Lincoln has good reason to be proud of its artistic credentials – as well as several galleries creativity can be found in almost every corner of the city.
As well as offering outlets to view the talents of others there are also many opportunities to explore your own imagination and see what it can create with some crafty guidance.
Workshops like those run by the Indigo Crow co-operative at its Burton Road gallery have become hugely popular and can be combined with a longer visit to Lincoln to explore its artistic side and so much more.
AMELIA COSGROVE gave gallery’s Wet and Needle Felted Hare Picture workshop a five-star review – find out why below.
Pick a colour, any colour
Every session begins the same way, tutor Eve Marshall opens up her enormous box of merino wool, curls, and silk fibres and lets you go wild. You spend the first hour building up a background, layering wool and texture the way you might build up paint on a canvas, only softer, fluffier, and considerably more forgiving of mistakes.
There's no wrong answer here, which is precisely why it works – with five of us in the room, spanning every skill level from total beginner to seasoned crafter, and not one piece looked remotely like another.
Suds, hands, and a bit of elbow grease
Once you're happy with your layers, the felting itself begins - warm water, a squeeze of washing-up liquid, and roughly 20 minutes of rolling, rubbing and agitating the wool into submission.
It's a strange and satisfying kind of labour, somewhere between doing the washing-up and kneading dough.
(practical note: bring gloves if you're sensitive to washing-up liquid, and this one's best skipped entirely if you have a wool allergy.)
Enter the hare
With your felted meadow finished, out comes a single felting needle, and the mood swings from playful to attentive.
Needle felting is a slower and more fiddly craft. Yet, with every tiny needle jab I made, a meditative rhythm took over me - turns out repeatedly stabbing wool is a sinisterly satisfying way to work out whatever craft rage you didn't know you were carrying.
By the end, an actual hare sits in your actual meadow, ears up, jumping or hiding in your felt flowers - blissfully unaware of how it came to be.
The Woman Behind the Wool
None of it would hold together - literally or otherwise – without the lovely Eve Marshall, who has been felting for close to two decades and teaching it for more than 14 years.
She describes her own work simply as: "I faff with fluff" - creating large, colourful felted artworks inspired by the countryside she lives in and, as she puts it, her ‘wacky brain’.
Her pieces begin life as photographs from her wanders, reimagined through layers of wool, silk and texture.
Those same instincts shape her teaching.
Eve has built her own instant-gratification method specifically so beginners leave with something they're genuinely proud of, no matter their starting point. She's taught people of every age and ability, and it shows in how unintimidating the room feels - supportive rather than instructional, playful rather than prescriptive.
Each workshop, she says, mixes playing with colours with learning new techniques, so students can pick and choose what they want to bring into their own piece.
The gallery
The workshop takes place within The Indigo Crow Gallery, a working creative space that's part artisan shop, part studio, part exhibition gallery.
Alongside regular workshops spanning painting, printing, pottery, jewellery, collage and felting, the gallery hosts changing exhibitions from its eight resident artists - the Crows - who own and run it, plus an artisan shop stocked with locally made art, craft and jewellery.
Why You Should Do It?
You leave with an A4 piece of felted art that's originally your own; sunset intentions, harvest-moon reality, and all - plus soft hands, a strange new respect for wet wool, and the particular calm that comes from three hours of not looking at your phone.
Whimsical, therapeutic, and a genuinely safe space to be creatively terrible at something new.
Five stars; would faff with fluff again.