Get to know me
Sara is a farmer’s daughter, who grew up in Mid Wales; now living on the Gower Peninsula and married to a farmer. As a child, she had a flock of Torddu Badger Face sheep. In 2017, she started keeping a flock of Llanwenog sheep, and she also has her “liquorice allsorts” flock which includes breeds such as Shetland, Blue-Faced Leicester, Ryeland, Coloured Mules and crossbreds. She is keen to produce both good meat and lovely wool at high welfare standards.
Both during and after attending college in Newtown, she worked a myriad of different jobs, but realised she would never be totally fulfilled unless she pursued her love of textiles and attended university. So, at 21 with her baby daughter in tow, she began her degree at Carmarthen School of Art, commuting 30 miles, 5 days a week. Sara’s dissertation in her final year at Carmarthen School of Art was enthused by her ongoing research into Welsh and British Wool. She questioned what could be done to improve the situation for Welsh farmers, and that of the environment too, but also delved into the anti-fashion movement. She graduated with a First-Class Honours degree in July 2018.
In September 2018, she began a Masters by Research degree part-time at Swansea College of Art to continue her research at an academic level, as she felt she had only just started to lift the lid on the issues raised in her dissertation. In Spring 2020, she had to take a break in her studies as all her planned research events for the summer had been cancelled due to Covid-19, but in November 2020, she returned to her studies with a revised plan. In August 2023 she was finally granted her degree, and is getting her cap and gown in July 2024.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Sara was doing performative hand-spinning in public as part of her research, and had more events planned in Mid Wales, Swansea and Cardiff for Summer 2020. She was using some very specific wool during the initial events (and would've continuted to use it for the planned ones too). Click here to find out more.
The Team
This is where serious people put their employees mugshots and job titles, but here we are at Pontardulais Show in August 2023, showing Mini Shepherdess #1's Black Welsh Mountain Sheep in the Group of Three class.
I'm officially a one-woman-band, but who actually ever is?!?
Mr Woolly Wales (the serious one on the right) is chief shepherd and shearer.
Mini Shepherdess #1 (left) and #2 (in baby carrier) are chief "shooers" when working the sheep. #1 has also passed grade 1 gate opening.
Occasionally my brother will come and help with shearing, and his wife helps me at events.
Sustainablity
Sara is a design activist- passionate about making a difference to the way people make and buy products. She advocates buying locally, supporting small businesses, ensuring goods are traceable and sustainable, having a transparent and ethical supply chain, and also supports working in a closed loop system. She also sees the importance of educating people on the provenance of handmade goods, by being 100% transparent, and why these qualities are so important, for example, heritage crafts such as hand-spinning and hand-weaving.
Sara aims to educate the public on these crafts by giving talks and demonstrations; these can be catered to your groups interests, please get in contact if you're interested. She's attended two local horticultural groups, so concentrated on natural dyes and the uses of wool in gardening. In the future, she hopes to provide classes to people who want to learn more about traditional craft methods. People who are increasingly aware of the origin of their goods often want to embrace the process themselves, and more people are seeing the benefit of taking part in the great craft revival. Instead of consumerism, you have participation and experience; for example, instead of going on a shopping spree, you do a craft workshop instead.
Zero waste is a key element of her practice, she saves all waste and scrap yarn to make into new products, whether it be art pieces, small home decorations, or Christmas and Easter decorations.
Products
Sara hand-spins unique fancy yarns from her own wool, and from some fleeces that have been carefully sourced from other Welsh farmers and smallholders. She hand-dyes British woollen yarns (commerically spun) in addition to her own yarns- she has most of her fleeces processed into yarns by three different small mills (one in Wales, two in England), and it is available undyed, and also dyed in many different colour ways, using acid dyes and natural dyes. Sara grows some dyestuffs in the garden on the farm, but she loves to forage fields and hedgerows around the farm for the majority of the plant matter she uses; returning to the zero waste ethic, she also utilises "food waste" such as onion skins, and also any Eucalyptus from bouquets of flowers that any of her near family and friends receive.
Raw fleeces are available from May - September. To avoid dissappointement, it's best to get in contact with Sara in April with what you're looking for (eg. suitable for making peg loom rugs, hand-spinning, garden mulch, etc) and she can keep some aside for you once shearing has commenced. You can arrange to come to the farm to collect or she can photograph them etc for you then to receive the fleece in the post, please note, "gardening wool" cannot be posted, only fleeces for crafting can be packaged.
Weaving has had to take a bit of a back seat recently, whilst she's been concentrating on her MRes and raising her young family. She is not taking on any commissions at this time, but hopes to reignite her love for weaving in Summer 2024. Her hand-woven products are made from 100% Welsh or British wool, the tags always specify origin and content as they're often unique. Her weaving can be quite experimental, often altering the designs as she goes along on the loom. She consciously makes pieces which can be easily recyclable, so mono-materiality is essential. 100% natural materials mean that her pieces can even be compostable when they are finally at the end of their lives, but that’s well after the end of our lives. Her pieces are made to last the test of time, an heirloom that can be passed down, along with its story, or if the moths get the better of part of it, it can always be cut up and remade into new products.
Inspiration
Sara’s creative inspiration comes from her surroundings; more often than not, it’s the rural, but occasionally it steps into the urban. She is a great lover of graphic elements, and often sees pattern in the most unlikely of places. Her graduate work was inspired by Welsh slate and the slate mined landscape of North Wales, as well as the applications of slate which led her back to the farm, where she used the buildings and temporary structures, layers of colours and texture, to inspire her design work. As an avid photographer, her images are how many of her designs begun. Her graduate work was all made from 100% Welsh and British wool. She hand-spun some Welsh wool herself, and incorporated it into her scarves.
To see her digital graduate collection portfolio, follow this link: https://www.artsthread.com/portfolios/transparentlandscape