Just to say that this is the work of the UK-based artist @foragedfibres (instagram, Facebook) and that she often uses native British plants that she collects without damaging the environment, like dandelion stems, flag iris, English Ivy, etc. She also uses plants that behave invasively, like bindweed. But in general she is using indigenous UK plants that are overlooked and/or unwanted, and harvesting them ethically.
So I'm trying to make folk linen pants from sowing to sewing.
Second post (here's first)
It's been about 60 days since sowing (it's 22nd of June). It's looking so pretty and started blooming about 55th day. I've been watering it one or two wheelbarrows of every 2 weeks, which I thought would be too little but it's growing pretty good. It's still not that high (about over the knee) and I doubt it'll get much higher sadly. That means lower grade of fibers but whatever. It'll be fine.
Every now and again there are parts laying down and I've been seeing some hares running about so they probably hide in it tramping down the plants. But it gets up no problem so all good. Maybe next time I'll put up a little fence around it.
Also idk when should I harvest it bc all the info is about oil flax, not textile flax, and even then it's contradictory sometimes. But either way it's around 100-120th day, so we're still only halfway.
Next up I need to start thinking about scuthing it, and it requires some equipment. But it's easy enough to build on my own probably. It should be something like this flax-brake:
And then this kind of metal comb, which I'll make just by densly putting nails in a blank:
So yeah, that's the plans for the near future. Here's a bonus flax video if you stayed till the end ❤️
This is so exciting good luck OP! I’ve only ever gotten as far as the retting stage myself, but I still hold homegrown linen as a goal.
pirates of the caribbean really introduced an eldritch octopus man who kills indiscriminately and torments the dead as their poster villain and then you watch the movies and it's like, "oh no, actually the worst villain in this series is a small white british man who functions as the herald of capitalism" and that was very very brave of them
Cyprus the Microraptor! 🦖🌲
another CraftyIntention’s pattern that i’ve been meaning to do for a while. a challenge, but a fun one!
I’m sorry friends, but “just google it” is no longer viable advice. What are we even telling people to do anymore, go try to google useful info and the first three pages are just ads for products that might be the exact opposite of what the person is trying to find but The Algorithm thinks the words are related enough? And if it’s not ads it’s just sponsored websites filled with listicles, just pages and pages of “TOP FIFTEEN [thing you googled] IMAGINED AS DISNEY PRINCESSES” like… what are we even doing anymore, google? I can no longer use you as shorthand for people doing real and actual helpful research on their own.
I was trying to write, but there are obstacles and they keep closing my documents
sometimes i say things on twitter and then make a little graph about it
fan function: i want to solve the canon for X
fan friction: i want to add X to canon
fan fraction: i want to divide the canon by zero
Happy birthday, Selka! Today this smart and spirited sea otter is turning 11 years old! 🎂
Selka was originally rescued by Aquarium staff as a stranded pup. She was brought to the Aquarium and raised by surrogate sea otter mom extraordinaire, Rosa!
After being released to the wild, Selka stranded again due to a shark bite. She returned to the Aquarium and was rehabilitated. That’s when she joined our furry family of otters. Since then she has been an excellent surrogate mom to rescued otter pups. Her easygoing and inquisitive nature is ideal for raising the next generation of mighty (cute) mustelids.
Help us sea-lebrate Selka by leaving her a birthday wish in the comments! 💖
You know how sometimes an old fandom thrusts its skeletal arm out of the grave, grabs you by the neck, and drags you down into the dirt?
Thinking about these assholes again, for the first time since ~2008.
Shout out to all the janitors that clean public bathrooms. Seriously thank you. You make going to public bathrooms a little more bearable when it’s clean. You’re all under appreciated heroes.
it takes like half a second to thank janitors/custodial workers and wish them a nice day with a smile and you should definitely be doing it
and shout out to anyone else who has to clean public bathrooms.
front end workers at grocery stores, fast food workers, people who work before and after hours at small schools, daycare workers, and anyone i’m missing. you were probably not properly trained how to do this and you still do it. thank you, too.
reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics
Hey bestie whats a narrow boat? I saw you tag that on something you reblogged and I'm pretty curious now!
- Terry Darlington, Narrow Dog to Carcassone
A narrowboat (all one word) is a craft restricted to the British Isles, which are connected all over by a nerve-map of human-made canals. To go up and down hills, the canals are spangled with locks (chambers in which boats can be raised or lowered by filling or emptying them with water.) As Terry says above, the width of the locks was somewhat randomly determined, and as a result, the British Isles have a narrow design of lock - and a narrowboat to fit through them. A classic design was seventy feet long and six feet wide. Starting in the 18th century, and competing directly with trains, canal “barges” were an active means of transport and shipping. They were initially pulled along the towpaths by horses, and you can still see some today!
Later, engines were developed.
Even after the trains won the arms race, it was a fairly viable freight service right up until WW2. It’s slow travel, but uses few resources and requires little human power, with a fairly small crew (of women, in WW2) being capable of shifting two fully laden boats without consuming much fossil fuel.
In those times the barges were designed with small, cramped cabins in which the boaters and their families could live.
During its heyday the narrowboat community developed a style of folk art called “roses and castles” with clear links to fairground art as well as Romani caravan decor. They are historically decorated with different kinds of brass ornaments, and inside the cabins could also be distinctively painted and decorated.
Today, many narrowboats are distinctively decorated and colorful - even if not directly traditional with “roses and castles” they’ll still be bright and offbeat. A quirky name is necessary. All narrowboats, being boats, are female.
After a postwar decline, interest in the waterways was sparked by a leisure movement and collapsing canals were repaired. Today, the towpaths are a convenient walking/biking trail for people, as they connect up a lot of the mainland of the UK, hitting towns and cities. Although the restored canals are concrete-bottomed, they’re attractive to wildlife. Narrowboats from the 1970s onward started being designed for pleasure and long-term living. People enjoy vacationing by hiring a boat and visiting towns for a cuter, comfier, slower version of a campervan life. And a liveaboard community sprang up - people who live full-time on boats. Up until the very restrictive and nasty laws recently passed in the UK to make it harder for travelling peoples (these were aimed nastily at vanlivers and the Romani, and successfully hit everyone) this was one of the few legal ways remaining to be a total nomad in the UK.
Liveaboards can moor up anywhere along the canal for 28 days, but have to keep moving every 28 days. (Although sorting out the toilet and loading up with fresh water means that a lot of people move more frequently than that.) you can also live full-time in a marina if they allow it, or purchase your own mooring. In London, where canal boats are one of the few remaining cheapish ways to live, boats with moorings fetch the same prices as houses. It can be very very hard for families to balance school, parking, work, and all the difficulties of living off-grid- but many make it work. It remains a diverse community and is even growing, due to housing pressures in the UK. Boats can be very comfortable, even when only six feet wide. When faced with spending thousands of pounds on rent OR mooring up on a nice canal, you can see why it seems a romantic proposition for young people, and UK television channels always have slice-of-life documentaries about young folks fixing up their very own quirky solar-powered narrowboat. I don’t hate; I did it myself.
If you’re lucky, you might even meet some of the cool folks who run businesses from their narrowboats: canal-side walkers enjoy bookshops, vegan bakeries, ice-cream boats, restaurants, artists and crafters. There are Floating Markets and narrowboat festivals. It’s generally recognised that boaters contribute quite a lot to the canal - yet there are many tensions between different kinds of boaters (liveaboards vs leisure boaters vs tourists) as well as tensions with local settled people, towpath users like cyclists, and fishermen. I could go on and on explaining this rich culture and dramas, but I won’t.
Phillip Pullman’s Gyptians are a commonly cited example of liveaboards - although they were based on the narrowboat liveaboards that Pullman knew in Oxford, their boats are actually Dutch barges. Dutch barges make good homes but are too wide to access most of the midlands and northern canals, and are usually restricted to the south of the UK. So they’re accurate for Bristol/London/Oxford, and barges are definitely comfier to film on. (Being six feet wide is definitely super awkward for a boat.) but in general Dutch barges are less common, more expensive and can’t navigate the whole system.
However, apart from them, there are few examples of narrowboat depictions that escaped containment. So it’s quite interesting that there is an entire indigenous special class of boat, distinctive and highly specialised and very cute, with an associated culture and heritage and folk art type, known to all and widely celebrated, and ABSOLUTELY UNKNOWN outside of the UK - a nation largely known around the world for inflicting its culture on others. They’re a strange, sweet little secret - and nobody who has ever loved one can resist pointing them out for the rest of their lives, or talking about them when asked to. Thank you for asking me to.
Is this what the boat is in Angelina, Star of the Show (from the Angelina Ballerina series)?
I always assumed it was the convenience of fiction, there just happened to be a canal from Angelina's home to the location of the festival, but since Mouseland is kind of like 1920s England, this would make a lot of sense.
Yes, that’s an archetypal leisure narrowboat for grandparents to have. It’s really clearly illustrated, too. You can see the boat hook, the chimneys are chained down, and the roof has the requisite specially painted cans. There are plenty of roses and the cabin doors by the grandfather are painted with castles. The bow also has the traditional adornments of the sun, crescent moon, and multicoloured diamonds. The style of this particular bow, or front, is called a “tug deck”. (Liveaboard boats are normally built with living quarters all the way up to the nose of the boat, or perhaps a small cloth tent or “cratch” at the tip, but this one belongs to retired grandparents who don’t need as much space. It’s also quite a short boat by modern standards.)
You can also see a narrowboat in The Wind In the Willows…
And in Sylvanian Families/ Calico Critters, which is particularly funny because they’re a Japanese franchise depicting a fictional pastoral idyll
In conclusion if you see a depiction of a narrowboat in the rest of the world outside of its native range, consensus is that it’s a natural vehicle for small talking animals. I will now take questions.
This is still one of the greatest things ever made.
May I present, the spiritual companion piece (moderate profanity, don’t play it at work)
happy pride month once again, here’s a redraw of this iconic medieval art