farmyard activities

It's an exciting and busy world inside Innerspiral Studio at the moment.... So much stuff going on, it's crazy! Right now, we're getting ready to take the hoop party to Glade Festival this coming weekend, plus we're organising another Fabulous Travelling Bag Folk Festival Market at The Greenbank, this time over the whole weekend for the Easton Arts Trail... 17th, 18th & 19th June. And if that weren't enough to do, we're leaving for Glastonbury Festival the day after for the whole week to run our felt making workshop in the Greenfields. And we've only just worked out how much wool we will need - 3.5 kilos! Blimey... Not to mention our vegetable garden and greenhouse which are going great guns, we're going to have potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, salad, chillis, beans, peas, sweetcorn, onions, garlic, squash, courgettes, leeks, carrots, parsnips, and sunflowers coming out of our ears! Plus I am trying to grow a tea plant but it takes up to 3 months to germinate so i have no idea if it's going to work.

Apart from all the events, there are developments here at Innerspiral Studio that are making us very happy indeed. First Pig got his absolutely BEAUTIFUL new drop spindle from slissie on Etsy http://www.etsy.com/shop/slissie.... in fact, she sent us two, so i can have a go too! We're going to be demonstrating drop spindling all week at Glastonbury. We went on holiday to Greece last week to visit the cat's mother (no joke!) and pig was drop spindling all over the shop, he even got spotted on the beach... (we think all the tourists thought he was a mad person)
(Ps Blogger is a bit rubbish so the pictures are all side on! We tried to sort it out. Blogger, we're moving to WordPress if you don't sort this glitch in your system out! )

THEN... (trumpets, drum roll, confetti...) the long awaited mighty DRUM CARDER arriveth! It's so much fun! You can basically put in anything you like and it cards it all up into as gorgeous 'batt' which is very easy to felt or to spin as woollen draw, which means much more meterage for your yarn.... we don't have a whole load of different types of fibres at the moment to add in but we will soon! For now we're satisfied with the results of combinations of dyed merino tops, blue faced leicester, white lambswool, natural black falkland, and hand dyed silk.... pig brains is delirious with joy, and has been making some very beautiful batts and spinning them into even more beautiful yarn... some are going on the stall and some are going to get crocheted up for the stall... cos the crochet has been in development too! We now have a very silly hat indeed that I made on holiday, like a cross between a jester and a dog, I don't even know how it happened! But I really like it so it stays :) Plus I have started experimenting with crochet and felt together which has created some quite bonkers colouful psytrance style cowls....

ITS THE DRUM CARDER DUM DUM DUM

This is once the batt of fiber is on the drum

removing the batt

finished batt (2batts rolled up together)

Yarn spun from a hand dyed carded batt

more yarn from a drum carded batt woo! Finally i can spin longdraw! PIG

psytrance cowl thing!

it is NOT psychedelic spit, pig!

We've also set up a new website for ourselves, with weebly - innerspiral.weebly.com. Check it out for info on our felt making classes in Bristol and our hula hoop party workshop, PixieHoopSound, plus loads of other stuff!

It's a sad fact that we just don't keep up with our blog - or our Etsy shop for that matter! We've got some splendid hats that we have felted now on the stall, and they are all entirely our own design. We've totally taken off with dyeing lots of different fibres, and Pig brains yarn has never been more beautiful. I have hand felted some scarves on raw silk with lots of hand dyed merino, blue faced leicester curls and silk.... They are very popular! I made one for myself which I'll wear when we get married and it took me 8 hours I was pooped afterwards! We really should get some of our new stuff on Etsy... we'll be working hard to do that over the next few weeks, in between festivals and organisationing and markets and stock making and general life! We never even wrote about the first Fabulous Travelling Bag Folk market that we organised.... it was brilliant! Such a success and so much fun! Ah well, here's some pictures of the day and you can see our hats in them too :)

just set up... hoping people come!

its busy!

busy o'clock

she loved my hat!

she bought my scarf!

Luna on one interviewing Bex

our lovely stall

its a monster pig!!!

the theatrical facepainter turns a cat sparkly!

pig goes boom boom bass on the decks

pigs hand dyed yarn

stephi bellydanvcing

suraya sword dancing

madame tinker, indeed

Well I reckons I've snuffled enough for one day here... time to go and do some work! i gots new stock to make!

LOVE YOU ALL

meeeeeaow cat x

The Fabulous Travelling Bag Folk!: One hell of a success

The Fabulous Travelling Bag Folk!: One hell of a success: "The Fabulous Travelling Bag Folk filled the Greenbank with bunting, festive music and a wide variety of superb stalls. But it was the st..."

The bank holiday adventures of innerspiral

We have been off on the road this weekend on a non stop adventure!

First we went to a lovely festival in wales called the Beltane Buzz. We were mainly doing hula hoops with our sister company (Pixiehoopsound) but squeezed in a felt workshop on the Sunday and we also had up a cut down version of our stall.
The festival was near St Davids on the west coast of Wales. A proper trek from Bristol! The campsite that was hosting the event was called Celtic Camping and we were right on the Celtic sea. It was gert lush, such a beautiful place... we might go there again just for our own sake. But anyway...
The party was great with some brilliant music and a good vibe all weekend. We had some resident hoopers by the end of the weekend who seemed to be hooping from the word go untill we packed up, and we had a great response to the felt workshop with lots of felt dredds being made and also some very nice felt bowls too.

We also have one injury to report..... Zara mannaged to fall backwards out of the van and scrapped her leg on the way which resulted in her being bound to a seat for most of the day :( luckily after the yoga on Sunday morning she felt a lot better and was back to her normal self! (Cat says - ohmygosh I never thought I could do yoga 'til I did it with Kalavathi... it was an awesome experience and blatantly healed my leg! give me more!)

Damage to the felt cat miaow!

After a good party on the Sunday we were up at 5.30am on the Monday bank holiday racing back to Bristol at 55mph (our vans preferred speed) to get to St Werburgs City Farm Mayday celebration at Boiling Wells, which is stunningly beautiful. We were there to provide a felt making workshop for the event. This proved to be absolutely brilliant with a real country feel in the middle of Bristol. The community around St Werburgs farm is very friendly and they loved the felt. Lots of parents and children joined in and we were non stop from start to finish. We had a star felter of the day who picked up the felt vibe very quickly. He was so keen that Zara did a special bowl making workshop with him on the side whilst I did dreadds with everyone else.

Making felt dredds

getting involved with the felt solution

our felt KING of the day 

By the end of the Monday we were very tired but we stayed to watch the maypole dance and the fire. We were standing in the crowd as Martin the storyteller was talking about lighting the fire... then he said he needed to chose a couple to be the lord and lady of may who would light the fire. He asked if anyone was getting married this year, me and Za put our hands up (Yes its true 2nd of September :) and got picked out of the crowd... before we knew it we were given reefs to put on our heads and a burning torch in our hands and instructed to light the wicker dragon. Oh yeh! We got to set it on fire! Lucky us!! What a great end to a fab bank holiday adventure!!!!! Sadly, we didn't manage to get a picture of the dragon before or after it became a glorious fire, but we just about managed to get one of the ashes....

us next to the ashes of the wicker dragon

If you want to catch us out and about put these dates in your diary

This weekend is the Montpelier arts trail! We will be at the Malcolm X centre in St Pauls. We will be running our felt making workshop and also exhibiting our work on Saturday and Sunday. Check out http://bristolartfringe.org/art-trail-2011/ for more details.

Saturday the 14th of May is the our first ever market that we have organised at the Greenbank pub in Easton called the Fabulous Travelling Bag Folk! Be there for festival style stalls and entertainment from 1pm till 2am :) see http://whatshotinbristol.com/2011/04/13/the-fabulous-travelling-bag-folk-festival-market-djs-party-saturday-14th-may/
also bagfolk.blogspot.com and http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=112557448824494


Bye for now

Woolly PIG!!!!!

XX

Treenergy........ YER!

The Fabulous Travelling Bag Folk!: Exciting Times at the Bag Folk camp

The Fabulous Travelling Bag Folk!: Exciting Times at the Bag Folk camp: "It's a marvellous occasion indeed when you collect a box filled with 3,000 of the most gorgeous flyers for a really exciting new event, huh!..."

whoop! we're going on adventures :)

Hello lovelies, spiralites and happy peoples of the world... Mercury went direct on Saturday and boy has it made a difference to our world! For those of you not in the astrological know, Mercury - the planet, that is - is the mischief maker and ruler of communications, and it's been retrograde for nearly a whole month. It does that 3 times a year. Retrograde is when from our earth's eye point of view, it looks like it's a-travellin backwards.... so obstacles, miscommunications, waiting waiting waiting, no progress... and then, bang! It turns direct and everything that's been piling up waiting to happen, happens all at once!!

Sooo... big news at Innerspiral Studio camp. We are pleased and excited to announce that our felt making workshop will be taking place at the following events (in chronological order)

• The Beltane Buzz http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=154311137952287. This is a really cool little private party/beginning of season mini festival and we will be taking not only our full set up with our tent and felt making workshop but we will also be there with our stall and our hula hoop cart workshop party (see our sister blog, pixiehoopsound, for more details on that). It's on the west coast of Wales, a mega drive away, but we don't mind. We really wanted to celebrate Beltane in style and then, magically, along pops this with Beltane in the very name... magick is a real thing! If anyone wants to come tickets are only £35 each, the setting sounds idyllic and it's right next to the beach.... yeah... and the weather is sweeeeeeeet.... We will be going on Friday 29th April in the evening until Sunday the 1st of May... we would stay longer but our next event is the very next day...

• St Werburgs City Farm, Boiling Wells site, is having a May Day Celebration on Monday 2nd May. We will be there from 12pm - 5pm running our Drop In Dredds making workshop for the first part and taking bookings for Book In Bowls later in the day. Come and take part for FREE! Go to  http://www.stwerburghs.org/index.php?section=calendar&event=mayday_celebration.txt for more information. Felting all Mayday, yay!

• We will also be running Drop In Dredds, Book In Bowls and Mini Hats workshops at the Malcolm X Centre in St Pauls as part of our involvement with the Montpelier Arts Trail. We will also be exhibiting our wares including some of our more fun and interesting crochet and felt creations as well as the Pattern Exhibtion 2:0 including screenprints and original felt pattern art. Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th May. http://bristolartfringe.org/art-trail-2011/

• GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL!! GREENFIELDS GREENCRAFTS FIELD!! Wednesday 22nd - Sunday 26th June * yay yay yay * do a dance woo hoo....* Whoops sorry I think I got a bit over excited there! Amazingly enough, our application to run our felt making workshop in the Greenfields has been accepted. That makes us two very chuffed pigs and cats. We will be there all week long, right next door to the stone circle, demonstrating our felt making, drop spindling and crochet and running our felt making workshops.... including mini hats making of course as a festival would not be complete without it :) everyone should have a mini top hat! We will totally have our stall up as well, cos we can, and especially as we found such a great vibe with our stuff at Glastonbury Town Hall market yesterday :)) http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/Areas/the-green-fields/the-greencrafts-field

So there you go, mercury turned around and gave us lots of good news all at once! We will hopefully be running our felt making workshops at the Easton Arts Trail too, at our Fabulous Travelling Bag Folk event at the Greenbank Pub over 18th and 19th June just before Glasto, watch this space... Until then we've got our first Fabulous Travelling Bag Folk festival market running on Saturday 14th May... it's going to be really fun with loads of festival style vibes and wares, so come along and cider it up with us lol just don't get it on our stock init ;) There will be some wicked DJ's on in the evening to make it a proper fat party including our very own DJ Trott :) hooray! www.greenbankpub.co.uk and bagfolk.blogspot.com for more info on these little beauties :) See you there dudes! Cat out!xxxx

Long time no post.... but we've been busy

Well well its been a while since our last proper post and lots has been going on. We have been dyeing, spinning, felting, crocheting and gardening. on top of that we have been organising an event called 'the fabulous traveling bag folk' which is an artisan market with entertainment on the side at the greenbank pub in easton on the 14th of may :) its going to be great! it will have music, DJ's, bearded lady competitions, walkabout performance and of course a really varied and cool handmade market --- for more info see http://bagfolk.blogspot.com/

flyer side one

Flyer side two

We have redesigned our market stall and have gone 'POST TABLE' well we still use small tables but our big tables have gone and we have made a display that customers can walk into and get involved, without feeling like two hippies are staring at them from behind the table.

This is our stall at the Colston hall for the made in bristol spring market on the Sunday. The market did not go very well as hardly any customers turned up. This was a shame but at least it made us redesign the stall. We think it looks loads better now.


Our garden is in full swing and our salad is already feeding us :) I have been digging the veg patch back into existence as it had loads of tree roots running through it. Since then we have planted potatoes, carrots, lettuce, parsnips, onions, garlic, spinach, broccoli and peas out into it. we still have a lot more to go in its very exciting :)

These are the seedlings in the greenhouse 

This is the Veg patch with the first plants in

We have also been painting fiber and using our new steamer to set the dye. this has given much better results. The colour is much easier to control and the transitions of colours look great. I have developed a new load of yarn using these colours. The yarns are approx 100meters long and 10 wpi which gives enough yarn for a nice hat or cowl

see http://www.etsy.com/listing/71991612/handspun-hand-painted-yarn-transition

The felt cat has been making a felt scarf out of silk and Falklands wool dyed with the above technique.  the pic is of the scarf being laid out. The finished product looks great and it will be on our next market. Yes yes the next market is in Glastonbury woo :) our first time at west country craft fairs :) lets hope they like hand made goodies !!!


anyways take care all you friendly craft a holics and catch you all soon

Woolly PIG

UPCOMING FELT MAKING WORKSHOPS!