OUR STORY & PHILOSOPHY
For forty years we have been learning to “live in the land”. Finding out what grows best on our patch, about climate and our own frost pocket, how to take from the land and to give back. We have also learnt about living with animals, tuning in to their needs, coping when things go wrong and delighting in the successes in the annual cycle. The best of these is the birth of lambs. These experiences have taught us the great satisfaction in using every element that the land gives us, from the food we eat to the annual gathering of fleece. In 2017 I was offered a couple of Suffolk sheep and I thought “that will help keep the grass under control”. Little did I know where it would lead.
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Although I had used yarn and fibre of many types it was spinning that gave me a curiosity about the nature and properties of wool fibres. Lustre, crimp, staple length, were words that began to make sense as I taught myself to spin with the help of You Tube. Helpful friends sent me samples of different fleeces and my space soon filled up with bags of fleece. Although my spinning technique has improved I still love my early, lumpy attempts that are so clearly hand spun and full of character. As my small flock grew in size the annual shearing produced a quantity of fleece that was beyond my capability to spin. At the same time it was too beautiful not to use. I decided to send it to a mill for spinning which gave me a generous supply of out own beautiful yarn.
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My first initiation into natural dyes was in Estonia using fungi. This was a truly revelatory experience. I soon discovered that it is hard to find the dye fungi in Scotland, but I was hooked on the process once again. I planted dyers coreopsis and chamomile and harvested the flowers. The yellows and orange colours were astounding. Lifting each batch from the dye bath was a mini revelation and quite addictive. I explored further growing japanese indigo, woad, madder and harvesting the weld that just sprung up from nowhere in a weedy patch. The joy of dyeing is that there is always something more to explore such as overdyeing yellows with indigo to give all shades of green. Plentiful plants such as broom can be collected for the dyepot. There are endless possibilities. The property of plant dyes that stands out for me is the complexity of the dyes which often contain more than one hue. This is the factor that really distinguishes plant dyes from chemical dyes in my opinion. These are particularly suitable for Fair Isle patterns.