Clothing

This is something we all hopelessly depend on global corporate industries for. In the past I've made some little moves to free myself from this dependency: when my kids were little I used to make at least half their clothes myself out of the salvaged parts of clothes other people bought them after they'd been outgrown.

I won't say I have any particular skill at it, and I never had any lessons, but what I made was serviceable and didn't get us ridiculed or anything. I just used to take apart clothes that had been bought and use them as templates to make more like them out of any suitable expanse of fabric I could get my hands on. Charity shops are good places to go for old tableclothes, curtains, sheets and suchlike that can easily be converted into clothing, as well as recycling actual clothing.

I need to dig out the sewing machine and start doing that again - it tailed off once my kids stopped growing and started getting their own clothes from their allowance. But thinking about getting hold of locally produced materials to work with, my gut feeling was that I'd have to lump it and suck industry c**k for cotton, linen and synthetic fabrics. Wool though - surely I can get Lincolnshire wool?

Yes, I can. Just look at that wonderful wedding dress on there! Isn't it fantastic?

Now, the challenge is to learn to knit! In a rare moment of inter-generational bonding, my mother taught me the bare basics of knit and purl - enough to make a scarf - when I was a small child. Since then I've had a little go at doing more with the help of written manuals, but never got too far as I think this is something best shown and learned from someone else. With the manuals, I ended up tied in frequent, confidence- and motivation-sucking knots.

So I thought: surely there's somebody nearby who'll teach me to knit? And once again turned to the trusty Google, which yielded one "UK Hand Knitting Association". There I found a list of knitting groups in the county, including two fairly near to me (bearing in mind that nothing is very near me, so it's all relative). However, much to my annoyance they have one of those annoying pop up things for emailing the contact people. You know, where it asks you which program you want to use for emailing, which kind of sucks when you just go through your browser to a non-mainstream email service. It means I've got to do all kinds of technical shenanigans before I can email them. Why can't people just put an email address or phone number on the screen? Argh!

Then I went to church on Sunday and realised I was sitting amongst lots of kind, old ladies. Surely one of them would be able to show me a few things on the knitting front? So, shamelessly and without regard to my macho image (largely as I don't have one) I started asking around and a lady called Jean kindly agreed to bring some things in next week to show me :)