Art Around the Firth

21st to 28th July
This is a week-long opportunity to see artists at work.  The event involves four venues, including the Anna Macneil studio that make a pleasant tour around the Beauly Firth.  We will be open for longer than normal hours - 10am till 5pm daily (closed on Sunday) and during the week we will be offering drop-in feltmaking sessions.   Please email for details.

If you have never tried feltmaking, this is a chance to have a taster and see how quick and easy this craft can be.  In an hour you can easily make a small wallhanging or a couple of bookmarks or perhaps a few felt beads - whatever takes your fancy.


The other venues are Beauly Gallery (14 different artists - see Beauly Gallery for details), Tore Art Gallery (7 artists - again, see their website) and closer to us is the studio of painter Avril Marr who will be open from 10am till 7pm daily.  All venues offer a warm welcome and you will find doing the tour a very pleasant way to spend the day.

Of course, normal work will be carrying on as well - orders keep coming in, so we don't have time to just sit and play with fibres!   Yesterday I posted off a special wrap - wider than our normal style, shaped at the neck and lined with silk - very sumptuous and I hope I will soon have a photograph of the recipient wearing it.  Today I was embroidering a batch of scarves for Elgin Cathedral - like our normal scarves, but the embroidery is inspired by the Pictish stone that stands in the grounds of ruined cathedral. 

Back to winter

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

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.

Busy Monday

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.

Highlands Open Studios

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

Highlands Open Studios Week

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.