sally light: rag rugging on a narrowboat

I am enormously excited to have been invited to lead some rag rugging sessions on one of Float by Boat's meditative narrow boat weekends! Rag rugs are very much associated with narrow boats and it's an interesting fact that women joined their husbands to help crew working narrow boats around about the mid 1800s when the growth of the railways had the effect of lowering the wages of boatmen, and it is during this very same period that the importation of hessian led to the growth in rag rug making (hessian providing a cheap, often free, open weave base suitable for rug making). During the early Autumn weekend of 3rd - 5th Oct. I will be teaching people how to make wearable three-dimensional floral 'blossoms' - showing how traditional rag rug techniques and up-cycled fabrics may be used in fresh, innovative ways!

Last year I joined Float by Boat for one of their meditative breaks myself, and found it so life enhancing. Summoning up memories of being on Spirited Away - recalling the sensation of it's gentle rocking movement in the water and in the breeze, remembering the play of light reflected from the water around the interior of the boat and the shadows of tree branches chasing through the porthole windows, I am transported once again to a place where the natural world seems to beckon me to a stillness, in which I can appreciate her far better. I thought of the experience of being on Float by Boat today, as I walked along the bank of the River Culm in Devon. Sitting still with a friend, we watched dippers, a yellow wagtail and house/sand martins(?) skim over the surface of the river. Found wild garlic leaves beginning to unfurl, bees nose-deep in blackthorn blossom, male and female catkins on alder, smelt the fragrant cuckoo flower (Lady's Smock) and saw fish leap.

See Float by Boat's facebook page or their website for further details of this rag rugging weekend and their other meditative canal breaks:

www. floatbyboat.co.uk

https://www.facebook.com/FloatByBoat