Well why am I reading this kids book which my partner pointed out was reading age 8+? I have just finished reading Cold Mountain which is full of pioneering strong women. The character Ruby is a case in point. The knowledge that woman has which allows her not only to survive but thrive in the teeth of a multitude of hardships, dangers and death is amazing and is in stark contrast to Ada, who has received no such education and is physically starving on a rich diet of Dickens and Mozart. So I wanted to continue finding out about these wonderful women, these pioneers of America. I totally understand that these pioneers have had a lot to do with the decimation of first nation people as they pushed back the boundaries of “civilisation” which is not a good thing, but there ingenuity, inventiveness and there integrity of how they lived their lives I am finding inspiring.

So far in the Little House, Pa has build a log cabin using hardily any nails and using little wooden pegs for fixings. Ma has conjured up amazing meals out of cornmeal,  they have almost lost their beloved dog Jack, and outside surrounding them are a pack of 50 giant prairie wolves menacing and malevolent.

These people, might be fictional but they are based on fact. There were women and men like these through America before they discovered corporations.  And they were taught skills that they needed to simply live from the time they were in the womb. Skills that became as much as a part of their life as breathing. And we need to regain these skills, we need to enjoy work. The kid series Little House on the Prairie was produced in the 1970′s the same time as massive oil shocks hit throughout the oil dependant countries of the world, I don’t think that this is a coincidence, come to think of it The Waltons were depicting depression era America in the 1970′s as well – I don’t know why but every time we went to visit our family in Wales the Waltons seemed to be always on. Maybe it’s time to brush of the TV schmulch and get back to what these stories were all about, ways of living with what you have created. However from 2011, sometimes I do look at the hard lives of these characters and think; “Verbs and all of them tiring”

After a gap of a couple of years, I’ve started a starter.
A sourdough starter that is, it is on it’s fifth loaf now which means that it is going to get good (hopefully) because the last time I did this the fifth loaf was the best but unfortunately paid work got in the way and I’m sure you can fill in the rest. Anyway, this time I used a mainstream ordinary strong bread flour and although I know that sourdough is supposed to be a wet mix this was just ridiculous with my bread looking more like a cow pat in shape than those gorgeous artisan loaves one sees in food porn. I thought that it was the shape of my proving basket (you see where I’m going?) which is a long oval shallow affair was not helping and looking online for a proving basket, proved to be  more than I wanted to pay. There are two solutions to this; a) look in charity shops, which is not yielding up anything yet,or b) learn to make a basket. As you can imagine I’m opting for plan B.
However, although I’ve got some books and some willow rods on the way, a development has happened on the bread front. After a bit of reading round the subject, I came to the conclusion the the flour I had been using did not have a high enough gluten content so I changed to good old Doves Farm Organic and it has made a world of difference-for one thing the dough does not try a run off the side of the worktop, and the taste!…..For this fifth loaf the flour in the starter has been gradually and finally been switched over to Doves Farm Flour and I’m looking forward to the bake with greedy anticipation.
In the meantime I’ve gone too far down the basket making route to back out now, it’ll probably take less time than the bread.

Good morning timber yard, how can I help you?

Hang on a minute, holes and cracks in the wood? Are you sure Sir?

So the holes, have they got a darker patch surrounding them?

Sir , it’s a knot, all wood has knots it’s where the tree had a branch and has been cut off and I’m sure if someone cut off your arm they would be a big knot near your shoulder.

These cracks then Sir?

They are in a straight line you say where the boards meet.

Sir, that is the tongue and groove in the boards’ edge that we machined for you, and they are perfect.

When you fitted the boards together, did you glue and clamp them?

Oh you didn’t. Well Sir, it’s not my fault that you don’t know what you are doing is it; well that is the reason for the long straight cracks in the wood Sir.

There is some discolouration between the boards you say Sir? It’s the sap in the wood that smeared when it was cut. Walnut is a natural product Sir, and I can show you colour difference if you care to come in Sir.

But Sir it is wood. If you were cut in half by a great big band saw, I’m sure that your cut surfaces would be slightly different colours too.

Yes but Sir, if you had stood with your feet embedded in the earth and birds nesting in your hair and pecking out the grubs in your ears. Had the sun, wind, rain and snow beat down on your bare skin for 150 years, I don’t think that you would look as good as that piece of walnut that you say is flawed.

Yes, it’s a natural product Sir. If you want a touched up, well lit photo finish to your walnut, why don’t you use a photo of what you want to see, laminates are a lot cheaper Sir and a lot more predictable. However, you don’t get the warmth, the feel, the delicate nuance of the natural product. You don’t get the subtleness when you walk into a room the uses real wood.

Sir, if you wanted it to look like that, I suggest that you use a photo.

Goodbye Sir.

(This piece was inspired by an actual phone conversation overheard at the timber merchants.)

With these hands I earn my living, sawing, banging, plastering,

Bricklaying……perhaps ?

With these hands I fix my home and knit my socks

With these hands I sow the seed that later will lift my fork.

With these hands I stroke my dog and caress my lover.

These hands have built up the patina of work.

You can tell I’m left handed there are more scars on my right.

A bump where, for years I rested my pen

There is a callus by my wedding ring.

These hands are my hands and they are tools of my trade.

My trade is life

My craft is my experience.

This quilt cost me £15

In thread and fabric and soft fleece lining

This quilt cost me a summer of my life

Cutting up paper, slicing up fabric and stitching

Stitching.

Stitching until my hands grew stiff and the tips of my fingers

Sore and pricked over with a multitude of needle jabs.

Each small stitch in this journey of cloth took me closer

To my sisters in time that made this pattern-stepping stones.

Each small stitch pulled me more in time with the

Rhythmical swaying of the wagons heading west

Through Indian Territory.

This quilt cost me £15

In thread and fabric and soft fleece lining.

You cannot buy this quilt

It is priceless.

Why I liked this quote was because I have always seen clothes as functional and that is to keep you warm and dry, to rub muddy gardening hands on or wipe a paint brush on. I use and abuse my clothes and this idea sort of fitted. Distrust all enterprise that require new clothes was written by Thoreau who was an American in the 18th century, and for me now this idea fits my life as much as my childhood dungarees.

At the moment I am at a crossroads where I do require new clothes. My needs are changing from clothes that need to stand up to saw cuts, sawdust blasted at them, and enough pockets to contain half a tool box, to clothes that I need to meet people in, stand up and teach people in, and spend time in warm centrally heated buildings in. In short I am embarking on enterprises that require new clothes.

But then thinking about it, clothes identify us. It is the image of ourselves we project on to the worlds we construct. maybe what is at the heart of this phrase is to be true to ourselves, not to change who we really are along with our knickers. I find that different aspects of me are revealed with a change of clothes, from dirty work clothes to clean clothes, a different attitude comes out. However, I still strive to remain true to my core values which ev0lve rather than change (a bit like my wardrobe!)

So maybe this old faithful saying needs to evolve, although for me, my original interpretation of anti- fashion and anti-consumerism still does ring true. What about;

Distrust all enterprise that require new core values

(liberal democratics please take note!)

However, there were other things in the seventies which I remember more; knitting, handmade clothes, power cuts and everyone seemed to be on strike. I was born in 1971, so the seventies was my girlhood.  Now in 2011, there could be a strong possibility that we are all going to go back in time. The cuts that the government are doling out are still in the abstract, but when they hit I think it is going to be bloody. We are headed for a new energy crisis, but this time it will be terminal. And I am still wearing flares; although this time they are called “bootcut” and are flattering.

Then of course there was the self sufficiency movement which leapt into popular culture with “The Good Life” and I still want to live in the house and milk Geraldine the Goat. The Goods’ life seemed like such fun.  The constant struggle for money and all the hard graft seemed romantic rather than worrying and back braking. As a girl, I didn’t get all the jokes –even that the next door neighbour to Tom was called Jerry- but what I did get that this people were free and happy. They had made their choice and were certainly living with it.

What they had chosen is now called “Voluntary Simplicity” what an awful name.

I thought that I call this my life.

So I have got a bee in my bonnet about an off grid workshop. To which end I brought a Singer 201k treadle sewing machine from Ebay for £10.50. All I can say is that it’s ACE! It has one stitch which you can make smaller or bigger and goes as fast as you can-literally. One write up about it says that it could withstand a nuclear bomb and still work; I believe them. I have never really got on with sewing machines they always scared the hell out of me and always snared and snarled up on me. The Singer 201k has just done what I wanted it to do without any fuss. Not only but also it is so quiet, no ear plugs needed and I can listen to the afternoon play. I am sure that you will hear more about this miraculous machine, but right now I’ve got to chase my chicken out of the kitchen!

At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of Her Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation.

The British bankers and American investors are linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their bonuses, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength.

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of consumerism and all the odious apparatus of market rule, we shall not flag or fail.

We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in the supermarkets

We shall fight with our homespun and with our knitting needles

We shall fight with increasing confidence in our jams and chutneys; we shall defend our independent thinking, whatever the cost might be.

We shall fight on the internet

We shall knit, sew and make cider in public

We shall fight with saved seeds and with our trowels

We shall fight with our ingenuity and with chickens in our gardens

We shall fight with human powered machines;

We shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were to run out of consumer goods and out of season strawberries, then our lives beyond the banks, armed and guarded against by economists, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, Common Sense, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the shopped.”

The quilt I’m working on now, I haven’t felt that attached to as yet. Maybe it was the decision to machine the pieces together so that I had to get the sewing machine out, set it up, I wasn’t too confident with a sewing machine due to a rather nasty textiles teacher at school. Anyway, Saturday, I sewed on the last triangle, cut the treads and started to open it up.  It wasn’t until I tried to lay it flat that I realised there wasn’t the floor space to do it in. I had always taken it to the bed it is designed for to look at it so the quilt never really looked that big……

After working out that the only way I could tack the top middle and bottom layers together was the do half at a time, using another labour saving devise-bent safety pins, I am now quite happily hand quilting and bonding with “the creature”.  Anyway I have learnt from this experience, I’m still not comfortable with electric sewing machines, so am looking on E-bay for treadle powered and also I’m a speed freak. If I can floor any kind of accelerator-I will.