With challenging news coming to us from all directions at the moment, thank goodness for our ability to sit back and enjoy the various gentle arts that textiles offer us.
I recently returned from a visit to Basel, Switzerland where I went to meet up with Deanna Bogart and Silvan Zingg who will be performing, alongside another super-talented musician, Luca Sestak, at our biennial Blues & Boogie Weekend, July next year (more of that later). And what I discovered was a charming, friendly city full of wonderful museums and art!! Such a well-kept secret, and if you are looking for a cultural break from it all I cannot recommend it highly enough. It didn't even snow! One of the must-see museums there was the Tinguely dedicated entirely to the artist. Jean Tinguely grew up in Basel but moved to France in 1952 with his first wife, Swiss artist, Eva Aeppli, to pursue a career in art. He belonged to the Parisan avantgarde movement in the mid C20th and was one of the artists who signed the New Realist's manifesto. It's hard not to smile watching his deliberately noisy and sometimes huge moving sculptures made almost entirely from recycled materials, and his work will no doubt fuel ideas for our Motion Impossible project in May 2017 to be led by automata meter, Robert Race. We can only accommodate 8 participants on this workshop so don't delay if you - or someone you know - would like to join us.
JEAN TINGUELY'S MÉTA-MATIC NO. 14, 1959
Paul Spooner's 1983 FIVE ARTISTS REFLECT ON THEIR WANING POWERS
It's never easy to juggle dates with workshop leaders and we have had to make a couple of alterations to our original calendar. We are delighted to confirm that Celia Pym - whose event Mending, Darning and Knitting was such a success here this year - will be returning in late September 2017 to run a unique combination workshop with fellow artist and stitcher, Richard McVetis (you can read a fascinating interview with Richard at TextileArtist.com). It will be a week long, hands-on exploration of both traditional hand embroidery techniques and textile repair, with an ongoing discussion about why these skills are more important and relevant than ever. If you were lucky enough to have attended Celia's previous workshop here we'd love you to return and take your mending a stitch further, so we are offering a 15% discount if booked before the end of 2016.
Our calendar for next year may now be a tad confusing so please note that Åsa Tricosa's workshop, Knitting Im-Mercerie, has now been brought forward to 6-12 September. This means that it is no longer overlapping with the Edinburgh Yarn Festival so enthusiasts have no excuse for missing what we guarantee will be a wonderful event with a superlative knitting teacher.
Finally, by popular participant demand we have opened a Recipe Page on this website and we will try our best to upload one of much-loved recipes every month. Do pay it a visit from time to time, along with our Inspiration page, and let us have your feedback - we really love to hear from you.
Meanwhile, we'd like to remind you that make our lives simpler and the journey across social media smoother, we will soon be dropping this blogspot in favour of our new website blog though we will keep this up for the time being as a record of our past blogs. | 
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