Ruth's embroidery

Award winning product

2012-01-24T15:13:00.000Z

I have had a stand at "Scotland's Trade Fair" over the last three days showing our Anna Macneil products to shop owners and retailers and taking orders. Over the course of the next two or three months we will have hats and scarves, bags and purses, wraps and wallhangings, plus a few more things besides, winging their way all over the world to both old and new customers.

The show organisers hold a "Best Product" competition, and in the Clothing and Textiles category, our new Kindle pouch was judged "Highly Commended".

This new product has come about as a direct result of a request from a customer and has involved a lot of discussions and research. The result is a fully lined, embroidered Harris Tweed pouch just large enough to slip in a Kindle, that closes with a velcro closure along the top edge. There is a long detachable tweed strap so that you can either just slip the case into another bag, or have it slug over your shoulder or across your chest. This is ideal if you have a long commute where you like to read on the bus or train and keeps your Kindle safe and secure. Our Velcro closing purses and pouches are proof against pick-pocketing, in that it takes two hands to open them, and you can't do it without making a noise! (Of Course I do have to stress that I am NOT offering a guarantee against theft!)

And if it's a different size of tablet type device that you have, don't despair! We are happy to make these to order. Just email us your tablet dimensions - or send us make and model and we will find out the dimensions. As with most of our products, these can be made in any colour. They feature a Celtic knotwork design on one side and on the reverse there is a small official Harris Tweed label surrounded by embroidered Celtic knotwork detail.

It will be a couple of weeks before the Kindle pouch is included in the on-line shop (that involves my husband doing some work for me - cobblers children etc.......!) but order by email if you can't wait that long!

Here you see the pouch in the dispaly cabinet at the show with me sporting a new tunic that I recently made. It was made just because I wanted it myself, but it attracted many favourable comments, and an order from Canongate Jerseys and Crafts in Edinburgh, so it will have to be back the the sweatshop pretty smartish to cope with all the orders!

And of course, you are always very welcome to call into our studio 6 miles from Inverness on the A862 Inverness to Beauly road. At the studio you will be able to choose your tweed, discuss sizes and have things custom made - or browse through our stock to buy off the peg.

Harris Tweed - buying and making

2012-01-05T18:23:00.000Z

I am on the Isle of Lewis just now visiting my mother and getting myself in gear for the new Anna Macneil venutre.

Very sadly, a weaver that I got a lot of our tweed from died very suddenly in the autumn. Donald will be sadly missed, not only by his family, but by all those of us that he supplied with his lovely tweeds.
However, his wife kindly agreed to sell me his loom and the supply of yarn and I hope to spend this next year or so learning how to weave our own tweeds. For tweed to be Harris Tweed, the entire production process, from cleaning the fleeces to finishing the cloth has to be carried out on the Outer Hebrides, and all the weaving has to be done using a people-powered loom - no electricity or any other power source is allowed - and the weaving also has to be done at the weaver's family home. In my case - this will be my mother's garage.

The first task is to get the yarn brought across the island to our home at Upper Coll just a few miles north of Stornoway.
I spent the last few days sorting out the attic to make space for storing the yarn. The loom itself will be transported across in a few weeks time and then we have the joy of trying to re-assemble it and make it work! With the attic cleared and shelved I collected some of the yarn yesterday and today I got it out of the car and up the ladder. (I decided against doing it yesterday because of the bitingly cold horizontal rain.)

I installed a pulley wheel above the loft hatch and used a rope with a latch hook on the end to haul all the cones up. They are now neatly stored according to colour - but this is only the first batch! I have about 1000 cones to shift over the coming weeks.

However, it will be some time before I am at the stage of actually producing my own tweed - a lot to learn and not enough time to practice, so a trip to the mill to buy tweeds was called for.

Between them, Natalie and Kerry at Harris Tweed Textiles (Carloway) cut and folded the tweeds I wanted and tomorrow I will be taking them back across the Minch to our workshop near Inverness where Mary and I will be making them up into bags, purses, hats, scarves, etc. It should keep us going for another few weeks.

Christmas Shopping

2011-12-04T23:42:00.001Z

Well.......... winter is definitely here! I woke up the other morning to find the garden pond frozen all the way across. The ice was no more than 4 or 5mm thick and I was rather worried when Maggie (one of our cats) thought it might be interesting to walk on. I managed to persuade her that it was a bit foolhardy.

As I drove out to the studio I saw there was snow on the mountains - not just the tops, but down to quite a low level. The temperature, according to the car thermometer was 2°C. Once I arrived at the studio it felt more like -20°! I switched the heating on right away, but it took a good couple of hours to warm up and I spent the morning do things that involved moving around rather than sitting still.

Earlier in the week Mary and I had spent some time rearranging the shop area. Now that all our craft fairs are over, we no longer need to keep packing and unpacking our stock. The shop is well stocked and open for business. And to make things easier for our customers, we now have facility to accept credit and debit cards.
In the shop you will find almost all of our range. There were a few things that we sold out of at the various craft fairs. Our corset belts are all sold but we hope to make some more over the next few days. And we only have one of the tweed-buckle belts left - more to follow soon!

The mannequin looked cold so we decided she could have both a wrap and a Hebridean hood. Here you see her standing beside a rail of some of our tweeds - so if you don't see the colour you want in the things that are already made, you can choose your own tweed and we will make it up for you. At the moment we can still get things made in time for Christmas but put your orders in as soon as possible.

On the agenda for this week is making some of our muff purses - but we are going to try lining them with real sheepskin rather than synthetic fur fabric. It will put the price up, but they will be much cozier and more luxurious - so.. watch this space!

In the meantime, all our other products are available - either by shopping in person or through the on-line shop. We have bags & purses, hats and scarves, wraps and hoods, wallhangings and cushions, Christmas decorations and various other bits and pieces.

If you are looking for a present for a creative person, why not get them one of our vouchers for feltmaking classes? These are available in multiples of £10 and classes can be arranged at a time to suit the recipient. We give the vouchers in small hand-made felt envelopes and these can be used afterwards as a glasses case - so a very practical present. See the website for more details.

Opening times
We should be open 6 days a week up till and including 23rd December, but then we will close the studio for the Christmas holidays. We will definitely be there between 10.30 and 3.30 each day, but usually I am there between 9.30 and 5.30. However, if you are travelling a distance it is worth phoning just to check.

Real snow! The weather is fairly changeable just now - nice sunny days interspersed with wild storms some days and snow on others. We had planned to spend last Thursday taking photographs for next year's catalogue but the horizontal sleet made it impossible. This photograph was taken on the Tuesday.

Christmas Craft Fairs

2011-11-13T12:55:00.001Z

Today is a very driech day and I am sitting in the foyer of the Birnham Hotel (near Dunkeld in Perthsire) during a quiet lull at a craft fair.

This is me now half way through the run of Christmas craft fairs. Despite the recession the fairs are all going well. People are perhaps cautious with their spending, but I think people are choosing to spend their limited funds on things which they know will be valued and will last.

The weather today is conducive to selling hats. I have just had a friend from Inverness call at my stall and she says that they left Inverness in beautiful sunshine this morning, but here it is dull, grey, drizzly and cold. Various styles sold at this fair - Catriona, Morag, Callum, Angus and Mairi have all proved popular and I will have to make more of each before next weekend's craft fair at Eden Court in Inverness.

Top seller at this fair - and indeed the last two - are definitely Shetland Angels. These are made with Shetland wool that I tie up with hand-spun Shetland yarn - and yes, I do the spinning myself too! They have been fairly flying off the Christmas tree yesterday and today.

Two more Craft Fair events -

18th to 20th November - Eden Court Theatre, Inverness.
2pm to 9pm on the Friday and 10am to 5pm on the Saturday and Sunday.

25th to 27th November - Brodie Castle, Moray
10am to 4 pm all three days.

If you can't make it to the craft fairs you are welcome to call at my studio at Inchmore, just 6 miles out of Inverness on the old Beauly road. And if you can't visit the Highlands at all, remember there is always the on-line shop.

Commuting to work

2011-11-02T19:19:00.000Z

One of the downsides of my new studio is that I can't go to work in my pyjamas! However, I am finding the commuting less trouble than I expected and on days like today it can be a real delight.
The weather has been very changeable recently and the temperature has been up and down like a yo-yo but today was warm - even at 7.30 in the morning.

The sun was just rising when I left the house and the sky looked as though it was on fire.

The reason for the early start is that I when I have to take the bus I have a choice of 7.40 or 9.30. A lot of work to do at the moment as I had a really successful craft fair last weekend in Glasgow and sold out of some things - need to make more for this weekend's event at Strathpeffer Pavillion - Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th November, 11am to 4pm!

The bus was on time and almost empty so I was able to have my pick of seats. I chose one that would allow me to take photographs along the way. It is a bit tricky taking pictures on a bus that swings round corners at 60 miles an hour, but what follows is a selection of the more successful shots.

The end of the Caledonian Canal at Clachnaharry

Looking back towards the Kessock Bridge

Looking towards the north shore of the Beauly Firth

Next Craft Fair dates are as follows :

12th & 13th November - Birnham House Hotel, beside Dunkeld in Perthshire

18th to 20th November - Eden Court Theatre, Inverness

25th to 27th November - Brodie Castle near Forres, in Moray

Buying Tweed on the Isle of Lewis

2011-08-30T23:14:00.000+01:00

I am currently on the Isle of Lewis visiting my mother and buying more tweed for our business - Anna Macneil.

I intended coming across on Sunday evening but only got as far as Marybank when a text message came through on my mobile phone telling me that the ferry was cancelled due to adverse weather. The crossing on Monday morning was a bit choppy, but didn't show much evidence of the storms from the day before. It was a dreich day when I arrived and the view across the moors was decidedly grey.

I found Mother in good spirits, but tired, so she elected not to come with me that afternoon when I visited the mill at Carloway. I spent a pleasant hour choosing some beautiful tweeds. There were a few that I wanted but couldn't get because they had barely enough left to take with them to exhibit at Premier Vision in Paris in September.

I hope to get hold of them later in the year.

In due course I will get the tweeds photographed and added to our swatches page, but in the meantime, these are a couple of beautiful tweeds I bought in heather colours. The heather is in full bloom just now and the moors look fantastic - even with the Scotch mist driving across them.

This morning we called in at the Calanais Visitor Centre to deliver an order of hats, scarves and bags. The rain was not heavy, but it was cold, and I suspect that this lot of hats will sell every bit as quickly as previous deliveries - I will need to head back to the studio and start making more as there seems to be no slowing down in visitor numbers to the standing stones.

This afternoon things brightened up considerably and I went up to the Butt of Lewis to visit Callum Maclean and collect some interesting tweed he had woven for me. I have yet to unroll the bale and see all the interesting combinations he has created, but they are stripey pieces where he has used up lots of different colours of yarn to create bands of colour that change along the length of the tweed. It will make for some very different wallhangings. Watch this space.......!

The sun was shining so I made a brief detour up to the lighthouse and in amongst taking these photographs I found some lovely field mushrooms - which I cooked with onions and cream to make a lovely sauce to accompany our pork chops.

Tomorrow I will do one last round of tweed buying and also fit in a visit to the museum in Stornoway to see the Lewis Chessmen - normally these are in the British Museum in London, but for the last while they have been on tour in Scotland.

Then on Thursday I head down to Harris to make another delivery, this time to The Harris Tweed Shop at Tarbert before catching the ferry across to Skye and heading home.

Felt making evening classes

2011-08-20T20:25:00.000+01:00

Evening classes start on Tuesday 13th September, 7 till 9pm in our studio at The Workshop, Inchmore. I can take a maximum of 5 people, so booking is essential. Email me at info@annamacneil.co.uk if you want to sign up for these classes.

This will be a six week structured course that covers all the main techniques of felt making - wet felting, nuno felting, needle felting, 3-D felting, cobweb felting and many different ways of creating pattern in felt. At the end of the course students will have a good knowledge of how and why things work that they can apply in their own projects. The aim is to get students making lots of samples that they can use as reference at a later date.

If you prefer to just go straight into a project, why not come along for a one day or half day session? These sessions are proving very popular. Some people come on their own for one-to-one tuition. Others come in groups of two or three for an enjoyable day out. Phone me or send an email - it is just a question of asking for a particular date. If I am free, I will fit you in.

The studio is equipped with tables that are electrically height adjustable - no sore backs in this sweatshop! All materials and equipment are provided and I have a wide choice of colours and types of fibres. There are 3 needle felting embellisher machines available and sinks at which to do the rinsing.

These are all photographs from classes that have been held over the summer.

Moving House

2011-07-03T08:43:00.002+01:00

It has been a while since I posted - largely due to the lack of time and energy because we have been moving house. However, this morning I find myself wide awake with time to spare. In our new house this morning, at 5am we were woken up with the sound of an alarm going off. We knew it was from outside but couldn't figure out where it was coming from. The sound was reverberating around a small courtyard area between kitchen, garage and shed. Wherever we listened it seemed to be coming from somewhere else. Eventually the police turned up - the culprit was a discarded smoke alarm amongst a pile of rubbish that still had the battery in it! Too late in the day to go back to bed, so I decided to blog.

People tell you that moving house is stressful. My past experiences certainly were but they were a long time ago, once when our first child was 3 months old, it was the middle of winter and we were moving from Dundee to Aberdeen to a house I had not seen. The next time was 3 and a half years later when I had 2 toddlers and was 7 months pregnant with Mary when we moved from Aberdeen to Inverness. Both these were stressful.

31 years later and I have to say, this move has not been stressful. It has been physically exhausting, has taken much longer than we wanted (still some clearing to do in the old house) and I don't ever want to do it again, but I have not felt stressed.

So what has helped avoid the stress? Partly a recognition that it was time to move on. Partly that we have moved into a house that suits our present circumstances very well. Partly that we didn't have to vacate the old house on the day we moved into the new one.

We booked the same removal company that had transported all my things out to the new studio a couple of months ago. They had done an excellent trouble-free job with that and they quoted a very reasonable amount for the house move. Four men turned up at 8.30 on the Thursday morning and started packing up china, glasses, books and kitchen things. We had done a lot of sorting out beforehand and made seemingly endless trips to the local recycling centre and to the store for the Highland Hospice charity shop. The aim was to take two days to make the move, one van load being taken on the Thursday, the next on the Friday. By 3pm on the first day they were ready to head to the new house - just a few minutes along the road. Our son-in-law, Steven, has been doing some improvements around the new house for us and we knew things were not finished so we phoned him to warn him that we were on the move.

When we arrived, Steven (the plumber), his friend Angus the joiner and Brian the electrician were still working on things - and then 30 minutes later two plasterers arrived to fill up the various holes made by doing the work! 5 tradesmen working in a 5 roomed house with four men carrying in boxes that there was no room for - quite amazing to see.

We had planned ahead - we had booked into the Lochardil hotel for dinner, bed and breakfast. This was probably the thing that most contributed to the lack of stress. At 7.30 we simply stopped unpacking, locked up the house, went back to the old house and fed the cats, then up to the hotel for a lovely relaxing evening.

The removal men turned up again the next morning and before mid-day it was all over with. We collected the cats and brought them round to the new house. They were in their element with boxes to jump in and out of (favourite pastime!) and seemed quite happy to explore around the house and garden. We resorted to a take-away dinner that night, but I had found and unpacked the plates and cutlery so it was a civilised meal, eaten at the dining table - and Steven had got the dishwasher installed, so we didn't even have to wash the dishes.

In the small hours of the morning I got fed up listening to the sound of Maggie (our female cat) meowing outside the bedroom door and I brought her dowstairs, shutting the living room door so that she couldn't get back up.   Next morning - no cats to be seen. All day no sign of either. We went back to the old house in case they found their way there - no sign. Went to bed that night making plans for trying to find them, but were woken up a couple of hours later by the wanderers having returned and wanting fed.   Since then Mungo has had another 24 hour disappearance (he has done it before on a few occasions) but otherwise, they seem to be as settled in their new house as we are.

We have done a lot to make the house our home - bringing things from our last house that we really like, such as the living room light fitting that we had specially made about 10 years ago and the stained glass window that I had made for the front door 13 years ago. The window is now fitted into new garage doors that we had specially made. This was a bit of extravegance, but it was the only way we could use the window because none of the windows in the house were the right size and shape. Our new doors have to be the poshest garage doors in town!   We have still to sort through all the pictures and decide where to hang them. There will not be room for them all, so we may have to devise a rota system. We did get rid of some of them, but most are pictures that we have because we like them and many have sentimental value. There are watercolours painted by my father, a painting of Aberdeen overlooking the harbour that we were given as a wedding present, family photographs, funny cartoons, paintings of places we have been on holiday and that sort of thing.

The joiners made such a good job of the garage doors that we went back to them and asked them to make a larder cupboard for the kitchen. There is wasted space on one wall - where all the boxes are in the picture above. We found we were quite able to walk around those boxes for a couple of weeks, without getting irritated by them or tripping over them, so filling the space with a practical cupboard seems a good idea. At the moment my larder is in a shed in the garden. What used to be my "feltmaking studio" is now the "utility room" housing the washing machine and drier, the big fridge and freezer and storing lots of things that haven't yet found a proper home. Before the winter sets in we will have to insulate the shed so that we don't have the water freezing, but at the moment it is working well.

I have been busy in the garden - mostly just trying to keep the grass short and trimming the hedge, but I have planted the edge of a raised bed with herbs - parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme! (plus mint, chives, oregano, dill and a few others that I can't remember, but they don't make such good lyrics.)   Hedge trimming is something I haven't done since I was a teenager. Len bought a rechargeable trimmer and I tried it out for the first time two days ago. Wow! 20 minutes and it was all done with virtually no physical effort at all - worth every penny. However, I will know better next time about preparing to do the job. Picking up the clippings from the gravel below took longer than cutting! Next time I will put a sheet down first.

I found an early purple orchid growing in the grass a couple of weeks ago - not sure how it comes to be growing here, but I carefully avoided it when cutting the grass.

We have still to get our pond sorted out. We got someone in to clear up the garden and dig out a hole for the pond but they only managed to dig down about 40cm when they hit something rock solid. So, the plan now is to build up the sides so that the ponds sits in the middle of a rockery.   We plan to make a water feature out of an old chimney pot that we got last week. We took some of the furniture and some bits and pieces across to Auldearn Antiques and came back with a cheque and a chimney - a good deal.   We brought part of the root of our lovely pink waterlily and it seems to be happy enough in its new home, even though the pond is not yet deep enough. It seems to be a fairly hardy plant - in its last home it survived almost drying out when the pond got a leak, and then several months in a plastic bucket while the pond was repaired, so I hope it will survive the move.

Of course, one of the things that made this move so much easier than it might have been was the fact that I had moved my work to the new studio. Not only did this mean that there were three empty rooms to use for sorting and packing, but I had somewhere to retreat to. Going to work was always a rest despite being incredibly busy.   Orders just seem to keep coming.   The shops we supply keep asking for more things, galleries are selling wallhangings and we are getting quite a lot of passing trade. Local people are beginning to find us and holiday-makers are stopping in to see what we do. One visitor recently got inspired by what she saw, but wanted something a bit different from what we had available. She spent some time browsing amongst our selection of tweeds - this is a photograph of the bag we made for her.

Yesterday evening I was busy hand-stitching a large pile of Morag hats which will shortly be heading to Skara Brae on Orkney. Over the next few days I should be finishing off an order for Canongate Jerseys & Crafts in Edinburgh.   We are being kept busy!

I have managed to fit in offering some felt making classes at the studio. Last week Kira and Pamela came to make mobiles. Kira made three lovely exotic red birds and Pamela made some sheep. I now have to find time to do some felt for myself. I think a large hanging for my new home would be a good idea.

Kira (opposite - making a start on her red birds) is a ceramic artist and offers ceramic painting classes. I have had a couple of enjoyable mornings at her studio in Beauly painting tiles for above the basin in our upstairs loo. They have still to be fired, but I am pleased with the design - two intertwined Celtic birds painted in a mixture a reds and oranges. This is a try-out (just 14 tiles) before planning for the kitchen. The kitchen has a very wide window and space between worktop and window for two rows of tiles. As the kitchen is quite bland - maple look units, beige worktop, white walls - I want to introduce some bright colours. Tiles seem like the way to go. But I will need about 100. At this rate, I may not have time to work!

Felt making classes

2011-04-18T08:02:00.002+01:00

Last Monday evening saw the first of our felt making classes in the new studio.
This was a one-to-one session with a student who has come to me in the past. He seemed to enjoy the bright and spacious workshop.

The project for the two hour evening session was to make a pair of baby booties for the baby that his granddaughter is expecting. He decided to make the booties with white fleece, but they were decorated with a flag on the side of each - one was the Scottish Saltire, the other the Norwegian flag as his granddaughter is half Scottish and half Norwegian.

He was delighted with the results - now we have to hope that his granddaughter is equally delighted - and that they fit the baby!

The next scheduled workshop on offer is a two day class - Celtic Felt and Stitch - 14th & 15th May. This will involve making felt that includes a Celtic design and then enhancing the design with stitching and needle felting. I can only take 4 people for this, so booking is essential. Visit the website for details.

I am always happy to offer classes at times to suit individuals. There is a choice of 2 hour classes, full day, two day and evening classes and these can be one-to-one sessions or for small groups. Click here for details. I take a maximum of 5 people at a time, ensuring that everyone gets individual attention and that we all have space to move around and access the various colours and types of fibres. Email me at info@annamacneil.co.uk or telephone (01463 831567) to request a session or visit the website to see if there is a scheduled class that is suitable for you.

In the centre of the studio we have two large, very sturdy tables which have electrically operated height adjustment. This means that at the press of a button we can change them from sitting height to standing height - and choose heights suitable for different people - so no back-ache!

Also available are Babylock Embellisher machines for fast needle felting and Bernina sewing machines for further decoration and enhancement.

We keep a large stock of fibres and colours including things to add interest to your felt, such as Angelina fibres, silks and synthetics. We also have a large stock of yarns that can be used for further decoration.

Anna Macneil @ The Workshop

2011-04-07T17:32:00.010+01:00

A week ago I was at the workshop all evening clearing up after the work had been done to make it suitable as our new textile art studio - Anna Macneil @ The Workshop. It took several hours to clear the dust sheets, gather up the rubbish, clear away the left-over bits of wood and plasterboard, cables and screws and then wipe, dust and vacuum everything ready for the removal men the next morning.

The removal was amazingly smooth and fast - well worth paying the bill to have the job done professionally. Mary and I had spent three days parcelling up bales of tweed and fleece, sorting and packing threads and yarns, rationalizing our stash of "useful" fabric and so on. I had 35 boxes of varying types of fabric - silks, tartans, cottons, cords, velvet, lycra, jerseys and more. I decided it was time that I was sensible about whether I was ever going to use some of them. I filled 8 black bin-bags with things I know I am never going to use and then emailed a friend who works as an occupational therapist at the local psychiatric hospital - she was delighted to relieve me of them.

The removal took just over three hours start to finish. At the time my big machines were being lifted downstairs I was making a visit to the local recycling centre - probably as well I missed that bit! I think my heart might have been beating a bit fast if I had watched them carry the machines downstairs. By noon I was left in my new studio with things more or less in the places they should be. Mary came out to help get everything put away but we started by going to the local pub for lunch.

There were some hiccups - I couldn't get the laser cutter and the big embroidery machine to talk to the computer - the only change was that I had swapped the cables round and used the long one to connect the embroidery machine because of where it had to be sited - so...... another £40 to get the "right" cables, but they did send it so that it arrived the next day.

And then there was the saga of the printer....... Moving out of the house meant that I also needed a new printer, so after a bit of research, found one that was suitable. It would work on the network from both my Mac and my Windows PC, would do duplex printing and print on card. It was due to be delivered on Monday but didn't come. On Tuesday, the company I ordered it from phoned to ask why I had declined to accept delivery....... I told them nobody had come to deliver it and after a few phonecalls back and forth it transpired that someone in the distribution chain had put the wrong address on the courier label. I was promised it would be there on Wednesday. I saw the delivery van drive past the studio without stopping, so phoned the couriers - no printer - it had been returned to sender because I had refused to accept it! Phoned the supplier - promised it would definitely be here today. This time they were right, it did arrive, and I managed to get it all set up and working.......until I tried to use the duplex facility! It will work from some applications but not the one I really want it for. A two hour phonecall to the OKI tech support people and I am no further forward, but they are looking into it for me.

One week on I am still waiting for someone to fit the vinyl on the kitchen floor, but otherwise everything is done and we are back in full production mode. The embroidery machines have been happily stitching away and the laser cutter is working well.

I spent some time doing a little bit of felting today. In the past, that involved going out into the garden and working in a cold, small shed. Today I was able to do it in a warm, bright studio and keep an eye on the embroidery machine while I was working..... what a difference!

Another great thing is the mobile shelving system that I have bought for storing our folded lengths of tweed. Small pieces are in boxes according to colour, bigger pieces are hanging on a rail that can be moved on castors and the longer lengths are on new chrome shelves with big wheels that can be easily pushed from one end of the studio to the other.

And from the visitor's point of view.......... we now have a shop!

It is a very small corner of the studio, but we can display all our products - hats & scarves, wallhangings, wraps, bags & purses, phone pouches and Christmas decorations. So, if you are in the area, please call in to see us. Between us we aim to be at the studio from 9 till 5, 6 days a week, but the shop itself will only be open Wednesday to Saturday from 10.30 am to 3.30 pm. That gives us the option of fitting in other things - like the visit I will shortly have to make to Lewis to buy more tweed.

I am waiting....and waiting....!!!! for my husband to modify the website - when he has done so there will be a Google map link to show you where the studio is, but you can see the village on Google's Street View if you put in the postcode - IV5 7PX - you have to search around at the east end of the village, north side of the road until you find a wooden building that looks like a Swiss chalet. The photographs are out of date - still have the signs for the previous business! If I remember I will photograph our new signs, but I have been rather busy and keep forgetting to do that.

We also have a new phone number because it is a different exchange from our previous address - 01463 831567. It is always worth phoning to check that we will be there before travelling a distance, but if you let us know you are coming we will give you a warm welcome.

The Workshop, Inchmore, Kirkhill, Inverness, IV5 7PX, Scotland, UK

All white - inside and out

2011-03-09T18:11:00.007Z

Last week, during some almost balmy spring weather, the joiners were hard at work in the new Anna Macneil studio building a partition wall and putting up new shelves. It is looking good.

This week it is back to winter and we woke up this morning to a blanket of snow. The studio seems to look even more like a Swiss chalet when it is covered in snow. I spent the day out there trying to make the inside white too. The painting has to be done before the heating goes in, so it was rather cold and I had to work hard to keep warm.

The morning was spent removing the nails and screws that were all over the walls and filling in the resultant holes with filler. Then a mug of hot soup at lunchtime thawed me out a bit and I got going with the painting. Last week I bought a "Paint Pod" system and I have to say it is proving to be a good system - very clean compared with the traditional method of rolling. By mid afternoon I had covered up all those bits of wall that were yellow.

It will need another couple of coats, but it has already made a difference.

Work has had to go on around getting the new studio ready - last week we sent off a big order to Canongate Jerseys & Crafts in Edinburgh and it included this wallhanging - inspired by the Pictish Stone in Elgin Cathedral. The red panel beside it is one that I painted many years ago. The only reason it is in the picture is that when I wanted to photograph the wallhanging, the easiest place was hanging beside it - there is a convenient nail in the wall which usually has a calendar on it.

Next up I have to make several large wallhangings for various galleries and we have bags, hats and scarves to make for Iona Abbey and Stirling Castle. I need at least 36 hours in a day and 10 days in a week - preferably hours and days that other people don't have! If the rest of the world would just go into suspended animation for a few days I might be able to catch up.

Tomorrow I will spend a couple of hours at the computer and then head out to put a coat of paint on all the walls. I shall leave the ceiling for Mary to do on Friday!

Commuting on a spring day

2011-03-01T21:12:00.007Z

Work has started on getting our new studio ready to move into. One of the drawbacks of this move is that I will have to become a commuter again - something I have not done for many a long year!

However, on a lovely spring day like today, there could be a lot worse ways to drive to work. The road from Inverness to Inchmore is along the shores of the Beauly Firth. Just as I was leaving Inverness - over the railway bridge at Clachnaharry, I was met with a wonderful view of the end of the Caledonian Canal, so I pulled into the lay-by and dug out my camera.

A little further along the road I stopped again and looked back towards the Kessock Bridge.
Then, once I was at the studio I found a few more things to photograph, like the front of the building and then as I stepped into the studio, the texture of the wooden threshold caught my eye. The building is very old, and you can certainly see something of this in this piece of wood.

It was lovely to be out on such a beautiful day, so I walked around a bit taking more pictures - the view I will see out of the windows once we are working here, and then from the next lane, a view looking back at the studio through the trees.

I don't suppose that every day will be as lovely as today - nor will I normally have time to stop and enjoy it. It would not surprise me if we still have winter weather to come, but today was full of the promise of spring and encouraged me to look forward to the next few weeks of hard work whole we get the studio in shape.

A good bit of news yesterday was that BT confirmed my telephone number and connected the line - so if you need to contact us at Anna Macneil, the new number is 0(+44)1463 831567. Email and web address remain the same. The postal address is:
The Workshop
Inchmore
Kirkhill
Inverness
IV5 7PX

On the move

2011-02-19T21:56:00.004Z

It has been a hectic few weeks since Christmas. Len has decided to retire from his job as a priest in the Episcopal church. This means that we have to move out of the rectory where we have lived for the last 30 years. In turn, that means that my business, Anna Macneil, also has to move out.

For some years I have been saying that I didn't have enough space for all I wanted to do. Bedrooms have been taken over as children fled the nest, but even at that nothing is really exactly as I would like it. We briefly toyed with the idea of building a house that would accommodate all my textile things, but finance and difficulties over planning consent put paid to that. So the next step was to find an industrial unit to rent. Easier said than done. Small units in Inverness are as scarce as hens' teeth and for some reason it seems to be more financially worthwhile for big businesses to leave a building empty than to let it for a reasonable (low) rent.

However, on Wednesday, thanks to a friend keeping her ear to the ground, I heard about a possible workshop and went to have a look. The place is ideal in many ways although it needs a bit of work to make it suitable as our new studio. I signed the lease for it on Friday and over the next few weeks we will be building an internal partition wall, replacing light fittings, moving shelves and painting the kitchen and the ceiling (currently both yellow!) - not necessarily in that order!

From 1st April, our new address will be : The Workshop, Inchmore, Kirkhill, Inverness, IV5 7PX. I have to investigate whether I can keep my existing phone number, but email, website and mobile will certainly remain the same.

The workshop is a lovely 150 year old wooden building. Originally it was a joinery workshop, but in recent years it has been the home of Pat-chis Corner - a lovely shop selling supplies for patchwork and quilting. The owner recently retired and sold the business. The new owners have moved it out to their own home at Beauly - another 5 miles or so along the road.

My plan is to create separate areas for sewing, embroidery and feltmaking and in addition, a small area to use as a shop. The workshop is on the main road through the village and particularly in the summer months, it is a popular route for tourists. So, if you find yourself in the area, do come and visit. We have still to work out things like opening times, but we will be happy to welcome you whenever we are there.

The kitchen is quite basic - and yellow! - but it has two sinks which means that it will be good for the rinsing stages of feltmaking. I am looking forward to having space to run classes - email me if you want to be added to my felting mailing list and I can keep you posted of any events that I arrange. I can also do one-to-one sessions at any time to suit you, so do let me know if you want to take a class.

I suspect that I may be too busy over the next few weeks to post much, but I will have my camera with me and will try and keep a record of how work progresses. As soon as we know when we are opening the information will be posted both here and on our website. Why not sign up as a follower of this blog? You will automatically be told when we do a new post.

The smartest dog in town

2010-12-27T21:26:00.006Z

All the products that we make at Anna Macneil are things that we have wanted for ourselves or have been suggested by friends or family. The latest was the result of a request from my son George's partner, Catherine. They have collie dogs and one of them, Bronte, is quite elderly, arthritic and feels the cold. Catherine asked if I could make a tweed dog coat. She traced a pattern from one that she already had and sent it to me and I promised to make her one for Christmas.

As it was, I only finished it a couple of days before Christmas - me being me, I couldn't resist the idea of going to town with the design and rather got carried away. I am particularly fond of zoomorphic designs and developed a Celtic hound design that I have used on some other products.

The coat is made of Harris Tweed and lined with polar fleece. The design is appliquéd with reflective silver fabric making this a high visibility coat, ideal for walking the dog early on a cold winter morning or late at night. There are elastic straps that hold the coat over the back legs and velcro straps to secure the coat around the belly and across the chest.

George and Catherine brought Bronte round this morning to show off the coat and let me take photographs. The snow is melting fast, but there is still enough around to warrant wearing a thick coat. However, the sun is always low in the sky at this time of year and it was difficult to get good shots.

There are so many different shapes and sizes of dogs that I don't think it would ever be practical to make these as part of our standard retail range, but I am happy to accept bespoke orders. Have a look at our swatches page to choose the colour of tweed that you would like. Email me a photograph of your dog and then I will contact you with what measurements I would need and an indication of price. Factors which influence price are size and complexity of the design. One similar to this would probably work out at around £100, but I can guarantee that you won't meet another dog wearing the same outfit!

Christmas Day

2010-12-25T14:50:00.011Z

To be able to spend time on Christmas afternoon writing this blog is strange. We only have our son Simon and his girlfriend Megan staying and so dinner tonight will be a quiet affair - at least in terms of numbers. Simon and Len between them will ensure that there is plenty of laughter!

We had a big family dinner yesterday which was a great success and will have another one tomorrow night when son George and his girlfriend come for dinner.

This morning I went to look out of the dining room window to see what the cat was staring at - and promptly did a double take! I know it is just the way the dead leaves are hanging and a play of light, but it really did look as though there was a tiny angel standing on the ground at the foot of the tree.

Here at Anna Macneil we were very busy in the run up to Christmas with people ordering last minute Christmas presents and decorations, so this year I have been quite restrained in decorating our house. Added to which, with all the snow that fell last week, access to greenery was somewhat tricky. However I managed to cut enough to do some simple garlands and wreaths and made use of bare twigs to display some of my hand-painted Christmas eggs.

The Christmas tree looks splendid nestling in the stairwell and covered with my growing collection of stars and angels. Some of these have been bought or received as gifts over the years but most have been made from materials as varied as polystyrene plates and recycled Christmas cards.
I don't know if there was a problem with the electricity supply last Christmas, but several sets of lights blew over the festive season and so I got some new sets this year. I was particularly pleased with the rattan ball lights used on the large holly wreath that adorns the front porch.

I used some strings of red and blue lights to make a simple holly garland that runs along the picture rail in the dining room and a similar set of white lights teamed with sprigs of Scots pine above the window of the sitting room.

Above the crib set in the sitting room I have another twig arrangement adorned with some of our Shetland angels - quite a small twig and only a few angels because we almost sold out of Christmas decorations this year.

OK, now it is off to the kitchen to spend a quiet hour or so preparing veg, emptying the dishwasher and generally clearing the decks ready for the next onslaught!

A Dreich December Day

2010-12-11T10:48:00.011Z

I am on the Isle of Lewis having been visiting my mother. On Wednesday when I traveled here it was touch and go whether I would make it across to Ullapool to catch the ferry. The road was closed until 7am because of snow drifts. I arrived at the ferry terminal just before the ferry did and at that point it was lovely sunshine and all the land round about was white with snow.

However, once on board it had all changed and we sailed from Ullapool in a blizzard that was so thick you could see no land even though we were only yards from the shore. That soon cleared and it was plain sailing the rest of the way - bitterly cold, but bright and calm.

Landing at Stornoway it was clear that they had considerably less snow than the mainland but there was still a lot of white around, particularly across the moors.

I found my mother in reasonably good spirits, though feeling her years and much slower moving around than when I was last across.

On Thursday the weather had changed - instead of 2 degrees, it had risen to 10 and all the snow had gone from around the house and the only evidence of the cold spell was the skating rink that was trying to pretend it was a garden path. Late morning we headed out to the west of the islands to visit some of our trade customers and also to purchase more tweed. Most of the lochs were still frozen over despite the rise in temperature but it was a dark, damp day.

On Friday it was still mild, but as you can see in this photograph it was dreich. This is an old Scots word that loosely translates as drab, cold, damp, miserable - the sort of weather that is completely un-inspiring and makes you convinced that we were meant to hibernate for the winter. This picture gives an idea of just how desolate the moors can be, but it seems to show everything much brighter than it really was. Driving across the moor to the Butt of Lewis I was contantly reminded of one of the reasons why I DON'T want to live on the island.

However there was a plus side to my journey. I went to visit Callum Maclean and collect some tweed he had woven for me. So, between what I got from him and elsewhere, I am going home today with a car packed full of tweed. I have left some with mother to make more hats - certainly the weather for hats and that was what we sold most of at our recent craft fairs. I will go home and make scarves, wraps and lots of other things to have them all ready for the trade show we will exhibit at in January. I know that Mary has spent the last few days sorting out the workroom so that I will have space to put away all our new tweeds.
This photograph shows a small selection of some of the ones I selected particularly for making hats, and in due course the other swatches will appear on our website. Also pictured is one of Callum's tweeds - an autumn toned check - which I particularly like and bought a lot of it.

Now the sun is shining again, the winds of last evening have dropped and it looks as though the ferry is running on time, so I will be back across the Minch this afternoon.

Felt making workshop

2010-12-09T22:43:00.003Z

In the summer I did a felt workshop for the Merkinch Arts Festival and one of the people at the workshop was so delighted with the techniques I taught that he asked to come and do a one to one session with me.
Alistair - a retired farmer - particularly wanted to make a felt picture of a Highland cow. Normally I would have held the session in my studio in the garden (a wooden shed) but the weather was so cold that we couldn't have worked there for more than about two minutes without hypothermia setting in. Added to which, the water supply to the shed is by way of a garden hose connected to an outside tap - all frozen solid for the last two weeks.
So, knowing the theme for the felting session, I brought in the colours of fibres that I thought we would need along with the various pieces of equipment and we worked at the kitchen table. It was warmer and more spacious and the only drawbacks were that I had to clear things off the table (in our house, nature abhors a horizontal surface!) and we didn't have the benefit of the height adjustable table that I have in the studio.

Alistair came with a photograph that he wanted to work from and we set about making his picture. He went home delighted with the results, and I have to say I was pleased too. He has a little work to do with adding some fine detail using needle-felting, but I think for a novice he made a pretty good job of it.

The sky and the foreground were achieved by traditional wet-felting, with the cow being made using an inlay method combined with some needle-felting that was put in before we did the rolling. The finished picutre had a nice feel of summer for such a cold winter evening. Alistair has taken the picture off with him to Norway to show his daughter.

Craft Fair at Eden Court

2010-11-22T21:56:00.005Z

This weekend I spent three days exhibiting at a craft fair at Eden Court Theatre in Inverness. Eden Court is just along the road from my home and studio, so is the most convenient craft fair that I do.

I had products from across our range - small velcro-closing purses through to large wallhangings, Christmas decorations and scarves.

Visitors to the fair got a sneak preview of our new product - the "Hebridean Hood". Details will be available on the website in the new year. It received a lot of favourable comments and several people tried it on.

The red scarf you see in the foreground of this photograph was another hit. This is a new design in our range of flared-ends scarves - "Celtic Flame". I will need to make another similar scarf because I only made this last week and didn't have a chance to photograph it. I was particularly pleased with this one, so I do want to feature it on the website.

The large wallhangings received a lot of interest and the green/gold one you can see to the right of the mannequin sold half way through the fair.

As might be expected for an event billed as a Christmas Craft Fair, the Christmas decorations were popular with Tartan Hearts being bought to be sent as presents to destinations around the world and Shetland Angels flying out of the hall.

I have to spend the next few days making more hats and scarves to fill orders for shops and then it will be another round of packing up and setting up my stall at the next event - the Victorian Craft Fair at Brodie Castle.

Craft Fairs

2010-11-13T19:36:00.004Z

I will have a stall at three craft fairs over the next few weeks. At these we will have all our usual things plus a few extras - hats & scarves, bags & purses, cushions & wallhangings, wraps, Christmas decorations plus some other bits and pieces.

Friday 19th to Sunday 21st November - Bishop's Palace at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness
This event is organised by Exclusively Highlands and features all sorts of quality crafts from local makers. On the Friday it is open from 3pm till 9pm and on Saturday & Sunday it is 10am till 5pm, so plenty of time to browse around all the stalls and do some serious Christmas shopping.

Friday 26th to Sunday 28th November - Brodie Castle, near Forres
Another Exclusively Highlands event run in conjunction with the National Trust for Scotland, the fair is from 10 till 4 on each of the three days. Stalls will be spread around throughout the castle and I believe some will be in a heated marquee opening onto the library.

Wednesday 1st December - Stirling Castle
This event is organised by Historic Scotland and as well as having things for sale I will be demonstrating my Celtic embroidery technique. The fair is open 5.30 to 8.30pm and the entry fee includes entry to the castle itself.

If you can't make it to any of these events, use our on-line shop where you can find our entire range. There is still plenty of time to choose what you want and have it made in your choice of colour and design.

Photography session

2010-10-17T19:18:00.020+01:00

On Thursday we had a day out in west Sutherland photographing some of our products for next year's catalogue and for the website. My brother is a photographer and lives in Lochinver - an area with stunning landscapes that provide wonderful backdrops to show off our fashion accessories. We found an interesting hat stand there, but it would have been a bit awkward to take home!
The weather on the way over was not promising, but by the time we reached Lochinver things were a bit brighter. Martin, Mary and I headed out right away to the shores of Loch Assynt leaving Mary's daughters Rachel and Lauren with Martin's wife and children.

We started off with some items from our Moor and Machair range. This "sundew" purse was a new design this year and fits particularly well in this moorland setting. Sundew is a little insectiverous that grows in boggy places. These velcro closing purses are the perfect thing for keeping your credit card, and keys - the times when you want to go out without the encumbrance of a bag.

After an hour or so we headed back to the house for lunch. By the time we had finished the weather had brightened up considerably so we all headed off to Achmelvich beach where the children settled in to beach activities right away - Catherine (Martin's baby - 10 months old) started eating the sand!

Robert wanted to be photographed too - you see him here with Martin showing him the results.

Rachel has shot up this summer and has now grown taller than me so we felt she was ready to help out with the modeling. Of course her little sister, Lauren wanted to join in too.

Martin's wife Cristine joined in as well and between the four of them we managed to photograph hats, scarves, bags and wraps in a wonderful setting.

By the time the sun started getting a bit low for good pictures the children were needing to let off steam and started turning cartwheels on the sand. Mary couldn't resist and just had to prove that even though she is getting older she can still turn a good cartwheel. You see her here modeling one of our tweed belts in a somewhat unusual position!

The patch-pocket wraps pictured here have now been sent over to The Harris Tweed Shop on the Isle of Harris along with some scarves and hats. These wraps can be worn as a wide scarf or as a shawl - perfect when you want a bit of extra warmth around your shoulders. We also do a wider style with triangular shaped pockets and more embroidery, which as you can see here can be wrapped round baby as well!

Parcels of scarves have just headed off to the Isle of Lewis ferry and to Arbroath Abbey and more will soon be heading to St Andrews Cathedral - all windy places where the extra warmth that these fleece lined Harris Tweed scarves is very welcome.

Celtic Designs - research trip

2010-10-08T18:27:00.014+01:00

As I write this, I am sitting in our room at the Steam Packet Inn in the Isle of Whithorn looking out over the harbour as the sun sets. It is as idyllic as it sounds, but it's not all play. I had to travel to Glasgow yesterday - one of my embroidery machines needed fixed and I had a trade show to visit so we decided to take a short break and fit in a visit to Whithorn before the museum and visitor center shut up shop for the winter.

In Glasgow yesterday we visited Govan Old Parish Church which has a large collection of Celtic stones including 5 hogback stones. I had visited here before but in the days before digital cameras so had only a very limited record of my visit. While I was photographing the stones my husband was interviewing one of the church elders for a radio programme that he does once a week on Moray Firth Radio. At the time that many of these stones were carved Govan was a very important ecclesiastical site but it declined in importance once Glasgow Cathedral was built. The church buildings on the site have changed over the centuries with the current building having been erected in Victorian times. The stones are housed in the church and in the care of Historic Scotland. There are many different interlace designs along with images of people on horseback and an interesting (probably pre-christian) sun symbol.

We came down to Whithorn in south west Scotland yesterday afternoon and have spent today visiting the sites associated with St Ninian - the earliest recorded Christian missionary to Scotland. Just round the corner from the inn is St Ninian's Chapel - one of the contenders as the site of Ninian's original Church - Candida Casa. Others believe that it was at Whithorn where St Ninian's Priory was a major ecclesiastical centre in early medieval times. At the priory I visited the museum which has a large collection of Celtic stones and crosses. These are quite different from the cross-slab Pictish stones in our own part of the country with influences from Northumbria. The most striking feature is the cross shape - wheel-headed crosses where the arms don't protrude beyond the bounding circle. The next thing I noticed was that although some had true interlace designs made up of a single line of knotwork, in many others the design consisted of lots of interlinking loops joined up with simple circles.

Later in the afternoon we walked to St Ninian's cave - one of the sites of pilgimage. It was a pleasant walk down through a wooded glen and then along a pebble beach. Some of the carved stones in the museum came from here, but were moved to the museum to keep them safe.

Once we get home I will begin work on some new designs that take their inspiration from stones I have seen on this visit. One project is to do a new stole design based on the crosses here at Whithorn and utilising the new St Ninian tartan that was created to commemorate the Pope's visit to Scotland on St Ninian's Day a few weeks ago. When done I will post a picture on my website for Ecclesiastical embroidery. Other examples of Celtic knotwork that I have seen may find their way onto some of my tweed wallhangings. I have certainly seen enough over the last couple of days to provide inspiration for a lot of new work.

New cutting table

2010-10-03T17:21:00.004+01:00

Until today, the vast bulk of our cutting of fabric has been done on the floor. That in itself has not been a problem - I like sitting on the floor, have no problem being on my knees and I like having space to spread myself out.

However - having space to spread out means I do just that, and tidying up is something I hate doing!

Some months ago my son finally (at 32!) moved away from home. As we were up to our eyes with orders for shops I immediately spread out into his room using the floor as a large cutting out area and the bed as a store. Things quickly got out of hand, fabric piled up, rubbish piled up, boxes seemed to appear and the room very quickly became unusable as a spare room. On Friday morning Mary and I set about clearing it all out and re-arranging the furniture so that instead of having one proper spare bedroom and two rooms that could in an emergency get used for people to sleep in, we have made two proper spare rooms, one of which is a family room and the third room is now officially part of the Anna Macneil domain. Rachel & Lauren (my grandaughters) stayed the night last night and got to try out the new room. They enjoyed the extra space to play compared with what they got in the past.

On Friday afternoon I took my husband to B&Q and we got wood to build my new cutting table / tweed storage shelves. I spent Saturday morning cutting, drilling and screwing bits of wood together. Once it was all assembled I headed up into the attic and salvaged a piece of carpet that has been gathering dust there for 30 years and used that to cover the tabletop - much nicer to cut on than a hard surface as we use electric shears.

Now I have space to store all the bales of tweed in such a way that pulling out one does not dislodge half a dozen others. I also had space to put away all the tweed that I brought back from Lewis two weeks ago - not many new colours, but restocking of some of our main range. However, I did get a few lovely subtle herringbone patterned tweeds from Callum Maclean at Butt of Lewis Textiles. He is weaving more for me just now and I hope to have them available at the end of the year. Among other things, I brought back a lot of black & charcoal herringbone tweed for making wraps and some of these have already been made - a collection of wraps headed across the Atlantic to "Things Celtic" in Texas, and another few have gone to California to "Scottish Treasures".

We have also been hard at work making small things - in particular our Christmas decorations. Most evenings I am sitting making Shetland angels - a nice thing to do while sitting watching the telly. It's just a shame there is not much on worth watching, but we are amusing ourselves by watching through a recently acquired boxed set of Jonathon Creek. Celtic and Tartan hearts are also being made in quantity, but we are finding it difficult to keep up with orders. It seems that as fast as we make them, shops are asking for more - a good complaint to have!

Now I have to see if it is any easier to keep the cutting table free of clutter than keeping the floor clear. I think I will have to have clearing the space on a daily basis written into Mary's contract!

Hebridean Holiday - Part 3 - Isle of South Uist

2010-09-11T18:44:00.007+01:00

Our introduction to South Uist was wet. It started raining as we crossed the Sound of Barra to Eriskay and it got wetter as we crossed the causeway to South Uist so we just headed straight to Daliburgh and our next self-catering place. We settled into Loch View Chalet and had a lazy afternoon watching the swans, ducks and grebes that live there.

The next day dawned fair, but pretty windy and we decided to do a tour of the Uists. I forgot to take my camera with me that day - so no photographs!

On North Uist we drove up a hill track on the west side of the island where there is a telescope set up so that you can see St Kilda, however it was actually easier to see it with the naked eye and visibility was not good, so all we saw was a grey mound rising up from the sea on the horizon.

Weather the next morning was lovely but we decided to stay close to base. We popped along the road to Lochboisdale and picked up information from the tourist office. Then we took the road through our village that heads across the machair towards the sea. Here there is the remains of an ancient settlement - the Cladh Hallan roundhouses. They were excavated just a few years ago.
The next day we headed up towards the top end of South Uist and tried setting up Len's telescope to see if we could get any better a view of St Kilda, but once again there was a lot of cloud on the horizon and St Kilda was nothing more than a faint grey mound.

We also visited the medieval chapel site at Howmore - somewhere I had visited while on a cycling holiday here some 15 years ago, but it had been horizontal rain that day and I hadn't really appreciated the ruins.

A visit to Kildonan museum was very interesting - it covered all aspects of the history of the island. I was particularly taken by the box beds and the old loom. I had already taken several photographs by the time I saw the sign saying "no photography".....OOPS!

We had picked up a small booklet "Made in the Outer Hebrides" and I very quickly homed in on an venue at the south end of the island - the Hebridean Woolshed.

We headed down there and found the place very easily - a lovely walled garden with a small summerhouse type shed just inside the gate. In this shed there was a mixture of handcraft items and preserves, all made by Denise Bridge. I found her hanging out her washing and we had a lovely conversation about all things wooly, that ended with me buying a couple of small Hebridean fleeces. I shall be using them mostly for feltmaking, but that will have to wait until my right hand is back in full working order. We followed Denise's directions to Eriskay to find her Hebridean flock. Easily found - and quite happy to pose for the camera.

On the way back we stopped at the standing stone at Polachar before heading back to our cottage. Then, unfortunately, it was time to start packing up ready for our departure the next morning.

All in all, a wonderful, relaxing holiday - just what the doctor ordered.

Hebridean Holiday - Part 2 - Isle of Mingulay

2010-09-06T11:35:00.010+01:00

It was my birthday while we were staying on Barra and my birthday treat was a boat trip to Mingulay. This is the most southerly but one of the Outer Hebrides chain of islands and was inhabited up until 1912 when the population level dropped too low to be sustainable.

The weather that day was wonderful - warm and sunny with just a light breeze. The sea was almost mirror calm. We set off in the M.V. Boy James at 10am from the slipway in Castlebay. When I say "we" I mean me, the skipper, Donald Macleod and the other holiday makers - my husband elected to stay on shore because he really doesn't like small boats.

About an hour into the sail we slowed right down to watch basking sharks. I had seen them in the distance in the past but never as close as this - just about 10 feet away these massive 30 foot long plankton eating sharks were quite a sight.

Wind and tide were in our favour and the skipper was able to take us right round the west coast of the island past some spectacular cliffs and through a narrow channel spanned by a natural arch.

On the east coast of the island there is a lovely sandy beach and we disembarked on the rocks at the north end of the beach for 3 hours on shore. I set off uphill across the narrowest part of the island to Eagle Cliff. Unfortunately the eagles were not to be seen that day, but the cliffs were perhaps even more spectacular when seen from the top. I sat up there to eat my picnic lunch but soon had to start walking again to escape the midges.

I walked along the ridge of the hills for a while getting the most of the midge-moving breeze before heading back down to the beach.
The remains of the village are still clearly visible as are the lazybeds field system that were in use a century ago. I took lots of photographs, including quite a few wild flowers that I will use for the basis of some new designs for our "moor and machair" range of floral designs on our bags and purses.

There were more sharks on the way back to Barra, plus lots of seabirds to watch and it seemed no time at all before we were back on shore.

What a wonderful day out - possibly the most memorable birthday I have ever had, topped of by a meal at the Craigard Hotel - in their conservatory dining room overlooking the bay while the sun set slowly in the west.

Hebridean Holiday - Part 1 - Isle of Barra

2010-09-05T16:34:00.010+01:00

We wanted a "get away from it all" holiday this year and that was certainly what we got in this delightful cottage on the Isle of Barra. We stayed here for almost a week and what a delight - no mobile phone signal, no television, no radio. I suppose it would be difficult to live this way, but for a holiday it was wonderful.

We arrived off the ferry from Oban about 8.30 on the Monday evening. In Oban it had been raining stair-rods most of the day and we were wondering whether it was wise to be heading for the Outer Hebrides, but by the time we arrived the clouds had dispersed, there was just a gentle breeze, the full moon was rising over the Minch and we could see the island of Rhum clearly from the cottage window.

South Bank Cottage is just a few miles from the "capital" Castlebay in the village of Earsary on the east coast of the island. It is a converted Whitehouse. A whitehouse is one step up from a blackhouse - still very thick walls, small, but with the addition of windows and chimneys. And unlike a blackhouse which is bare drystone walling, the walls are rendered and painted white.

Our first day was spent just meandering around the island getting a feel for the place. We went up to the north end and saw a plane coming in to land on the beach. Barra boasts the only beach airport in the world to offer daily scheduled services - they are just scheduled to coincide with low tide. It is quite something to see a plane landing on a beach where there are several people cockle gathering. This was one of the busiest beaches we came across - there were 6 people on it! Most were deserted even though the weather was fine and we are still in peak holiday season.

On the Wednesday morning we went into Castlebay and took the boat trip to Kisimul Castle - the medieval seat of the clan Macneil, set on a rock on the middle of the bay. The castle is now managed by Historic Scotland and is open to the public for the summer months. We were the first visitors that morning so had the place to ourselves.

What a delightful surprise on entering through the gate of the castle - inside this rather forbidding and defensive fortress everything was suddenly on a small domestic scale. There were houses built with their backs to the main castle wall arranged around a little courtyard, almost like a small village. Part of the castle had been made habitable again in the middle of last century and it was enough to give one a feel of what a comfortable home it could be now that we have all the luxuries that modern technology can provide. I can recommend it as a place to visit - and they have a well stocked shop that inlcudes hats, scarves and bags from our embroidery business - Anna Macneil.

The next day was a wonderful experience - a trip to Mingulay - more of that in the next post. Friday was spent doing a bit more pottering around. We headed down to Vattersay, the most southerly of the inhabited islands in the Outer Hebrides, but joined to Barra by a causeway. We stopped en-route to visit the remains of a wheelhouse - an iron-age dwelling peculiar to the Outer Hebrides and the Shetland Isles. In this particular example there were remains of several buildings from different periods. The wheel house pictured here is so named because it is circular and has internal walls arranged much like the spokes of a wheel, creating little rooms which appear to have all had specific purposes.

Our time on Barra came to an end the next day. If we had been heading straight home it might have seemed quite a disappointment, but fortunately we had another few days holiday to go - we were simply heading across the Sound of Barra to the island of Eriskay and then on to South Uist to continue our Hebridean adventure.

Progress report

2010-08-06T20:32:00.005+01:00

I have been working as best I can with the limitation of having my right hand encased in plaster and my thumb sticking out at a weird angle. With some effort I have found that I can do hand-sewing, albeit very slowly compared with my normal speed. Using the machines is more successful and here you see me seaming scarves on the overlocking machine. However, when it came to turning the scarves right side out and finishing the fringed ends I needed my daughter's help - definitely a two-handed job.

It is school holidays just now so Mary has to bring her two daughters to work with her. Workload is such just now that I set them to work fringing the edges of some small wallhangings that I had embroidered the day before. Here you see Rachel and Lauren working in the "sweat shop". These need a lining hand-sewn in place, so at the speed I am working it may be a week or two before they are finished. When they are done they will head over to Iona Abbey.

On Wednesday I was up at the hospital and had the first plaster taken off and stitches out. The surgeon seemed happy with progress and it all looked OK. Then I had to get another lighter cast put on which will be in place for another month. This time I was given a choice of colour and decided on bright red.

Although I don't need a sling most of the time, there are times when I need to be careful and remind myself not to do things. I really didn't like the one I got at hospital - a white triangular bandage, uncomfortable and difficult to manage. So - I made myself a more practical one! I used a combination of Harris Tweed and polar fleece - fleece against the skin so no scratching from the tweed. I made it with a small pocket to hold my mobile phone and decorated it with one of the Celtic knotwork designs that I normally use on some of our narrow scarves. However - I don't expect this to become a best selling product!

Two New Wallhangings

2010-07-28T18:36:00.005+01:00

I have sent two new large wallhangings to Carron Pottery at Strathcarron in Wester Ross. As well as selling their own attractive and practical stoneware, they have a well stocked craft shop filled with Scottish-made goods of all sorts - including many of the products from Anna Macneil.

Upstairs they have a small art gallery featuring work by many local artists and it is in this space that my wallhangings are displayed. Over the years it has proved a successful venue for showing my one-off pieces of work.

The first piece is an intricate Celtic knotwork design in a teal blue Harris Tweed and measures approximately 40cm wide by 115 cm high. The second piece "Sunset on a Celtic Sea" combines hand made felt and Harris Tweed in rich deep reds with small details of red and gold metallics.

Sticking out like a sore thumb!

2010-07-27T21:02:00.002+01:00

Last Friday I was in Raigmore Hospital in Inverness having an operation on my right hand.
Actually it was really two operations side by side. The main one was a trapeziectomy - removal of the small bone at the base of the thumb. As I have also been experiencing problems resulting from carpal tunnel syndrome, the surgeon took the opportunity to deal with that at the same time.

I was offered a choice between nerve block or general anaesthetic and after discussion with the anaesthetist, opted for the former. The appeal of this was that I got to see parts of the operation in progress. Some might consider this a bit ghoulish, but I studied Biology at university and I always enjoyed dissection. Actually, I did have some sedation and slept through some of it. I have no recollection of the final stage of having the wounds closed up and the plaster put in place.

I stayed in hospital for one night and although the stay was comfortable, I was very glad to get home. The biggest problem was coping with the disruption to normal bowel activity caused by the ineffective pain-killers prescribed at hospital. Now everything is back to normal and I am in very little discomfort. In fact today I was more or less back at work. There are lots of things I can't do with my right hand in plaster, but I have found a surprising amount that I can do.

Today I managed to handle both embroidery machines, the electric shears and the laser cutting machine. Mary was at work today and she helped me when I got stuck. For example, I made up an Angus style hat, but I couldn't press the center seam open around the curve of the crown - that definitely needed two hands. Between us we finished off the order for Highland House of Fraser - a highlandwear shop in Inverness - and I will deliver that tomorrow. I also got a wrap embroidered and a few more cut out to stitch tomorrow and they will soon be heading to Canongate Jerseys & Crafts in Edinburgh's Royal Mile.

First thing this morning I walked along to the post office with parcels of hats. One parcel of Morags went off to St Andrew's Cathedral in Fife (run by Historic Scotland) and another two parcels of Mairi and Angus hats went off to De Paz in Italy, a shop in Bologna. It has been quite a summer for hats - perhaps because of the rather dismal weather this summer! In the last couple of weeks we have supplied repeat orders of hats to Shetland, Orkney, Lewis and Harris. Next on the list is Iona Abbey. During my walk I became very aware that I was indeed "sticking out like a sore thumb"! If one wants the sympathy vote in the health stakes, a plaster cast on your right hand is the way to go.

Besides hats, we seem to have been selling quite a few large wallhangings. As many of these include hand-made felt, I had quite a rush in the last couple of weeks making new pieces. Felt-making will definitely be out of bound for several weeks! I got several new ones made before I went into hospital and over the next few weeks these will be heading off to various galleries.

The chemist's shop had also got my "stukie bag" today, so now I am off to enjoy a leisurely bath. Washing has been one of the more difficult things to do without a right hand!

Merkinch Summer Arts Festival - Workshop

2010-07-15T22:20:00.008+01:00

Yesterday evening I was teaching a wet-felting workshop in the Bike Shed, home of the Merkinch Summer Arts Festival which runs for two weeks every July. We had seven students, some of whom had attended my class at last year's festival. With just two and a half hours we got to work quickly and I set everyone the task of making a seamless felt purse.

Everyone chose two or three different colours of fleece and started laying it out in preparation for felting. It took people a while to get their heads around the idea of working "inside-out" but we got there and soon everyone was happily creating lots of soapy bubbles under their bubble-wrap.

Then the hard work began and we started the milling. Because these were small pieces we were able to use small cane placemats rather than big roller blinds and everyone was able to work on their own piece.

Finally came the rinsing - shortage of kettles and space at the sink meant this was a communal effort but as you can see from the photograph below, each purse was so different that there was no danger of muddling them up. I seem to have forgotten to photograph one person's purse - sorry! - and my own which I made as a demonstration is sitting waiting for me to finish milling it before it gets rinsed and hung up to dry.

We over-ran our allotted time by about 15 minutes, but everyone was happy with their achievements and a good time was had be all.

P.S. I will be taking a few months off from felt-making because I am about to have some surgery on my wrist. However, if you are interested in tuition at a later date either one-to-one, small groups or for large groups please do email me to discuss what you want. My plan is to use the down-time that is an inevitable consequence of the surgery to catch up on some computer projects that have been sitting on the back-burner for a long time. (I can use the computer left-handed) One of these is to get to grips with designing a website to promote my work as a textile artist - www.ruth-black.co.uk At the moment it is simply a holding page which directs you to either my Ecclesiastical Embroidery site or to my main business site - Anna Macneil.

Crisis Visit to Nottingham

2010-07-10T21:45:00.007+01:00

After my drive to Reading I had had quite enough of motorways! On Wednesday I started work after my long trip and everything was going really well until mid afternoon when my laser cutting machine broke down. Phonecalls to the engineer and work with the soldering iron achieved nothing and the machine still kept putting up an error message - "X-axis error overflow" - i.e. NOT WORKING!!!!!!

I use this machine for cutting out all the appliqué pieces that are used for all our embroidered products and also for cutting the ends of our fleece lined Harris Tweed scarves. This machine is not your everyday bit of kit and there is nobody in Scotland that can fix it so there was nothing for it but to load it into the car and drive the 470 miles to Nottingham. This is not like packing up a computer. It has a 1m square footprint and requires the door to be taken off its hinges to get the machine out of the room. It also requires two strong men to lift it down the stairs and out to the car.

I got to Nottingham by just after 8 o'clock on Friday morning and handed the machine over to the engineer in the hopes that he could wave a magic wand while I went off to explore Nottingham.

The first surprise was that there is no castle! There is still a medieval gatehouse (pictured left) and evidence of the old castle within the grounds, but the castle itself was destroyed a few hundred years ago. The castle hill is now occupied by a 19th century building used as a museum.

I had looked on the internet the night before to see if there was anything interesting to explore during my visit and found details of the lace museum. Unfortunately, it has closed and nobody has bothered to update the information on the web. The lovely old building (pictured right) is still there but very closed up and the lace curtains mean one can't see in the windows. The costume and textiles museum has also bitten the dust.

Next I thought I would look for something modern - the Nottingham Contemporary. Disappointment there too! The don't have any permanent displays and were between exhibitions.

At that point I decided to give up on seeking out culture and went into the post office to post a small parcel. I had brought it with me because the queue at my local post office had been too long for me to wait before I left Inverness. By Nottingham standards it was almost non-existant! In Nottingham they are obviously very used to queues - they provide rather comfortable seating! They operate a ticket system - mine was No 164 " there are 41 people ahead of you in the queue". It was swelteringly hot outside and my feet were sore so I decided to wait and test out the seating - it was a welcome half-hour break.

After that I wandered about through the the streets and the market square before ambling back to see what progress had been made with my machine. I timed it really well as they had just finished the work - it needed a new cable to feed the X-axis motor, relatively simple once you know what's wrong! So car loaded up and back on the road again.

I decided to make a detour on the way home and visit Texere Yarns in Bradford. I have bought lots of yarn over the years from their website but never before had the chance to visit. It was good to see the colours and feel the yarns - things you can't do on the internet. Unfortunately by the time I had found my way there, managed to find somewhere to park and got to the shop I was seriously hot and exhausted and that effectively limited my thinking powers so my spend was quite small. 4.30 on a Friday afternoon is not a good time to leave Bradford - it took a long time to get out of the town through rush-hour traffic and I was very glad that I had sat-nav.

I broke my journey in Ayrshire staying overnight with my sister and then got home by lunchtime today. The machine is now back upstairs. The door has still to be screwed back in place but the machine has been tested and is working as it should. After driving 2,500 miles in the last 6 days, I will be quite happy not to drive anywhere for quite some time!

Shopping for fibres

2010-07-06T20:09:00.009+01:00

My son Simon has finally fled the nest! He has a new job in Reading and last week moved into his own flat. He doesn't drive so I volunteered to drive him down to Reading with all his gear - computers, rowing machine and other things that it is not really practical to move by public transport. He flew up on Saturday morning and we drove down on Sunday - 650 miles, 11 hours, but trouble free apart from confusion over how to pay for the toll motorway. (Up here in Inverness we don't even have motorways, never mind ones you have to pay for.)

Anyway, the advantage of driving to the south of England was that I was traveling north again on Monday. Wingham Wool Work has the largest stock of fibres for spinners and feltmakers of anywhere in the UK. They have a large mail-order business, but there is nothing like seeing it all for yourself and picking what you want. The shop is only open on Sundays and Mondays, so traveling north on Monday was my reward for driving south on Sunday!

I made a list before I left of the colours of Merino fibre that I particularly needed to stock up on. The shop consists of a large barn with 3 large sheds. The stock of Merino fills one large shed and it is just a question of collecting a large polythene sack and filling it with as much wool as you can afford. I filled two sacks for myself and one for a friend, then headed to the shed with all the natural fibres. Ruth Gough runs the business and she is very happy to give advice on all the fibres she stocks. (This photo shows Ruth beside a display of Scandinavian carded wool.) She is an expert spinner and we had a long discussion about what would be the best choice for me to try spinning enough yarn to knit a jumper.

I have done this once before - a lovely white Shetland wool jumper with a random check pattern created using a combination of moss-stitch and stocking stitch which I was very pleased with. Unfortunately I spread outwards and the jumper shrunk in and it is now too tight for me. It still fits Mary and she is wearing it in the bottom right photograph of the bags page on our on-line shop website.

On Ruth's advice, this time I have plumped for Blue-faced Leicester and I will be spinning up a combination of white and beige mix fibres and plying them together to get a nice tweedy appearance. If you come back in 4 years time I might have finished the project! My spinning is not bad for an amateur, but my knitting is slow and tends only to happen when I am traveling on a ferry or sitting with my elderly mother-in-law waiting for a doctor to arrive. I reckon that if I were to try and sell a hand-spun, hand knitted jumper I would have to get £4000 if I were to get a reasonable hourly rate for my work! I will stick to embroidery and felt making for earning my living, but I do like having something like this on the go.

The whole process of shopping at Wingham Wool Works took well over two hours and I had lovely conversations with other fibre enthusiasts - a feltmaker who lives in Abu Dhabi and stocks up every time she comes home to the UK, and a spinner from Yorkshire who had recently visited Inverness while on holiday.

In this photograph you can see the car loaded up with my sacks. I would have loved to get more but I have limited storage space and the credit card might have melted if I had bought any more!

The next thing is to do some more felt panels which I will then transform with embroidery into large wallhangings. At least now I can choose my colours freely rather than being restricted to those I had in sufficient quantity.

Noah's Ark - a felt wallhanging

2010-06-29T08:54:00.006+01:00

On 20th June I had children from our very small Sunday School making a felt picture of the story of Noah's Ark. They had come after school a few days earlier to make a start, making some half-felt in all the colours of the rainbow and a selection of different neutral shades for making the ark and the animals. Last thing on the Saturday afternoon before I shut up my studio for the day, I laid out some fleece to make the background to the picture so that on Sunday morning we were ready to go.

We cut strips of different colours and made a large rainbow. The ark was made from strips of brown half-felt - this was different colours on each side, which means when fully felted the bottom layer peeps out around the edges of each strip giving a plank-like appearance rather than just flat colour.

Next came the animals - giraffes, elephants, tigers, sheep, horses, monkeys and penguins had all got a home on this ark.
The children seemed to really enjoy the process - lots of soapy bubbles and physical activity always goes down well! We didn't quite get it finished in the time available - it needed a bit more rolling and then the rinsing, but as one child wanted to take the picture into school, his mother took it home to finish off. They brought it back this Sunday and I got this lovely photograph. It will now get mounted on some canvas and hung on the wall of the church hall.

New Celtic Cross Wallhangings

2010-06-23T18:15:00.008+01:00

After my relaxing week making felt in the garden during my "open studios" event, it has been back to work with a vengence trying to catch up with embroidery orders.

The last couple of days has been spent making large Celtic Cross wallhangings for Iona Abbey. This batch includes two new designs. Last summer I was able to visit the abbey and I took lots of photographs of the wonderful collection of Celtic crosses and grave covers that are housed in the abbey's infirmary museum.

I already had designs inspired by the wonderful St John's and St Martin's crosses, but I wanted some simpler, less "busy" designs. These two stones particularly appealed to me and both designs were relatively straightforward to depict in embroidery. The wallhangings are approximately 40 x 60 cm and are made with Harris Tweed.

The plain ringed cross was just a bit too plain so I have used artistic license and added in some Celtic knotwork. Although this is my own invention, it is entirely in keeping with the style of many of these stones and follows the rules of this artform.

These wallhangings, along with two new priest's stoles will shortly be winging their way to the Abbey, where they stock many of our products such as bags, scarves and hats.

We make two sizes of Celtic cross wallhangings - large ones like these, and small ones just over 10 x 20cm. The larger ones often get bought to be used as pupil falls in churches. The small ones go all over the world - the last one that I sent off was being taken out to Malawi. The next design that I have to work on this week is the Kilnave cross on the Isle of Islay and this will be on the small size of wallhanging.

Back to winter

2010-06-19T18:50:00.008+01:00

After two lovely days in which we sat outside in the garden, today was cold and windy. As the day wore on the grey sky cleared and the sun came out but the wind felt as though is was blowing straight from the north pole - and it was blowing hard.

I retreated to my studio and spent the day making felt. The hard work of felting and milling helped to warm me up, but my feet were frozen.

Today's project was inspired by two things - the flowers in the garden and some balls of rainbow dyed merino pencil rovings. Pencil roving is the term for fleece that has been taken through the preliminary stage of spinning for commercial spinning. I have found that with the aid of a battery powered "hair braider" it makes really good twisted tassels for a fringe. I cut lengths of about 12 inches and twisted them up, then brushed the ends with fine mini carders and blended these fluffy ends in with the fleece that I used for the rest of the felt. This piece of felt will be used as a base for one of my Celtic knotwork embroidery designs. My intention is to stitch a quite open knotwork design so that it looks rather like a garden trellis and then possibly add in a few little flowers to pick up on the colours of the felt.

It is quite amazing how quickly the garden changes. When I first opened the studio for our Highlands Open Studios event last Saturday the irises were only just beginning to flower and the foxgloves were just beginning to grow tall, no buds in sight. A week later and the irises are beginning to wither and the foxgloves are beginning to flower.

At the end of the afternoon I spent a little while preparing for tomorrow's Sunday School group. We will be making a felt picture of the story of Noah's Ark and the rainbow. If it works out, the pictures will appear in my next posting.

A sunny day in the garden

2010-06-17T21:47:00.006+01:00

Highlands Open Studios - half way through our open studios event, today we had beautiful warm sunshine which made our day in the garden very pleasant.
I have some orders for our Shetland Angels and that involves spinning Shetland wool to make a yarn for tying the angels "wings" to the body, so today I sat at the spinning wheel and spun enough yarn to keep me going for the next few months. Fortunately I have prescription sunglasses!

Mary spent a couple of hours working in the "sweatshop" upstairs, but then came out to join us and sat labeling items for several orders. Here she is doing the rather tedious job of labeling keyrings but it has to be done, and is more enjoyable outside in the sunshine.

For the last few days Val has been making her jewellery inside the gazebo. Today it was stifling in there so she joined us on the patio. Her activity today was making beautiful, delicate polymer clay roses. She is considering adding them to the range of items that she sells at craft fairs - some as individual roses, others possibly included as part of jewellery pieces, but there are various things she needs to consider. Does anyone have any idea what sort of price these roses might fetch at a craft fair? Email Val through her website if you feel you can offer her any advice on this, or indeed if you want to purchase one of her flowers.

Later in the afternoon we had a visit from a young family. The children come to Sunday School at our church - St Michael and All Angels, Inverness - and we are planning to make a felt picture on Sunday. Today we made a start by creating some half-felts in various colours. These will get cut into the shapes we need for the story we plan to illustrate on Sunday - come back next week to see how we get on.

New blue photographs

2010-06-16T21:12:00.007+01:00

Mary was back at work today having spent the weekend at Rockness Music Festival. She had got her hair dyed with blue streaks and we thought it might be fun to photograph a few of our blue items while they were all out in the gazebo for our Open Studios event.

First off - Maggie hat - in teal blue with toning embroidery around the brim - visit the Anna Macneil website for full details. Mary assures me that this style of hat is very popular with festival punters.

It was really far too warm to wear this lovely silk-lined "Celtic Splash" scarf, but it did match Mary's hair.

Always popular - our mobile phone pouch - or it can be used for a small digital camera. There is a spring-lock toggle on the cord allowing the cord to be adjusted in length so that it can be worn on the hip or round the neck, whichever is more convenient.

Then after all the effort of posing for photographs, Mary sat down with an embroidered wrap around her shoulders, to sample the new chair that her father had just bought!

Wild Garden

2010-06-16T20:47:00.006+01:00

A lovely sunny and warm day today so I headed out to the garden with enthusiasm to open up my feltmaking studio. I have hooks on the walls either side of the double doors so that they can be kept open when I am working. I went to hook back one door and saw something weird filling the hook. At first glance I thought it was some sort of seed - lime green and knobbly, but then I realised that the surface was moving and it was in fact a mass of tiny spiders. I don't know much about the life cycle of spiders but this nest was definitely not there yesterday evening when I locked up the studio. The whole mass was only about half an inch across.

Yesterday I finished the felt panel with the iris flowers - needs some work done on it to give a bit more definition to the flowers, but as a quickly done sample piece I think it turned out not too bad. I went to photograph the irises today and found one growing out of the pond, which looked a bit strange.

The cats kept me company today while I spent time making buttons for bags and cutting up all my scraps of tweed for making keyrings and Celtic hearts. The good weather brought out some visitors and among other sales I took an order for a tartan draughts set - a wedding present that will be heading out to Spain when it is finished.

Busy Monday

2010-06-14T17:55:00.001+01:00

This morning it was rather grey, but dry. I had an early start and went off to the supermarket - always better to go first thing when one can get round and back home within 45 minutes. I then spent a couple of hours in the kitchen before heading out into the garden to open up my studio for our Highlands Open Studios event.
Yesterday I had laid out some fleece and had it all ready to wet down and make some felt. I spent the rest of the morning working on this. I am not sure yet what I will do with this piece - probably embroider on it, or perhaps use it as a rug.

Val took a break from jewellery making to come and make felt beads using some half-felt that I had cut off from the edges in an effort to get the felt into a better shape. She likes to sit and watch me working hard!

While it is wet the contrast between the bright red and the darker blotches is a bit strong, so I am hoping that by the time it is dry it will be a bit more subdued.

At lunch time a local woman called Laura turned up and asked if she could try her hand at felt making. We spent a very pleasant afternoon going through the basic principles and then building up a felt picture inspired by the buttercups growing at the side of the garden pond. She will be back tomorrow to do the hard work of rubbing and rolling.

While Laura was cutting out yellow petals for her buttercups I decided to see if I could do something with the lovely blue irises which have just opened out today. The flowers are almost at shoulder height and they look very impressive. It remains to be seen whether I can do them justice in felt.

All in all it has been a very pleasant day in the garden and we now have clear blue skies and sunshine. However, the day to day work doesn't go away just because I have been "playing" and I now have to head upstairs to the workroom and get on with making purses for an order.

A very wet Sunday afternoon

2010-06-13T15:53:00.000+01:00

The forecast for today was right....... wet.....wet....wet!

I have my studio open, but I really am not expecting any visitors. I certainly wouldn't venture out today. I can see the pond clearly from the open door of my studio - lots of ripples from the rain.

I started off with good intentions and have laid out a lot of fleece and got it all ready to start felting, but decided that it is so wet outside, I wanted to keep dry inside. If there are any visitors brave enough to venture out, I will at least have something ready to show them how it's done.

My visitors yesterday were keen to watch and some of them stayed watching for well over an hour. Below you can see the results from yesterday afternoon - this piece of felt measures 45cm across by 69cm long. The grey felt and white felt were done separately to the half-felt stage then I cut out the grey felt to create the Celtic knotwork design before felting the two layers together. Today's piece will be very different - bright red for starters! It is much more abstract with lots of different textures achieved by using mixed fibres on the top surface - curly bits of wool, silk, mohair and fine angelina. I will leave it till tomorrow to start felting so for now it is covered with a piece of organza so that the bits don't move. This piece (provided it works according to plan) will form a background on which I embroider - and it remains to be seen what form that embroidery will take.

Highlands Open Studios

2010-06-12T12:58:00.001+01:00

This week I am participating in an Open Studios event. From today (12th June) till 20th June I will be ensconsed in my felt studio in the garden along with my friend Val Ford - a jeweller. Both of us will be making things while we are here and people can watch us at work if they are able to drop in and see us. For contact details visit my website.

We have work for sale - to suit all pockets. Visitors can also try their hand at either felt making or bead making while they are here - or indeed they might even make felt beads!

At the moment it is a bit grey and overcast. The weather forecasters are predicting showers today and torrential downpours tomorrow - so we have our wellies to hand! So far it has stayed dry and the only moving water is that in the fountain in our garden pond.

Two gazebos joined together allow us to dispay our wares.

I have more or less our full range of products on sale - though in rather limited quantities. The shops we supply seem to have been busy and they keep ordering more things, so our stock levels are low. If you can't make it to the studio, why not visit our on-line shop and order something through that. You can choose from things that we have in stock, or choose your own colour and we will make it up specially.

Val makes lovely jewellery that involves a combination of beads and silver chain-maille. You can visit her website at www.highland-gems.co.uk/

Val setting up her space in the gazebo

I know it's a bit early to be shopping for Christmas, but our decorations do seem to be popular year round, so why not!

Some of Val's Jewellery

New work at Morven Gallery

2010-06-10T20:43:00.000+01:00

I have just returned from a fleeting visit to the Isle of Lewis. As usual, it was a multi-purpose visit. The main reason for going was to attend a seminar on colour and fashion trends with an emphasis on Harris Tweed. It was an informative morning and good to meet up with other people working with Harris Tweed.

The weather there was lovely. Not hot by mainland standards, but in fact we seemed to have the best weather in the UK for that couple of days. It was wall to wall sunshine and despite a cool breeze, it was T-shirt weather.

On Monday I visited Harris Tweed Hebrides mill at Shawbost in the morning and purchased a few more lengths of tweed. These will soon be made up into bags or hats. I will add them to the swatches page on our website as soon as I get a chance.

After that my mother and I went to Morven Gallery for our lunch and to deliver another order. This lovely gallery is only open for the summer months, but during that time they have all sorts of lovely art and craft for sale. Here you will find some of my large one-off embroidered wallhangings along with our Celtic Thistle cushions and velcro purses. If you are visiting the island, this is a must - and the cakes are wonderful! The pictures here show some of my work on display in the gallery.

Later on that day I headed up to the Butt of Lewis to visit Callum Maclean, a very experienced weaver of Harris Tweed, and discussed some new tweeds that I want him to weave for me. It will be a month or two at least before I have these available, but when they are ready they too will be added to the swatches page.

The seminar was on Tuesday morning and then it was a quick lunch at Woodlands before catching the ferry back to the mainland.

The next task it to sort out my felt-making studio (a grand title for what is really a garden shed!) because from 12th to 20th June I will be participating in Highlands Open Studios and have my studio open to the public. I will be joined by jeweller Val Ford and we hope to welcome lots of people into the garden to watch us at work and perhaps participate in some mini workshops. We just have to hope that the temperature picks up and we don't freeze to death in the garden.

Mary's hats

2010-05-22T19:00:00.000+01:00

As promised, the link to ebay for Mary's hand-dyed canvas version of our new hat style.
canvas hat

Online shop - at last!

2010-05-15T22:09:00.000+01:00

We finally got there - a new website with on-line shopping.

It took a lot longer than I expected but the site is now up and running. When you visit the Anna Macneil site you will be able to buy things that we already have in stock or to order something in your own choice of colour. Our full range is there - hats, scarves, wraps, bags & purses, cushions and wallhangings, draughts sets and Christmas decorations.

Also on the site is the brand new style of hat - Maggie. This bucket style hat is designed and made by my daughter, Mary - and she models it as well!
Besides making them in tweed for Anna Macneil, she is also making them in cotton drill and will soon be selling them on Ebay. She tells me that this is the style of hat favoured by young women who go to music festivals. She is hand-dyeing the cotton for those hats and they are every bit as fetching as the tweed version.

We took this hat to the Aviemore Trade Show recently and it was a great hit with several shops placing orders. These orders are being filled within the next couple of weeks and you will soon be able to buy them at Canongate Jerseys and Crafts in Edinburgh, Callanish Visitor Centre on the Isle of Lewis or Ginger at Morar on the west coast. Carron Pottery & Craft Shop will get their's on June. Of course these shops take lots of our other products along with many other shops and visitor centres. You can find links to many of these shops, galleries and visitor centres from the Anna Macneil website.

Another hit is a new design I have created for a large wallhanging. This one is two intertwined zoomorphic birds tied together with lots of Celtic knotwork. Although nobody knows for certain the meaning of these Celtic designs, some scholars have suggested that when two birds are entwined in this way it symbolises the concept of everlasting friendship. In this example the birds are stitched with metallic gold thread with golden wings using tweeds with subtle checks. The hanging measures 40cm wide and 115cm long.

Lots of other developments are in the pipeline, but at the moment we are concentrating on getting orders out to shops and to those who order from our online shop. Do visit and have a look for yourself.

Progress report

2010-02-03T07:34:00.000Z

The new website for Anna Macneil is now well underway. We are creating an on-line shop which will make it very much easier for you to make purchases. However - it is much more work for us, in terms of setting it up - lots of "buy it now" buttons to make, pictures to edit, links to create, but we are getting there.

So far we have got all the hat pages ready and on these you will be able to select a hat from stock or order one in the colour of your choice. At the moment this is still not accessible for you to view, but "watch this space"! There are 8 styles to choose from, all designed to keep out the Scottish weather - and we are getting plenty of that! Actually, today is lovely and sunny, but bitingly cold. Perhaps once the sun is properly up in the sky (it's just after dawn just now) it will be a bit warmer but for all those who need to go out to walk the dog before heading off to work, these hats come highly recommended. Or perhaps you walk to work? Or perhaps you should walk to work but don't like arriving with a cold head? Choose between our different designs to combine warmth and comfort with style and colour.

Today it is the turn of the scarves section to get the on-line shop treatment. I made a start by organising my collection of scarf photographs to make it easier to select the ones I need for the shop - only 1027 to choose from! These have certainly proved popular over the 5 years that we have been making them. As with the hats, they are designed for comfort and warmth. They are made from Harris Tweed and we can offer a choice of embroidered scarves or plain tweed.

Actually, plain tweed is a bit of a misnomer - Harris Tweed is far from plain - even in the single colour versions. The wool is dyed before carding and spinning to make the yarn from which the tweed is woven. As different fibres in the fleece take up the dye to greater or lesser extents, there is always some variation of shade, but in addition, most mixes for carding include small quantities of extra colour, so you will get green, red, yellow and blue all rubbing shoulders with a main brown fibre - see the centre square of the swatches on the left. These swatches are all the tweeds that we have in stock in reasonably quantity - we have at least four times that in smaller quantities, so we should always be able to make something in the colour of your choice.

So - keep checking our website. I think at most another two weeks should see it fully up and running - though there may be the odd little glitch to start with. When Len was creating the page for our hat style "Angus" he was doing it straight after working on the "Anna" page. To save time (!!!!!) he did a "find and replace" for all the times that "Anna" was used - not taking account of the name of the business - so suddenly we had "Angus Macneil" - oops! However, we spotted it and it was easily remedied. Len (my husband) does web design and management for small businesses, individuals and charities. That is one of the reasons why I have had to wait so long to get the Anna Macneil site overhauled - a case of the shoe-maker's children going barefoot! His charges are very reasonable, but the paying customer gets priority.

In the meantime, you can still access our catalogue through the website and see details of our full range of products. Besides the hats and scarves we make bags & purses, belts and wraps, phone pouches & specs cases, cushions and wallhangings and a range of Christmas decorations - something for everyone.

New website - online shopping coming soon

2010-01-30T18:37:00.000Z

We are very busy working at getting on-line shopping facilities onto the Anna Macneil website. Because of this, we have had to take off most of what was there and it is currently only a limited site with a home page and a catalogue page. The catalogue is in the form of a pdf file that you can view within your browser (unless you are using a Mac - sorry, this seems to cause problems, but you can still download it and open it in Adobe Reader or Preview). And before Mac users get up in arms about discrimination - I am a Mac user!

If you look through previous postings you will find all sorts of links to different pages of the wbesite - these will no longer work, sorry! However, we hope it won't be too long before the new site is up and running.

You will soon be able to choose between products that we already have in stock or order something in the colour of your choice, all at the click of a button.

I will be keeping you posted through this blog and on the home page of the website.

Award Winning Scarf

2010-01-29T15:10:00.000Z

I have just returned from Glasgow where I was exhibiting at Scotland's Trade Fair (Spring) at the SECC. At the show there was a panel of judges choosing the "Best Product" in each of four different categories. In the Clothing and Textiles section, we were awarded "Highly Commended" for our Bog Cotton fleece lined scarf. We have always been proud of this design, but it is very rewarding to have it recognised by experts.

This scarf was made by my daughter Mary and you can see her here pictured wearing the winning scarf and holding the bottle of wine that came along with the certificate. The scarf is lined with polar fleece which has a decorative fringe detail - more details on the website.

Another winner (at least in terms of orders from shops - we hadn't entered it for the competition) was our new style of hat - Callum - which over the next few months will be making its way into several shops. First up will be "Canongate Jerseys and Crafts" in Edinburgh's Royal Mile and they should have them in stock by mid February. This shop sells many of our products - hats and scarves, bags and purses, wallhangings, wraps etc. and is well worth a visit if you find yourself in Edinburgh. One of the samples I had with me at the show was bought by a keen angler. On the first day he asked if he could buy it at the end of the show and every so often throughout the three days he would come and try it on again. His verdict - "the best hat ever"!!!!!

We took orders for all our various products, some of them from shops we have not dealt with before. As we get the orders made and out to these customers we will put details of them on the website.

Sneak Preview

2010-01-18T20:20:00.000Z

From Sunday 24th to Tuesday 26th January I will be exhibiting at Scotland's Trade Fair at the SECC in Glasgow. It is not open to the public - just to buyers, managers and shop owners from bona fide retail businesses. If you want further details about the show visit their website at http://www.scotlandstradefairs.co.uk/spring/Home.aspx

I will have our full range of products there including our new style of hat. This new design is a man's hat (though no reason what so ever why women shouldn't wear it!) - named "Callum" and like all the other hats in our range, it is designed to keep out the Scottish weather. It is made with Harris Tweed and fully lined with anti-pill polar fleece. Here you see it modelled by my son Simon.

It comes down over the ears, but is shaped at the back so that it doesn't interfere with the collar of a jacket or a scarf, making it extremely comfortable to wear as well as warm.

We will of course have all our other hats on view at the show and hope to have them heading out to retail outlets fairly quickly after the show. Full details of all our hats can be seen on the website at http://www.annamacneil.co.uk

All our other products will be on display at the show - bags and purses, scarves & wraps, belts, cushions, wallhangings ---- and even Christmas decorations! I know, we have only just had Christmas, but the retail trade need to plan ahead to ensure that they have everything you will want in their shops by the time you start thinking about next Christmas.

Another product on display will be our Mairi hat - a traditional bonnet style of hat in Harris Tweed. It has proved very popular this winter and this year we will be offering it with the addition of embroidered detail such as this one with a small Celtic knot stitched with gold embroidery thread.

Full details of these will go onto the website soon.

On holiday

2010-01-07T15:56:00.000Z

I am enjoying a very welcome break at Port Appin on the west coast of Scotland. While the rest of the country seems to be covered in snow, here there is lost of green around. It is cold - lots of ice on the ground and the seaweed on the beaches crunches underfoot because it is frozen. There is snow above about 500ft but at sea level it is lovely.

This afternoon I enjoyed a pleasant walk on the island of Lismore while my husband stayed at the hotel working on the new Anna Macneil website. The big change is that I am going to have an online shop. You will still be able to commission things in the colour of your choice but there will be things ready for purchase and "add to basket" buttons with a Paypal checkout. It will probably be a few more weeks before it is polished up enough to put it online, but we have got the basis set up. In the meantime, you can still visit the current website and use the online order form. I will be back home tomorrow and able to make things and post them out.

I will need to come back here in the summer months and take the car across to Lismore as there is much to see. This afternoon I only managed a short walk around the northern tip of the island where the passenger ferry comes in. It gets dark quite early and by 3.15 the sun was already below the hill and it was bitingly cold. There is a good website for the island and it looks as though there is lots to justify a longer visit.

Tomorrow we head back up the road to Inverness to find out just how much snow there is. It is certainly unusual for us to have such a prolonged spell of cold weather, but more pleasant than wet and windy weather.

Hats and scarves - good in the snow

2009-12-30T12:43:00.000Z

It is a long time since I have had time to post, but I am making the most of the relative quiet of the Christmas holidays to catch up.
We have now had snow lying for ten days - and I really can't remember when we last had that, I am sure it must have been last century!
We have been out in the snow taking some photographs our our hats and scarves. These are designed to keep out the Scottish weather so this is ideal weather to show their worth.
Our hats and scarves are made of Harris Tweed which is handwoven in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. In this picture you see George and Catherine with their dog Fly playing in the snow in our back garden. Catherine is wearing a "Mairi" hat - a traditional bonnet style and George is wearing an "Angus"-the style most favoured by men. Both are wearing fleece lined embroidered scarves.
In the next photograph, Mary is sporting our "Peggy" hat - a flat Harris Tweed crown teamed with a padded polar fleece band designed to sit snug around the head keeping your whole head warm and cosy.
We do several other styles of hats and we can make them in just about any colour. To order visit our website at www.annamacneil.co.uk

Open Studios Week

2009-06-08T21:08:00.000+01:00

I have just finished a successful week as part of Highland Open Studios. Sharing my garden, feltmaking studio and a couple of gazebos with my friend, jeweller Val Ford. Typically for Scottish weather we experienced all four seasons in the course of the week with temperatures ranging from single figures to high twenties. However, we ended on a dry sunny afternoon so were able to get the gazebos down dry and stored away for the next time we need them.
We had lots of visitors with a mix of people who had come as part of the Open Studios trail and others who had simply been in the area and seen the signs out on the street.
Val got lots of jewellery made. She makes a mix of beaded pieces, silver chain mail and polymer clay neckpieces. Her next event is a craft fair at the Strathpeffer Pavillion on 30th June and 1st July. You can see her here explaining the finer points of working with polymer clay to one of our visitors.

I had a productive week too - spinning, felting and stitching, but by the end of the week I was happy to get upstairs to my work room and get back to the main work of embroidery.

Some of our visitors "had a go". In this picture you see my neighbour who dropped in to do a bit of needlefelting as a way of disguising a repair on a favourite pair of slippers.

On Saturday afternoon I left Val holding the fort and went with a fellow felting enthusiast to visit the Wingham Wool Works sale in Ardross Village Hall - organised by the Highland Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers. They only come up to the Highlands about once every two years and it is a wonderful chance to choose colours and types of fibres. Their website is a great place to choose fibres, but however sophisitcated the internet gets, we can't "feel" and the colours are never the same as they are in real life. My friend Eileen was rather more restrained than me, but she mostly makes small scale jewellery pieces so doesn't go through quite the same quantity of fleece as me. I needed to stock up because I have a couple of workshops coming up soon. At the beginning of July I am off to Portsoy to work with a the primary school children making a felt "sail" for the Portsoy Boat Festival, then in the middle of the month I will be leading a class as part of the Merkinch Arts Festival.
The rest of the time, it is hard at it on the sewing machine - see my main website for all the things we make.

Highlands Open Studios Week

2009-05-22T12:22:00.000+01:00

From 30th May to 7th June I will have my feltmaking studio open to visitors as part of the Highlands Open Studios event. For this 9-day period, artists of all varieties will have their studios open and will encourage visitors to come and see them working.

I am joining forces with jeweller Valerie Ford and between us we will have lots of wearable art for sale. We will also be offering drop-in and booked tuition in our own fields. Both of us are happy to discuss commissions in addition to our current stocks of unique pieces, so if you are in the area, why not look us up.
If you want to book a workshop session please email me (for feltmaking) at ruth@ruth-black.co.uk or Val (for jewellery making) at valerie.ford@hotmail.co.uk

Saturday 30th May and 6th June - 10am till 4pm
Sunday 31st May and 7th June - 1pm till 4pm
Monday 1st, Tuesday 2nd, Wednesday 3rd and Friday 5th June - 11am till 6pm
Thursday 4th June - 11am till 8pm

The photograph opposite shows one of my visitors enjoying himself at a previous drop-in feltmaking session.

For information about other artists in the scheme, visit the Highlands Open Studios website.

To see my full range of fashion accessories visit my main website - Anna Macneil or to see my ecclesiastical work click here.

Making a mannequin - Part 2

2009-04-10T18:01:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday I spent the day in the garden making - and more or less finishing - the mannequin. I got the arms attached using a combination of wire, bits of pipe and a lot of needle felting. Then it was a question of wetting down, laying on the fleece, adding lots of soap and then rubbing, and rubbing...........and more rubbing. It took all day and my arms were aching by the end of it, but I do now have a mannequin that I can use for displaying my wares at the Aviemore Trade Show. She needs a little bit of attention in one or two areas where the fibres have not adequately covered the form, so I will need to do some judicious needle felting. I also have to give some thought to whether to give her a skirt, and if so, what do I use. I have two weeks to make a decision as that is when I have to get the car packed up and take everything to the show.

My older granddaughter (aged 11) has christened her "Effie". In this photograph she is still drip-drying, and three days later the tips of the fingers still feel a little damp.

Mary and I have been busy making all the things we need. Every time we think we are succeeding in building up stock, another order comes in and we are back to square one! The last two days have been spent with the embroidery machines making fleece-lined scarves, some with Celtic knotwork designs, others with floral designs. I have added a new design to the range - the heath spotted orchid - Dactylorhiza maculata subsp ericetorum - and I will adapt the design to put it onto a buttoned bag.

It being Easter weekend, I will take the next couple of days off, and then it will be a question of burning the midnight oil to get everything done on time.

Making a mannequin

2009-03-28T17:45:00.000Z

In four weeks time I will once again be exhibiting my wares at the Aviemore Trade Show. This is a trade only show for crafts and gifts made in Scotland and has everything from soaps to ceramics, greetings cards to textiles, jewellery, glass and too many other things to mention. If you buy for a retail outlet that wants to promote the best of what Scotland has to offer, this is a show not to be missed - see website for details - www.aviemoretradeshow.co.uk.

For years I have been struggling with how best to display the Harris Tweed wraps that we make. They look best on a person, but are not really practical to keep on for the duration of the show - far too warm! So, the next best thing is a mannequin, but that is not as easy as it sounds. For one thing, nice ones are very expensive. Also, they are too tall, and so make the limited stand space feel too full. And none of them could be positioned just the way I want.

In January, on a visit to a shop-fitters outlet for a few bits and pieces of display material, I spotted a polystyrene body form reduced in price because of slight damage. I have now attached a polystyrene head and covered the two in icewool prior to making a felt covering.

Today I spent the day in Dingwall at the Highland Feltmakers Group and have made a pair of arms using a combination of wire, polyester wadding and gloves and covering them with merino fleece to make a felt covering.

I am aware that my mannequin may be a bit out of proportion - I think the arms are from a slightly miss-shapen anorexic, while the body is quite generously proportioned, and the head is tilted at a slight angle. So that it doesn't look like a factory reject, but something individual and quirky, I am adding all sorts of interest in the way of embroidered "jewellery" and felted "tattoos". It remains to be seen how it looks when finished, but I am pleased with today's results - see photograph below. In the photograph the arms are still very soapy (particularly the left one), which is why they look so patchy. At the moment the arms are sitting on a rack in the porch at he back door, dripping soapy water all over the place.
Of course, if I was to add a figure for my time into the equation then this will work out as a rather expensive mannequin, but I can guarantee that nobody else will have one the same!

More ecclesiastical embroidery

2009-02-19T13:08:00.000Z

I have just finished a commission for a family in America who asked me to make a set of four stoles that they wished to donate to their church in memory of their parents. The family roots are in the county of Sutherland in the north of Scotland and they wanted something that would reflect this.

After discussions by email we fixed on using the one design for all of them, but using 4 different tartans to go with the liturgical colours - white, red, green and purple.

I have used two clan tartans - Buchanan (white stole) and Cumming (red stole) - as these are the family names. The other two are the Sutherland District tartan (green stole - tartan worn by the Sutherland Highlanders regiment) and Scotland Forever (purple stole - a modern tartan inspired by the legendary war-cry).

The design itself reflects the family origins, with the cross in the centre at the back of the neck based on the Clynekirkton Pictish cross-slab which was found in a village just north of Brora and is on view in the Dunrobin Castle museum.

In due course the photographs will be posted on my website. In the meantime, I have to get on with the next commission - a deacon's stole using the Isle of Skye tartan - and then a Cornish tartan stole to head "down-under". And of course, I have to carry on with all the secular work - wraps, scarves, bags, purses, cushions and wallhangings. Just as well my mother is able to carry on making the hats!

Learning to sew

2009-02-17T16:45:00.000Z

My younger granddaughter, Lauren, had her 10th birthday recently. I had promised to give her sewing lessons as a birthday present, and these lessons have happened over the last few days.
She chose to make a dress to wear to the school disco which is happening on Thursday evening. Fortunately, this has been the mid-term holiday weekend and the girls have been off school for a few days. We bought a pattern and the fabric last week and got it cut out after school one day. Then on Sunday afternoon she stitched together the various pieces that made up the yoke. Today she hand-stitched the yoke facing and the side seams of the dress, followed by putting in the sleeves and stitching the hem - all done and looking pretty in pink!

The frozen north!

2009-02-15T20:22:00.000Z

For the last few weeks there have been reports of severe weather in Britain, but for most of the time it passed us by. Inverness is in a very good position. Being on the east coast of the country it benefits from the rain shadow created by the mountains, making it quite a dry climate. However, in it's position at the top of the Great Glen (Loch Ness and the Caledonian canal) it also gets a funnel of comparatively warm air that is normally associated with the west coast.

On Wednesday last week I travelled across to the Isle of Lewis to visit my mother and buy more Harris Tweed. On the drive across to Ullapool to catch the ferry I had to stop every ten minutes or so to clean the windscreen as the washers were frozen and salt spray off the road was making the glass very dirty. This photograph was taken on one of those stops, just a few miles before Braemore Junction. All the lochs I passed were frozen all the way across - something which we have not experienced for many years.

However, by the time I came home on Saturday it was raining and most of the snow and ice seemed to have gone, although as it was dark by the time I got off the ferry, I didn't get a clear view.

My tweed buying was very successful and I have lots of new tweeds for you to choose from - more or less any colour you want - so have a look at our Anna Macneil catalogue and see what you want.

2009 catalogue now available

2009-01-29T20:28:00.000Z

January is almost gone - much of the month has been spent creating a new catalogue which can be seen on our Anna Macneil website. The catalogue is in two formats - both pdf. One of them is a fairly simple version that will print out easily and should download quite quickly. The other is an embedded pdf. When it works it is very straightforward, with links to each page to make for easy navigation, but I have discovered that browser embedded pdf files are not supported by the Mac version of Firefox, so my apologies if this is your preferred method of web browsing. It's my preferred method, so I am very dissappointed that it doesn't work! If anyone reading this can offer a work-around I would be pleased to hear from you. In the meantime, if you want to see this version I can email you the pdf to open within Acrobat Reader.

I am working on the ecclesiastical side of things at the moment - four stoles (the photograph shows the work in progress) will shortly be heading across the pond to the USA and then I have to start work on some for down under. In amongst all that, Mary and I are busy building up stock ready for the tourist season.

Did you know that this is Scotland's year of Homecoming? Those with Scottish connections are being encouraged to come and visit, with lots of major events planned - see the Homecoming 2009 website for more information. One of the plus points of our current recession is that the pound's value has slumped, making a trip to Scotland much more affordable for those in foreign parts.

If you can't afford to make the trip in person, you can always buy something from Scotland! Our products are just about as Scottish as you can get. Not only are they made by Scots, in Scotland, using designs inspired by Scotland's history and landscape, but they are made from Harris Tweed which is hand woven in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland with wool from Scottish sheep!

In February I will be taking the ferry across the Minch to the Isle of Lewis to visit my mother and buy more tweed. So if you want something in a particular colour, this is a good time to tell me - email me your request at info@annamacneil.co.uk

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T20:47:00.000Z

I would like to wish all my customers a
Happy New Year.

I have been spending the holiday season away from the sewing machines. Mostly I have been in "domestic mode" cooking meals for millions of people, changing bedsheets for the constant stream of overnight visitors etc. But in between all that, I have been sitting a the computer working on the new Anna Macneil catalogue for 2009. I hope to have it completed within the next two or three weeks when it will be uploaded to the website. This year it will be in two different formats - an interactive one which you can explore within your web browser and a simpler one that you can download and print off.
Prices are having to go up - the cost of Harris Tweed has risen sharply over the last year and my other costs are rising too, so I can't absorb these increases. However, until I get the new catalogue completed, you can order at 2008 prices.
The photographs are of a scarf I made recently. It is hand made felt made as a lattice, with the fringe tassles incorporated into the felt. I made a matching scarf ring which fastens with a small magnetic catch, and also a co-ordinating brooch. More details will be on the website soon.

Wrapped up for Christmas

2008-12-02T18:00:00.000Z

We are well into winter now and today there was a reasonable snowfall - enough to give us the chance to get good photographs of a wrap we made recently that has a real Christmassy feel to it. This wrap is made of a length of Harris Tweed that has a red warp and green weft and the appliqué on the silk-lined patch pockets is red tweed stitched with green thread. The wrap costs £52 and can be bought through my website : Anna Macneil. The hat Mary is wearing is our Anna style - a warm headhugger designed to keep you warm in the harshest of weather and also available from the website. For items ordered as Christmas presents, I am offering a gift-wrap service where I can send the parcel direct to the person you are buying it for to save time and save you postage - UK postage is included in the price. For overseas postage please email me for a quote, but it usually only adds a few pounds to the price.

The cats were intrigued by the snow and came into the garden to help with the photography session. Mungo was not particularly adventurous today - just wanted to be kept warm - but Maggie got quite brave with her attempt to walk across the frozen pond.

Tartan

2008-11-27T18:31:00.000Z

I have just come home from Edinburgh having gone there for a reception at Edinburgh Castle to mark the launch of the new Scottish Register of Tartans. The website for this new database goes live on 5th January, 2009 and the website address will be www.tartanregister.
gov.uk
This has been enabled through an Act of Parliament and will be an official authority on the subject of registered tartans - and also where one has to apply to in the future to have a new tartan registered.

Since I was going to a posh function in a posh place, I decided to treat myself to a new posh frock! It is ages since I have made myself anything smart to wear - too busy making things for other people! The invitation said Dress : tartan - so I thought I better make it a tartan dress. The main fabric is plain red wool and the tartan appliqué is the Morrison Dress in the modern colours - hard to see in the photograph, but it is red with checks in bottle green, black and white. The stitching is bottle green to match the tartan. The dress is fully lined and very comfortable to wear. It attracted lots of favourable comments - of course it would have looked much better on someone who is 6 inches taller and 6 inches narrower!

I was invited to the function because I am a member of the Scottish Tartans Authority - a very useful resource for me in my ecclesiastical work where I use so many different tartans. The most recent stole that I have made was using the Clergy tartan. A telephone call to the STA provided the information that the Clergy tartan is unique in being the only profession specific tartan. The motifs on this stole are based on some ancient artefacts associated with the two parishes served by the Church of Scotland minister who commissioned it. The chalice design is from the St Angus stone in the Church at Blaquidder (of Rob Roy fame) and is known as the Cup of Salvation. The crozier and bell are relics associated with St Fillan - an 8th century Irish saint who travelled widely in Scotland and is associated with the minister's other parish - Killin. The crosier and bell are on display in the National Museum of Scotland. When I was working on the design I had to work from photographs and sketches that I had been given, but since I was in Edinburgh, I took the time yesterday to visit the museum and see the pieces for myself - very impressive and interesting, well worth the visit.

Craft Fair this weekend - 29th and 30th November 2008
If you are in the area, come along to Brodie Castle for a Victorian style Christmas Fair. I will have my "Anna Macneil" stall there - and will probably be wearing my new dress! I will have bags & purses, hats & scarves, wraps, wallhangings and cushions for sale as well as our very popular Shetland Angels. So - if you live within shouting distance, why not come along and do all your Christmas shopping!

Photoshoot session

2008-11-01T15:24:00.000Z

Mary and I spent a few hours yesterday with my brother Martin who is a professional photographer. He was taking photographs of Mary modeling some of our products. The pictures you see here are the amateur variety - taken by me. It was beautiful day, clear blue sky and only a light breeze. However, it was the last day of October, so it was cold!
Our location for this session was the shoreline between Invergordon and Alness in Ross-shire just 40 minutes drive north of Inverness. We will get the good photographs from Martin in due course, and they will be put on the Anna Macneil website. In the meantime, here are a couple of pictures that demonstrate what my very versatile daughter can do besides sewing and embroidery - like climbing trees and clambering over rocks!

New wraps

2008-09-02T20:50:00.000+01:00

Over the last few days Mary and I have been busy making wraps for two shops. As the sun was shining today we took a little while off from sewing and went down to the Ness Islands to do some photography. Pictured here is one of my new designs - knotwork with little spirals in some of the spaces. You can see some of the other photographs that we took by visiting our website - Anna Macneil. Some of the wraps have been sent to the Braemar Highland Heritage Centre and others will shortly be winging their way across the Atlantic to Texas where they will be on sale at Things Celtic in Austin.

Custom-made bags

2008-08-29T09:40:00.000+01:00

This summer I have made a few bags specially designed for particular people and functions - a capacious zipped folding shopping bag (see below), a bag to hold my mini laptop for when I am traveling, a good-sized handbag and a shoulder bag designed to hold my A3 format portfolio books.
Left you can see the handbag, which also has a large velcro closing pocket on the back (below) and another velcro-closing pocket inside.

While playing with designing this bag I allowed myself to be diverted and experimented with making a zipped wallet. I made a zip-pull to match the button that closes the handbag. I shall have to experiment a bit more with this as the idea works well. I can see a range of bags with zip pockets appearing in our range in the near future.
To see our current range, download the catalogue from our website at Anna Macneil.

The folding shopping bag was designed for my mother. She wanted to have something that could fit in her handbag when not in use, but be completely secure after she had filled it up with shopping when she comes across to Inverness for the day. As it is made from Harris Tweed, it doesn't fold flat, but it does tuck up into a comparatively small space.

The bag stays folded by means of a magnetic catch at either end of the top zipper panel - keeps the ends of the zip neat when the bag is in use as there are corresponding catches on the sides of the bag. The handle straps are long enough to allow the bag to be carried on the shoulder, but short enough to make it easy to carry as a shopping bag.

As the bag is fully lined, with a stiffened base and embroidered on both sides, this would not be a cheap bag to make on a commercial basis, but if someone is willing to pay £65 I can make it in whatever colour and design is wanted.

The computer bag has a foam padded lining to keep the laptop safe, with inside pockets to hold all the extra bits and pieces such as charger, mouse etc. The shoulder strap can clip on and off making it easier to stow inside a larger bag when flying.
The portfolio bag is simply an extra-wide shoulder bag such as the one you can see on my website, with the addition of a flap over the top and fastened with a magnetic catch to keep the bag closed.

If you have a need for a specialised bag, let me know and we can see what we can come up with!

Polymer Clay Buttons

2008-08-05T22:52:00.000+01:00

I have been experimenting with using my laser cutting machine to create Celtic designs on polymer clay buttons. Polymer clay is an easily modelled, coloured, plastic clay that can be "fired" in a domestic over. At only 120 degrees celsius, the plastic particles bind together to form a relatively hard piece of plastic. I use this to create many of the buttons that feature on my bags (see my website). Mostly these are just colours marbled together and shaped by hand, but I am trying to be more adventurous.
I have tried three different methods with the one design. Left and middle, a very thin layer of orange clay was cut on the laser cutting machine and the pieces laid onto a brown clay base. One is the negative shape, the other the positive - so no waste! In the middle button, there is a middle layer of marbled brown and beige clay between the orange and brown clays. For the button on the right, there is an engraved line as well as the cut lines, to create the border which shows the "unders and overs". Once the pieces were all in place, the triangular shapes were cut with a tissue blade. I laid the buttons upside down and fixed brass button backs in place with a small ring of clay before baking in the oven. The technique needs a bit of refinement, but I think it has potential. In due course, some of these buttons will appear on my bags, but I think there is too much work for it to be generally cost effective - most of the buttons will continue to be simple marbled colours and hand-shaped.

Heavy workload and Harris Tweed

2008-07-09T20:50:00.000+01:00

There seems to be no shortage of people wanting to buy my products at the moment. It seems as though almost every day another order is coming in. So far we have had a lovely summer weatherwise, but very little time in which to enjoy it.
June started off with Highlands Open Studios week - not a resounding success in terms of visitor numbers, but enough to keep me occupied, and most of the time the weather was kind. As I was working in my "studio" in the garden making felt, that was important. I got some good pieces made that week. Some of them are now on display at the Lyth Arts Centre in Caithness and others at Morven Gallery on the Isle of Lewis.
During that week my mother went into hospital to get a new hip joint, so a lot of the rest of June was taken up with looking after her, but late in June, my sister took her home to Lewis and last week I went over there myself for a few days. I am pleased to report that the operation has been a resounding success.
While on Lewis I took the time to find out for myself what is happening in the Harris Tweed industry. As Harris Tweed is the main ingredient in my work, it is important to know what is going on. The good news is that the mills at Carloway and Shawbost are both fully operational - the bad news is that they have so much work trying to keep the big customers supplied that they have not got stocks to sell to people like me - but it will come in time. At the moment I have plenty of stock, so there is not much of a problem just now - just one or two colours that I am running low on.
These next two months are going to be non-stop work trying to get current orders met and build up enough stock to see me through September when I am off to Australia for 3 weeks.

Highlands Open Studios Week

2008-05-31T06:48:00.000+01:00

HOS'O8 starts today - 31st May and runs for 9 days. If you are in the Inverness area, do drop in and visit. More information about the event can be got from the Open Studios website - http://www.highlandsopenstudios.co.uk/
I will be working in my "studio" in my garden along with painter Liberty Bligh. This will be an opportunity to indulge myself and concentrate on the textile art side of my work rather than the more routine things. I have a selection of our "Anna Macneil" range of products on display as well as many one-off pieces.
Visitors will have the opportunity to play chess or draughts with my large tweed & felt sets. Also on offer is the chance to try your hand at needle-felting or simply to watch me at work.
Today I am planning to weave the fringing for a stole commission. The fringe is constructed using a miniature peg-loom weaving technique that allows me to create a bullion style fringe that matches the tartan used for the stole - in this case, the Orkney tartan.
For more details of my ecclesiastical work visit my website - Ecclesiastical Embroidery.
So I am off outside now (a cold damp, misty start to the day - let's hope it improves!) to set up the signs to direct people to my studio. Do come and visit if you can. If you can't manage to visit in person, visit the relevant websites to see my work.

Visit to Australia

2008-05-09T19:52:00.000+01:00

In September I am going "down-under" for 3 weeks. My nephew is getting married and I am using this as the excuse to travel .

However - it won't be all play. I am in the process of creating an itinerary for giving talks and workshops. If you would be interested in hosting me to give a talk while I am there please get in touch. At the moment I have firm commitments in Adelaide for two talks and a workshop over the weekend of 18th to 21st September. I will be in Sydney for the week 8th to 12th September, with the wedding on the 13th, so if you know of a group in that area, let me know. So, at the moment, the available times for traveling beyond Sydney are 14th to 18th and 22nd to 25th, then on 26th it is homeward bound and no doubt back into the rush of orders for the run up to Christmas.

For more information about talks and workshops that I offer visit the website. For those in other corners of the world, or indeed much nearer home, if you want to book me to do a talk, I am open to offers - but for September, the offers have to come from Australia.

Filling orders

2008-05-09T19:29:00.000+01:00

Well....... The Aviemore Trade Show has been and gone. It was a successful event except for one thing. The threats of petrol shortages caused by the strike at Grangemouth meant that buyers stayed away in droves. Still, those that took the trouble to come were serious and placed good orders with the very varied selection of designer-makers exhibiting at the show.

Our new floral designs proved popular and the corset belts were a huge success. My waist is considerably wider than it use to be, but even on me, it was enough to attract a lot of attention with a couple of bespoke orders as well as some orders for shops.

Now we are busy filling all those orders we took at the show and there are going to be several more retail outlets selling our things. As we get the orders out to shops I will add them to the "shops" page on our website. New venues include Aultbea in the north west and Banchory and Braemar in the east. A consignment of belts has already gone over to Belgium, another order is being delivered to a local shop tomorrow morning and I envisage it being non-stop work from now till the end of the summer!

However, just because we are busy shouldn't prevent you putting in an order - 24 hours a day is a flexible concept!

Spring ..... and summer..... and winter again!

2008-04-06T07:00:00.000+01:00

The last few weeks have flown past with no time to post anything, but an early dawn chorus followed by the noise of howling gales has got me up early with time to spare!

Two weeks ago we had snow on the hills - a thick blanket of white making the landscape wonderful. It was followed by a few days of glorious sunshine that was definitely T-shirt weather and my workroom was like a sweat-shop with the sun streaming in the window. However, it did get us busy with producing more of our Moor & Machair designs for the family business, Anna Macneil - you can see examples of the new purses and cushions on our website.

Now we are back to snow again........ although the fall last night has melted away here at sea level, I suspect the hills are covered in white.

After a few days of spending time at the computer - designing and then putting information on the website, I decided that the time had come that I really did have to create a better work space for the computers. I work between two computers because I like using a Mac for all my design work, but I need to use a Windows platform to run the embroidery machines and laser cutting machine that allow me to translate my ideas into the pieces of art and fashion accessories that earn my living. So yesterday was spent clearing everything off the two make-shift desks, vacuuming in spaces that had not seen a hoover in a few too many years, cutting a board to size and shape for the space for my new desk and then working out again which wires went where to re-assemble the computers. They are now both up and running again and I have a nice continuous desktop that holds both computers plus scanner, graphics tablets, telephone, etc. The only problem is that there is a rather large pile of paperwork - un-opened credit card statements and the like - that needs to be sorted through! Which of course is why I am sitting here typing rather than doing what I ought to do!

Another thing that re-surfaced in the tidy-up was a book - GoLive Classroom in a Book. The intention is that I learn how to build a website myself rather than working from a template designed by my husband, He is very obliging, but of course, when you are getting something for nothing, you tend to go to the bottom of the pile compared with the paying customers. He has set up a holding page for me while I work out how to best present things - so you can visit and bookmark the site for future reference. http://www.ruth-black.co.uk

The aim of this new site is to give me space to show things that are one-off art pieces rather than the commercially orientated fashion accessories or my ecclesiastical work........... Things like my "Standing Stone" - a full size, free-standing interpretation of the Aldbar stone in Brechin Cathedral - an ancient Pictish sculptured stone with a lovely intricate knotwork and key pattern ringed cross. In this new website I hope to provide photographs of exhibtion work, down-loadable books that have accompanied my previous exhibitions, information about talks and classes and generally what I am up to in the way of textile art. So, watch this space......!

Lewis chessmen

2008-02-28T16:10:00.000Z

I got back last week from a very enjoyable holiday in London where I spent a good bit of my time in the British Museum. We went primarily to see the exhibition "The first emperor" with the Chinese terracotta warriors. It was fascinating and well worth the visit.

I also took the time to visit an old favourite of mine - the museum's display of the Lewis Chessmen. This is a collection of chess pieces believed to be 12th Norse that were found on the Isle of Lewis in the early part of the 19th century. I spent a lot of time in the museum photographing and drawing some of the pieces.

A number of years ago I made a chess set with an embroidered Harris Tweed "board" and solid hand-made felt pieces. A glimpse of this set can be seen on my website. Now I want to try and make a similar sort of thing, but having both board and pieces based on the Lewis Chessmen. Many people have made reproductions of these wonderful characters, but I have never heard of a textile version. There are several technical problems that I have to sort out, to say nothing of finalising the designs, so it could be a long-term project. In the meantime, if you would like an embroidered Harris Tweed chessboard with 4cm squares and hand-made felt drafts pieces let me know - cost is £65 and for this you get something that is decorative and unique. Or if you are a serious collector, you might like to purchase my big chess set at £800. Let me know and I will send photographs.

Aviemore - again

2008-02-14T12:30:00.000Z

www.aviemoretradeshow.co.uk
I will be there on stand K2 - with a good view out the window towards the surrounding countryside.

That's what I said a few days ago, but the show organiser has had to make some changes to accommodate more exhibitors who are wanting smaller stands. So - yes, I will still be there, but instead of the nice view out of the window, I have to content myself with a good view of the door! My stand number is B2, just inside the entrance to the Osprey Arena so you can't miss me!

Any buyers out there who want to stock our products, come along to the show. You can pre-register at the Aviemore Trade Show website, or if you contact me ( ruth@annamacneil.co.uk ) with your details I will post you a buyers invitation. Please be awared that this show is for trade only and proof of trading will be requested. If you can't make it to the show, email me for details of our range and a wholesale pricelist.

What is Harris Tweed

2008-02-14T12:22:00.001Z

I am often asked what it is that makes a fabric Harris Tweed.

Harris Tweed is known across the world as a hard-wearing woollen fabric traditionally used to make mens' sports jackets, but there is a lot more to it than that.

Certification is managed by the Harris Tweed Authority which is based in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. To qualify as Harris Tweed a cloth must meet the following criteria:-

it must be 100% pure new wool.
all the wool must come from Scotland.
all parts of the process of making the cloth (cleaning, carding and spinning the yarn, preparing the warps, weaving and finishing) must be carried out in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.
the cloth must be hand-woven at the weaver's own home.
it must meet the quality requirements set by the HTA.

Hand-woven is a bit of a misnomer. It really means that the weaving must be done on a loom that is powered by the weaver - no electrical or mechanical powering. There are two types of loom commonly in use for weaving Harris Tweed. The traditional Hattersley loom is used for making the single width tweed (75cm). It is powered by two foot pedals that get pumped up and down. In recent years many weavers have moved over to a rapier loom so that they can produce double width cloth (150cm) . This type is also operated by foot pedal, but in this case they are rather like the pedals on a bicycle and it is not quite such physically demanding work as the Hattersley loom. In both types, the pattern is controlled by means of a chain with different holes that give instructions to raise or lower the 4 heddles.

The main weave patterns used are either a simple twill or a herringbone although other weaves are used for some tweeds. When these different weave structures are combined with varying colours of yarns arranged in different patterns it means there is an almost infinite variety of tweeds available.

Traditional earth-toned colours tend to be what springs to mind for those who don't know much about Harris Tweed, but there are tweeds produced across the whole spectrum, from pastels to brights, from neutral colours to vivid rainbow shades. There are lots of plain self-coloured tweed produced (twill weave) as well as patterned, but "self-coloured" is another misnomer. The wool fibre is dyed prior to carding and spinning. Different qualities of fibre pick up the dyes to a greater or lesser extent and these will all be mixed in together in the final yarn. Also, small amounts of other colours will be added to the mix for carding so in any given tweed you will find at least 4 or 5 different colours and shades of fibre. (To see what I mean, look at the photographs on the HTA website.) For example, a green tweed will likely have blue, yellow and brown fibres along with 2 or 3 shades of green. These mixes make for very lively looking fabrics - nothing "flat" about Harris Tweed.

We try to keep about 100 different colours and patterns in stock at any given time, but this stock is constantly changing. We tend to buy fairly small quantities of each colour so that we can give our customers lots to choose from, but that does mean that repeats are not easy. We are unlikely to be able to match anything that is more than a couple of years old. In addition, last year a Yorkshire company bought up the main mill on the islands - Kenneth Mackenzies and they are now only producing tweed for making up their own range of clothing. As many of our plain tweeds came from there, we are now having to source elsewhere. Fortunately, this change of direction opened the way for two other mills on the Isle of Lewis to re-open under new managements - Harris Tweed Textiles Ltd and Harris Tweed Hebrides. Both these companies are now catering for makers such as myself and new colour ranges are coming on stream.

There are also several independant weavers and whenever possible I try to source tweed from them. My next trip across to the islands is likely to be in early April. I go mainly to visit my mother, but we both really enjoy visiting the weavers and mills and selecting tweeds - it feels like Christmas when we get back to her house and start opening up all the gorgeous tweeds we have found. My appliqué technique gives me lots of scope to team up different tweeds - whether I go for tone on tone or strong contrasts, the scope is endless and exciting. Look through our website and you will get an idea of the range of colours. Or download the catalogue and browse at leisure - in the introduction you will find out a bit more about Harris Tweed and see a photograph of a small selection of the tweeds from a previous shopping trip.

Spring is in the Air!

2008-02-12T17:31:00.000Z

Well it may still be early February, but today and yesterday it almost felt like summer - and when inside, looking out, it certainly looked like summer. Except that the trees are still bare and the sun is low in the sky.

A low sun causes difficulties for me. Yes, my workroom (my "sweatshop"!) is lovely and bright, but the screens on computers, sewing machines and embroidery machines are much more difficult to see. I find myself sitting at awkward angles and squinting. However, we see little enough of the sun through the winter that I am NOT complaining!

We had a very productive day today (does sunshine speed us up?) with Mary making up several shoulderbags and me making lots of silk-lined tweed scarves. The scarves all have to be pressed and have the fringed ends brushed and trimmed, but we are well on the way to completing the next big order. These will all be winging their way to Iona Abbey for sale in the Abbey shop.

The Isle of Iona was the base chosen by St Columba when he came to bring the Christian message to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland over 14 centuries ago. The island hosts an impressive collection of Celtic sculpture some of which has provided inspiration for some of my Celtic designs.

The island is also a typical Hebridean island with regards to its flora. This year we are developing a new range of designs to complement the Celtic designs for which we are well known. This new range is called "Moor and Machair". Most people think of moorland as rather bleak and barren with little more than miles of peat and heather, but it plays host to a wealth of beautiful flowers such as the heath spotted orchid, tormentil and bog asphodel. Machair is the Gaelic name for the sandy fertile grassland found between the beautiful sandy beaches for which Scotland is renowned and the moor. In summer the machair is ablaze with colour from swathes of flowers such as birds' foot trefoil, red clover, lady's bedstraw and harebells. In our new embroidery designs we are taking these tiny flowers, analyzing the structures and developing designs that are large enough for the detail to be easily seen. So far we have designs for the wild rose, Rosa rugosa, harebells, Campanula rotundifolia - often called a bluebell in Scotland - tormentil, Potentilla erecta, bog cotton and bogbean. Have a look at the website to see some examples. More designs are being developed but it takes time to do the drawings, transfer them to the computer, digitize the embroidery instructions, test them out and then actually make them up into things that people will want to buy. If you have a favourite that you want us to work on, please let us know by emailing info@annamacneil.co.uk

The Celtic Cross - an exhibition

2008-02-10T20:04:00.000Z

I will have some of my worked displayed in an exhibition being mounted by Walkers Celtic Jewelry in Rochester, New York State, USA. For more information, visit their website at http://www.celtarts.com/CelticCrossExhibit.html

The particular examples of my work on display are two very different Celtic Cross wallhangings and a priest's stole.

One wallhanging is a knotwork cross created using an inlay technique from hand-made felt and embellished with beading and free motion machine embroidery.

The second wallhanging is made from Harris Tweed and is based on the ancient St Martin's cross on the Isle of Iona. It is made using applique and machine embroidery, with and fringe along the bottom edge made of hand twisted tassles.

To see other examples of my wallhangings, visit "Anna Macneil"

The stole is a green stole with embroidery over the entire surface. The embroidery is a knotwork design that has small crosses formed by the spaces in the knotwork. This interlace design is made with tartan (Scottish Odyssey) and the stole is lined with the same tartan. It has a hand woven fringe along the bottom edges - or at least it will have when I've finished weaving it!

To see other examples of priest's stoles, visit "Ecclesiastical Embroidery".

Today I have been working on another stole - a commission. I have got all the embroidery done, but now have to weave the fringe and do all the hand stitching.

Aviemore Trade Show - April 2008

2008-02-08T15:12:00.000Z

There are hundreds of people like me - designer-makers - working and producing in Scotland. Most of us are far too busy being creative to be able to spend much time on marketing, but unless we get our work out there in front of the public, you don't know what we can do.

In 2007 stained glass artist Gail Steele of Half-A-Moon organised a new event to help address this problem. At this show you will only find products made in Scotland - no far east imports, no tat.

The show is aimed at anyone with a retail outlet selling quality gifts, art and crafts. It attracts buyers from all over the world who are looking for things from Scotland as well as Scottish buyers looking for stock for local shops. It is a trade only show, not for the general public

Many of the exhibitors are showing for the first time. Others have been around for many years, but they will be bringing exciting new ranges to the show. If you are interested either in exhibiting or visiting as a buyer, take a look at the website : www.aviemoretradeshow.co.uk
I will be there on stand K2 - with a good view out the window towards the surrounding countryside ready to take orders from people who are looking for Scottish products that are:

designed and made in Scotland
by a Scot
to designs inspired by Scotland's history
using fabric that is woven in Scotland
from wool that comes from Scottish sheep!

If you want to see what I make, take a look at the Anna Macneil website.

Starting out with blogging

2008-02-05T18:18:00.000Z

OK - it's been suggested that I start a blog as a good way of giving people some background to what I do and why I do it, without cluttering up my two business websites with incidental information.
I am an embroiderer / textile artist. I have three main themes to my work:-

Ecclesiastical embroidery - visit http://www.angelforce.co.uk/pp/vestments/index.htm for more information.
Celtic & Pictish inspired embroidery - visit my main website http://www.annamacneil.co.uk/pp/ to see the range of things that I make along with my mother and daughter in this 3 generation family business
Feltmaking - I don't have a dedicated website for this, but you can see some examples of what I do on the Anna Macneil site - http://www.annamacneil.co.uk/pp/felt.html

My aim is from time to time to post accounts of anything new or exciting that I have been doing - today was a bit tedious, as I spent the afternoon modifying a purple altar frontal for our church - the Church of St Michael & All Angels, Inverness - so that it is easier to put on and off. Tomorrow is the start of Lent, for which the liturgical colour is purple, so it had to be done today. Well - it should have been done last week, but I didn't get round to it till my husband threatened to make the alterations with drawing pins and sticky tape!!!!!!!!!