A Friend in Tweed

I am experimenting with Harris Tweed fabric. Cutting it into raggedy ribbons and haphazardly stitching it between ribs of hand knitted Harris Tweed wool.

I made these heather plaid ones for my auntie who wears them walking her bonkers dog who is a Foxie x Jack Russell.

{In these shots I am wearing a pair of 'Thai pants' in Thai silk which I made a big fuss about having after seeing a big Maori man friend of mine looking great wearing a black pair. This is the first time I have worn them in oh, five years... Harris Tweed and Thai silk, oh yeah}

I also made a killer pair of warmers and a neck cowl for a friend of mine in black with blood red Harris Tweed ribbons in rib. I didn't get a chance to photograph them before giving them to her because the weather was too overcast and the light dim.

Here's a poem about Harris Tweed written by Janet Hunter which I've pilfered from the Harris Tweed Authority website. It's also about my ancestors, all of whom were crofters on the Western Isles of Uist, Skye and Coll:

I met a man in Harris Tweed

As I walked down the Strand;

I turned and followed him like a dog

The breath of hill and sea and bog

That clung about that coat of brown,

And suddenly, in London Town,

I heard again the Gaelic speech,

The scrunch of keel on shingly beach;

The traffic's never-ending roar

Come plangent from a shining shore;

I saw the little lochs where lie

The lilies, white as ivory;

And tumbling down the rocky hills

Came scores of little foaming rills,

I saw the crofter bait his line,

The children herding yellow kine,

The barefoot woman with her creel,

The washing-pot, the spinning wheel,

The mounds thrown up by patient toil,

To coax the corn from barren soil.

With buoyant step I went along

Whistling a Hebridean song

That Iain Og of Taransay

Sang one enchanted day.

I was a man renewed indeed

Because I smelt that Harris Tweed

As I went down the Strand.