Blog
Hanging around Portuguese wool
Today, a day spent organizing samples from raw fleeces from all our local sheep breeds, for a small exhibition that will happen in late September. So many different wools for such a small country!
At the Textile Industry Museum of the Ave region
At the Textile Industry Museum of the Ave region, the mechanical looms still work and they sound like music to me.
The spring workshops are over
Spring is over and so are the workshops dedicated to teaching how to grow and process textile fibers from the ground: Sheep Shearing, Silk Reeling and Flax growing and processing were taught in Serralves using the fibers grown right on the farm
The tools we have
Gathering good tools for next saturday's flax processing workshop was not easy. I wanted to find good ripples and hackles, that had been used in real flax work, not because I'm nostalgic about other times, but because you can't easily find new ones for sale and making them with the same quality would be expensive, because of the specific metal work necessary.
HOW TO PRODUCE FLAX: Practical workshops and demonstrations at Quinta de Serralves
At Quinta de Serralves, this is the second year of cultivating a flax field with the goal of teaching about its production and processing using only locally produced fiber.
HOW TO PRODUCE SILK - practical workshops and demonstrations at Quinta de Serralves
On Saturday June 11, Saber Fazer brings to Serralves a day entirely dedicated to silk fibre and its small-scale production, with demonstrations, experiments and guided tours of silkworm rearing, which is taking place for the second year running at Quinta de Serralves.
Slow and steady
This year the weather was radically different from last year's during the flax season: lots of rain and lower temperatures that have been raising slow and steady.
Learning to reel cocoons with Teresa Frade
Last year I found myself with a box full of cocoons resulting from our breeding, but I had no idea how to extract the silk thread. These days, in Portugal, it's not exactly easy to find someone who can teach you how to do something so specific.
Cocooning
Half of our silkworms have entered the last instar and have started to feed on black mulberry leaves like crazy, as they should in the days before cocooning.
The Typographer's Manual
I received a beautiful Typographer's Manual and a typometer, produced there by Joana from Clube dos Tipos.
Learning to shear
Here are a few photos of the Shearing Workshop that took place last saturday in Serralves, right after the morning demonstration.
Growing
As we get ready for next saturday's shearing, our flax keeps growing. If all goes well, that empty area above the linhal will become a small Dyer Plant’s Garden.
Sheep shearing workshop and demonstration at Serralves - 21st of May 2016
The 2016 shearing season has already begun and there will once again be a shearing open to the public at Quinta de Serralves next Saturday, May 21, this time with something new: a practical workshop for beginners!
Flax sowing 2016
After the trouble we had finding Galego Flax seed to start our crop in Serralves last year, it felt good to have it multiplied and have this year's sowing assured without having to count seeds.
It's that time of the year again
Yes, it's true. I didn't even finish telling the story of last year's silkworm raising and silk reeling and the 2016 silkworms are here already. But that's what happens when you want to get a farm to produce, wool, flax, silk, write about that, make a study about portuguese wool, run a shop and also have a baby by the way.
A matter of perspective
I've written about the case of Daniel Harris before, in 2012, but it's a case I want to revisit because his work has grown and consolidated in the meantime, and he's now a proven example of what I wanted to show at the time.