The Autumn was a busy time at Renaissance Dyeing both professionally and personally so no time was found to publish an Autumn Newsletter. For those who are new subscribers, normally you can expect a newsletter at least each season if not more often.

Winter Woad

So what happened in the Autumn? Well among other things

• At the busy Journées de la Laine at Felletin at the end of October we launched a few new patterns Madeline by Lili comme Tout and Fall in Creuse shawl by Hélène Marcy who came and spent the weekend with us to help launch the design which was inspired by the very woodlands around Felletin.

• The wonderfully woolly togetherness of the the Journées de la Laine at Montbrun Bocage, a recipe for inner warmth on a chilly December week-end. There is a little film of that on the Renaissance Dyeing facebook page.

• Reorganising of the dye garden here in Montbel to include more variety for playing with in the workshops and for my own personal dyeing. Yep, I do that sometimes!

• Oh yeah and we built a hugel. It took a while you can see the first phase and here is the finished Hugel. It is not in the dye garden, but I am beginning to think about the possibilities of marrying this with madder cultivation.. anywhere, whether your soil is suitable or not.

The key word that seems to cover the Autumn activity is creativity and ..

So I wish for you all this challenging New Year not only health but the equally important creativity. Together they can give the world a shininess only limited by our imaginations.

In this icy bare January it is difficult to now imagine the brilliant colours of the Creuse woodlands that inspired Fall in Creuse. So I have put together a winter kit, image above. (That soil is in the Ariege not Creuse) What do you think? You can of course pick your own colours from our individual skeins and hanks page. This is what we will be asking you to do in the Spring newsletter. A little competition maybe, so start thinking, what colours for a 'Spring in Creuse shawl'?

Events already organised for this year are the show in Nantes in April which we so much enjoyed last year, La Lot et La Laine.. la creme de la creme, (I am so looking forward to those cooling rivers even in January) and 2 natural dyeing workshops.

Some of the colours dyed on crewel wool on the 2016 workshop.

On the 21st - 25th August I will be giving my usual 5 day Natural Dyeing workshop here at the dye-house in Montbel. Here is a blog post of last years workshop. Inscription for this is now open. You can download an outline of what we will be doing on the workshop here

The second workshop is still to be arranged but will be near here in the Ariege.

And of course New Year wouldn't be new year without a few bargains to help stock up your yarn supply for the this years creative work. So you will find three shades of variegated turquoise lace-weight on the sales page plus a lilac!

P.S. We now have an Instagram page. What I like about Instagram is that it is really possible to make your own personal record of what YOU see in YOUR world and then share it with others should they wish to look. So this will be used to record what goes on around the dye-house, winding room, garden, woodland garden and where ever else we happen to go. Please feel free to join us.

Have a colourful winter

Andie and Adriaan