I hope no one has been trying to get a hold of me lately. I’ve somehow managed to have every line of communication severed over the past two days - my phone has no credit, I can’t find my voltage converter for my laptop, the highschool’s web-blocker is on the fritz and won’t let me check my email or facebook, AND I have 100% lost my voice for the past two days.

SO, because this blog (somehow spared from Websense’s block list) is my only connection to world, I’m going to leave some messages here. See those that apply to you:

Pamela: Please book Orkney for me. If its not raining, I may bike to your place this evening (although I can barely speak and can’t use my laptop).

Family: My throat is sore, but I don’t have a fever, so I’m assuming it isn’t serious. I think its probably a cosmic message to stop talking and do some work.

Everyone else: I won’t have any way to take/edit/upload photos until I find my voltage converter, so its going to be pretty visually dull around here until it turns up. Bear with me.

All else is well - working on exhibition pieces and drinking lots of tea!

I’m back at Ardnamurchan highschool after a two day tour of the Isle of Skye ( An t-Eilean Sgitheanach in Gaelic).

Immediately after getting off the ferry, Pamela and I visited a magical knitwear shop called Ragamuffin . Apparently it was started independently by a student and a knitting machine and has turned into a retail space for the original designer and other smallish scale designers of woolen / linen garments. I did pick up a thing or two - although I didn’t have a spare $400 to drop on a sweater.

The photo above was taken that afternoon after lunch in Portree (the island’s biggest town). Morag Anna, a Raasay native and Gaidhlig Development Officer of the Highland Council spent the afternoon giving me a whirlwind tour of the island. I can’t begin to expain the sceenery - its the kind of thing you have to see to understand. That picture is from the Waternish area - the northern tip of Skye - which was also the location of …

Shilasdair, the Skye yarn company! Here I picked up a big order of their naturally dyed wool yarn - which I’ve spent the better part of today winding from hanks into balls (an arduous process without a ball winder). I got a tour of their dyeing studio and garden, but missed out on a visit with the dyer/designer, who was away on holiday.

The three small balls of yarn are from the shop of a handspinner in Broadford. It felt a bit insulting to be buying Rowan yarn from a handspinner, but she just didn’t seem to have the colours I was looking for. The other cones were donated by a woman in Glenuig who used to sell machine knit sweaters. As it turns out, I’ll only have about a week and a half to actually produce my exhibition pieces with this yarn. I’m already getting flashbacks to knitting furiously at 2AM trying to meet past knitting deadlines - although they’re probably the most pleasant type of deadline to have.

The rest of my time on Skye was spent at Sabhal Mor Ostaig - the Gaighlig university I’ll be spending a year at in September. I got a full tour of the campus, met their artists in residence, met some current students, and had an hour long interview / assessment of my Gaidhlig ability (which went quite well). Now its back to work. Updates on what all of this yarn is to become coming soon.

Students from Acharacle primary school look on as I pour some yellow dye down the sink. The dye was made from bog myrtle - a local plant I found out about just after I got here (’rideag’ in Gaelic). The dyes have been coming out very well and the bog myrtle smells great. Kind of like cloves? Every evening in between workshops I’ve been taking a walk to a bog near my place and picking bog myrtle in the midges (the vicious Scottish equivalent of black flies).

The younger the kids are, they more willing they seem to be to improvize with textiles. Older students want to get the pattern just right and get frustrated when things aren’t perfect the first time, but the younger ones just go for it. Making mittens and bags inevitably turns into making puppets, monsters, and accessories.

Contrary to what I’ve posted here, I’ve actually been quite busy at work at Ardnamurchan highschool. Over the past three weeks, I’ve taught tweleve day long workshops at the highschool and at some of the elementary schools in the area. The idea was to expose the students to traditional and contemporary craft and to integrate the use of Gaidhlig language into the workshops.

We’ve been working on natural dyeing and an intro to sewing. After a review of basic skills and concepts, students were encouraged to experiment in their application using recycled materials. The overall focus of the workshops was to give the students a sense of both freedom to create, basic skills to achieve their visions, and a sense of history and context within traditional and contemporary craft.

Here are some examples of the kind of work the students have been producing (a hand-sewn, felt hat; felt skull patch, felt tie, and felt mits with applique and embroidery; and a mit gone awry and turned into a whale puppet).

More on the workshops coming up next…

This is a 360 view of our campsite in Knoydart - completely surrounded by mountains and islands and very high up on the list of the most beautiful places I’ve even been. A crew of us from Glenuig took a very soggy fishing-boat ride to the town (which is inaccessible by road) for a ceilidh in the hall. Arriving just before dark, we rushed to get the tents up before heading back to the hall to spend far too many hours on the dance floor. As it turned out, the tents didn’t even get used (although I did have a little nap in the morning).

I could elaborate for days, but need to order some materials at the moment. I’ll try to post about the workshops shortly to assure everyone that I’m not just dancing and sitting around in the sun all the time here (although the weather has been magic - no rain for three weeks).

In response to my family’s requests for photos of my house, here’s a quick tour of what is known as “the old PO”. Its a one bedroom stone house in what you might call “downtown” Glenuig (next to the hall, pub, inn, and shop).

This is the gate next to my house leading to magical paradise a shed. More often than not it has sheep on the other side.

This is my bedroom. It holds my bed and has room to roll around on the floor. Earlier, I evicted a big spider from it.

An un-neccesarily large photo of my bathroom. It used to be the post office part of the house! Maximum capacity: two envelopes.

This is the kitchen. Its where I do my sitting, eating, and drinking. It also contains…

…the bane of my existence. This is the Rayburn - a coal stove with the added benefits of being my primary heat source and nearly impossible to light.

And that’s that.

Internet access! As it turns out, my little house in Glenuig has neither phone nor internet access, so I won’t be wasting as much time blogging as I had originally planned! Probably for the best. Above is not my place. Just a nice spot on the drive from the Glasgow airport to Ardnamurchan. Pamela, organizer of the exchange on this end, hid in the car while I did my best impression of a tourist

I don’t have a lot of time at the moment, but I will say that everything here is perfect. My little house, the people in the community, the students at Ardnamurchan, the other fibre artists I’ve met.

Here’s another bit of the drive from Glasgow to GLenuig - although its literally like this the entire way once you enter the highlands…

A few days ago, myself and a tub full of shrunken sweaters made a visit to Dalbrae Academy in Mabou. There, Department of Education staff were being introduced to the highschool’s Cultural Industries program, while students of the program got a taste of the fruits of their labor - two short workshops from Scottish artist-in-residence Beth Legg and myself.

After a few defunct thumbs and many backstitches, everyone came out with a pair of mittens made from recycled, felted, wool sweaters:

Over the next two months, I’ll be keeping you posted as I travel to Ardnamurchan, Scotland to teach student and community textile workshops and to develop my own work. So, check back from time to time. You can also keep up with Beth’s work at Dalbrae and in the Mabou community here.