25/07/2026
Highland adventures with the Highland Back Creel 🌿
I actually made this one to enter into the Royal Highland Show competition with the theme "a Celebration of Craft, Community and Countryside", but muggins here read the drop off info wrong and didn't manage to enter it in time! 🤦 So I've absorbed it into my own collection I love it so much.
The stripped white willow being the "community" side of it, with stripping of willow being a historically communal activity, the spliced wool rope speaking of the sheep of the countryside, and the creel itself fitting perfectly into the theme as a whole. A basket of the countryside, rural communities and of course, crafted by the people within them. Made with the classic round bottom of the Scottish (and Donegal) varieties of creel, and the window technique of Scottish descent also.
On a hair-moss gathering adventure (for future projects I'm excited to share soon) we took it to Aoineadh Mòr, the Lost Village which was a beautiful township affected by the Highland Clearances. There's a retelling of Mary's story on one of the notice boards and she speaks of children being carried out of the village in creels, and it made me wonder when was the last time this village saw one! A special experience indeed.
We also used it for getting all kinds of supplies on and off the boat, a back rest of boating too, and for gathering flowers at my "Foraged Floral Mobiles" workshop that was part of Morvern Games and Gala Week Gala Week. A lovely activity and week that deserves a post all to itself! Truly a working basket of the people!
(More details on that coming soon, but right now I'm just posting when I can between summer holiday chaos 💚🌞)
