Looking back and forward!

As December is a countdown to the end of the year, it is a great time to look back on the entire year and make new plans. The Christmas season is always a bit hectic, but I love the quiet time after Christmas to reflect, analyse and move forward. We have made it a tradition in our family that everyone including our children take time to reflect on the year and write down their highlights of the year and wishes for the new year. On New Year's Eve, we sit together and everyone shares their thoughts and feelings. If nothing else, it is so easy to forget all the wonderful memories throughout the year.

New Year's Eve around the fire with our family.

Full-time artist!

So, what a year it has been! The biggest change in the past year for me has been quitting my school job as an art teacher.  It still takes time and energy to make everything fall into the right place with my working routine, farm and family life. It has not been easy this year, but I had felt for a long time that I had to change my life and put my whole focus on our own businesses to create the life I have wanted to live. 

This is my biggest lesson learnt in 2024 - struggling with too many responsibilities will lead you to burn through and finally, you are learning to put yourself first one way or another. Of course, it is scary to give up some financial security and I am not advising anyone to change their working relationships without a deep and proper understanding, plans and thoughts. The change is always a bit scary because our brains are protecting us from anything new and unknown. But the true breakthrough only happens when being stuck in the moment or crisis, so never underestimate that. 

I am still transitioning to becoming a full-time artist but I am looking forward to my first whole year being able to concentrate on my artwork and farm!

Teaching workshops!

In June I had the honour of traveling to Finland to teach the members of Finnish Felt Association Filtti. It was one of my most memorable teaching workshops in 2024! I am looking forward to sharing my knowledge more in 2025! The traditional textile techniques and skills like felting and weaving need to be preserved for the next generations.

One of my student`s work in the Fillti workshop in June 2024.

Starting this blog!

It has been a long journey for me to finally open myself up and share my thoughts with you here on this blog. I am enjoying capturing these moments and saving them mainly for myself at the moment. Since my childhood, I have been the one with at least three different notebooks and diaries, but it is easy to move your focus to something else when getting busy. So these few blog posts have been a surprisingly fulfilling experience to look back to the last month and share my life as an artist with you. 

Thank you to everyone, who has been reading this, I do appreciate that!

Exhibitions!

2024 was quite a busy year for me with participating in 9 different exhibitions.

The last exhibition was organised by the Estonian Textile Association, which proud member I became in June.

The exhibition is called “The Colour of the Year is Diverse” and it is open in the Museum of New Art, in Pärnu, Estonia until the beginning of March 2025. 

As my recent work contains more natural fibre and natural colours, my work called “Diverse Silence” is also made of our own fibre in natural colours. 

I originally planned to enter my last wall hanging "Bronze III" into this exhibition, but I did not finish it in time due to some unexpected felting issues, so I decided to enter this work instead.

There are already a few great exhibitions coming up in 2025 and I hope I will manage to plan my time around to create new artworks. 

The "transformative" year!

I am grateful for the time spent in my studio creating, working with my vision & goals, looking deeply inside myself and questioning many patterns and beliefs..

This is the year of growing as an artist and human being, the year of learning many new lessons, and the year of stepping outside my comfort zone..

I will step into 2025 with a clearer vision and direction as a textile artist. My love for working with natural fibres from our flock continues through traditional and more modern textile techniques with a stronger focus on sharing my knowledge with others.

Looking forward to 2025!

We are here to create our own future and today I feel proud of myself for taking these steps this past year. There are still plenty of brave steps to be taken, but it is an ongoing journey and this will continue in 2025.  After a long period, I am looking forward to all the challenges and new chapters ahead of me. It feels great to be able to focus on my artwork and I have many exciting projects waiting for me in the new year. 

In January I will be finally launching my online course "Textures and Surfaces." Creating this course has been the most transformative experience. I just need to add a few finishing touches to it and then I am ready to share my knowledge and support with you. This course focuses on two main parts - firstly different felting techniques I have been using in my work over the last years. The second part focuses on being creative - finding inspiration and motivation for your work with different exercises, worksheets and guides to help you support your creativity to its fullest potential. Stay tuned for the news in the next few weeks!

And last, I wish you the best, the most creative and successful New Year!

Follow your dreams, and keep your cup full of simple moments for yourself. Go walk a walk, read a book, take time for your hobbies, learn new skills and create memories with your family and friends! 

Until next time my friends,

Reena

Sustainable wool

As November disappeared with its dark nights and wet weather conditions, I was faced with an experience of mainly looking after our farm and children while my husband was visiting his home island - the Isle of Man. Therefore I am sharing some of our ideas about sustainable wool written by both of us this time.

Our Swedish Finewool sheep relaxing in the summer on the field.

As many artists promote their art as sustainable these days, it raises the question, what is sustainable art in principle?

So, some definitions found on the internet are as follows:

Sustainable art is “artistic practices prioritising environmental responsibility, social equity, and economic viability. It often involves using eco-friendly materials, incorporating recycling or upcycling techniques, and addressing sustainability and ecological awareness themes.”

Sustainable textile art “focuses on creating artworks using eco-friendly materials and practices that minimise environmental impact.” 

My primary material for making art for the last 20 years has mainly been sheep wool. At the beginning we had a production flock of sheep and their wool was not the best quality. So for many years, I also used carded wool and merino wool purchased from different companies. So overall, I was using still a very natural material. The first finewool sheep arrived at our farm over 10 years ago and it has taken time to build up a flock since then. Quite often people ask me how long it takes to make a wall hanging. So to make a sustainable wall hanging, it has taken me all those years to get to the point that now I can proudly say that the main material for my artworks comes from our heritage breed Swedish Finewool sheep.

My last wall hanging is completely made of our own wool fibre.

Over the last few years, we have specialised in raising finulls and our wool locks have travelled to the neighbouring countries in Scandinavia, but also to Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, the United States and Canada. Last year we added a Gotland breed into our flock.

For wool to be truly sustainable, all parties involved must benefit. This means ensuring that animals are treated with respect and care, allowing them to exhibit their natural behaviours, and ensuring their health and welfare. It also involves preserving regional traditional breeds for genetic, fibre, and cultural diversity. Producers should be fairly compensated to secure their sustainable future, and consumers should receive the sustainable fibre they desire. Our goal is to give our sheep the best life and it would be wonderful to be in a position where these grand old ladies can retire gracefully on our farm and still give us wool without being mated for commercial purposes.

Some of the fibre locks from the finull fleeces.

Sheep breeds tend to be regional, with sheep exhibiting different characteristics worldwide, including various colours, horns, hair, fine wool, coarse wool, and milk production. In fact, on a global scale, more milk comes from sheep than cows for human consumption. Unfortunately, many agricultural animals and plants have been bred to the point that the vast majority of chickens, pigs, wheat, and corn are the same genetic breed worldwide.

Our farm is based in Estonia, but Matthew's heritage is from a small island called the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea.  In a strange twist of fate, we only realised this year that the local breed named Manx Loaghtan on the Isle of Man is genetically linked to the Swedish Finewool Breed and the Gotland we breed here some 3000 km away. Around the year 800 AD, Vikings landed on the Isle of Man bringing their native sheep with them from Scandinavia. The Vikings of course didn’t only land on the Isle of Man but also inhabited the Scottish Islands, Iceland, and Greenland and were also believed to have travelled as far across the northern seas to North America.

Manx Loaghtan heritage breed from the Isle of Man.

Our sheep are part of a group of breeds called the Northern European Short-Tailed Sheep. There are still thirty-four breeds in existence, and most are classified as rare breeds. Many survived because of the harsh isolated environments they acclimatised to, and the inability of other animals to survive there.   

In Estonia, we also have two rare breeds called "Eesti maalammas" and "Kihnu maalammas". We would love to help maintain these genetics as well one day, but having a new breed means investments and changes in our management system.

Kihnu maalammas is one of the traditional heritage breeds in Estonia.

So, my journey towards more sustainable art has been a long one, but definitely worth taking! Wool is such an amazing material to work with and my wall hangings are moving towards a more simplistic look to showcase the wonderful variety of natural colours and textures of this wonderful fibre.

We are inspired to find out more about the heritage breeds and one day it will be great to get to know, feel, touch and work with all of these fibres from 34 breeds. It is part of our culture and heritage and it is important to preserve the cultural traditions, farming knowledge, and artisan skills together with the genetics of the sheep breeds.

Until the end of the year then,

Reena and Matthew

October news

Even though most of October has been more sunny than normal, the end of the month has shown the real colours of October. It has been raining, the evenings are getting darker earlier because of the clock change and suddenly the trees have lost their beautifully coloured leaves as well. Despite the darkness, I have always loved the autumnal colours, which have always been part of my colour palette.

My local lake is an endless source of inspiration for me.

It was my birthday a few days ago, and it is always a good time to reflect on the last year. I might not be exactly where I want to be in my artistic journey, but after taking a few very brave steps, I am much further along than ever before. The last year also showed how important it is to focus on the little steps toward your goals. To remember that, I managed to finish off the new tapestry called “The Journey.”

"The Journey"

I also started a weekly textile workshop this month, where I will be teaching different techniques, such as felting, weaving, stitching, freeform crocheting, and many more. I am looking forward to having interesting winter nights ahead of us with a lovely group of craft-loving ladies..

I have also made some progress about the online courses and I have decided to finish the first workshop before the end of the year. Some plans have changed a bit, but at least I had some progress with them.. Still plenty of work ahead of me, but slowly I am getting there.

During October I spent quite a few days sorting, washing, and carding wool ready for the wool kits. We have a lovely new white wool from the new Gotland ram offsprings and I am very happy about it as I had a shortage of white wool in recent years.

I love the softness and silkiness of the new wool.

I am also very excited about the grey wool, which I have a few fleeces of. I can not wait to add more grey tones to my felting palette again. 

My favourite gray wool with brownish tops.

I have a few artworks for sale in the online gallery called Singulart and one of my works got chosen for the “Scandinavian Hygge” collection. Truly happy about the views and interest in the tapestry and this inspires me to weave larger tapestries later on in the winter. 

I have not forgotten felting (I never will!) and I tried out some new ideas about very calm and peaceful felt wall panels.

For the first trial I chose not to go very big, but I am quite happy with the result (except for a few composition flaws) and will try to make similar panels in larger sizes as well. 

This wall panel is part of the Collection Bronze, which focuses on the simplicity and functionality of Japandi-style interior design. This collection celebrates our heritage fibre intertwined with other natural materials in traditional techniques.

"Diverse Silence" 87x140 cm

My online shop got quite a few updates and I have a new selection of photo-printed bags.

These are great presents, so guess what my friends are getting for Christmas :)

I have had a few selections before and I try to add new designs as I develop and move forward as an artist. 

At the moment there are three different designs representing my three main collections (Bronze, Textured, and Intertwined).

November is going to be very, very busy, but I am grateful for this opportunity to spend more time inside my studio.

Until the end of November then,

Reena