When I was in my late teens, I bought a calligraphy marker. Possibly I bought a set of them; I can't remember now. And when I tried using it, I discovered an important fact. Anyone, actually, can do basic calligraphy, because the main thing is the shape of
Right now I'm in the middle of making my first Verdun woven T-shirt. There will be more to come; it's actually a nice pattern now I've tweaked it to suit. As I mentioned previously, it is American, and it is all in inches, which
I'll start by saying I'm not an all-out AI enthusiast. I have programmed it on a limited scale, and I do find it fascinating; nonetheless I also have some serious concerns about it, and anywhere AI is being used I need to know that those concerns
I'm not one for going on holiday anywhere, but I'm giving myself the rest of this week off (and possibly also the following Monday). I hadn't been planning to do so, but there are two main reasons. One is that I had a stoma
You've seen my regular netting needles, and these are not they. My regular netting needles are made of steel, they're very narrow, and they carry a lot of string (or thread, depending on the size). These? They're bamboo, they came from eBay, and their
Ah, mediaeval recipes. They're eternally fascinating (I saw one recently which began "Take a sausage and kerf hym in gobettes" - what's not to like there?), but I can't help feeling that they were more mnemonics than actual recipes. The actual recipes,
I love sewing. And I love open-source. So when I found out that someone had actually put the two together, I just had to go and investigate; and what I found was quite out of this world. Freesewing.eu is not like any other pattern site you've ever
Just over eighteen months ago, a young woman died in hospital in Katowice in Poland. She was no stranger to that hospital, having been admitted many times during her short life. I don't know her exact age, but she was certainly only in her early twenties. Her death,
I'm not an albino. I'm just extremely melanin-deficient, to the point where every time I go to hospital someone, at some point, asks me in concerned tones if I'm always that pale. And the answer is: yes. Yes, I am. I know what I&
I have the first skirt which is suitable for mediaeval garb; at that point - in fact, for the entire Middle Ages and earlier periods of European history - you had a choice of linen or wool, and if you were feeling really fancy you could mix them, and so
We all make mistakes, and drama groups are no exception to that rule, especially not very new and highly enthusiastic ones. So I'm not blaming any of them for what I'm about to relate, but... it was still kind of frustrating. The first thing I asked
So, as I think I mentioned the other day, I am now the proud owner of a galvanised bucket; and once you have one of those, the world of dyes is your oyster. And, while dyeing fabric is always a fun thing to do, I realised that I now also