Tag Archives: Ballymurphy

Houston calling and fun felting at Ballymurphy National School!

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I'm really happy to confirm that I'll be heading on from a Dallas to teach for two days in Houston, thanks Barbara for inviting me! We're planning a one day felt vessel workshop on Monday 28th April followed by a one day natural printing workshop on Tuesday 29th, finalised details should be posted here tomorrow or the next day. Here're two pictures of a small naturally printed wrap that I felted last week, this time combining eucalyptus leaves with blackberry and rose leaves from my garden.

Now on to my main activity for a lot of last week…..

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I had the pleasure of introducing the 50 pupils at Ballymurphy National School to the joys of working with fibre. This school is actually about ten minutes walk from Clasheen through the fields, obviously though I had to drive because otherwise I'd never have managed to bring all the necessary materials and bubble wrap!

For those of you living in countries with a different junior school system, usually children go to national (primary) school from the ages of 4 to 12, sometimes in small rural schools such as this there might be actuall classes with no pupils, strange but true!

Anyway, as you can see from this series of images a fabulous variety of stunning felt pictures was created. Inspiration was varied but the surrounding mountainous landscape and portraits were two popular themes. I'm going to load all the pictures I took to an album on Facebook later today, this way you can have a look plus all the pupils will have a reminder of what we got up to!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Little snippet …..

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It’s Alan’s birthday today so I won’t get to blog, reply to comments, check email or update FB properly until tomorrow at the earliest.  We’re meeting friends for lunch, celebrating the Winter Solstice with more friends in the afternoon and then walking through the fields to Ballymurphy the our local pub in the evening with yet more friends, fun!  This is in addition to delivering some felt and showing another friend my stock, so until tomorrow then, adieu!!!

Where is Clasheen???

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For anyone wanting to visit me here at Clasheen to attend a felting workshop I am about 1 minute drive from Ballymurphy, Co. Carlow ( extremely rural village with 1 shop, a big church, 2 pubs one of which is also the post office and about 10 houses!), 5 minutes drive from Borris, Co. Carlow (very small country town), 8 minutes from Graiguenamanagh, Co. Kilkenny (another small town) and 10 minutes from Kiltealy, Co. Wexford (another very small rural village with exactly the same services as Ballymurphy!). 
I am just up the small road from Kyle Cross on this map Unfortunately none of the above mentioned are on a direct bus or a train line and unless one had a car it would be very difficult to get here by public transport.  There is a small ‘Ring-a-link’ bus service to Ballymurphy periodically but I think it is pretty much a ring on demand kind of thing so unfortunately if anyone wants to attend a workshop here they would need to get to one of the above mentioned villages/towns (Borris or Kiltealy would be the easiest) and at a pinch I would be happy to collect them from there.  I only have a pick up truck so this offer is for one person at a time!

Off now to start my rug ……….