Nemeton Erithan

I’ve star­ted to do some work with soap­stone. I’ve had a chunk of it sit­ting around for years now wait­ing to get turned into some­thing inter­est­ing. I’m thor­oughly sat­is­fied with my drop spindle from Cauldron Farm, which has a soap­stone whorl, so I decided I would try my hand at mak­ing a spindle of this style. Stone whorls were com­mon in Vik­ing age and pre-Christian Celtic drop spindles. Stone was not the only mater­ial used, but it was the one with the best stay­ing power. Other mater­i­als used for the whorl included wood, bone, and earth­en­ware. The whorl I’ve cre­ated is a large whorl, ideal for spin­ning thick fab­ric. I’ve tested it with a bit of alpaca which is what is vis­ible on the spindle.

Triskel soap­stone spindle with test-spun alpaca.

I’ve also carved a small pendant out of the soap­stone that I’ve titled “Manannán’s Gift”. Man­an­nán is the god of the sea and guard­ian of the gates to the Oth­er­world. This pendant is a rep­res­ent­a­tion of a droplet of water and is carved with a wave-like swirl.

“Manannán’s Gift”: Hand carved soap­stone pendant.

“Manannán’s Gift”: Hand carved soap­stone pendant.

I am cur­rently in the pro­cess of carving more items from soap­stone (mainly jew­elry). I find it sat­is­fy­ing to work with. I am also work­ing on some pieces made from maple along with replen­ish­ing my chain­maille stocks after Three Rivers and some private sales. I plan to be present as a vendor for Durham Pagan Pride Day this year.

Part II of my pre­view, fea­tur­ing works other than chainmaille.

Bot­tom whorl drop spindles: green & white and black & white decorations.

Hand made and painted with my sig­na­ture line­work. These are great for someone just get­ting star­ted with spinning.

drop spindle spun nat­ural cor­riedale and hand dyed merino.

The cor­riedale will be plied later on with some other rov­ing I’m work­ing on. The green merino was from Fleece Artist.

Earth & nature inspired prayer bead set.

A simple yet strik­ing set of prayer beads with an earthen theme. Fea­tures hem­at­ite, tur­quoise, moss agate, and tiger’s eye.

There’s still more to come: brace­lets, book­marks, more neck­laces and hair sticks. Rechar­ging the cam­era batteries…