Hi 👋
I'm Nikki, Master of all that is The Crafty Weaver.
I thought I'd tell you a little bit about me and what I do
I make lots of lovely things with wool, including using the beautiful Harris Tweed, I make my own hand dyed yarns and I also design and make knitting and crochet kits. I make some hand knitted items too, including a new design of mine that combines Harris Tweed and hand knitting. I'm a Harris Tweed weaver for one of the local mills (I don't weave my own tweeds) so get to also be part of the making of Harris Tweed as well as using it.
I love beach combing looking for beach treasure, so you'll see the beautiful glass, plastic fishing waste and ceramics I find in my makes too, as well as my beach treasure buttons and Stitch markers.
I'm based on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland and I've lived here since 2009. I moved from the South West of England where I am originally from.
I trained to weave Harris Tweed in 2010 and was a full time Harris Tweed weaver for many years, and while weaving I realised I could also knit while at the loom (I'd taught myself to knit just before we moved up to the Hebrides). And as I really hate to waste yarn, my little knitted sheeps and coos we designed to use up not only the little bits of yarn that are left over after weaving each Tweed, but also the selvedge edge that the looms cuts off the cloth when being woven (the selvedge is classed as waste too). So I spent several years weaving and knitting my little sheeps and coos.
Then I decided I wanted to learn to sew (I could already hand spin yarn and had been writing my own knitting patterns for a while) and dye yarn and the crafts I made slowly turned into my main business and I now weave part time and run my business for the rest of the time I'm awake ⏰️ 😴
You'll see a rare selfie on my social media, you'd much rather see picture of the islands, what I make and of course, my 2 crazy Border Collies, Pip and Ben, affectionately known as the fourleggers, as dogs make social media so much better 🐶. So give my Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok a follow to see more about what I'm up to.
I try to keep my social media a mixture of the things I make, island views, delivery runs to the local shops that stock my makes, hill walking and beaches, weaving and just my daily life here in the Hebrides. I'm certainly not a professional in photography or social media so if you see badly taken pictures/videos please forgive me 🙃.
