India Flint workshop in Newburgh

I’ve come away from a magical week shared with new friends.
Newburgh itself is an old fishing and textile town on the Tay. It has interesting old buildings and is built on a slope so between gaps of buildings there are spectacular river views.
The textile centre – textilecentre.co.uk, is a fabulous venue, and Janette and Alison provide a lovely ambience and working space, and the most fantastic lunches – they cater for gluten free and use a local breadmaker to provide real breads,with taste bud provoking names, like rye and caraway, oat and stout, buckwheat and all sorts of seeds through them, even a good gluten free one, nom nom.
India ran a workshop last year in Newburgh which was fully booked before I realised it was on, so I pre-booked this year, which was just as well as it apparently sold out in a day! The theme for this year was ‘being present’, and being present with the river and surroundings of Newburgh.
We were working with ‘Stonehenge’ watercolour paper, which is strong enough to cope with being immersed in dye baths, steamed etc. which is just as well as we really put that paper through its paces!It coped really well, though some of the more mucilaginous plants flowers proved a bit problematical, my issue was with Rosebay willowherb flowers, even though the leaves give a fantastic print, the flowers, nah, not so much.
We folded and divided the paper into 4 pieces, 3 longish ones which were later turned into one long book (the river winding its way through our experiences) and one more rectangular one which we added textiles and stitch to to become a seperate piece. We also made 3 smaller books which were stitched into the larger long one.
At each stage we were encouraged to walk, breathe, write poetry or fragments of words that came to us on our perambulations, sew and gather plant materials. I got to recognise several locals on their dog walks, some of whom I’m sure ran from us weirdos wandering around, others were very curious and asking on a daily basis what we were up to now!
Group work was made into installations outdoors ( much to the delight or bewilderment of many of the local residents) and photographed before being carefully unravelled.
The group was fantastic for helping and sharing experiences and knowledge.