Texere Tribe

Right, drum roll, please! (Thank you...) Because Texere Yarns has just announced its new spring and summer workshop programme and…..Claire (my creative partner) and I are teaching! Lots!

In fact, we’re scheduled to teach no fewer than nine classes over the next four months. We’ll be making gorgeous fabric beads, doing fun things with buttons, knitting with wacky materials, giving our wardrobes a makeover, stitching summery bunting, making felted flowers….oh, and a whole lot more. We’re going to have a glorious old time!

So if you’re within travelling distance of Bradford and fancy a happy day, messing about with textiley stuff, then come and join us. Most of the classes are suitable for beginners; and the bonus is you get to explore the Aladdin’s cave that is Texere. Housed in a vast old mill that’s stuffed to the rafters with yarn, the company is an established and respected name in the textile world. You’ll find pretty much anything you’re looking for there (as well as a whole lot of stuff you’re not). Only the strongest-willed leave empty-handed!

You can book for the workshops online. And you’ll get a lovely lunch and home-made cakes, too! We’d love you to join us, so take a look at what’s on offer here. See you there!

I Wish...

I wish I could photograph

the curlew’s cry,

the scent of the fox,

the springiness of the moss beneath my feet.

I wish I could capture

the taste of the Pennine rain on my tongue,

the scratch of the heather stem that’s trapped inside my welly,

the sight of the two huge hares who just streaked before me and vanished before my fingers could even cup my camera.

I wish my lens could impart to you the deeply grounded feeling that comes when you stand on a moor and listen with your feet.

Spring Week at Dixon Hill: 7

I took a trip to London on Thursday (for the first time in many a year). As the train travelled south, there was a noticeable greening of the landscape. I saw forsythia in blossom and daffodils in full flower. Occasionally, a tree or bush already covered with timid leaves.

Here on our Pennine hillside, new shoots are slower to emerge. Most of them are just beginning to peep at the world, the bravest only just unfurling. On my morning walk today, the stems pictured above were the closest thing I could find to fresh foliage.

But the leaves are on their way. And the opening buds already teasing with their beauty. Soon they’ll unroll wantonly, the grass will grow, and the valley will be all shades of green again. After all, it’s spring.

Spring Week at Dixon Hill: 6

Okay, so I may have overdone the egg pictures of late.  But it's spring!  And how can I possibly bring you a week of spring-like images and not show eggs?  They're the archetypal symbol of new life.

Besides, I'm still enraptured by the deeply dark brown eggs that my new Cuckoo Marans lay daily.  Such a rich colour.  Such mini miracles awaiting me each morning.

What's more, I've discovered that the nickname for these lovely birds is Chocolate Eggers - precisely because of those cocoa-hued eggs.  And with Easter just a week away, what could be more appropriate?

Spring Week at Dixon Hill: 5

Now I know frogspawn doesn’t make for the most exciting photograph in the world, but you have to understand just how excited I am about the stuff this year. Not only is my little pool up on the moor full of frogs-in-the-making; but earlier this week, I discovered a good quantity of the caviar-like jelly in a ditch at the bottom of my very own field. And frogs. Big ones!

So I’ve turned into an avid frogspawn-watcher, checking daily to see if anything small and wriggly is swimming about in the muddy water yet. I appreciate that you may not feel quite so ecstatic about this lumpy slime; but if I fail to resist a compulsion to update you on the progress of all things froggy hereabouts…..well, you won’t be surprised, will you?