Red Cottage is

the home and fiber studio

of artist Erin Carlson

Red Cottage is about craft, fiber, and gardening.

I primarily focus on weaving and needle felt, although that already feels hemmed in. There will be basketry, dyeing, and carving as well.

I weave on a Schacht Mighty Wolf floor loom in the attic-turned-studio which is slant-ceilinged with excellent views of the yard and upper lot. The needle felt is mostly realistic renderings of animal subjects, but I also offer more whimsical cards, stickers, and prints of my felted work.

It is a home of experiments.  

Seed starting.  Bread rising.  Cider fermenting. Compost heap after compost heap. 

There is all the time in the world here and somehow not enough time for every craft and idea.  The raised beds need to be built then oiled then filled, the seedlings hardened off in the little greenhouse, the daffodil bulbs divided and spread throughout the lower meadow. The days are always too short here, and on long winter nights we crawl into bed long before the fire is out.

A row of blue spruces line the driveway like ancient sentinels, and the house, built by my grandfather and great grandfather, is low and meandering like a burrow.

And of course there are the gardens.  

The front sloping lawn is being converted into a kind of cottage prairie with grasses as well as native plants and some cottage classics.  After the spring bulbs give way to the herbaceous perennials, there is eupatorium, iron weed, mullein, perennial sunflowers, echinaceas, campanulas, ageratum, bee balms and lemon balms, yarrows, and of course the whole thing is studded with alliums and camassia lilies and the joyous self-seeding annual volunteers.  Height is achieved with Poplar branch trellises for the sweet peas, cucumbers, and luffas as well as a new iron rose arch.

There is the fragrant herb corner, the raised vegetable beds, a stout and sturdy rhubarb, the row of peonies, the little asparagus patch, and rows of peas nestled in with the three varieties of poppies.  There are raspberry bushes, black currants, a forsythia hedge, and let’s not forget the victorian stumpery or the growing collection of digitalis. My newest passion is roses and you can watch along with me as they grow from the bare roots planted in April.

I hope to offer you inspiration, some advice and tutorials, and also a little shop in case you want a piece of Red Cottage in your own home.