Norwich is Pants!

No I am not joining in Harry Hill and any other comedian's cheap jibes at our marvelous city but trying to come up with a witty title to my blog. For a number of years I have been interested in the manufacture of clothing in Britain. So how happy was I to see both a programme about making pants and also a workshop to make them in Magdalen Street both in the same month?

Mary Portas has a new programme called Bottom Line in which she attempts to re-energize the British manufacturing industry by creating her own line of British Knickers. I have not seen all the episodes but I followed a link to the House of Fraser where they appeared to be sold out of said garments, although Liberty London still have some. So things must be going well. I am assuming this is because of peoples desire to buy British rather than their advertising slogan which implies you might buy your pants for the milkman (I wonder if milkandmore who we get our milk delivered from had the same idea, I always thought that 'more' meant a couple of strawberry yoghurts but now I am starting to wonder)

Back to the workshop. My excitement mounted as I entered Makeplace and saw the women gathered at the tables. We were then shown to our sewing machines that had been loaded ready with the correct colour cotton. We opened up our pants kits with ready cut material and soon we were making our own pants. The teacher explained how she had become disillusioned with the manufacture of clothing in China, mainly with the working conditions and now she runs courses to upcyle t-shirts into pants. 'What is upcycling?' one young sewer asks? In my head my hand has shot up to answer: Oh God, I know this, pick me! Pick me!'

I remain calm while the instructor describes how it differs from re-cyling and how it sounds better to say upcyling pants than recycling pants.

After a couple of hours we each have a pair of pants and pose for a group photograph.

You may notice that I got the best deal in that we all paid the same price and I got the most material!

I think I will ask her to do a workshop at the Magdalen Street Celebration......

something to do and someone to do it with

Many years ago I trained as an Occupational Therapist. It was the perfect job for me because I absolutely loved doing stuff. My childhood was filled with evening activities and as a result I had 'Grade 5 piano' and 'was a Queens Guide' on my CV.

At a recent interview I discovered that these things are no longer held in such high esteem, however they made me what I am today so I am glad I did them. As my life progressed I grew bored of achieving and entered a new more spiritual phase in my life where it was more important to do things with people.

The creation of the Magdalen Street Celebration has been a most amazing experience of working alongside wonderful people to create 'something for everyone'. What is great about working on a project is that it is free leisure time. If you go to the gym or join a class you are paying to sit (I think this maybe frowned upon in a gym but my experience is limited) in a room of people you may not interact with. Being part of a project you get to make jokes round a table, drink tea and leave with the feeling you are making the world a better place in some small way.

Everyone takes part according to what they can do. The lovely James knows about music and has organized some great bands for the day. Karen is super organized and has made a spread sheet of all the workshops and stalls and fitted them into the empty shops in Anglia Square. Stefi is mainly bossy so we just did what she told us to do but it meant that in a bunch of lefty liberals at least someone was in charge. Andy was behind the scenes creating amazing graphics to give the celebration its yellow-black-hand print theme. I attended meetings and made jokes mainly.

Oh, and applied for funding, invited the mayor and made 100 metres of bunting (with a lot of help).

The 2nd Magdalen Street Celebration is tomorrow, Saturday 1st October, 10am-4pm, all along Magdalen Street, Norwich, NR. Click here for map and details of activities, stalls and music. line-up

Pride in what we do

We have just seen that third Norwich pride and the first North Norfolk pride this year. It has bought together hundreds of people through its year long events including singing, sewing and art. Its taken me a lot of years and many great friends and mentors over the years to give me the confidence to believe that you can make anything happen. You don't need a lot of money but just the willingness to get lots of people to help you. Norwich pride was run on a tiny budget with lots of help from willing volunteers. Last year of course saw the making of the giant rainbow scarf which used oddments of wool and over a million stitches to make a 40 metre piece of art. In the photograph below you can see it at North Norfolk pride on Cromer beach.

In a group called 'Sew Gay' ( see what we did there?) we made a banner with offcuts of material with over 130 mini people. The library at the forum gave us a free space upstairs and members of the public came and made mini versions of themselves. It was interesting to see how people made themselves recognizable. I tried to knit myself (dont try this at home).

In the top picture you can see me with Peter Tatchell. I asked people for broken brollies and used the material and sewed it onto an old fishing umbrella frame.

Some people from Yarmouth came up to me and said 'I wish we had a Yarmouth pride'. I reassured them that they could make it happen and wished them luck.

all present and correct

It may seem like only the other day that we had the torture of valentines and that it was only recently Christmas and surely we don't have to buy anything until Easter but may I remind you it is mothers day on Sunday?

There is no getting round it really. You can say you are not religious or its just commerical or you dont have a mother (actually that last one would probably be ok) but they will EXPECT something. Apart from my mother who has severe memory loss. But then its her birthday as well and I actually WANT to give her something. Besides which she will go to church on the day and no doubt some cute kid with bunches will thrust a daffodil in her hand and give the game away.

So she is getting knitted gloves. Ok so I might have taken advantage of the fact that she isnt that sure of the seasons but she actually loves the scarf I made her at Christmas and wears it indoors and out.

In fact the not buying things has been going since the beginning of lent but I am not meant to tell anyone but I decided to not buy anything until Easter. This included my flat mates birthday so I had to do some quick thinking. She ended up with a cornishware teapot (that had belonged to me) a mini cardboard cut-out of herself with some paper clothes (you had to have been a girl in the 70's to know what I am talking about) and some homemade brownies.

The picture shows a hat I made as part of the norfolk beanie series. It has pictures of windturbines/windmills on it. Just a little tip if you are knitting a present for someones birthday. They are always on the same date each year and people get funny if you ask them to move it because say, and this happened to a friend of mine, you leave your knitting at a someones house and can't finish the project on time. You may, and again this is not me but a friend of mine, end up knitting in your bedroom in the dark at your parents house hoping to get the gloves finished by tomorrow.

In this image I have re-eacted the scenario of my friend. Anyway I have got to go I have to go do a thing now.

mad as a hatter?

For sometime now I have been studying the idea of creating a hat that is completely made in Norfolk. A Norfolk beanie perhaps. Something that is not merely an experimental piece of wearable art but a viable, affordable and marketable hat.

Finding the wool.
Norfolk is not known for its sheep. Although there are some but it is rarely made into wool on any industral level and there are no spinning factories in East Anglia. There are two places that sell alapca wool alpacas of norfolk and Adzu although I find the wool a bit fluffy and one of them bit me during my research and they are quite ugly (maybe that's why he bit me, he can read my mind). For colour I have used charity shop and left over wool from other projects and the recent closing down of the textile centre in St Benedicts street.

The design.
I spent some time studying local fishermans designs and fairisle patterns before coming up with the windpump pattern as above. The only problem is that most people see a person (dont ask me what the third leg is!) or a white diamond and it takes ages to make. then I came up with the idea of a helmet design but the sides rolled up and made you look like a milkmaid! Lastly I changed the design so it would be like a trapper hat and could fold up in warmer weather.

Costing
A fleece sells for about £1.50 which is more than the cost of hiring a shearer. The black sheep shop in Aylsham sells British wool at £3.30 for 100g which would make one hat. It takes about 4 hours to make one. So you could sell it at £25 and feel like you had earned a wage. In fact I have sold one for this price. Of course knitting can be done in front of the TV. Not anything too complicated or visual. Lark Rise to Candleford would be the kind of thing. Not You've Been Framed or you will miss all the drunk people at weddings and the feeling of superiority from knowing the you have never danced stupidly at a family event or fallen backwards into a paddling pool while playing swingball or been bitten by an animal that you were researching for wool, oh actually those things may have happened.....

Woolly Thinking

"Norwich, with a population of probably under 6,000 in 1377, was the only town (London apart) with a population of over 10,000 in 1524...  The communities of the surrounding rural area were very active in the manufacture of (woollen yarns), and Norwich was the principal centre of their sale.  Norwich's prosperity lasted and her population grew... throughout most of the fifteenth century."

The girls wanted to make some pompoms, so we popped into a local charity shop that we know sells wool. It was only later when I looked at the label, I realised that the “wool” was actually 100% acrylic and made in China.

The next day, I was talking to a friend of mine who owns some sheep. I asked him what he did with the wool. He told me that it costs more to shear a sheep than you can get for the wool. In fact, he couldn’t even give the wool away, no-one wanted it. It’s not so much that it’s hard to turn the raw wool into the knittable kind of wool, but you have to wash it first to get the lanolin out, and it’s that that requires a lot of effort, and you have to be careful that the lanolin doesn’t clog the drain.

It seems to me an odd situation that we have the two ends of demand and supply so close to each other, yet in order to satisfy that demand, we import from many thousands of miles away a product that is actually a substitute for what we really wanted in the first place. And we’re substituting a natural, renewable resource (wool) for one made from chemicals(acrylic). Add to that the fact that people with dry skin buy big pots of lanolin at the chemist, yet it’s a waste-product of the wool-making process that’s simply going down the drain. I’d never really thought it through like that before.

The process whereby a sheep’s winter coat becomes a knittable product clearly requires a bit of thought and effort, but our current system does seem daft. Instead of throwing wool away, we could give our local (or national) farmers and producers an additional income, reduce imports, reduce waste, and revive a part of the economy that has served us, in Norwich's past, very well indeed.

If there are readers out there who would like to get their hands on some wool, or readers who have access to the raw product, do get in touch and I’ll do what I can to match you up.

Quote from English Society in the Later Middle Ages 1348-1500, by Maurice Keen

how many eco-lightbulbs does it take to change a person?

I don't know what this title means and I have a temperature so anything could happen.
Aspirations are much better than resolutions. Although medical aspirations should not be performed except by a trained health practitioner or failing that someone who has seen it done at least once.
The photograph is proof if proof were needed that resolutions do not work. It is a picture of my purse when I was about 12. I have always lost things and continue to do so. So there is no point setting a goal that says 'this year I will not lose anything'. All that will happen is that you will feel sad about losing said item and then sad about failing in your resolution.
What is much more fun is to write a list of things you would like to do in the year. At the end of the year when you come to write a new one you can look at your old list (it will be a nice surprise because you will have forgotten to look at it for a year) and see which things you have done.

At the moment I am thinking mainly about January:

Make a rabbit or squirrel stew you can get these from buylocal (I can't find anyone willing to teach me to shoot a rabbit, I cant think why, maybe people have heard about the incident with the PE teacher and the javelin when I was 13)
Have a session of gift,clothes,book swapping
Learn to make stuff as part of the reskilling group such as making material from plastic bags
Do a stand up session about being green

Another nice thing to do is to look back at what you have achieved in the year, this would be my list;
helped to create the Magdalen street festival
made a bag out of felting a jumper
did my first stand up gig at a party
wrote a reading about green Christmas and read it out at the Octagon Chapel
had another year of not buying any new clothes ( apart from fairtraide underwear).

And if you think ethical is not sexy then think again.



Any answers to the question in the title are greatly received.

Christmas shopping part three - things you can make

I have decided to do a hamper for my parents when I go and see them. In it I will put some plum jam I bought at a fair, a Christmas cake I made (not the one in the picture, mine was more burnt looking well er actually burnt, but I am thinking icing), some Chocolate brownies (jamie olivers recipe is amazing) some fairtrade wine and some cheese (binham blue maybe).

With one of my friends I showed her a book of felted gifts from which she chose a small bag which I made by boiling down one of my mums cardigans (before you ask, yes she HAD thrown it out and no she wasnt wearing it)

Another friend I knitted a caftiere cosy which I tried out on his caftiere when he wasnt looking and then realized it was too small and had to knit some extensions. It looks cute in a look-my-coffee-pot-is-wearing-a-balaclava kind of way.

Of course you have to have started this process back in November when you would have been pouring alcohol into your cake every week, practising your brownies and stealing I mean repurposing your mums sweaters. So bookmark this page for next year and get to the shops there are only 168 hours of shopping left!
or go to this website...http://www.buynothingchristmas.org

Christmas shopping part one - green forgiveness

Having been bought up a Christian I am well versed in feeling guilty and this time of year is the perfect opportunity for honing those skills. To help with the trauma of buying someone what they want instead of an ecologically sound gift I have developed a kind of green atonement or carbon offsetting for the individual.

Of course if you are Kirsty Allsopp you will have unlimited time and a constant supply of soap makers, seamstresses and flea markets and all your grandchildren will be delighted to receive a secondhand jam jar full with jelly beans instead of a galaxy tab but for mortal souls we have to make compromises.

So the next three days I am offering my thoughts on how to negotiate the season relatively guilt free (keep watch for my survive January blog)

My first carbon offsetting is to buy as many ecologically sounds gifts as possible for those that will accept them. Norwich has a number of places you can now buy handmade goods. St Lawrences textile centre has a great selection of vintage clothes and handmade crafts ( where you can also find Anne McCrudden's highly sought after teacosies)St Gregories Centre for the arts http://www.stgregorysart.co.uk also has great secondhand, homemade, vintage goods and the most amazing cake. Elm Hill has several good shops and one new craft shop that has opened has handmade socks amongst other things.

The gloves I am sporting in the photograph are from a shop in Scotland. They are made by a 90 year old local woman who used charity wool knitted to a pattern named after the Duke of Buccleuch who encouraged the hand knitting industry over 150 years ago.The pattern is called Sanquhar named after a town in Dumfries-shire.

Another offsetting is to come home from shoppping and do some mending and drink some nettle tea, you will feel very groud (green and proud).

More tomorrow on green gifts....

What do you do if you make a stool and it turns out a bit low

We will come to the answer to that in a minute. But first I want to tell you about my clothes situation. Two years ago I decided to stop buying new clothes. So I now use a variety of methods for buying clothes and only buy new pants and nothing else.
I buy my 'pants for poverty' from 'Alls fair' in St Gregorie's alley in the lanes. Although I am looking for a different make as they have just made the womens pants very small and the mens are very, as the lady in the shop put it, 'shaped'.
Anyway, enough about my underwear. So these are the following methods for getting secondhand clothes.

Charity shops - okay so I know they smell and sometimes things are more expensive than in Primark BUT you don't get a warm feeling in Primark of having given to a local charity.

Borrowing- there is nothing like borrowing for a special occasion. After all you cant wear it twice anyway unless you are a man of course. You have to be aware though that if you borrow something you are subject to the 'its borrowed so it will break' rule. Which mostly applies to bikes.

Swapping - Clothes Swapping parties for the uninitiated are where you invite your friends round and dump your unwanted clothes in the middle of the room and then strip off and try stuff on like clothes are going out of fashion. Or you can have a very formal affair with labels and earl gray tea etc. There is a pack you can download
http://labourbehindthelabel.org/support-us/item/845-clothes-swap-pack

Giving - once you start giving away your clothes people will just start to give YOU stuff they don't want. Its great except some friends ( you know who you are) start eying up the stuff you are still wearing.

Ebay - this is an amazing place. You can literally put in skinny black jeans size whatever and there will be some. Or you can get it to tell you when there are some. Also a local recycling community interest company collects clothes from people and sells them on Ebay, you can find it at http://www.wombling.org.uk/

Stealing - my mother has a large number of clothes that she does not wear. She has dementia so after she has agreed to give them to me she forgets and takes them back. So I have to nick them back again but it passes the time.

Making - I have a local tailor (your style on Magdalen Road) who will make you a skirt to measure for £20 or shorten you trousers to capri for £5.
I also could not pass a whole blog without mentioning knitting. Its slow and more expensive than buying but that's not why we do it. We do it because we cannot stop!!

Lastly on the theme of make do and mend I add a photo from the Daisy International Charity shop in Magdalen Street. To show what to do if you make a stool that is a bit too short..

Warning this post may contain knots

For the last 5 months I have been creating a mammoth woolly to celebrate Norwich pride. It has been an amazing project. Why? Because the council let us hang is on the balcony at city hall? Because it is made of a million stitches and is over 30 metres long? Because the EDP printed a picture of it and lots of other pride stuff despite being a 'family' paper. No, none of these things. What was amazing was that hundreds of people came together to make something happen. People from all walks of life. People who would not normally associate. But they wanted to make something. There was a drive to create, to knit, to commune. There is something so simple about sitting round a table and making stuff. Friendships have been forged, alliances made and lots of people have rekindled their love of knitting.

The only problem is what to do next. Knitted dishcloths anyone?

bloggoff ( buy one blog - get one free)

yesterday i accidentally uploaded my blog to the news bit so today you have two blogs.

Its my birthday and to celebrate I am having loads of people over on Sunday to the textile centre on St benedicts street to knit. If you want to understand why then watch the video.
Today i will also be;
eating blackberry jam made from Mousehold heath blackberries ( thanks Karen for this)
walking into town to have lunch ( is the bicycle shop any good?)
listening to a blackbird in the garden that sings to the tune of camp town races
maybe dropping in at St Clements church that is open every Saturday lunchtime for history and chat
tonight we will go to my friends house and order a takeaway
stroking my dogs face hair into her 'go faster' style

falling asleep if I can because I will be too excited about knitting tomorrow...

why did the environmentalist cross the road?

Well of course i do not know the answer to this joke but it got me thinking about travel.

last week I was due to see my parents in Peterborough and felt too ill to drive so I went by train.
Interestingly although I did not train it for any environmental reasons I found that it had a number of advantages over driving
1. It was about the same price as the cost of petrol for the journey
2. It was about half and hour quicker
3. I was able to knit which i always find awkward when driving even with an automatic. ( this IS a joke)
By the way, a good place to buy wool in Norwich is Norfolk Yarn on Aylsham road.
www.norfolkyarn.co.uk

Ebay Snowflake jumper - £15
gloves knitted by mother - free
souvenir hat from Russia - free
clothes swapping Caterpillar Boots - free
snowball - models own

Saving the planet and looking geeky - priceless

How to knit a snowflake

This year I decided not to buy any new stuff for presents or at least as little as possible. So for a friend of mine I knitted this facecloth ( or dishcloth) with bamboo yarn. I got the pattern off a website which has loads of patterns. This one is a snowflake which like all snowflakes is completely unique but that is because there is a mistake!
www.knittingpatterncentral.com/directory/dishcloths.php