Having been inside a yurt for the first time at 'Middlewood' in June 2001, I was really taken by their lovely feel. I then stayed inside another yurt when the Council of Management visited the Isle of Wight for a meeting later in the Summer & it reminded me how much I liked them. So when I came up with the idea of travelling down to Spain for the Winter at the end of the year, a yurt seemed the obvious dwelling to take with me. I had been keen to make the whole structure as I have long harboured a desire to build my own home.

 However, at that point it was clear that I wouldn't have the time to do that if I wanted to take it to Spain with me. So I decided that it was probably more practical for me to buy the frame & to stitch the cover myself. I had bought 'The Complete Yurt Handbook' & the cover definitely sounded more straightforward to make. I decided to buy a 16' frame, as it would be large enough for me to live in for an extended period of time & ordered it in what seemed like good time for my trip.

 I travelled up to Wales to collect it from Steve Place who makes the frames at his rural smallholding from Ash thinnings from his local wood. The countryside was very beautiful & so was the frame, mine was apparently the 99th he had sold. I got a tour of the small forest garden they had made there & then loaded up the car with the frame. It all went into the car, but there was more than I had realised & it was heavy! I'm sure that with a roof rack it would have been a lot easier, but it did make me consider whether I needed to get a bigger vehicle if I was to drive down to Spain safely.

 Back at home, I put it up for the first time & measured it for the canvas. A call to the local marquee people ascertained the sizes of secondhand canvas that were available & I then did a few calculations to see what I needed. I bought a large piece (25m x 5m) at a cost of a little more than £1 per square metre, which was a particular bargain as instead of being 10 years old (when they usually sell off their canvasses), it was only half that, purely because it no longer fitted the frame it was designed for.

 My first attempts at stitching the cover were frustrating failures. I had a lovely old Singer treadle sewing machine & 'The Complete Yurt Handbook' had informed me that for 12oz canvas (which I had) I should be able to use such a machine. My experience though was anything but & the thread that I had been advised to use by the canvas people wouldn't go through the needles I had. I needed bigger needles, but then I discovered them very difficult to get hold of to fit the machine. Eventually I found some, but then the thread was still too big for the bobbin & it kept jamming in the machine. It just wasn't up to the job. There was only one thing for it, I needed a bigger machine, but I didn't see the point in buying one for a single job. Did I want to go into business making yurt covers? It would certainly be something I could do at the farm. Days passed & then weeks & months..... Various things kept me occupied, but I had developed a mental block about the cover. Along with the Winter gradually passing me by & the reason for needing it so urgently gone, it just didn't get done.

 The following Summer, Jane who had been living in a tipi at the farm, decided that she wanted to make a new cover for it. Once again the incentive to get on with my own project reappeared. We discovered that we could rent an industrial machine for £50 a month (for a minimum of 3 months) & we figured that between us it would be worth it for us both to get our covers made. I had a feeling that it may take me some time, but I wasn't quite prepared for exactly how much work was involved. I had sewn things up before, I made a rucsac & a padded jacket when I was a lot younger & wasn't afraid of using a sewing machine. But this one was a lot bigger.... & faster; I had been used to hand operated or treadled machines, this one just whizzed along & it took me a while to get the hang of it. Nevertheless, it certainly coped with the job in hand, it only struggled & started breaking needles when I asked it to sew several thicknesses of canvas to doubled over webbing around plastic windows. Not surprising perhaps that it found that difficult, but they then became bits that I had to sew by turning every stitch over by hand. Blisters & painful wrists were the result of these time consuming jobs.

 'The Complete Yurt Handbook' was a very informative read & well worth buying, but I did find that at times it lacked some detail that I really needed. Some of the diagrams were unclear about how to stitch things together & I had to figure a few bits of the design out for myself (no bad thing that though). Also because every frame is different, the patterns for the covers that the book offered didn't really help me much as I had to recalculate all the measurements for my own.

 Perhaps the worse thing about the job was that the canvas was impregnated with a fire retardant. Quite a sensible idea that seems & maybe when the canvas is new it isn't such a problem, but I found that the pounding of the needle on the canvas brought up lots & lots of white powder. This got everywhere; in my hair, my clothes & worst of all my lungs. Had it not been so bad I may have enjoyed the process much more, but the experience certainly made it clear to me that I didn't want to be doing that for a living! A good job then that I didn't go out & buy a machine.

 All in all it took me the equivalent of two whole weeks of working all day & well into each evening to do all the stitching & it wasn't until December that I finally got to fit the cover for the first time. The only way I found to get the roof to fit properly was to make it in two halves using as accurate measurements as I could & then fit them together on the frame to get the correct join.

  I designed the walls to hang from the roof & in two pieces, so that on really hot days the back can be opened up too. I've since found though that just removing the crown cover provides plenty of ventilation to keep the yurt cool in the summer. This is further aided by the blankets I lined the roof with, which also keep the warmth in when the temperature drops. I made the centre of the crown cover from clear plastic, so that plenty of light comes in the roof & at night a few stars are visible too. I used elastic to keep the 'arms' of the cover flush with the roof.

 The windows in the walls allow in more light & give nice snapshot views of the surrounding orchard. I stitched flaps on the outside of them to give privacy when needed. The door is double thickness canvas with pockets sewn in to hold ash battens which keep it rigid across the door frame & give it weight, but allow it to be folded up onto the roof when required.

 Almost the last thing that I had to do was fit the woodburner. I sat it upon a beautiful piece of slate, given to me for helping someone with their garden, with a second piece behind to protect the wooden frame. The metal sheeting that I used to make the collar for the chimney came out of a skip, I bolted two sheets together around the inside of a hole I had cut & hemmed in the roof. The floor is covered with recycled carpets & I have collected a few recycled bits of furniture too to make it nice & homely. I even have a healing couch, but there is not always room for this inside.

 The solar panel has been attached to the roof & now powers the internal lighting. I recycled an old bread bin & attached the charge controller & several meters & sockets to it, so I can plug in various items & monitor both the power into & out of the leisure battery. There are two lights, one uses half the current of the other, to minimise battery use unless the brighter light is really needed.

 It's great to finally have the yurt finished & now sited just a few yards from my mobile home. I will keep it up during the warmer months, but as soon as the weather turns wetter in the autumn, I will take it down & store it to maximise the life of the canvas. I don't want to have to stitch another one of those too soon! The yurt is such a beautiful structure that I want to give others the opportunity to experience it too. It has already been used by a lot of people visiting; for various events, social gatherings, healing & for staying overnight. Everyone who spends time in it invariably loves it & I understand exactly what they mean.