Alston Craft Fair

This is the place to be this weekend. And this really is a proper craft fair, with real handmade crafts - blacksmith, shoemaker, potters, basketmaker etc. Check out who'll be there.

To make this year's craft fair really special there's a related art exhibition just around the corner.

Hopefully the snow will stop before Friday.........

Even the comments book is a work of art

This is the comments book for the Cowshill Village Hall Centenary Exhibition, opening on Friday. Isn't it lovely?
And here's an image from the photo archive showing the hall in 1918.

And this is the wonderful proggy mat, another dimension to the exhibition. Isn't it sweet?

And, finally, here's a detail from the forty ft long felt frieze.

The exhibition is running from 28th November to 5th December, then it's going on tour. It's first stop will be Beamish Museum, although the felt frieze will remain in situ in the hall. We've been hanging the frieze today and I've seen some of the other bits for the first time, including the wonderful photographs taken by Louise, who also orchestrated the entire project. There's also the photo archive, oral history project, specially composed folk song, and heaven knows what else. If you can make it to Cowshill Village Hall next week I promise you will not be disappointed.

High Force

I was all set to tell you about High Force. For those of you who don't know, High Force is, arguably the biggest waterfall in England. I say ' arguably' because there are several ways of defining biggest waterfall - volume of water, height of drop, and probably a host of other criteria. Anyway, High Force fits one of them - can't remember which....... High Force is not far from where we live and we haven't been since the summer, so we though we should go to see what havoc the recent rains had wreaked. Unfortunately, the path to High Force is closed - too dangerous! We walked around to the top of the waterfall, but it's difficult to get a good photograph from the top - there's no concept of scale - especially when you're there at dusk and visibility is pretty poor, to say the least. So here we are at the top of High Force.

And here's a sign which we found rather amusing.

To see High Force itself the best thing to do is to visit it yourself. In the flesh it's always impressive.

Centenary Exhibition

The felt frieze is finally going to be unveiled as part of the Cowshill Village Hall Centenary Exhibition. If you're in the area during the exhibition then do go in and have a look - there's plenty to see and hear. Of course, the 40ft frieze will be on permanent exhibition forevermore. It's all very exciting! Also look out for an article about the project in the December issue of Felt Matters, the journal of the International Feltmakers Association.

Felt online

I've finally made my first move to selling online. Check out my Folksy shop! Here's a sneak preview. Obviously I need to add a few things to it.....