Hand-Spinning & Natural Dyeing Retreat, Highlands, Scotland

Description:

Come and join for our week-long or 5 day Natural Dyeing and Hand-Spinning course. We are located in a beautiful part of the Scottish Highlands. Participants spend their first few days foraging for Highland dye plants and making botanical dyes in our woodland clearing. We make our dyes outdoors over fires the traditional way, dyeing our own and local Shetland fleece ready to spin. We have our own small flock of Shetland sheep, which Alex will hand-shear on our longer course -we also sort and wash the fleece ready for dyeing and spinning. We take time out in the middle of the week to see some of the areas stunning scenery, including Glen Affric and Plodda waterfalls. After dyeing our fleece, the last two days of the course are spent learning to hand-spin with Bridie. Bridie has been teaching spinning in the Highland's of Scotland for over 20 years and has her own mixed flock of sheep. Bridie is a wonderfully relaxed teacher who guides the class through step by step, starting off with drop spindling and moving on to the spinning wheel. Each participant has a chance to try different types of spinning wheels over the two days. Each participant will learn how to hand spin fleece, which they have hand dyed at the beginning of the week, creating unique stunning wool. Join is in the woods and learn something new in a beautiful place!
We also run Felting and Needle Felting weeks, Craft retreats and weekend courses in Felting, Natural Dyeing, Spinning and Eco-printing.
We provide accommodation and all meals for both courses and pick our guests up from Inverness at the start of the course. Inverness can be easily reached by plane (Easyjet, Flybe) or train.

What's included in the price?

All materials, transfers from and to Inverness, all meals, accommodation and workshops included. Once we pick you up from Inverness you don't need to open you purse unless you want to send a postcard!
We are happy to cater for any dietary needs. We love to cook and produce as much of our own salad and vegetables as we can and we use local suppliers for our fish and meat.
Travel to Inverness is quite easy as you can fly or take the train. Easyjet flies to Inverness from London, Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester. There is a regular train service from Glasgow and Edinburgh connecting all major cities in the UK.
Each guest goes home with a sample book of the fleece they have naturally dyed and bag of dyed fleece, course notes and their own spun yarn.

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