Gimme Shelter

A wee small shelter, fit for one.

One and a half man shelter

A workshop and symposium with Deveron Arts. 

This workshop really interested me as it had such strong echoes of my own Shelter degree show piece. It was really interesting to listen to another shelter builder talking about his whys and wherefores.

We fitted six in here!

Shelter: the finished piece

Shelter: Nearly there....

Just needs the floor...

Stitching together the pre-felted floor sections

Building Shelter

 Degree show set up with my wonderful mum as a second pair of hands

Bender Trial

I finally have enough straight Hazel and Rowan rods gathered to try out the bender build.

I marked the size of the structure back in Feb by the simple expedient of drawing a circle in the snow with a walking stick held at arm's length. This gave me a circle approximately 3 metres across which feels big enough to be spacious but small enough to be cosy. Human scaled.

Today was idyllic weather for a change, and I loved working in my outside studio with a big pot of wild-gathered nettle soup cooking on the open fire ready for lunch.

It's interesting how as soon as the skeleton of the structure was up there was a clear feeling of inside as opposed to outside.

It's also interesting to find that rods I thought were really straight in the woods turn out to be very wonky when I try to bend them.

Sampling Fleece

top to bottom: 1, 2, 3.

 Felting trials to see which fleece felts best and the different qualities: texture, colour, density, and ease of felting.

Fleece 1 felt wonderful when it was un-felted but was very hard to felt well.

Fleece 2 was quite wiry and was nearly as hard to felt as #1.

Fleece 3 felted like a dream with the same amount of rubbing and rolling as the other two.

L to R 1, 2, 3.

Fleece Heaven!

Second trip to get fleece from the Aladdin's Cave of the Wool Grower's depot. See what I mean about the wonderful huge bins full of fibre?

So much wool, so many shades and tones of colour = so hard to choose! I wanted to take it ALL home but returned with a sensible number for the huge project ahead. I limited myself to fourteen Moorit fleeces, mostly from Shetland sheep though some may be other breeds.

I also treated myself to one lovely soft brown Blue-faced Leicester fleece for spinning because it was just irresistible!

Moorit Fleece

Teasing and Carding

Moorit: a lovely warm brown with sun-bleached tips that occurs naturally in some sheep breads. This is my chosen colour to work with for felting a shelter cover.

I am buying my fleeces from the Evanton depot of the Scottish Wool Growers: first visit was really exciting, all those huge trolleys full to overflowing with wonderful raw fleeces and the freedom to rummage through and select what I like. Very heady!

The feel of lanolin-rich wool and the smell of sheep are strongly reminiscent of my childhood: my family had sheep and I helped tend them and shear them from a very young age.

Each fleece has to be teased out by hand and then carded on my drum carder before I can start the felting process.

Gathering Wood

 Lovely long rods for building a Bender...

Watch this space!

Very Wild Berry Mead

Raw local honey
Blaeberries (Vaccinium myrtillus)
Brambles (Rubus fruticosus)
Geans (Prunus avium)
Ling Heather flowers (Calluna vulgaris)
Water
Wild yeasts from all of the above

The alchemy of wild fermentation transforming and interweaving these wild ingredients into The Blood of Life

The smell wafting from the airlock is promising, the outcome utterly unpredictable and unrepeatable... Only time will tell if this is something wonderful or something minging!