wool

Since the start of the year, I have been making a conscious, deliberate effort to make more time for making. Rediscovering my creative side has been a revelation to me. Having a variety of absorbing, enjoyable, fulfilling (and manageable!) hobbies have been doing wonders for my physical and mental well-being.

In parallel to my renewed interest in making things with my hands, I'm also becoming increasingly interested in the processes involved in creating the raw-materials that I then enjoy transforming at home...or out on the hillside.
 
I've started with wool. Living in a sheep-farming community, this seems the logical thing to do. Daily life, yearly life in our village still revolves around the handful of sheep farmers who scratch out a living raising livestock.

Perennial, divisive issues such as the expansion of the ski stations, the management of the Pyrénées National Park, electronic tagging of livestock, the reintroduction of the brown bear (...) are all important, very real issues for local farmers.

But despite having lived here for five years and taking an active interest in these thorny issues, I realise that I still know very little about the realities of the traditions and way of life that have shaped our valley over the centuries.

And I know even less about sheep!

Back in February, I listen to some excellent French podcasts about sheep farming and the wool industry here in France. They've really got me thinking. In addition to recycling, re-purposing and re-using yarns, where possible, I'd like my choice of materials to have a real connection to the landscape in which I live and work.

The first step back then was to find a spinning wheel and learn how to use it!

Since then, I've been spinning away at every opportunity and feel like I'm really starting to get the hang of things now.

The next step then is to knit a garment with my own, hand spun yarn. Only a few weeks left before it's time to cast on!

les chemins de la laine

De retour d'un week-end ensoléillé, riche en rencontres, en échanges et en découvertes. 

Un week-end à tisser des liens d'amitié entre tricoteuses, feutrières, teinturières, tisserandes, éléveuses de brébis, fileuses et fileurs... 

...à papoter en trois langues...

 ...à refaire le monde, autour de la laine...

 

...et à peaufiner mes compétences de cardage de la laine, en occitan.

Je reviens ressourcée, inspirée, apaisée, la tête pleine d'idées et l'esprit plein de soleil...

Just back from a magical, sunny weekend: making new friendships and exchanging ideas with a fantastic group of local hand knitters, felters, hand-dyers, weavers, sheep farmers and spinners. 

We've spent the last two days building new friendships...

 ...babbling in three languages...

 ....putting the world to rights, through the medium of wool...

...and (for me!) improving my handcarding skills, in Occitan... 

I'm back home recharged, uplifted and inspired...

la fête du mouton

A few weeks back, I joined a little association of local producers and hand crafters. Earlier in the week, we were each invited to set up a little stand at our village's annual "Fête du Mouton". 

Although I was a little nervous at first (it's not easy to spin good yarn when your hands are shaking!) I soon got into the swing on things. 

My little stand pulled a large crowd throughout the evening. I took onlookers through the processes of fibre production from sorting to carding to spinning on both spindle and wheel. It was a wonderful experience to be able to share my craft with locals and visitors of all ages and nationalities. At one point we even had a ball of my yarn and a pair of needles going round the assembled crowd with onlookers doing a row or two here and there.

And to think I've only been a spinster since mid-March. 

(Photo credit: Marie-Bernard Hourtané)

plateau de belle vue

Là-haut. Au-dessus de 1500m. L'air est pur. Le soleil tape fort. 

Des champs d'iris. Des vaches broutent. Des abeilles bourdonnent. 

Et moi, je marche. Lentement, certes. Mais je marche quand même.

C'est comme un renouveau. Comme si tout venait de recommencer: 

La vie. La santé. L'amour. L'été. 

Doucement. Lentement.

Sans s'abandonner. 

※※※※※

Up above 1500m.  The air is pure. The sun is strong.

Fields of irises. Grazing cows. Bumble bees a buzzing.

As for me, I'm walking. Slowly, yes. But walking all the same. 

It feels like life has only just begun. As if everything is starting afresh:

Life. Health. Love. The summer. 

Gently. Slowly. 

Not giving up.

(Notre première balade en montagne depuis l'automne dernier /
Our first mountain walk since last Autumn.) 

Tarbes / Jardin Massey

Etre assis assis sur un banc public avec mon amoureux. Un pique-nique à l'improviste pour fêter le début de nos vacances d'été. Entourés de cedres de Liban, le cri des paons et le soleil qui est revenu. Si on fermait les yeux une minute, on se croirait dans un pays etranger...

※※※※※

Sat on a park bench with my sweetheart. Enjoying a picnic thrown together at the last moment. Celebrating the start of our summer holiday. Surrounded by Cedar trees, the sound of peacocks and the sun which has decided to come back. You'd think we were in a far off land, if you close your eyes for just a moment...

plateau de Cayan

The storm is still some way off when we arrive at the crag. Storm clouds race across the sky between the summits and the heat is oppressive down here amongst the pine trees. Our friends rope up and I settle myself down and unpack my mobile workshop: carders, fleece, spindle. All around me, the forest is inviting: the pine trees, the black woodpeckers and the wild orchids. Just like that. 

I extend my arm, take a few locks of fleece and carefully tease them apart, picking out the debris as I work and letting it fall to the forest floors. Then I carefully brush them with my carders before making a stumpy rolag of fleece. 

Then the skies open and thick rain drops start to fall. I pack up everything and escape the impending storm, arriving at the nearby refuge quicker than the climbers. 

I don't think I'll ever tire of these summer days spent outside in the forests and the meadows.

after the flood

I'm starting to realise that to belong to a place means that you feel tender toward it, even if you were not born there. You are concerned for its welfare. When you return to this place after an absence short or great, you are surprised by the feelings it evokes in you. You were not aware that you missed it, but you did.

The little things you notice now, the steady transformation of the hillside from grey to green in the spring time, the wild lillies that wave in the summer breeze, those two motorists whose stopping in the middle of the road causes a traffic jam whilst they catch up with one another (and this doesn’t irritate you because sometimes you do it too), the antics of the neighbours cat in the street, the chiming of the church bell in the dead of night - all  of these familiars are made precious by repetition and knowledge.

And that view from the bridge of the water below, it still brings a gasp of delight. But to feel the pulse of those waters also drags up memories of last year, when the waters were a deluge rather than a trickle. 

Does the fact of having lived through that event - when the waters ripped our valley apart and we were cut off from the rest of the world for three days - does the fact that I too have a memory of that time mean that we now belong here?

Then as now -  a year after the flood - we were all there together on this earth. And we were all left hurting, earth and people combined. Some of us were locals, many of us outsiders. But for the time of the flood, those distinctions were irrelevant. We all felt the same fear and sadness. We were all soothed when the waters subsided and we felt the warm sun on our faces once again. We were all equally a part of this place, because we all lived through the flood.

in these green mountains

“If you asked me why I live in these green mountains

I would laugh at myself. My soul is at rest.”

Li Po (701-762)

Mountains get into your blood. After almost five years of living in the Pyrenees, I miss their familiar contours when I go away. I am used to their monumental presence, the way they seem so fixed and eternal, and yet offer a visage that seems to be constantly changing.

These mountains are indeed green, but they are also sometimes white, golden, grey or blue...
Every day the first thing I do is look up at the mountains, the unfolding peaks that tower over our little valley village to the east and to the west. Nothing else seems quite so satisfying.  

19 mars

This is what an immigrant looks like, grinning from ear to ear and full of wide-eyed wonder and hope, having just set foot in the country she has longed for from afar for so very long.

That was me back in 2009, at the start of my year abroad. The 19th of March 2009 will forever be a day engraved in my memory.

It was the day I was first woken by the bells of L’Eglise des Templiers, the day I took my first steps as an English Language Assistant in Esquièze School, the day I began my life here in the Pyrenees.

We visited the school, we went to Lourdes, I drove in the gorges for the first time. My Pa was with me every step of the way, getting me ready for the inevitable separation, which at the time was heartbreaking.

Apart from the smiling face, I can hardly recognise myself in that photo above, hardly believe I had the courage, aged only 21, to take the plunge and start up life abroad. As I think back to my first few weeks out here, it is wonderful to realise just how far I have come, how much I have grown and learnt during my time here. And how attached I have become to this place.

things that go bump in the night

Step out on to the street tonight and find the world has turned upside down.
The streets pulse with the noise of the samba band. The rhythm chases my feet down the street and a hundred, thousand rain drops are shouting silvery excitement.   

A strange creature  rattles through the village tonight, surrounded by a thronging crowd. A low moan follows us down narrow stone pathways.

Yet even as I’m staring open mouthed at this otherworldly spectacle, bundled up in layers of clothing, in an Arctic defying jumper and a scarf wrapped around my face, strange creatures walk past me: ghosts and ghouls, vampires and witches and a whole host of other-worldy things that go bump in the night. The night seems populated with the abnormal side of humanity...and I'm not along in my wonder. The villagers and tourists look on in disbelief.

We take Monsieur Carnaval to the village square, put him on trial and sentence him to a burning. Before the touch paper is lit, we hurl abuse at him.

Where are all the feral people tonight? Tonight isn’t for sitting in by the fire and drinking tea. It’s a night for howling at the night, at the winter.

Carnival is one of my favourite parts of the Pyrenean calender. It's a reminder that winter is still here...but not getting the better of us.

waking up the bear

In the Pyrenees, legend has it that the brown bear falls asleep just before Christmas and awakens forty days later at Candlemas, le chandeleur. 

When the brown bear puts his nose out of his den, the firstly looks to the heavens. If there is a clear, full moon and the bear sees his shadow, he returns to his lair and goes back to sleep for another forty days. In that case, spring will be late. If however, the sky is darkened by the New Moon, the bear foregoes sleep and leaves his den - signalling the start of spring.

I cast on this little fellow just before the festive season and finished him last weekend, just in time for candlemas. He's a true snow bear, started with the first winter snows...and finished this snowy week-end.
 
Unlike his brown bear cousins, he didn't got looking for the moon, but rather a place beside the fire.

It has been such a joy to knit up, that I've already started another one.
The first, no doubt, in a long series of little knitted bears...

dark skies

The Milky Way, seen from the Pic du Midi de Bigorre

One night in early September, N and I went stargazing. It was an exceptionally clear night, with neither moon nor wisps of cloud in sight. It had rained earlier in the day and there was a smell of damp earth rising from the ground as we walked out from the forest onto the little grassy knoll jutting out into the valley.

Shielded from the street lights of nearby Bagnères de Bigorre, the Milky Way was visible, a rich speckled band of million of stars. 

We stood on the hillside for what seemed hours, heads turned towards the heavens. 

We exchanged the names of stars, his Grande Ourse for my Big Dipper. Satellites traced a path between the constellations, and shooting stars fell towards the earth. We clung together, transfixed by the beauty of the night sky. 

The distance from the earth to the sky is always hard to comprehend, the fact that the light we can see now is so old that the star itself might actually be dead. 

Yet it is even harder to comprehend that we too are made of stardust, that almost every element on this earth was first formed at the heart of a star...

Stargazing at the Pic du Midi

Many thanks to Nicolas Bourgeois, leader of the Pic du Midi Dark Sky Project team, for the accompanying images of the night sky...they are stunning.

white peaks, blue skies, visits from friends

November has ended as it started: every Friday night we've gone to bed with barren trees and every Saturday morning we've awoken to a world that looks quite different. This weekend was no exception.

If the Winter is as long and as hard as last year, perhaps by the Spring, I'll be worn down by the weather. But for now, I am beguiled by the change of the season, enchanted by the transformative power of snow.

 

All the better then that a good friend from university has come to visit for a long week-end...and that there is fresh snow, sunshine and blue skies to enjoy together.

tricot au petit matin / oulettes de Gaube