Wednesday 20 July 2011

Glastonbury Festival 2011 - Felt making workshop in the Greenfields

So here's what happened when we from Innerspiral Studio in Bristol rocked up at Pilton with our felt making workshop and our stall...

It's hard to tell it all... after all it was a 10 day adventure out in the fields :) but here's some highlights!

So we got out workshop tent set up and it looked lovely :) we were very happy with it, even though we ended up being squeezed into a bit of a smaller spot than we should of because of some confusion with mud and bears!
felt menu
outside the tent

outside our workshop tent

Our first workshop customers were on Wednesday, the Recycling Warriors! An extremely lovely trio who all made very good felt dredds. They told us lots of things about recycling at Glastonbury that were interesting... and some things that wee really gross! It was great to hang out with some of the onsite team before the punters came rolling in :) We saw the same crew at the end of the festival and they all still had their dredds! In fact, they had become a bit of a saga and were now 'the magical felt' due to incredible not being lost-ness. Good work!

the recycling warriors mid felt!
the recycling warriors! displaying their lovely felt dredds as hairpieces & necklaces


















Then of course the next thing that happened was it rained.... And the real mud began! It didn't bother us at all.... we had the fattie van (smug) and the workshop tent was very luckily based in a non flooding place... plus we'd set up a fair bit away from the path so that the mud would not destroy us...
Mud + felt = error so mud must not happen in tent! Everyone was very good and took their wellies off before coming in.

sunshine & wellies

So we had lots of takers for the workshops over the coming days, both dredds and bowls, and were well satisfied with our classes. Every single person who took part went home (or tent) with their own handmade felt to be proud of. Soooo many people wanted us to put the dredds in their hair, so we are looking out for hair braiding thread now :) And a lot of people wanted to make a hat, so we are devising a festival beret making workshop which we hope to preview at Green Gathering at the end of July in Chepstow. We are very lucky to have been given another frame tent to use and are currently devising a bigger space with an outside area and everything to take to the GG... watch this space!
sunshine stall
Next door to us was a guy called Des and his chainsaw carvings of bears.... you've never seen a piece of wood get so much attention oooh er! The whole festival was in love with the bears and we saw some very strange actions happen to them over the week...
see the bears!
its the bears! and mud!





















our top customer of the festival!
Our top felt maker of the week was the lovely Molly of the Jewellery workshop just down the way... she made no fewer than 5 dredds and one bowl... she must have been popular at school the next week handing them out to her friends :)
bowl felting workshop underway
Of course, we were lucky enough to be allowed to have our stall on the side and we met some lovely people through it... several yarn junkies cleared Paul out of most of his stock which he was very pleased about! One particularly lovely lady named Anna came along afterwards and showed us what she had made from the yarn she bought. Then she sent us a lovely hand knitted heart from hand dyed Catch The Rainbow which we have hung in the van, see it here...


hanging in the fattie van - a lucky charm from glasto :)


I had some great success with my felt too! It was very gratifying that I sold both of my nuno felted silk scarves within 10 minutes of putting them outside in the sunshine on the Saturday but slightly scary to realise I hardly had any photo's of them! Silly cat. Luckily scarf customer no. 2 was more than happy to pose in her new treasure....

happy scarf customer

stall inside
Overall our stall did very well and we were pleased with the reaction to it. We now have a lot of stock that we are remaking for Green Gathering and for Shambala the week before our wedding! eek!

We sold a fair amount of hats and even ended up with two custom hat orders which makes us very happy, hats are sooo much fun to make~! 

a happy beret customer and Glasto veteran!

a happy hat customer...
...so happy she bought two!

cat & pig well chuffed




cat
So on the last day of the festival we followed tradition and got into fancy dress. We're getting a bit too good at it - people are starting to think we are part of the act... we got seriously photographed at Larmer Tree... but that's a whole other blog... (pixiehoopsound.blogspot.com in fact)

pig

















We hate to end on a bad note BUT OH MY GOSH! What is wrong with everyone and what happened to leave no trace???!!! We saw fields and fields of tents left behind, really good ones worth lots of money... plus clothes, gazebos, endless wellies, blankets, bedding, cushions, carpets, alcohol and food and goodness only knows what else strewn for miles and miles.... Punters of Glastonbury Festival SORT YOUR ACTS OUT! This is not ethical living!!!!
 
gah! the only bad part of the whole festival!



WE LOVE THE WORLD :) It loves you back when you treat it right :)

Green Gathering, here we come....  CAT OUT !! xxx

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