woad 2

I thought I was going to have to call this post "oh woad is me" (and it may come to that eventually). After sowing the seeds in great excitement and watching them germinate and sprout, they just seemed to stop and enter a period of stasis. After a few weeks the leaves started to get a bit bigger, but the little stems didn’t get any bigger and don’t look strong enough to hold up the plants.
Anyway, Stu and I decided we just had to go for it. We went up to the allotment and took the plastic sheeting off a patch of earth. We dug over the top layer and pulled out the couch grass and raked and levelled and then planted the little seedlings. (When I say "we", it was mostly Stu doing the heavy stuff and me getting to do the fun bits – but Iris helped as well).
The plastic collars are supposed to give them some protection from slugs, but really they’ve just got to take their chances – after all it was a weed originally!

continuity

Whenever I have a workshop clear-out I come across this.



It's a canvas-work rug that my mother started in the sixties. She spent quite a lot of time on it, but never finished it. When she died in 1992 I took it on, intending to finish it myself. Clearly, this hasn't yet happened. I have done some work on it, but the wool is very fibrous and makes my eyes itch. It's never going to be a rug now as one of the wool colours has virtually run out, but I think I could just about even off the ends and turn it into a big fat floor cushion. One day!