Posted by I don’t think I have ever, in my life, struggled with finding words as much as I have this past 3 months. Lockdown life is bewildering, challenging, tearful, gloriously quiet, restful, heartachingly sad, furiously angry, grief filled, joyful, and all the feelings inbetween. Often all of the feelings all in one go, which is a…Read more »
Posted by Craft, whether of words or paint, yarn or cloth, has always been the beating heart of my life. The fuel that takes me through each day of my journey in this world. There has never been a time when I have not used creativity as a crutch to hold my head above the stormy waves…Read more »
Posted by My Dad died on the 17th of May 1996 – a Friday afternoon in a busy hospital, a stones throw from what is now my children’s favorite park. I’d traveled up from Uni that morning, jumping on the first train I could get out of Liverpool Lime Street. Mum said he waited, as the…Read more »
Posted by It is the strangest feeling to sit with the cursor blinking, unable to find enough words, the right words, any words to properly describe what is happening in the world right now. I’ve been writing, deleting, writing, for what feels like weeks. Feeling battered by the storm of stories, like an ocean full of currents,…Read more »
Posted by In the time before plastic permeated every part of our lives, hemp was a valuable, sustainable, versatile plant that was cultivated without the hugely negative associations that have been fashioned around it over the last 100 years. A plant that can become food, medicine, textiles, shoes, rope, animal feed/bedding, building material, paper, insulation, bioplastic and…Read more »
Posted by It’s been a quiet start in our little house to this new decade. Much of December and all of January so far has been a blur of illness as one child or other, or me, has succumbed to the coughs, colds and winter infections that fly about so freely as this time of year. We’ve…Read more »
Posted by I’ve always loved it when the thirteenth day of the month falls on a Friday. Friday 13th, despite the negative patriarchal influence, has always been a positive day for me. Maybe somewhere in my DNA, there is the remembrance of the feminine importance of 13. The number of the divine feminine, representative of the thirteen…Read more »
Posted by My email inbox has been full to the brim this last week with Black Friday deals. On books, on haberdashery supplies, on just about anything you can imagine. Those of you who have followed my business for a while, might remember that last year I shut-up-shop for Black Friday weekend in protest against the consumerist…Read more »
Posted by I have often wondered when it was that Western society collectively decided that visibly mended clothes were a mark of reduced status. Of a life worth less. Where a patch or a darn was certainly not acceptable in polite company. Many cultures across the globe value and respect the energy that is used to create…Read more »
Posted by I first learnt to cut and stitch patchwork sitting on the living room floor of family friend Barbara Thompson. Walking into her house, there was always the aroma of cooking spices, books, wool. The walls were covered in bookshelves, almost as though her house was built with stories, not bricks, and the books that didn’t fit…Read more »
