Whether it be knitting on giant needles or leading craft trips to Morocco, the textile artist Ingrid Wagner is determined to push the boundaries. She talks to Women's Editor Sarah Foster

ON setting eyes on Ingrid Wagner she looks a little well, eccentric. Today she's teamed a purple top with sage green jeans and bright red boots and topped them off with a green scarf that is resplendent in two shades. Her earrings don't appear to match - though what would I know, I suppose - but the most striking thing of all is Ingrid's shock of bright red hair (it looks remarkably like fire and stands up straight in rigid spikes). If not an artist, as she is, she'd be on children's tv.

Though Ingrid might be out of place in any office in the world she looks entirely at home in her own studio in Newcastle.

It is as colourful as she is, with shelves of yarn in every shade, and though haphazard and chaotic, it has a certain kind of charm. This is where Ingrid does her work - she makes and sells things using textiles - and it is also where she passes on her skills to other people. A current favourite is big knitting, for which she uses giant needles, and while in principle at least, it's just like granny used to do, it does appear a bit surreal.

"I went to a workshop where I saw somebody else doing it," explains Ingrid, who lives in Sunderland. "I was already knitting with 12 strands of wool together, but as soon as I saw the really big needles that interested me straight away because I make big textiles anyway and it appealed to my sense of humour. I just love the absurdity."

While pretty new to the North-East she says it's proving very popular. She runs her own big knitting workshops and you imagine they'd be fun. "In the workshops you learn how to control maybe 15 or 20 strands of wool or material and you can make a scarf in a couple of hours," says Ingrid. "It's redefining the image of hand knitting. A jumper can take you three years to finish and that's why people get bored with it, but with this you are able to make a throw for your sofa in 12 hours - I think that's pretty good. The other thing that people love about it is that you can play with colour."

As well as knitting giant pieces Ingrid also hand-makes rugs. She has a special tufting' gun which fires the yarns onto the background and this again is something others have the chance to have a go at. Both crafts are part of her own business, Ingrid Wagner Rug and Art Creation, which is her UK-based concern, but Ingrid Wagner Real World Journeys is another major project.

"We did the first pilot weaving trip in August 2005 and it was a great success, so 2006 was our first year of operation,"

she says. "We now run weaving trips, painting trips, cooking trips, and you can go on an eight-day trip to study calligraphy, mosaics and interior design wall effects."

How this all started makes a convoluted tale. A keen explorer - she's lived in Russia and a host of other countries - as part of Ingrid's textiles degree she got the chance to visit Morocco. She spent a month there on her own and was inspired by all its culture, but her bid to take it back did not turn out as she had thought.

"I studied North African textiles while I was there and made some contacts in the mountain markets and a month later, I went back with a van and a co-driver and brought 50 Moroccan carpets back to sell," says Ingrid. "It was my first big lesson in business - it taught me that I didn't know enough about it and that's why I went back to do a masters at Northumbria - and it taught me that I didn't just want to import carpets. Ethically, it didn't sit well with me to import carpets from a still-developing country.

I wanted to put something back into it, so instead I had the idea to take people to Morocco to see how the carpets were made."

From there the trips developed naturally, with Ingrid simply choosing crafts that were traditional in the country and taking visitors to learn them. Unlike on normal package tours they're squarely thrust into the culture. "I think the best way you can learn about a culture is to have an on-the-ground experience," says Ingrid. "You learn a bit of language and you get to experience the everyday life of the people. For the weaving, for example, we go to a village about an hour away from Marrakech and we've got three girls who do the teaching for us, whose homes we stay at."

Ensuring every trip is ethical is of paramount importance, so while the visitors learn a skill the locals reap financial benefits. "The girls are all paid for their time and we go to visit the local dyeing operation, so clients can have their wool dyed to whatever colour they want, and the dyers are all paid for their work," explains Ingrid, again referring to the weaving trip. "Everybody on the trip is provided with a small frame on which to make their own piece of work, so the local frame makers are all paid for their work, and obviously the weaver's mother is paid for doing the cooking for us, et cetera, so it's economics that we're putting back in."

She'd like to think the trips do more than this, however. In bringing together different cultures she feels they foster understanding. "The weaving thing is very much a woman's world over in Morocco so on the last trip we all had our hands and feet hennaed, and that's a real social occasion, so it was a real girls' thing to do - it was lovely," says Ingrid.

She's now been trading for a year with both the businesses she runs and while the going has been tough - a normal day is 14 hours - she says that things are going well. As far as Real World Journeys goes she feels she's tapped into a market. "There's a lot of competition out there in the travel market, but now is the right time to be doing what I'm doing because people are looking for something different, and sustainable development and responsible travel are high on the agenda," says Ingrid.

The future plan is to expand - in both her areas of business - and she would like to take her trips to countries other than Morocco. The main thing is she loves her work and wouldn't think of changing jobs. "I love what I do," enthuses Ingrid. "It's tremendously satisfying because I'm using all the skills I've got."

* For more information call 0191- 2289888, email info@ingrid wagner.com or visit www.ingrid wagner.com