Weavings

Nearly four years ago, before we left London on this grand adventure of ours, I found a wonderfully talented young weaver called Christabel Balfour

You can see more of her work here https://www.christabelbalfour.com

She weaves contemporary tapestries. Her work is beautifully tactile, with subtle colours and beautiful cotton, linen and wool combinations, and as soon as I saw her work it reminded me so much of Skye that I knew that I had to have something made up by her for our new home-to-be.

At this stage, remember, the house was just a drawing on an architects page.

It took a long time until Christabel was free to start the design phase. She posted me drawings and we selected colours and materials remotely. Then the pandemic and life got in the way and there were more delays, both to the work and the house build, so speed or otherwise didn’t really matter.

Then the day arrived when the package turned up on the croft. The house was still a building site and we were living in the caravan with very limited space. We opened it, but it was very quickly packaged back up for safety and stored in the spare room until the house was in a state of greater completion.

And here it has stayed, wrapped in it’s protective linen shroud in a dry cupboard in the hall, waiting for it’s moment. Because we haven’t finished the plaster on the walls in places let alone the painting, no art has yet gone up onto the walls.

Today we moved a temporary bookcase from the wall in the sitting room area that I’d always planned for the tapestry to be mounted on, and once the wall was free, Hugh hung the tapestry.

It’s beautiful. All the colours of the sea, sky and mountains here are woven into it, and for the first time we can see how right it looks in this place.

There’s something so very tactile and warm about a woven piece of art. I keep running my fingers over it to appreciate the contrasting textures that Christabel has built into it.

Thank you Christabel Balfour. You are a very talented lady and I am very proud to have a piece of your work.