Well I am back again, on the second day of my Web2 training with Maggie Bowen. I have been very adventurous over the past week, I signed up with Facebook, LinkedIn and UTube as well as starting this blog so I am feeling very pleased with myself altogether! Has anybody found me?
Well I have made contact with someone I was at college with in Galway so now I know it works. For me, the web is not my my natural medium but I am plugging away at it, trying to get the know how, with a view to raising the profile of my handwoven scarves as a special gift purchase, and promoting Swallow Studios as a really nice place to visit in County Monaghan.
During the week Swallow Studios welcomed an enexpected bus tour of lovely nice visitors from Conneticut, USA. We demonstrated the warp preparation and weaving on the looms, and they seemed to enjoy the experience. And some went away very happy, with Liz Christy scarves as gifts to bring back to the USA, and they really appreciated that they were truly handmade here in Ireland, as is everything in Swallow Studios.
A group of twentyone who were staying locally at Alices Loft & Cottages Self-catering visited us. They were mostly from Virginia, USA and they too really enjoyed the Studios.
Would you like to bring your visitors to see what we are up to here in Annyalla?
Hi there, I am Liz and this is my first ever blog, I am totally new to it so here goes…
Following a Web 2 training session yesterday with Maggie Bowen from Sitestogo in Clones, County Monaghan, I have been inspired to take the first steps into the world of blogging. So I will start by posting a little bit about Swallow Studios. By way of getting back to my craft after a few years away from it, I set up my loom in the spare bedroom of Swallow Cottage in 1996 and I began designing and handweaving a range of scarves which were inspired by my favourite paintings by Claude Monet. Mrs Joyce of Cleo Ltd in Dublin bought them and that was the begininning of “Handwoven By Liz Christy”.
Eventually yarns, looms and scarves took over the cottage and with some grant aid from the LEADER program through Cavan Monaghan Rural Development, I took the huge step of building a new workshop next to our home and Swallow Studios opened in 2004. As well as my growing ‘loom family’, I now had space for other creative people to work, which I felt would add to the atmosphere and experience for visitors to the studios. Louise Loughman and I were friends since our college days in the textiles department of Galway RTC as it was known in the mid 1980’s. There she specialised in print and experimental textiles and she was the natural choice of a complimentary maker to locate here. Her batik combined with silkpainting has evolved into a truely unique style and she like myself has a passion for using colour. So our work sits well together and we have combined our skills on some big public commissions. Check out www.lizchristy.com/catalog if you would like to see some of our work.
