Categories
antique textiles handspinning

Fortune Favours The Spinster

Soon I will be working on a project replicating some Roman linen, found in a stone sarcophagus a metre from my childhood garden. Turns out, a lost Roman road ran along the width of our old orchard and high status burials were found along it. Thereby hangs a fascinating tale but I’ll tell it sometime […]

Categories
local history

Have We Found “The Graves at Tadcaster”?

“Soft Rainy Morn. Bradford Fair. Heard Samuel Myers Mason say when repairing Tadcaster dam they found a great deal many human Skeletons near the Surface…”

Categories
cotton textile histor

Keats and the Belfast Weaver

I’ve had a lifelong obsession with John Keats, and yet not been able to weave him into my work, until now. I had somehow forgotten or missed these words in Keats’ letter to his brother Tom, from the summer of 1818 when he made his walking tour of Westmorland, Scotland and Ireland, writing home to Tom as he lay dying at Well Walk, Edmonton.  How did I forget this? As soon as I saw this paragraph, I knew I’d have to write about it…

Categories
Uncategorized

Talking Tomorrow

…In the Before Times, our talks were mainly in the North of England. But tomorrow, wherever you are, you can come and see us …

Categories
Uncategorized

Journal of the Plague Year

Sort of explains why my input here has been sporadic in the past year…

Categories
Uncategorized

He’s Leaving the Wardrobe, He May Be Some Time…

Over on my other blog, new post about something that lives in my wardrobe. And it’s not moths. Read and enjoy! I won’t repost it here, just send you on an Expedition over there…

Categories
political knitting

The Tangled Skein – or The History of the Decline and Fall of Knitting

… This ‘feminising’ led to knitting being perceived as an ‘idle’ waste of time; an amateur feminine pursuit to be followed safely from within the cage of domesticity; a belittling of both craft and women. “The Little Women” of nineteenth century novels, were kept quiet – and in a back room – by the needle; patronised and diminished into being “small”; their concerns and their Art, also perceived as insignificant…

Categories
Dales

“A Manner of Going Peculiarly of their Own”

“…These men have a decided provincial character; and their galloways also, which are always overloaded, have a manner of going peculiarly their own…”

Categories
West Riding

Progress in Pudsey

“…All this was for nothing, except in some cases a small allowance for a little ale, or cheese and bread…”

Categories
Brexit Monasteries

It Was The Wool That Paid For All

…The church was an early version of the EU; a joined-up economy, where trade was done easily across borders…