Of Bees & Honey

Following on from my musings about direction in the last blog post, I've been working on two 'woolidermy' projects which I'm excited about and feel are more distinctive of my style. The first of these are my honeycomb & bees.

This year is likely to feature many, many bees (of the needle felted variety). Last summer, I had a burst of inspiration while considering what to make Mamma C for her birthday. Mum really does like bees and their fascinating ways. Indeed, she is an enthusiastic bee-keeper with several hives, acts as adviser to various individuals, allotments and community orchards, has been working with getting hives onto National Trust properties, has achieved the award of  'Expert Bee Master' via years of annual exams, has appeared (ably assisted by Dad) on 'Landward' talking about sudden colony collapse and, much to my amusement, received an email from the team at 'John Bishop's Britain' wondering if she may be interested in a bee-related feature (she wasn't, not really knowing who he is). As you can imagine, bees have featured heavily in our family life! In my husband, Mum has found a potential protege as he doesn't tire of hearing bee stories and facts and unlike me, he's keen to help by getting close to the bees and his hands in the hives. The pic below shows the three of them looking impressive at a hive (less heroically, I was using a zoom lens from quite far away!).

If it wasn't for the distance of c. 400 miles from the Edinburgh family home and the fact the only land we have access to is literally only big enough to swing two cats in (but we prefer to cuddle them instead), we would now be surrounded by bees. As it is we get the honey (always popular with friends & family) and a source of inspiration & technical knowledge for my bee-related projects.

Back to Mamma C's present, I was racking my brains to create something personalised and featuring bees. After scouring the internet for a honeycomb crochet pattern, I gave up after only finding complex Tunisian crochet stitches and realised I should instead make individual honeycomb pieces stitched together. The bees are needle felted free hand and while not very anatomically correct, have I hope, the proper suggestion of a bee. As is evident, I've taken a cavalier attitude to scale but we'll call this artistic license. Attached to a proper standard honeycomb frame, the whole thing now hangs neatly on two nails on the wall, looking suitably sweet.

Over the last couple of weeks I've been making smaller versions of this featuring a section of crocheted comb cells & felted bees encased in actual honeycomb wooden sections (used to sell edible cut honeycomb) which have been amended and painted. I'm hoping that they will make good presents for bee-lovers/keepers as well as having a more general appeal (as pictured at top of this post). I'm currently making more frames and building into a more ambitious project which I'm hoping to display at this year's Helfa Gelf (North Wales Art Trail). Which reminds me, I really must go and fill in the application form now...