This is not about christmas....

...although this post appears quite christmasish....

...it is actually a post about wool.

Wovember - Kate and Felix's great project launched this month has inspired me to go one step further with my craft kits. I have just added these two sewing kits to my etsy shop - a robin and a set of trees. They were previously made with polyfil stuffing, which I was never happy with. One of the things I love most about my kits is that a large percentage of them is actually bio-degradable. So the stuffing was bothering me. After some head-scratching and number crunching I have decided to go for 100% wool stuffing in the kits. Yay!

There it is, in all its woolly grey glory!

I have just written a guest post for Wovember all about why I love wool (out sometime this week) and in reminding myself of why I choose wool and natural materials I found I had to make this change in the kits too.

Its been great to visit Wovember and see how many people there are out there who love wool too, and want to see more of it, want to see items labeled wool to be made of actual wool.

Its definitely been a difficult call for the craft kits. I spend more money on materials to buy what I feel are better materials - 100% wool felt, recycled bubble-wrap and compostable packaging. So its always nice to be inspired by something like Wovember to include even more wool and get rid of the synthetic rubbish just waiting to fill a landfill for the rest of its life.

The robin loves wool too!

oneoneoneoneoneone

In celebration of today's date, I felt I should again share this photo. Happy day of one-ness!

(Sorry about the dusty dashboard!)

Art Trail at Hunter's Moon

Here are the artists whose work was on display at the festival. .

Above, Eva Walsh's installation of cast deer jaw-bones. Eva cast some in beeswax, which she painted gold and some in uranium glass. Under UV light, these glowed a bright green, casting an eerie fairy-tale light in the space.

Helen McBride's photographs. Helen took dark double exposure photographs of animals, the moon and other subjects.

An installation from my own selection of puppets and taxidermy. A graveside picnic of tortured souls.

Glyn Smyth of Scrawled Design's gig and band posters.

A spontaneous and mysterious exhibition which appeared in a shop window in the town... We were glad to see the mood of the festival inspired artists to get out there and show their wares!

Tim Kerr's vibrant and amazing paintings were on display in the Dock Coffee Shop. The top photo is rather dark, so I included this shot of one of the prints for sale in the box office too.

I also failed to get a good photo of Karen Constance's strange and surreal, cartoon-like paintings, but here is an example above.

Some pieces by Jane Lives, in pen and ink, print and lace.

Paintings by Elizabeth Archbold. A series of empty landscapes - dark and evocative.

Ciaran Coghlan's very popular bird paintings. A whole flock graced our walls.

The Deer Ladies, by Helen McDonnell, a Belfast-based tattooist, with sound installation by Hornby. Delicate sculptures made of sellotape and tissue paper, and embroidered with bold tattoo-like designs, each with autobiographical significance to Helen.

And finally Kit Fryatt, our wandering plague doctor poet, captivating some meat-related-articles.

We ended the shows on Sunday night with a Day of the Dead Procession, (fancy dress of course!) which visited all the artworks. Artists gave short talks on their work and answered questions, which gave people a lot of insight into the works.

All in all, it was hugely successful, with a lot of visitors over the weekend - both festival-goers and people living in the town. I was also happy to see work sold too. Lets hope we can do it again next year!

Hunter's Moon

Oh dear...quite a lack of activity here, which usually means plenty of activity in the real world and a lack of sitting down to write about it...

I have been working on Hunter's Moon Festival which is rapidly approaching - next Friday 28th to Sunday 30th October - and looks to be a pretty amazing festival, the likes of which Carrick-on-Shannon won't have seen before.

I've been curating the Art Trail, which has been great - lots of interesting artists from near and far, putting up their mysterious and macabre work in unconventional gallery spaces - the dark and empty buildings in the town.

Check out the website for more details about the festival. There will be more info coming on all the artists soon!

Hunter's Moon website.