' Market.

We had such a good time at Woolfest last Friday and Saturday and thank you to everyone who came to see us, helping to make it such an enjoyable event.
Highlights for me included the lovely very pale grey Suffolk & Shetland fleece I got from the Wingham Wool Work stand, which I intend to use for edging and adding details to clouds in future. I'll try to use it as it is, but I think I may have to call on the services of my friend Jenny from Sky Blue Pink Designs to spin it for me. Other highlights for me included the hurdy gurdy man and the herdwick sheep & sheep dog puppet show.
Keith's main highlight was Indian Delights, one of the caterers at the event. Keith had a chicken tikka wrap for lunch on both days AND brought some home with him so he could have it for lunch and dinner the following day. Apparently they are going to be at a food market at The Monument in Newcastle for 2 weeks this December. So I expect we'll be paying them a visit. Anyway, back to Woolfest, next year's dates have already been announced and they are 23rd & 24th June. Hopefully we (and Indian Delights) will be there again. www.woolfest.co.uk

We have another lovely new card stockist - Doodle Workshops at 63 Station Road in Ashington. 

Doodle Workshops is dedicated to making Arts & Crafts accessible to everyone. Tuition is available in  screen printing, ceramics, glass fusing, slumping and laminating, silk painting, glass painting, quilting & handicrafts, rug making, machine knitting, textiles and lots more. It is also a fabulous shop selling the work of lots of local artists & crafters as well as art & craft materials, haberdashery, wool & a small selection of fabrics. Visit www.doodleworkshop.co.uk to find out more.

This is a new little picture I've done specially for the Alnmouth Arts Festival, which starts tomorrow night. It is 9" square in size (unframed) and is framed in a white washed solid wood 15" square frame.
The picture costs £225 and it is hand made from Harris Tweed & wool yarns using a technique called Needle Felting. As it is a special "one off" there will be no prints or cards taken from this image. But I do have other puffin prints and cards taken from  images of my work, which can be seen in my shop gallery. Click here to view.
Alnmouth Arts Festival - We will be in the rooms off the Dandelion Cafe courtyard, next to the golf course throughout the weekend, so please come and see hello if you're around. 

This is a photo of "Blossom" a new picture I have created specially for Woolfest. Blossom is a much loved member of the Whistlebare herd of Angora goats owned by Alice Elsworth at her farm of the same name in North Northumberland. Read more about Whistlebare below.

"Blossom" is so new that I haven't even had her scanned for printing yet, hence just a photo for now. Unfortunately there definitely isn't going to be time to get some cards produced in time for Woolfest next week, but I will have some £12 & £25 prints by then. If you want to see more of my print & card images click here.

Woolfest is a celebration of natural fibres and of all things wool, The aim is to celebrate all aspects of wool - from hill farming and rare breed fleece animals to the latest craft techniques and creations. Visitors and stallholders come from across the world, many of them every year, to meet and catch up with friends and to share ideas and inspirations and sell their work.
Woolfest 2016 | Friday 24th (10am - 6pm) & Saturday 25th June 2016 (10am - 5pm)
Mitchells Lakeland Livestock Centre, 
Cockermouth, 
Cumbria. 
CA13 0QQ Cockermouth 

Alice Elsworth produces a lovely range of soft, lustrous and natural knitting & crochet yarns from her Wensleydale Sheep and Angora Goats, which she will be selling at Woolfest. All Alice's wool is spun in Yorkshire and then hand dyed in an array of brilliant colours back at Whistlebare Farm. Here is an extract from Alice's About Us page on her website www.whistlebare.co.uk.
"On our small family farm in North Northumberland we keep pedigree flocks of Angora Goats, for their fine mohair fleece and Wensleydale Sheep for their high lustre longwool.  Every attention is paid to our animals' care from planting mixed swords of grass and herbs, keeping their hooves neatly trimmed, patrolling 'maternity' through the night at kidding / lambing time and housing them in thick straw beds through the cold winter months.  Any feed that is required in addition to that grown on the farm is sourced from our local mill. Here at Whistlebare producing yarn is entirely a family affair.  Every stage of the process is in our hands from selecting the livestock to labelling the last skein of yarn.  When you buy natural yarn from Whistlebare you know that it has been produced with the utmost care; both for its quality and beauty, and its concern for animal welfare and environmental impact."

We are very pleased to add another new stockist to our list. 

Located in central Dumfries, Strands offers a superb range of handmade designer jewellery, crafts and other gift items from over fifty makers. It is also the home of award-winning "Slate & Silver" handcrafted jewellery made in Dumfries.

30 Great King Street, Dumfries, Dumfries & Galloway, DG1 1BD       Tel:01387 266666

Victoria is our latest card stockist and can be found at 53, Castlegate. Penrith Cumbria. CA11 7HY

​Victoria's is a unique clothing and gift shop, run by Victoria Stevenson, which sells only Fair Trade or British vintage and modern clothes, textiles and jewellery.
www.victoriaclothing.co.uk    Tel: 01768 840994    Email: [email protected]

What Victoria says about her business "I wanted to have a business with a 'heart', so selling fabulous Fair Trade and British made things 'hit the spot' for me. I've been doing this for over two decades in the lovely Lake District town of Penrith, in a quirky old building that was, in a former life, a Temperance Hotel.Penrith is still the sort of town where you can dash out in the morning and pass four people you know, who'll stop and pass the time of day. Community is important. As is our effect on the world at large – which is why I particularly want to support artisans who are struggling to improve their quality of life. Who cannot take reasonable wages or working conditions, or adequate healthcare or schooling for their children for granted. I want to try to sell the best quality for a reasonable sum. I want to nurture British small – scale artisans, in their especially creative endeavours.
And I want to be passionate about the goods I sell. And I would like my clientele to treasure what they find here. They do come back, my customers, year after year and some of them tell me they love their clothes so much that they can't bear to part with them, even after 20 years of wear!
I am trying to do my best to 'leave only footprints'. With that in mind, we stock 'organic' cotton clothes, with dyes that leave minimal residue. We recycle everything we can. We haven't used plastic wrappings for at least 15 years."

I have 8 pieces of work in the Summer Exhibition at the Biscuit Factory, Newcastle. The preview evening is tonight and the exhibition runs until September 1st. The exhibition brings together an eclectic mix of contemporary art, craft and design work from more than 200 artists. Headlining this season is contemporary landscape painter Chris Forsey with his new solo exhibition. Chris's show explores the Nortumbrian landscape; from light filled riverscapes to dramatic coastal scenes. Other highlights this season include Richard Stainthorp intricate wire sculptures, a showcase of spectacular surrealist paintings by Stefan Mas Persson and new collections of jewellery from designer-makers Zoe Scrutts, Rachel Brown, Eleanor Bolton and Leila Swift.
OPEN DAILY | FREE ADMISSION
Location: The Biscuit Factory Gallery, Stoddart Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 1AN
www.thebiscuitfactory.com

​I am really excited to have some of my rag rugged work included in a fantastic exhibition at The Gallery at Woodend, Scarborough along with work by some of the North East’s foremost textile artists. Pieces by Zeneta Bakute, Helen Birmingham, Helen Edwards, Jane Jackson, Angela Knipe, Margaret Kenny and Lindsey Tyson will reveal and explore a sumptuous world of colour and texture. The exhibition will include intimate items of jewellery, large wall hangings, three dimensional work and carefully crafted embroidery that will present the viewer with a veritable panoply of beautiful fabrics. Visit ​www.woodendcreative.co.uk to find out more about the exhibition and www.rebelragruggers.co.uk to see examples of Jane's rag rugged textile art.
FREE ENTRY
6th June - 28th June
9am - 5pm weekdays
10am - 4pm Saturdays