Update

I am coming to after a hectic time. First we had ITV Wales filming the garden as part of National Garden Open in Wales. For those of you not from the UK this is a uniquely British event where people open their gardens sometimes just for one day sometimes for groups visiting . All the gardens are listed in a famous yellow book. The visitors fee goes to Charity. Most of the gardens are absolutely stunning and often very grand stately homes but also little tiny cottage gardens too. My parents were very fond of visiting gardens and when my father moved up here he and I went round gardens together although mostly I think because my father was very partial to the home made cakes that so often feature! Quite where I found the courage to propose the dye garden to the organisers I don't know. I think it came from the day when we opened the garden last year as "Shopping for Colour" and it was so obviously enjoyed. Someone said to me you should open under the National Garden Open Scheme and here we are. We are open to groups visiting when Enys and I talk about the plants and I talk about dyeing and then conduct them around the garden. The solar pots have been a very good way to introduce people to the colour of the garden especially the madder , birch and golden rod pots.
So last week -was it really only last week?- ITV filmed. I forgot to ask Enys to take pictures of me demonstrating woad dyeing and I only took a few of her but it gives you the flavour of the day. We both enjoyed it it very much and it was a fascinating experience. I picked woad leaves six or seven times while they filmed it from different angles-amazing that the woad leaves held up. I kept finding another little plant hiding under something else as it has self seeded around the dye beds.
Two days after that we loaded the car, squeezing an unhappy dog into one tiny corner and set off for Woolfest. "Don't buy anything will you" said DH "there is no room even in the top box". Not buy anything! Go to the Woolfest and not buy anything. The poor man obviously had sun stroke. Fortunately a good friend with an empty car came to the rescue and took back my two fleeces and a swift and I sold some big bulky items such as all my new solar pot kits complete with 2 litre Kilner Jars which took up a lot of space. We could have sold these twice over they were all gone by 10.am of the second day. Another great success of the Woolfest was my inks of which I sold a lot. These inks designed by me for painting and writing turnout to be excellent fabric paints too. I painted some pre-mordanted silk with them steamed and rinsed. No colour came out at all

In between ITV filming and setting off for the Woolfest my new Aura wheel, the fantastic new spinning wheel from Majacraft, which had arrived but was sitting tantalisingly in it's box was set up. My original vision was that I would sit spinning some fantastic textured yarn at Woolfest to advertise both my fibres, my packs and my new Beyond the Twist Yarns. A good friend ( I am very lucky in my friends) recovering from a hip replacement carded me some batts to spin and some batts to sell. Did I get a chance to spin? Well I expect you are smiling as you read this . Of course not- except for a few minutes here and there. Plus the fact that people bought the batts which were meant me to spin so at the end I had no batts at all! The wheel attracted a a lot of interest. I directed them all to poor Martin of PM Woolcraft who imports them and from whom I bought mine. I say poor because none of his ordered wheels had arrived. I was very fortunate to have mine as it is at the moment one of only three in the UK. What is so good about it? Well it spins like a dream. The huge flyer and fantastic threading system (no hook pulling the yarn through a tiny orifice) means it will spin from laceweight to bulky yarn. A hugely versatile tensioning system with two different tensions means it is very flexible. In the picture you can see some fine yarns ( some of my cashmere and silk plied with a laceweight merino) and an over the top yarn with teeswater curls spun in whole.
What am I doing now?Getting ready for the student coming on Monday for two days. Which means tidying up my studio. Sigh! (And I still have not fully unpacked the car)

A Working Studio,Organised Chaos or What the BBC saw!

Dot Lumb in her blog Fibre 2 Fabric mentioned the state of her studio saying that the place that had been immaculate two years ago was now almost too full to move in. It set me thinking about my studio. One fellow artist just says "Oh my God" whenever he sees it Early on in the week I taught 7 people Felt Beyond the Boundaries-incidentally one of favourite workshops- in a beautiful pottery studio ( Ceri Pottery) high in the hills near Newtown in Powys. Her large studio with two pottery wheels and lots of working space was immaculate and really put mine to shame. My worse enemy could not describe mine as immaculate and here it is in all its organised chaos glory with photos from the doors at either end. This is what the BBC saw when they came interested in running a children programme .
I thought it would be fascinating to have a show of working places. What does your studio look like?
Mine I realise is going to have a face lift before the Open Studio event later this year Helfa Gelf. sigh.When?I don't know and where will everything go while I wash down the walls and paint? I know it needs to be done and I will feel better for it but ..............................arrgh!

Filming the Dye Garden

Photographing the filmers!
The top picture shows Enys with the presenter Russell waiting to be filmed through a sea of golden rod , Enys again waiting - there was a lot of waiting- with my washing line with merino tops dyed with the garden dye plants next to her The third one is of the camera man in my studio with dried garden grown dyes in the foreground, and finally me posing in blue gloves glasses on top of my head as usual waiting to pull something out the dyepot.
The day went well- the garden and Enys were the stars and Enys explained all about the dyes sometimes translating what I said but the focus was really on the plants. S4C is the Welsh language channel and consequentially they cannot have more than a small amount of English in it so I don't appear very much in the film, just pulling stuff out the indigo vat and so on. They were fascinated by my samples of fermented madder and solar dyed madder which I had laid out ready at the back of the studio ( will put up a photo of these ) and we unwrapped a piece of bundled silk which had been wrapped around crushed dye plants for three weeks and left in the sun. The colours are gorgeous so I will take a picture of that today and put it up on the blog too. The funniest thing was the big debate on how to translate that I do a lot of fermentation dyeing and came up between them with a word that apparently is rather like brewing as the formal dictionary translation of fermentation into Welsh would not have been recognised by many viewers. The day was fun how much of it it will make it to the small screen I don't know but they said it will probably be shown about four weeks after the start which is the 4th of June.

Fame for the Dye Garden!

My dye garden is going to feature in a televison production-part of a series on working garden by S4C the Welsh language Televison channel sometime in the summer. Enys who grows the dye plants and I who uses them will feature too! Enys of course is the Welsh speaker in the relationship with me doing the dyeing. We tried to persuade them that it might be better to wait till the dye plants were mature, but they are adamant they want it in May (they are filming on May 22nd) which will challenge the pair of us. They predictably want me to demonstrate woad dyeing with fresh leaves. However I hope to have a few others such as birch, and eucalyptus leaves which gave a good colour about this time last year. S4C are also going to film Enys's garden too as she grows plants for medicinal and traditonal usage.

At the moment I am wondering how they are going to do me dyeing and Enys explaining as she grows and I dye! We are also both feeling totally freaked at getting everything ready in two weeks However at least I put some cotton into my compost heap to compost dye last week which helps in explaining that every part of the garden is used and we have practiced good lines for the nettles-dye, attracts butterflies, can use for spinning , as well as for the bonfire site, (my DH loves having a good burn) which we point out provides me with woodash for wood ash lye. as things stand we cannot find a good excuse for the weeds in the paving cracks on the patio so DH will have to weed., ( I originally said that we would have to weed but DH pointed out that the we was a royal we and it really meant him)