This morning somebody said that it seemed ok to him.

So why did UK ‘Independence Day’ feel more like 9/11?

17 million previously largely ignored Britons said last Thursday that they preferred the abyss to the status quo: to put two fingers up at unification with our European friends. 16 million Britons voted, many of us very ambivalently, for a union born not just out of a desire for peace, co-operation and cross-cultural exchange, but also born of a desire to help transnational commerce wrest power from state governments (vis TTIP, particularly).

Facebook has erupted with both intelligent debate and bigoted anger. So many feel unheard. Some streets have seen heartfelt, positive protest; more have seen abuse and violence. A good woman politician has been assassinated. A party leader has received a murder incitement. No-one in the spotlight can agree. Our parliament and our system of democracy are failing us. Our nearest neighbours are uncomfortable in alliance with us. 

Money, like everything and everyone else, is a commodity. Our rich are getting richer, whilst our poor are getting poorer (sound like a cliché? I wonder why).

Our country is unwilling and/or unable to give jobs to talented, hardworking economic migrants. Our country is unwilling and/or unable to give shelter to refugees whose countries we’ve bombed. Our health service is running on goodwill and getting worn out. Our benefits system assumes that you are a criminal. Our manufacturing is all but gone. Our small businesses are struggling. Our big businesses are rank. Our soldiers are cannon fodder. Our teachers are operatives. Our schools and universities are running like factory farms. Our factory farms are running like concentration camps. Our roads are belching with traffic. Our homes are flooding. Our wild places are diminishing.

Does this seem ok to you?

Extreme right parties in Europe are the only bodies there that celebrate our choice to Leave. How many of us gave a thought to peace on the border between Eire and Northern Ireland if it regressed to being a policed border?

Istanbul just suffered a major terror attack, which, whilst almost unnoticed, will stoke ever-growing fear and fortification.

Yes, if the hole in the ozone over the Antarctic is healing (nice word, Torygraph), that’s a good sign. Yes, employment levels are high. Yes, Britain’s economy is *relatively* strong. Yes, there are good people and good politicians and good businesses making real change at grass roots and treetop levels. Yes, we, like all humans, are survivors.

Our achievements are incredible, but the collateral damage is profound.

There is hope that from destruction may arise a phoenix. And if destruction is what we need, we seem to be going about it in the right way.

But there is also real possibility that we will *ride* this one ‘thanks’ to a ‘strong’ new neoliberal Tory leader, and continue on the same blind, bloody, greedy trajectory with the same old struggle between the same old oppositional forces.

In a vicious fight led by right wing haves who’ve seduced the unheard have-nots, the failures of neoliberlism and everything else are stark: everything is to-the-death competition, to-the-death debt, or to-the-death subsidy…

…Neoliberalism — unbridled capitalism at its most aggressive — would have it that if in business you are prepared to elbow others out of the way, anyone* can do well (*to give it the benefit of the doubt).

…The monetary system, in which a few huge private corporations have the special privileges of money creation via lending mechanisms that siphon our wealth upwards, would have it that the banks ‘balance’ the economy (to put it optimistically).

…The welfare state, with its reduction to the lowest common denominator and its bureaucratic nannyism that undermines and disempowers by fostering dependency, would have it that everyone needs *help* (control by a different, if inadvertent, means).

…First past the post ‘democracy’ means that the same old voices carve the same old divisions.

All probably mean well: self-sustainment doesn’t have to be selfish; altruism doesn’t have to be protectionist. But all are at odds, and all — together or separately — systematically undermine the kind, the conscientious, the hardworking, the freethinking, the artistic, the underprivileged, the unwell, the other and the common good. All is way, way out of balance.

I don’t know what the answers are, but had things been “ok” in little England, things would not now be like this.

My third maker-conversation at the all-abuzz Contemporary Craft Festival was with warm-hearted handweaver Sarah Beadsmoore, from Gloucester, who was displaying her beautiful silk scarves. (I had to slow the tempo down in the recording to compensate for my mania; we were not actually speaking at this laid-back Westcountry tempo, but I don’t want to drive my listeners mad with my hyperactivity!) Our weaving discussion covered:

Part 1: colour and dyeing; design and planning versus improvisation; making to order

Part 2: the pitfalls of weaving a selvedge

Part 3: making a living; loom types

…and we also learnt from a potential customer the importance of warp and weft in tough old canvas fire hose construction where the water must be able to stretch the fabric but not deform it.

Sarah’s lovely silk work, including commissions and teaching, is here:

I admired some pieces by leatherworker Paul Lowry and, both humble artisans looking for a folkier lifestyle, we got to talking about the ways of the world. (Most notably, about how money is created and the trouble caused by its mechanisms; I am way out of my depth redrafting and redrafting and redrafting a post on this potentially world-changing and totally mind-boggling matter that just a minority understand.) Says he of his half-made ‘Hardback Rucksatchel’ that sounds like just the sort of practical, stylish, laptop-friendly, bike-friendly, eco-friendly bag that I have been imagining for a few years: ‘making something you don’t like is hard – laptops, commerce, uuuurgh…’

Well, here is what my laptop means to me:

It is small, light, sleek, beautiful, fast and reliable (I do like good machines).

Its vaults hoard stockpiles of incredible music. In these vaults I have met incredible people, and seen glimpses of the self I will be.

It seizes a fleeting melody, helps me shape it into rhythm, rhyme and structure.

It tells me what I know, and versions that I didn’t know.

It turns words into stories, and gives them wings to fly around the world.

It turns pictures from dull to vivid; offers bas-relief and alternative frames.

It turns numbers into plans, rationales, justifications, currency.

It reveals a Book of Faces, known and not-yet-known, who share whims, furies, follies and family anecdotes.

It makes short bridges between countries, continents, hemispheres.

It conducts lightning ideas from brilliant brain to brilliant brain around the world and back again.

It grows my most lucid thoughts, and tabulates the muddled ones.

And I’m sure I’m only using a fraction of its capacity.

(In Brittany, that incredible guitarist performing minutely intricate stunts, so pleased with himself with a small boy’s grin: ‘he spends too much time with his guitar’ said I. She spends too much time with her laptop, say I.)

And as for my commerce: every cynical thing has its beauty –

• Making = crafting, refining, learning
• Trading = exchanging, learning
• Marketing = clarifying one’s offer to the world, learning
• Selling = valuing oneself, learning
• Self promotion = asserting self-belief, learning
• Networking = ally-making, learning
• Competing = improving one’s offer to the world, learning
• Negotiating = friendmaking, boundary-setting, learning

Oh dear, capitalism again! Next time I’ll be writing about monetary mechanisms, balanced economy, and why, in my humble opinion, Britain is better in the hands of the EU.

I mentioned a generous-spirited Canadian, Amy Newsom, whose shawl pins I admired in her online shop. She needed some photographs for developing her website, admired mine, and sent me three beautiful pins (of three-figure value) in exchange for some photos of her work offset agains my wool. Here are some of the first batch:

I was so touched by her gesture, and so struck by what good business sense it also made for us both to publicise our complementary products, that I’ve been seeking some more of these kinds of exchanges. I searched for some other jewellers whose pieces already had top-class and imaginative photography, and offered them some of my remnants in exchange for having them featured in their photos.

Remnant / test patch (sold)

Remnant from a saddle blanket, for sale at http://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/271776968/saddle-blanket-cool-washable-breathable

One Danish guy and one Italo-Californian offered to send me a pin in exchange-exchange, and here is what I received in the post today – a Viking- or Celtic-style recycled copper pennanula made by Marcella:

Barter can also be really tricky: I’ve had great and not so great experiences in the past, as it can politically embroil even more than a monetary transaction, and easily become muddier. I often use currency and time as a measure or benchmark for negotiations, but you come up against questions like how one skill is valued more highly than another by our society, and that can be hard between friends.

A few weeks ago I decided that even better than heading back to the Hebrides this summer might be staying in Devon, where I’m enjoying musicmaking in a folk scene that’s possibly as rich as any anywhere. So I put out word to try and find a pitch, and have had a great offer to park by a house on highest Dartmoor in exchange for working someone’s horse a few times a week (a proper gypsy dream!). We’ve had lengthy, thoughtful and detailed email discussions to try and pave the way for a fair and clear agreement that’s as smooth as possible – it’s been a really useful discussion, and is looking highly likely.

I’ve just created a new page on my website called ‘Barter’, listing what I’d like to swap for weavings. Current ideas for business, home and music include:

• A place to park somewhere Celtic or Dartmoorish (this is an ongoing need, short or medium term, especially over winter)
• A small, lightweight but adult-strong, wooden bunk bed ladder
• A supply of organic produce/local free range meat
• A working digital SLR camera
• A working iPhone
• Publicity – e.g. press articles
• A working piano accordion
• Singing lesson(s)
• Recording studio/production time (not that I’m quite ready yet, but I like to float ideas as they arise)
• Other musical favours – anyone able to make a bagpipe/melodica hybrid?! (Though you might not want a lifetime’s supply of blankets – I might just have to amass some gold for this last one sometime!)

Keep an eye on that page for updates if you’re interested (and Facebook, especially, for live feeds), and get in touch – there will be far more things than I’ve listed that I haven’t thought of.

It’s been a while – the winter was difficult.

Not because of living in a van: that continues to be bliss. I love it. It’s so right. My home is with me wherever I am. Everything I own and need is within an arm’s length, all the time. I don’t have much, but I have loads, and still the odd inch to spare. I only need one of anything. I have brass taps (well, *a* brass tap). I have a new MOT with only one advisory (the bumper was held on with cable ties. I thought I’d graduated from bailer twine, but the kind man at the testing station advised that bailer twine would be better, and luckily I had some). I have had, thanks to my mother, two very comfortable medium-term parking spots with facilities – which means that an electric fan heater dried out the damp corners; half a MB of bandwidth kept me in touch with customers; and there was a fireside to sit by when I wanted company.

I’ve been in Devon since Christmas, and in reach of some of my best friends, and in Brittany before that, where I made new ones.

In itself I don’t mind the cold and dark and wet – it is intrinsic to the character of the places I love, and a crucial part of their beauty.

But the winter is always difficult: damp wood to burn; deep mud to lug hay bales through; hungry horses skirmishing; dark mornings to get up to; dark evenings to come home to; the hurtling train off the rails that is the academic year; the unmovable deadline that is Christmas.

However, all but this last I have left behind, so it wasn’t that. This winter it was family dynamics, the death of my father, Italian bureaucracy, even more acute money worries than usual (before Christmas), and long, long hours of work. Things intensify in the winter.(I’m thinking of ways to make rugged woollens appealing in the summer too – picnic and saddle blankets are my favourite ideas.) At least I enjoy my work. 

Of course there has been ever-intensive learning, and lots of it.

In relation to my business, I’m learning to take myself more seriously; price myself properly; use spreadsheets fully; quote realistically; design confidently; network strategically; begin to understand the bio-rhythms of my work as well as my personal ones; promote with endless enthusiasm; retain the spirit of trust and generosity, and say no. All because of a fairly sore need: constantly improvising, making something new every time, making endless mistakes on the loom; handling commissions inefficiently; misjudging timescales; promoting vaguely; exhausting my resources working for less than £1 an hour. Well, I’m not doing as badly as all that, but I have been stressed and tired.

In the photos below is the documentary of a mistake (by burning) that cost me 14 hours (and a discount). I had to cut out a section of the (synchronously over-long) weaving and tie the two parts back together thread by every single wretched thread, weaving each end back in by hand with a needle in both directions. (Yes, it would have been quicker to have started again, but I hadn’t the heart, and after at least an hour’s motionless deliberation, boldly took the scissors to this expensive, luxury shawl – ouch.)

Thankfully the lovely customer was understanding!

On Christmas Eve – of all times – my shop was featured in a promotion by the #Etsy Powers That Be. My monthly visitors that I had built up to 1000 soared to 5000 in one day. I needed a break, had a sociable Christmas planned (which was busy, and fun), and so was unable to make the most of the sudden surge in potential custom. Nonetheless, it helped my following grow. A few great customers came my way just then, and waited patiently while A Lot Happened, and the first quarter of 2016 saw me working to a month’s waiting list throughout.

And at the end of the waiting list I am, on the one hand, desperately plugging away on the social media platforms, and, on the other hand, free to make what I want to make. The market wants soft, but I want a rugged, homespun look – I have got too smooth already! Always a compromise, and a tricky contortion – though that can result in just the right thing, as long as it’s not excruciating. So it’s a breather time (ignoring for a minute the worst of the admin: the accounts – which are not even that bad but which have a way of looming ominously anyway) in which I look up and look around and see where I am and where I want to go next. It’s blankets and saddle blankets really, but people keep buying other things, and so I keep making batches of those other things, and then other people see those other things for sale, and buy those other things, or order those other things, and so I keep making those other things… So I’m not obliged to a husband, landlord, boss, children or horses,  but I will be a slave to the market in a minute!

But here is a more earthen blankety run in progress (the double thickness and tricky warp took some seriously hard beating and I broke my loom, but replacement parts eventually arrived and I will do it again, because the results are worth it, IMHO):

Warp for saddle blankets for sale at http://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/271776968/saddle-blanket-cool-washable-breathable

The customer was delighted with her green saddle blanket around which this batch was designed, and I’m looking forward to seeing pictures of her horse wearing it in Australia:

The remaining two of the saddle blankets are on sale here. (Horse-lovers might like this gorgeous collection of handmade saddlery too.)

Geographically speaking, *next* was probably going to be the Isle of Lewis: familiar, functional, beautiful, musical, affordable, spacious, and the source of one of my favourite yarns, with which I need to restock: that beautiful, rugged, subtle, rainbow virgin British wool used for Harris Tweed.

However I’ve been enjoying gigs and folk clubs and musicmaking so much in Devon – which is just starting to blossom – that I’m inclined to stay a while longer, perhaps even for the summer. A few exciting-sounding opportunities for pitch/duty barter are emerging (for any Dartmoor readers, I’ve put out word for summer camping spots, which I’ll swap for daily duties or a weaving).

Even more exciting: I have booked a converted stable in ancient woodland halfway up a Connemara mountainside to stay the Autumn.

So thank goodness for another re-emergence. Here are the new shoots on our morning walk, and, at the bottom, the view of willows, oaks and the stream I’ve been looking at for a few months. There is an accidental weaving that has just come out perhaps because I hadn’t dared attempt to weave this view despite many a ponder.

‘Marketing’. Possibly the least sexy word in the world, or so I’ve always thought. But ‘market’ on the other hand:

hustle, bustle, banter, barter; great smells, bright colours, good food; local people, local produce, universal concerns; growers, makers, merchants and buskers, sharing stories, jokes, grudges, favours, rain.

I don’t sell in physical markets much any more, after little financial success in them with my old dressmaking business, but I natter animatedly online with both customers and weavers afar as we bounce design ideas off each other, and glean snippets about each others’ loves, families and work. The communicative ones feel like new friends and colleagues.

I’m getting clever on Etsy, the online marketplace for handmade where I sell my wares. Growing out of the child-in-the-sweetshop who makes ‘treasuries’ of pretty things she likes, I’m starting to be strategic, network (uurgh) in a focussed way. I make a treasury of handmade shawl pins to show to my customers, and invite the jewellers to also display my weavings to show off both our complementary wares. I make a collection of other people’s beautiful scarves to remind my ‘followers’ that they need one with this new cold, and as I do it I admire their photography, am inspired, and learn. I make a ‘Rugged’ collection of landscape photography, ceramic and metalwork to show the backdrop of the creativity of so many of us. I make a steampunky ‘Castlewear’ treasury, to give shape and context in both mine and my potential customers’ eyes to my posher range of weavings. How can I improve them? What might you wear with them, and where, and how might you feel, and what do your dreams look like?

Gudrun Sjoeden is an enchantress at this: a leaf through a catalogue of hers is like a trip with an artist to Mongolia, Moscow or Madagascar. Never mind the artefact: it’s the story that counts.

I strike up a virtual conversation with a kiltpin maker, Alastair, of Callum Kilts Jewellery. I admire his and his father’s unaffected Scottish and Pictish designs – so often twee, but here, not. Their modest online shop reminds me that whilst the first thing to attract me to Scotland is a glamourised and romanticised view of their folk traditions, the thing that keeps me compelled is the humble and austere reality of them. A brief late-night chat about austerity with Julie Fowlis (‘only’ the fiftieth most influential woman of Scotland) has stayed with me all year as I’ve enjoyed the bleak Lewisian levels and barren scree; the clutters of kit-built bungalows that flank abandoned crofts; and old folk singing old songs in ugly pubs and community rooms in the Western Isles and the Westcountry.

Yes.

Here in Brittany in an ugly community hall in a run-down village, some lively local women and three bands, including Soïg Serberil, ‘the best folk guitarist in France’, and Nostrad, a fantastic traditional dance band from Brest, got me up on my feet learning some hypnotic Breton steps late last Saturday night.

Our good friends, a gardener and a folk musician/storyteller, make a weekly pilgrimage to the market. Sometimes they help the fishmonger arrange his coquilles de Saint Jacques. They know his story, and that of the wholefood shop man, and those of many others, I’m sure. Though they don’t eat meat, they know whose farm to send me to for free range, healthier creatures. They do their errands early, and, all done, meet every week at 1030 in the same bar for coffee with whoever else is also that civilised.

Meantime, in the best cafe in the best woods in Finisterre (‘basse Bretagne’, where they still speak Breton), the work of local artists, craftspeople, producers, foragers and musicians is showcased in weekly events and ongoing displays amid an eclectic collection of erudite left-wing literature – a little hub of resistance.

Back online, I have another conversation with a Canadian jeweller, Amy Newsom, who, after a very good season, offers to send me three lovely silver and copper shawl pins she’s made in exchange for photos of them with my weavings that she can use on her upcoming website. I am taken aback and delighted by the generous spirit that makes so much business sense for us both. Maybe I will weave some little samples to offer to jewellers to display their pins on, until I can afford to make larger pieces of cloth or even give away whole shawls.

The kiltpin maker says he may open a shop and would happily stock my wares too. We natter and laugh about minority politics, and another Scotsman’s words return to me as I recall Dick Gaughan in concert addressing the referendum issue. ‘England stands to lose a very grudging tenant and gain a very good friend’. I know what that feels like.

And so ‘marketing’, when one puts one’s cards on the table and grins, can be collegiate, and even friendmaking (the specifics of England/Scotland economic relations are beyond my sphere of knowledge, so back to my little story for now). I am no window-shopper – or even much of a shopper. Etsy ‘treasuries’ could be a marketing gimmick, a cynical hard-sell, but they call the treasurers ‘curators’. As someone who scribbled all over her history exercise books at school and fainted with boredom in airless museums, I am starting to understand the intrigue of history and anthropology and the excitement of archivists and collectors. I am gestating more authentic trasuries: ‘A History of the World in 12 Objects: real Scottish Islands’, or deepest Brittany, or highest Dartmoor, and looking forward to my next encounter with my insightful archeologist and museum curator friend, Nicola.

Who knows what doors will open. Funny, the many faces of Capitalism.

Saturday November the 14th was the first day of winter in France. The gale on the 13th had blown most of the last autumn leaves from the trees. The morning after the Paris attacks the temperature dropped about 8 degrees, the sun hid behind the clouds, and for the first time in this beautiful forest there was little colour. I wonder whether we’ve understood what the terrorists are asking; whether and how and in what time frame we might address things if we had. If they asked us in more reasonable terms, would we hear? Did they, and did we?

We went sightseeing to a non-existent neolithic village (there is no neolithic village at the site; instead a place called ‘Dreaming at the Gates of Hell’ makes model replicas); a decommissioned nuclear power station; a closed beaver reintroduction centre; and military remains on a bleak Mont St. Michel. More rewardingly, we also found a good dolmen, met a nice man on the mount, and dropped in on a new friend out in the sticks for a good natter before supper. Oh, and visited an ‘artisan farm’. Though some of the craft was faerily kitcsh and some was downright disturbed, much was also of very high quality, and it was all uniquely Breton. I’m glad I’m not a farmed artisan though.

Three things I need *absolutment* nowadays: to make a living, to make music, and to be free. 

And I suppose I need a home, but that beloved thing mutates with me, and I find that:

Home is where you know the right conditions and the right spot to squint at on the horizon to make St. Kilda appear. Home is where you know the right rock to stand on to get a mobile signal. Home is where you know the red throated diver’s daily flight path, and the eagle’s breakfast table. Home is where you know the best funnel in the stream to fill your water canisters. Home is where you know when and where the folkies meet, and who to call when your van breaks down.

Here now I know which tree yields the best chestnuts. I know where to buy organic produce. I know which old oak planks will sound which notes on the little boardwalk over the stream. I know a folk-baroque Appalachian dulcimer player; the time and place and character of a huge Irish session; the ‘standard’, or key motif, of Breton folk music, and that the instruments of Celtic music came up from Berber through the Iberian pensinsula, treacling Galician, Breton and Cornish music in particular with that North African scale. And yes, I already know who (and that that should be whom) to call should I break down, though can gloat that this is because of a problem (correctly diagnosed by moi) with my mum’s van, not with mine.

This place is beautiful, and autumn is the right time. 

We are surrounded by diverse, mature, sensitively managed, mixed woodland that is littered with huge, green, egg-shaped boulders, Arthurian legends, families with baskets, moustached mushroom hunters, dogs, goats and alternative types. There’s a cafe-gallery-bookshop in the woods whose internet I use. And then there are the patisseries, the artichokes and the saracen crepes. Vive la France!

The first while was tense: day three and my mum broke her right arm badly, which has thrown her, and us, in all sorts of ways. She’s here to write a book, but is right-handed. She hasn’t wanted to lean on me, but has needed help. I’ve wanted autonomy, but am camping in her front garden, and benefitting from her facilities. She’s needed to get into civilisation, but only I can drive. I’ve needed to get my head down to catch the Christmas trade wave, and have had insomnia. I’ve wanted freedom to explore exciting musical leads, but don’t even have enough money to top up my mobile.

In all this beautiful warmth (which has returned again since Saturday) with the winter slow to arrive, trade has not yet picked up proper, and I haven’t yet learnt the secrets of the summer market, so am biting my nails.

I’ve been reading about marketing (uuurgh), and even managed to raise some enthusiasm and smarten up my shop a little. Dividing it up into sections…

‘Croftwear’ (for the more rugged woves)

‘Castlewear’ (for sleeker, posher, softer ones)

‘Edenwear’ (for soft yarns in vivid colours that are more English garden than Celtic wilderness) and

‘Homeware (for non-wearables)

…helped me think more coherently about designing, photographing and promoting cohesive ranges. (Damn, I LIKE scattergunning! And Damn, DAMN, I have so much work to do!)) 

There’s a ‘Sylvanwear’ range germinating too, inspired by the bosquiness of these stunning woods…

…and  I still have Hebridean shorescapes a-mind too.

I’ve been networking on Etsy – especially creating treasuries of some of the beautiful craft made by others. (By chance I’ve made a lovely woollen contact in the West of Ireland, and since I’m planning to spend some of 2016 there, perhaps I should make some more.) A golden nugget: ‘Self promotion is me, me, me, whilst marketing is you, you, you.’ We (artists, especially) tend to swing wildly between outrageous narcissism and crippling self-doubt: ME, ME, ME [hide hide hide] – and loathe the both. So how to do the ‘you, you, you’ without being equally-loathedly false and cynical?

Promoting the work of others that I admire seems one good way, following in the footsteps of the lovely and talented Rima (art through the gap in the hedge), Tom (shadows and landscapes), Amy (myth in watercolour and ceramic), David (conjurer of magicscapes with colour and sound), Mark (plants for the imagination)  and my mum (with fire in her head). Nat, maker of all sorts and bringer-together of people and ponies, these beauties made me think of you, and Ren, dweller in the woods, your leather shop is sleek and artful!

Here is just one ounce of the talent of some of my friends:

http://roselle-angwin.blogspot.fr/2013/02/earth.html

Really thinking about what my potential customers need that I can supply is another way. What do you need?

Baby wraps and saddle blankets, some of you have said, and these are still in the pipeline – summer projects – though not yet for competitive prices. I want to make blankets but fear spending a week or two on one expensive item that may take ages to sell, especially on the busy run up to Christmas. Perennial tension between what I think will sell (soft, luxury, dyed wool garments) and what I want to make (big, coarse, rugged, undyed, earthen things).

I tend to think that you need things to give comfort in and protection from the wet and cold and that still leave you looking interesting, is that right?

What do you think I should make more of? I’ve a rustic, waxy, sheep-coloured cape just come off the loom, and some Jacob’s snugs and snoods just going on. When I have a choice between ought and  lately I’ve been opting for the latter. Artisan, not businessperson. Sigh. A run of soft reds may be in order – snugs and a scarf – and perhaps a luxurious silver-grey Gotland shawl, both long overdue, and reasonably saleable.

What else? I’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments below.