Final Week Part 2 – The Weekend

By Saturday our luck had really changed re the weather, though 4 weeks of wonderful warm sunshine in September was an amazing run. Rainy sleety awfulness had set in and the idea of creating solar jars in a blizzard somehow didn’t seem promising. A rolling fire later and we were ready for visitors! Once again…

Final Week Part 1 – Equinox Harvest

Well we did it… Our ‘Open September’ has come to an end, and what a grand success. Coming out of lockdown and with a very limited growing season, we managed with a lot of kindness and help to open ‘BALCONYLIFE A Collection and Nomadic Dye Garden’ to the public. With the final week approaching, unsurprisingly we had…

Fourth Week – Experimental Brushes and an Indigo Taster

Week 4 of our ‘Open September’, and the garden is thriving – the madder is loving its new more spacious container and the weld finally looks like its alive and willing to take part in this project! The woad is doing well in the troughs and fortunately whatever was picnicking on it has moved on….

Third Week – White Linen, Indigo and a Birthday

Week three and we have been dyeing in the garden, even if it was just reviving an old indigo vat, which due to circumstance has lain idle this year. The impromptu garden set up with Cat worked a treat. It’s always a little daunting when planning a ‘play date’ as you never know what your…

Second Week – Open Studio and Garden

Our first full week (well Thursday to Sunday) of being open to the public has been a great success, with a stream of neighbours and inquisitive locals plus friends and colleagues from further afield coming to visit us. It has been quite a challenge to get the studio organised so that visitors can safely enter…

Restrictions – (Un)woven Reflections on Lockdown

This weekend at CraftCentral is a wonderful show, Restrictions exhibiting work created during lockdown by an international collection of artists. ‘Restrictions, unraveling and the re-creation of new structures in contemporary textiles are the themes of this black and white exhibition.’  This is an independent exhibition organised by `Freeweaver Studio `London and is the first in…

Opening Weekend and Journey Retraced

The first three days of our Open September went excellently, with the weather holding and lots of local visitors from the neighbourhood dropping by. One gentleman who remembers the Florence Trust moving in in ’88 said how nice it was to be welcomed into the church grounds after the gate being locked for so long….

Balcony Life – A Nomadic Dye Garden

This summer we have been creating and installing a nomadic natural dye garden in St Saviours grounds. These photos document the creation of the garden, from the initial clearing and building of a wheelchair friendly walkway and socially distanced treestump seating (built by the wonderful Steve Allbutt) to where we are at the moment. The…

Citroën Extravaganza!

Originally posted on Modern Eccentrics:
Somewhere in the Lot is a rather lovely barn and house, recently constructed, sitting unassumingly in the surrounding countryside. But underneath, cut into the gentle slope is something rather surprising – an underground garage full of treasure. One man’s life long passion has resulted in a wonderful collection consisting of…

Glastonbury 2009 Part 2

So it rained for the first half of the weekend and then was gloriously sunny for the rest of it so I got the knee deep mud AND the wonder of waking soaking in sweat broiling in my tent! 2009 was a great lineup with the reformed Blur closing the show on the Sunday night,…

Glastonbury 2009 Part 1

3 months before my 40th birthday, I achieved a long overdue milestone and went to Glastonbury for the first time. The weekend surpassed my wildest expectations – wonderful company with a bunch of great guys, the music was awesome encompassing virtually every genre and at any given time there was at least 3 bands I…

I remember…

Originally posted on Modern Eccentrics:
It’s 25 years since my first Pride (LGB as it was then… QUEER as it should be now) and so much has changed – charging for entry, corporate sponsorship everywhere, a neutrering of political ambitions, the lack of reference to any form of sexuality in the title… Pride should be…