The Woodland Haberdasher

06/09/2026

2 marvelous days at Thrigby Autumn Arts Festival this weekend.

Lots of butterknife carving yesterday with visitors, and lots of carving with friends an fellow stall holders today.

Karen of kindly fixed several basket handles that I had broken over the last 6 months and I made her this excellent toggle for her new basket out the the Apple wood she brought. Good skill swap!

I am so pleased that one of the Jam Oars is going to an appreciative home, I was even brought some jam - serious commitment. Thank-you ❤️

The biggest thanks go to our glorious leader and Whimsical Skedaddler in-Chief , Clare of Wayside Pottery - thank-you for organizing this lovely event, we all love it so much 🥰

If you missed it, luckily for you, quite a few of the Thrigby gang will be at the Wild Winter Fair again in December (details in a couple of weeks) so you can come and see us then.

03/09/2026

One of the tasks at Haberdasher HQ this year has been to try and work through all the small projects, things stuffed into corners, boxes and bags, underthings, on things and hanging off doors (and sometimes as a very trippable hazards in the hope that if I kicked it enough I would get annoyed and get it done).

One of these was cleaning the fox bones that I found in the early spring. While they were in a fetching pile next to the front door, off putting to most delivery personnel except my regular postman who it now unfazed by most things.

Not a complete skeleton but most of the leg bones, spine, skull and teeth. My house has quite a few fox bones already in it so all of these will be added to the Haberdashery, or viewable at events over the coming weeks.

I am at Thrigby Thrigby Autumn Arts Festival this weekend with a full stall and you can come and sign up for one hour carving workshops for butterknives and bull roarers, £10 pp.

Next Sunday is Heritage Crafts Weekend at Pakenham Water Mill. I haven't been for a few years but I am very pleased to be back this year.

The following week is Thetford Open Studios and I will be there Wednesday afternoon, Friday and Saturday doing green wood demos, things for sale and a dye and wood display.

Busy busy busy! :)

A few other Haberdashery bits for this weekend, I made up a couple of packets of Birch hearts using a paper stamper. This is from Paper Bark Birch - Betula papyrifera so a bit thinner than Silver Birch!

Odds of Oak and Elm - Pin, toggle and what I am calling the Oak Onion pendant 🤣

Needles in Elm, Birch and Hazel

Chip forks in 2 different Hazel's, Birch and Elm (love the Elm one, such a dark colour!)

Apple crochet hooks - the one on the right has as fair wiggle on. More of those watershoots to come later in the year.

01/09/2026

Excited to be taking part in this - lots going on all week! :D

31/08/2026

Nothing holds a knothole like Blackthorn. All the pink boys and girls were finished earlier in the year, and now it's time for the gnarly ones.

Blackthorn is always good for strangely ergonomic knobbly handles that just sit pleasingly in your hand.

These 2 spatulas did not hold their knots (Birch left, Alder right). You don't always have to drill out a popped knothole, you can work around it, literally in the a case of the Birch one, or with mild rage in the case of the Alder one, and be left with a charming wiggle instead.

There are 2 long Blackthorn spoons too, although I might label them as jam oars.

A little bit of Field Maple, my favourites are the long handled small paddle spatula and the twiggy teaspoon.

A couple of rogue Plum teaspoons and a Hazel one that hid in the wrong paper bag. Not pictured but there were a few Cherry ones to be be done too, it was good to be able to compare the (in my mind) big 3 Prunus' next to each other. 🧡

And a selection of Silver Birch things. Very in love with the butterknife. No I don't need another one, but it's really smart and streaky.

I think all that's left to do in the dried out spoons is a bit of Walnut and some Hawthorn but I won't get to them for a couple of weeks.

I'll try and get these online next week :)

Now to go and get a few chip forks done before the weekend!

30/08/2026

Grains of Ash - Fraxinus excelsior

A bit like using mordants to move the colour of dyes around and allowing you achieve a more varied palette from one plant, something comparable is possible with with wood.
When you've only got one branch/log/tree how can you best take it apart and zhuzh it up to give yourself some variability without relying on finishing techniques (yeah, I had no idea it was spelled like that either, one to remember for Scrabble I think!)

Ash is great for visual examples, a tastefully heavy grain, that starts pale and darkens over time for some lovely natural contrast . These 3 are newly finished ready for the Thrigby Autumn Arts Festival next weekend and beyond although I am loving the middle one quite a bit, he might stay.

The Puzzle Log is Birch but the cuts are the same. It's about 5-6 inches in diameter, so all these slices can apply to any sized piece of wood you can get them in, providing the wood is clean enough for a straight cut (although we are also at home to knotholes!).

Slice 1 is worked across the grain, you need to get a decent thickness for spoons so there is enough for the bowl. Works well for butterknives. Works best for woods when they have both heart and sap wood so you get 2 colours on the same piece, although it can be a bit tricky with the varying density. My best Walnut eating spoon was made like this and is half brown, half pale 🤎🤍 With Ash you'll catch a sideways wave.

Slice 2 is a straight slice from the edge of the wood. Ash always gives this four-way psychedelic chevron/ melting grain effect. I use it a lot.

Slice 3 is what I call the cheese wedge slice. The open side of the spoon bowl is facing the bark side of the wood. This give you lots of concentric rings when you work down through the bowl. If you are particularly on fire that day, you also get it dead centre haha 💯

More things to show you tomorrow 😍🥄🪓🪵

23/08/2026

This might be the best free hand circle I have ever drawn.
The spoon bowl did not stay that shape sadly!

Some carving highlights of the last week or so. There are a few fresh Oak billets in the fridge, and one length of Hawthorn outside but otherwise I think I have mostly caught up! In no small part this was due to a couple of outside bags being completely dried out and I love my thumbs too much to work through all of that.

There is some Hawthorn and Plum in the second photo. Was hard to tell until I got all the soil off them! I had hoped the orange wood was Alder but no such luck although some lovely markings.

The rotten wood photo is the same Oak I photographed on 12th November last year with a fungus growing through the plastic bag :o
There was some spalting but what was white rot was really soft and mostly just came away, with little effect left on the remaining wood which was still very solid. Made 3 nice spatulas though.

Random plume moth that came in the kitchen. Would not give me his papers, no idea. All suggestions gratefully received.

And lastly the Walnut that was stored in the freezer. Some nice markings on these bits. I think of them as Appaloosa markings (like the horses), nearly a heart on the spatula! I think I will put some lake pigment on the butterknives when they are dry.

17/08/2026

Today was a my very first time teaching lake pigment making - happily, to a group of known people, friends having a crafty catching up day, so less scary and some good feedback.

If you would like an artisanal stick man drawn for you I am your woman but other than that I'm a materials person really, so it was good to see all the pigments put through their paces with everybody else's skills! (I once painted a really good rock about 7 years ago and decided I would retire 🤣)

Lakes, as with most of the things I do, are not really a wham-bam-thank-you-m'am kind of craft. Process are simple, but they all take time, and often on a day workshop they get done out of the usual order.

We were in the Wilds of Thetford forest today so there was a lot of Birch which we gathered and used fresh on the spot.

I though some of catkins were looking a bit hairy, and Ruth ID'd them as Buff Tip moth caterpillars. The adult moths look like snapped of Birch twigs, very apt. We left these guys hanging out.

It was also good to test out the paints I had made in June. Aside from one, they others had all hardened nicely, and painted well with an application of water. Very pleased with that! Bodes well for the next phase of paint production!

There will definitely be some more lake workshops next year, in a couple of varying forms hopefully. 🎨🐛🖌

14/08/2026

Excited to be back at the Mill in September! :) 🥄🪵🎨

A date for your diary

09/08/2026

A few more things added to the online shop 😁

Too hot for the Spoon Room today so I have been working on the indoor in-tray instead.

A couple of experiments with dyeing the different East Anglian rovings that I had made -
In the first basket they have all been dyed with Weld, 5 different sheep varieties, and one of those modified afterwards to be more green-ish.
2 white breeds - Ryeland and Portland, and 4 coloured ones - Dark Ryeland, Jacob, Manx Loaghtan and Hebridean.
All took colour well. They will need a card out before spinning but will all produce lovely spun results.

In the second basket they've all been dyed with Blackthorn - Ryeland, Portland, Manx Loaghtan and Hebridean.

Several little dyed selections have also been put together. Bottom left is some of my EA yarns all done in Woad.

The top 2 conform to my general jellysweet palette theory of natural dyeing that the 'trees and weeds' gang tend to conform to the colour intensity of different jelly sweets while all being in the same tonal range. Here we can see Fruit Pastels (left) and Jelly Babies (right). Sometimes with recycled yarns you can also achieve a depth of W**e Gum richness too.
The 'Jellybaby' yarn is part of a nice batch of pure Cheviot breed yarn I picked up recently so expect more of this :)

The fabric dolly bundle is all pieces of fabric from a synthetically dyed tan blanket, giving the dyes a nice warm intensity compared to if they had been on white blanket.

One swatch card currently available, more to come soon.

And a selection of Weld greens and Woad blues ones on various yarns. The big green one is from a wool shop I visited in while in Dent, and is 75% Swaledale, 25% Blue Faced Leicester. Dyed very nicely!

08/08/2026

Only one photo from today's Lime workshop . . . Pigs on Sticks! 🍃🐷

A joint day of Tilia-philia exploration between the Suffolk Tree Warden Network and East Anglia Coppice Network.

We walked out to have a look at how the Small Leaved Lime that was coppiced 2 winters ago is doing, and have a chat about Limes in general.
We then got down to some serious splicing and making some cordage.

Lots of excellent chats and cross pollination of the groups about projects and experiences. Lots of cake.

More cordage and some Lime wood carving in the afternoon - we had a dragonfly, a couple of spiral pendants appeared, a pig skittle and a request for chopsticks. I have never made chopsticks before, I think the prototype worked well, I wouldn't of thought about using Lime.
There was enough wood left at the ends for some kind of finial, just a simple sphere . . . or y'know, a pig 🐽
It was fun to make, I will definitely be playing around a bit more with the idea of chopsticks though!

Pig skittles, and pigs in general are very much on my to do list this month, not just in Lime.

Thanks to everyone who made it such an exciting day, it was really good fun.