King Sun for Solstice

This has been our recent Nature Table ( a Steiner tradition for bringing the seasons into the house (ours is a shelf)). The main feature of it is the figure of King Sun, who is a little dry felted chap. He has pipe cleaners as a skeleton for his arms and head shape but otherwise is just made of wool scraps needle felted together.You have to make sure the bottom is well felted and sturdy, so he can stand up. Sometimes I add a pebble to weight it but didn't this time.. He has a copper crown in this representation, which seemed highly appropriate to me: it's just a scrap of copper electrical wire made ziggy zaggy, although Mr Pexton in the hardware shop cut his finger getting the wire out of a thicker one for me. Apparently pure copper wire is hard to come by these days...
The butterflies are also dryfelted, and seasonal Brimstones and Blues, which I often see walking through the Allotment to school. The fire is just wisps of wool tops as flames.
This Summer solstice time of the year has "St John's festival" in the Steiner tradition, which at our school is a high energy run or walk for each individual between or over flame. I feel this as a cleansing, and the children are encouraged to throw their grumbles and gripes into the fire as well. It also acknowledges the individual as part of a group, similarly to the twelve candles of  whitsun.
St John is John the baptist, he of the severe wandering and asetic life. I myself see this time of year as being characterised by male energy such as the Holly King / Oak King celtic pagan legend, and it's also lovely to see bright firery colours amongst the blooms of the season. The blooms are (or symbolise) perfectly the Airy nature of  summer, where all is most "out There". We all find ourselves a bit scatty and "air heady", and young children often "excarnate" letting their energies float free of the physical body, but also seem to find it excruciating to sit still, the want to zoom about like all the animals, like the pollen and insects floating free in the air.
Colours of the season: yellow, red, orange, bright pink, pale bright blue, green  and maybe some earthy brown, so we don't float right off!
Symbols: Zig zags, spirals, golden suns, white doves
I made the King Sun figure as part of a Seasonal workshop I was hosting, which was wonderfully inspiring. I felt blessed to be in room with so many women given just the space, materials and opportunity to create amazing seasonal characters.

Wool in every room

I fell asleep last night with the comforting thought that there was wool in every room of the house! Here are the photos and I'll explain...
1 Top: Bath of wool
2 Middle: Shelf of wool
3 Bottom: Bobbin of wool
The most comforting of all, is that some of  a Texel fleece (this one from Woolfest), is currently cleaning in the bath overnight. I aim to do it over night, and through most of the next day, so as to cause the minimum of disruption to my family. It will soak overnight in hot water with some washing soda, and then in the morning a hot rinse, and then another later on. Then by bathtime i need to have moved the fleece up to the loft to start drying , as it's winter, flat on a sheet.
I love to be washing a fleece, as it means lots more to spin. The only hassle is when you're having to do it in a hurry. I also love the fact that I know exactly where this fleece is from, and that only gentle cleaning products have been used on it, and that no electricity has been used to produce something spinnable.
And somehow, the whole process gives me a secret smile of satisfaction...
Photos 2 and 3 are both from the living room, and show last night's spinning from my own hand blended hand plant dyed batts, and "the wool basket", which has all sorts in, currently a dry felted Mother Earth who needs fixing, my Christmas present from the family (a niddy noddy), my current spindle spinning of hand blended batts in a red/brown/purple colourway of merino, silk, waste nylon glitz, blue faced leicester and other random bits, plenty of handspun, some hand dyed, hand blended singles, and some a My Heart Exposed fibre artist dyed two ply, also various knitting needles, a bag of knitting (currently a bootie), and small left over balls of yarn, which i constantly use to tie things up.
Both photos 2 and 3  have yarns in process which are very slender for me, as I am hoping to get something usable for knitting a lacey shawlette.
So that's the bathroom and the living room. The kitchen has some red and green two ply, handspun by Fay my 8 year old daughter, drying after having been set. Mine and Marc's bedroom has a basket and two boxes of unpun wool, mostly tops. One of the boxes holds my Etsy shop contents, mostly plant dyed tops at the moment. I happy to say that I've needed to do a slight restock recently as people have been buying it for spinning and dry felting. Hooray!
The loft has fleeces needing washing or carding in it, and my precious stash of yarn. The girl's room has Fay's stash of yarn, and her tops for spinning, and what she's spun too! Which makes a houseful of wool.
(ofcourse there's always my knitting and Fay's crochet projects, which travel around the house too....)