Clonmany Capers.

We were adventuring in Clonmany today at a lovely little knitting class in St. Mary's Hall. We set ourselves up round the table and got stitching and subtly mentioned that we were knitting with hand-spun Inishowen wool. They were all quite impressed with the wool and we'd conveniently remembered to bring along some knitting kits with needles and wool to work with and some project info included and the lovely Urris ladies with be stitching away over the next few weeks. :)

Some of the Clonmany ladies turned up at the studio later and got stuck in to some spinning and wool worrying :)

Call into the studio tomorrow (or any day at all really) for some spinning fun. I'll be spinning on the wheel and working with drop spindles all day and I'd love to show you how to do it too.

sock making kits and grapsh to think on

Hi All,
Ruth will soon be returning to the studio and putting together ready to go kits to give out to anyone wanting to knit for the project.

If you're still wondering how the climate change part is going to fit in beyond all our strategies of local economy, here are a few images of data that may be incorporated into the socks. I will say that the one I like the most is the simplest, in reflection of the Mallin Head rainfall data over the past 100 years, make one of the socks of your pair 50% longer than the other.

Over the next couple of days this page with be updated with data sets regarding climate change and Ireland, specifically Inishowen where possible. I've added a few images here that might be inspiring. Please feel free to riff off of them and come up with your own interpretation of the how to present the data.

More to come soon!

Thanks to everyone and good luck!

Skype adventures with Seema!

Seema showed up at our stitching session today via the wonders of Skype! We all got down to work on our sock knitting and discussed how we can incorporate the scientific data Seema has been collecting into our finished pieces. There were some pretty exciting ideas flying around. Keep your eyes on the blog or call into the studio to see some designs in action; you can even come up with your own!





















The wonders of Skype and ball winders :)



















Eileen even had her first go on a spinning wheel today. It's all happening folks.

Interview by Nick Hand

Nick cycled by a last month and did a fantastic interview with Ailbhe Dunne and Aideen Fitzpatrick of our local knitting group at the studio. Check it out! Beautiful pictures!

nick hand interview

science at last

Hi All, Seema here just checking in and setting up some direction for the next 4 weeks. The studio is still going strong thanks to the work of Ruth and the wool co-op women.

The connections between global economic and local independence are well established in this project. It's time to bring in the science and some data. This project began as an intersection between art and science where sheep wool is considered a form of carbon capture, but is this the case? YES! I am currently in touch with the Rural Economic Research Centre and examining the carbon released and sequestered in the "life cycle" of the wool. From the grass the sheep consume to the use of electricity to shear them and the amount of transport fuel used to bring in their bags of meal. It is a weird and wonderful web.

This is also the time to bring design and data into the picture. Socks incorporating the data from Malin Head meteorlogy station and hats creating sculptural versions of the thermohaline ocean circulation system are in my head soon to be on some needles. Ready to knit with more art and more science? - get ready!

Hope you'll make it to the knitting sessions!

Special thanks to Dr. Rowan Fealy of ICARUS and NUIM for the many conversations about climate change.

(Images: molecular structure of wool. source: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/heritage/Astbury/alpha_to_beta_transition/; http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Thermohaline_circulation_png)

Hello all, Ruth here again.

Call into the studio on Wednesday for some knitting and crochet fun! I'll be in the studio from 12 noon onwards (or earlier if you fancy) armed with pointy sticks and hand-spun wool; if you'd like to call in and learn some stitches with needles or hooks then I'll be happy to help :)

As always I'm happy to teach drop spindle and wheel working too so if you haven't given it a go yet just drop in to the studio!

Hello all.

Ruth here. Just reporting on some ninja spinning and knitting in public that occurred over the weekend. I took my drop spindle and my sock-in-progress all the way to the island of Inishbofin in Connemara. I knit up some lovely inishowen texel on the ferry while the sea roiled around me and I sat in the sun and spun some Jacobs fleece into lovely yarn that I think I'll ply soon. So there you go, wool adventures around the country :) Why not tell us about some of your own public knitting endeavors .

What a day! I spent the morning in Clonmany with our lovely wool co-op collective and we dyed up a storm!

Here are our lovely participants raring to go. We were lucky enough to have local Inishowen produce to dye with. We tried our hand at dyeing with onion skins and ivy. Below you can see some hand spun yarn waiting to be dyed and some of our dyeing materials.

Blackberries and wool; grown from Inishowen!
Here are some of our glamorous assistants for the day examining the onion skins before we boiled them up to make a dye bath for our lovely hand spun yarn :)

Here is our ivy dye bath (above) and our onion skin dye bath (below).

We used alum and vinegar mordants. Below is the yarn in the mordant solution.


And here is the finished product! Beautiful hand-dyed, hand-spun Inishowen wool.






It was a lovely way to spend the day. Hope to see you all again this Saturday the 18th at 1pm in the studio for a sock knitting workshop with the lovely Ailbhe Dunne! Keep your eyes on the blog for more workshops coming next week!

We were lucky enough to have a visit from this nice man today. Nick Hand is cycling around the coast of Ireland talking to local artisans and making soundslides/recordings of the people he speaks to. He happened upon our sock knitting workshop and got talking to some of our local knitters and we talked to him about spinning in Ireland.

Felting and future sock knitting.

We had a wonderful felting workshop on Monday with Maura McLaughlin, a master textile artist in the area. Big thanks to all who participated. Here are some shots of the group in action :)



































































































































































































We'll be running our first sock knitting workshop this Saturday at 1pm in the studio! It will be run by a local knitting enthusiast, Ailbhe Dunne. Feel free to bring your hand spun yarn to knit with or just show up and we'll kit you out with needles and local yarn to work with :)

Some words from a local lady who took part in one of our spinning workshops. It's so nice to get an insight into how people view the spinning experience.


'My week at home has happily coincided with a series of spinning workshops run by Seema and Janelle of the Carbon Footprint Workshop. I find the inspiriation for and behind the project really interesting - using local wool and the spinning thereof as a metaphor for climate change and how economics has changed. Wheras Donegal wool and the products made from it are sought after commodities around the world, in Donegal the wool is virtually valueless, with farmers using the raw fleece from their sheep for soaking up tractor oil. By spinning and knitting, felting, crocheting with our own local wool, we are avoiding the heavy carbon consequence that might otherwise be incurred turning this raw material into something deemed to be of "value", for example by flying to the Far East for cleaning, spinning and making into a garment, before being flown to North America for retail You can read more about this project, as well as it's goals and inspirations, over at the Carbon Footprint Project blog. The upshot of all this is that Seema and Janelle are teaching the people of Inishowen to spin, huzzah! I've spun with a drop spindle before, having got my first for my birthday nearly exactly a year ago (you can see some of my spinning here. Last Saturday I got to fulfill a long time ambition - to spin on a wheel!

Some more photos of the Spin in!

All courtesy of Paul McGuckin.

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