The Fabulous Bagfolk - Festive gifts for all, ethical & handmade.

Bristol's best kept secret! The best handmade market of local artisans that Bristol has to offer... indoors, at the perfect venue. With a bar! It's the Fabulous Travelling Bagfolk, a local & independent market which focuses on quality over quantity... and this time, its festive and at The Full Moon on Stokes Croft, in the Attic Bar - just inside the courtyard of The Full Moon to the right as you walk through the vaulted iron gateway. It's a great venue to be hosting the market in, cosy and stylish, and convenient to so many places in Bristol from St Pauls and Broadmead to Montpelier and St Werburgs. And did I mention it's got a bar! Not only that, in fact, but it's got a German Christmas Gluhwein bar selling sausages and hot mulled wine and cider outside for the season.

Inside you can find a large, carefully curated selection of the best in Bristol handmade design, including clothing ranges, art & photography, illustration, screenprints & framed prints, wool felt & handspun yarn, stained glass, pottery, sculpture, dance hula hoops for adults and children, fantastically surreal costume, jewellery including steampunk, silversmith, copper, fibre art & felted flowers, hand designed cards, crafted lamps, knitwear, chutney, ArtWear scarves and hats, quilted bags, patchwork and a whole lot more. Everything is meticulously and lovingly crafted by independent and local artists and artisans - nothing but the very best in each discipline is showcased. Plus, many of the artists and crafters demonstrate their crafts throughout the day on their individual stalls. So you can see 'live' drop spindle, crochet and silversmithing on an anvil, besides other things. Many of the stallholders also offer classes and workshops in their particular craft, so if you have always had a burning desire to learn felt making or stained glass, this is a great opportunity for you.





Walk in through the gateway all decorated with bunting and welcoming signs, across the courtyard and through the triangular doorway of the Attic... and you can tell something special is happening. The atmosphere is alive and vibrant. As you step inside the warm lamplight welcomes you in, the music rolls over you, and the glitter of treasure catches your eye. What a vast assortment of wonder! This is a market like no other. It's got edge. It's beautiful. Even the stallholders look fabulous - well, after all, they are the Bagfolk.








So, don't miss out on your last chance to catch the final market of the year for the Bagfolk. You will certainly be able to find exclusive, one of a kind and moreover ethical gifts. You will be entertained all day with wine and great music, including live loop performance from Hawthorn and our in house vinyl DJ playing bouncy classics to shop to (NO CAROLS!!). Find us on the 11th of December from 12- 6pm.

Go to www.bagfolk.weebly.com for more info or email fabuloustravellingbagfolk@gmail.com

Join the event page at https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=229170007149847

Find the Facebook fan page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Fabulous-Travelling-Bag-Folk/138617756211552.

You can also follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/#!/fabulousbagfolk.

Find a map with more info here - http://schmap.it/53YwEb

We look forward to greeting you on the 11th.... oh, and darling - do look fabulous!

Spinning and carding our new game!

Hi to the people who stumble uppon this!

Id like to introduce the queen of our house...... Suzi AKA Schnuzel the owl cat!

Now back to business

This is just a quick late night post to show you what's going on here at Innerspiral! We have been very busy lately as the festive markets are going full speed now and we are making new stock all the time. Tonight we have been making a red felt scarf, spinning some yarn and carding some fibre batts.

We have made a new game, Zara cards a load of fibre on the drum carder for me to spin up into an Artyarn. Sounds simple but we have only just started doing this the other day and we are getting some seriously cool yarn coming out! We made mash up da yarn 3, which for all those who dont know means that we card all our left over pieces of fibre from other projects into a bunch of bats then i spin it right up! then we made fairy tale yarn

http://www.etsy.com/listing/86981129/fairytale-handspun-art-yarn

which is possibly the coolest yarn i have ever made... then another 3 yarns since and they all look wicked!!!

I finished this yarn tonight, 240ish grams all on one majacraft jumbo bobbin :)

Zara is now addicted to making batts she's going well batty. Its well hard to keep her away from the drum carder. I dont mind though it means i have a massive supply of fibre to spin up all the time. We will need the yarn as well because all our crochet has been going well on the stall at the moment. So we need to get involved with the crochet over the next few days. Turn yarns into cowls, hats and gloves!!!!

Well that's all thats going on tonight. We will be moving to Paulton soon, well, after new year into a lovely little cottage. We are looking forward to it and we are very excited as we will have more space to go completely bonkers in :) We will keep you posted on the progress of the move and a few pics of the new place :)


Back in spring I bought a drop spindle from S.lissie
(http://www.etsy.com/shop/slissie?ref=seller_info) as i wanted a nice drop spindle to spin with on our market stall.

Since then i have made a whole lot of yarn on it and i absolutely love it. Drop spindles are great as you can take them anywhere with you in a small box. A drum carded batt takes a few hours to spin up so you don't need much fibre with you. The type i got from slissie is a turkish drop spindle which means that when you have finished spiining your fibre you can slide the cob off and use it as a centre pull ball straight away, which is great for plying and also great if you want to crochet it up or knit with it straight away! Basically its not as quick as a wheel but I can make such nice yarn that is just different from the yarn i spin on my wheel. Zara is using up my stash crocheting beret hats for the stall which are actually selling quite well - even though they are obviously more expensive than our regular handspun hats. So all in all I'd reccomend it to everyone. Most people start spinning with a drop spindle as you can try it for next to nothing. Then you can decide if spinning is for you and if you want to buy a wheel... its then something we put aside once we pay for a wheel and get obsessed with wheel spinning.... I did this but i am glad that i decided to give drop spindling another go and that I decided to get a decent spindle to experience the next level of drop spindling. It teaches you a new approach to spinning and then gives you skills you can take back to the wheel and improve your spinning there! S.lissie spindles keep spinning for a long time if you spin yarn at the right thickness of yarn for the spindle, so you don't have too keep spinning it so frequently once you have got the knack. Anyway my drop spindle rant is now over. And to show you how much I love it here's a pic of me on holiday drop spindling on the beach....... I was quite new to it back then (may) so that explains the concentrated look on my face lol.

Me drop spindling on holiday

Now i will leave you with a pic of the joker of the house. Scamper AKA Scamper-tronic (hes the hero, gonna sit on ya lap and purr in your ear hole!) enjoy

So bye until next time!

Woolly pork chopper :)

Treenergy!!!! YER!

The Fabulous Travelling Bag Folk!: Fabulous Festive Markets!

The Fabulous Travelling Bag Folk!: Fabulous Festive Markets!: How exciting - we did what we say on the tin... we are TRAVELLING... this time the location for Bristol's best handmade & artisan market is ...

Tis the season to be manic!

Well, well, we have been busy! Innerspiral reporting for an update! 

We have been really pushing the boundaries when it comes to fibre art with wool. We've developed some  pretty impressive stuff just recently. Several one off pieces have been made by the Cat from the Pig's left over yarn supplies. See Exhibit A - the History of Yarn hat. It was nearly a bag... I intended it to be a bag all along... and then suddenly, it was a hat. Just how or why remains a mystery, but there you have it. Its a statement piece, apparently, according to a local customer at a recent craft market. This is probably true as I can state with certainty that this hat contains a timeline of Pig's yarn... It includes our first ever crock pot hand dyed, our first ever hand painted...our first ever yarn with hand dyed curls from BFL spun in... yarns made from drumcarded blends, yarns made from pure naturally coloured wool that we worked from raw right at the beginning of our woolly adventure together... It has a little bit of everything in it, hence - A History of Yarn! Soon to be listed on our Etsy shop... to see what reaction it gets indeed!

Exhibit A - A History of Yarn, as modelled by the lovely Alice.

So, onto exhibit B. This piece of experimental fibre art madness was actually started on teh festival circuit this year - possibly Glastonbury. It began life as a crocheted circle, using a handspun yarn dyed with Onion skins and mordanted with Rhubarb root, back in the days when that seemed like a feasible idea (it wasn't, sadly). Then using another of Pigs handspun yarns, it got little sleeves crocheted on... and then on the birthday of the Cat (yes, we do these things for fun!) it got FELTED good & proper! It didn't know what had hit it. One day it was a rather odd little thing, not really sure of its path in life... the next it had become a crazy adventure and a marvellous, splendid piece of fibre ArtWear, oh yes. If you are interested in reading more about it, you can find it in our Etsy shop, here http://www.etsy.com/listing/84569296/experimental-art-wear-wet-felted-nuno

Exhibit B - the bonkers bolero

So, now then, what else have we been creating? Hats in general have been our thing the last few weeks here at the Studio. Pig has created a very impressive trilby hat which looks amazing on men and women. He's been making them out of natural Romney wool, which is very soft and comes in lots of different natural shades from light to dark. He also made one out of black Shetland which looks awesome! (Proud catwife speaking). He has also re-created *the* hat from the wedding for the stall. You can find them in our Etsy shop but here is the evidence...

Exhibit C - *THE* wedding hat recreated from pure romney wool

Ok, so I guess you wanna see what crazy hats the cat ha been making, huh? I can't help myself, I don't even try to, I just love making madness out of wool felt! Check out my latest custom order for the lovely Rosie of Glastonbury...

Exhibit D - dragonflys hat

As well as all this, Pig has made some rather beautiful art yarns recently... the drumcarder has suddenly exploded into action. He has blended naturally coloured silks, hand dyed silks, hand dyed fibres, natural fibres, dyed tops, alpaca, shetland, BFL, romney, falklands, milk protein, add ins like curls and scraps of silk fabric, played with coils and beehives and toyed with coreless corespinning, slubbed it right up with thick n thin yarns, and generally, had a good time. You can find a good selection of his recent work in our Etsy shop, but here's some pics to whet your appetite!

Autumn Tiger 

Pink, Purple n Proud

Sari Curl

Slender Sheen

Black Magic

Since coming back from honeymoon we've been working hard developing our products and updating our stall display. We are pretty pleased with the effect of Pig's yarn and all the crochet now nicely displayed in baskets across the stall. We have been doing lots of markets - we've been to Glastonbury, Wells, Tobacco Factory in Bristol, Nailsea Craft Fair, Southbank, Sidcot School and Made in Weston the last few weeks! Blimey guv'nor! And that's just the start.... Check out our flyer here for info on our stalls to come.

Here's a quick tour of our markets the last few weeks!

Tobacco Factory

Southbank

Pigs new yarn display

Southbank - see Pig's new trilby and top hats in the foreground!

Sidcot School

Made in Weston

Finally, we are organising another Fabulous Travelling Bagfolk Market in Bristol, this time its 2 dates at the Full Moon Attic Bar in Stokes Croft. A whole new blog awaits this, methinks...

So when a recent customer at the Made in Weston fair commented that this must be keeping us out of mischief, we couldn't help but agree! We are as busy as bees! Or cats and pigs in any case... Anyway, watch this space spiralites cos the farmyard is *moving* .... we are going countryside... stone cottage with wood burning stove, anyone? Us, yes please!

Lots of woolly love to you all x x x x x

new season - new name - new farmyard activities!

Yay, it's autumn. No, actually, I love it. I love the colours of the trees, I love the feeling of the end of the warmth rolling around us and through us, the change in the seasons, the world rolling on as it should...the wind in the trees getting snappier, the feeling of moving into a yin stage, as our caz would put it, focusing energies and intentions and channeling the hibernation instinct... the madness of summer over and we can retreat into a state of  creativity and snuggliness, apples, chutneys, slippers, jumpers, scarves...especially scarves, and cowls in fact anything warm and snuggly... We have been taking great delight in our own crochet wear, self confessed designer wool junkies that we are!! We've made lots of new things, I now have nice new gloves to replace the ones I lost at glasto (sob! for the lost gloves, so lush) ... new ones are nicer tho! And made a few pairs for the stall too :) of course! Next stop...is felting slippers. Oh yes, please I can't wait to have some on my feet... we are going on honeymoon in 2 days, and the yurt we're staying in has explictly stated no shoes inside...felted slippers it is then, no problem dudes

Honeymoon! Yes, we are now indeed newly weds Mr & Mrs Cat & Pig if you do so please, and extremely chuffed about it too :) we had TWO ceremonies in one day, registry office and handfasting, it was the most beautiful, incredibly energetic weekend of bliss and indulgence and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves... of course, there was a grand amount of felt on display as I sewed felted flowers into my dress and pig made his own very marvellous felted top hat for the occasion.

mr & mrs farmyard

on our wedding day

So yes, we are going on honeymoon tomorrow... we actually have had to wait 2 weeks before getting our yurt since our ceremony and so, although it may seem strange to some, we have been doing some work... although, all very fun! We can't help it, our lifestyle is our business and our creation and our baby... anyway, we're very excited and pleased to be able to say that we will soon be hosted in The Blue Room of Nailsea (which is where we are currently residing) They are going to take some of our things including felt flowers and art yarns, and we are going to be running our workshops there. First up felted bowl workshop Tuesday 18th October, so we'll keep you posted :)

Inside the hedonistically crafty and divinely smelling Blue Room...

Also, today we did our first craft market of Nailsea which went extremely well despite the most unbelievable downpour of torrential rain every 15 minutes! We were practically flooded out before we began but all was well in the end :) plus we saw the most incredible rainbow, a full arch unbroken ... I might have accidentally gotten into two newspapers as well we'll have to wait and see! looking forward to our next market there in November. Before that we have several markets we'll be doing in Wells and Glastonbury over the autumn :)

We had such an incredibly busy summer what with all the festivals we worked both with our felt making workshop and our hula hoop party that we barely had a moment to sit down. But now we're back - well, we will be after the short interlude known as Honeymoon - and full of energy and as filled as ever with a determination to succeed on our chosen path, follow our dreams, make an honest living doing what we love, make beautiful fibre art for all, share the joy of hooping and hoopdance, live ethically and intuitively, follow the Universe, and generally be the farmyard.

Plus we've got a glow hoop and a new mixer now so we're gonna do hoop parties all over the place this winter! Whoop whoop!!

Here's some photo's from Green Gathering... we wanted to do individual blogs for all our festivals but time was not on our side... its a busy business being self employed and getting married :)
loads of love from cat&pig.face.farmyard.miaow xxxxx

this is the most amazing crocheted hat we've ever  seen - hats off to this man! literally!

and this is the awesome red felt top hat the pig made which sold within 5 hours of being open. good work!!

bit of felted scarf (with added faeries)

cat in her hat... claimed off the stall as the rightful owner!

beret making workshop in full flow

the next day festivalised outcome from one of our felted bowl workshops!

if you take hoops to a festival, sometimes this happens

the most beautiful handmade faerie cartle constructed throughout a giant tree stump

watch out for the biting spiders, cat! yeech