We had our first Grow a London Garment workshop yesterday at Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses. It was a beautiful day so we moved a couple of tables outside and set up our new breaking/heckling machine. We also improvised breaking the stalks with mallets, meat tenderisers and bits of wood but, after experimenting in many ways, found that the machine did the job better and in much less time. Of course. If you’ve ever read Ridley Walker or other post catastrophe fiction, it felt a bit like that: trying to learn something from fragments of a greater knowledge lost to us but so familiar to our forebears. Quite soon we had a jumble of cake, tea, a variety of combs, drop spindles, bits of wood – and our precious tow and line on our tables. Diane Sullock showed us how to use the drop spindles so that we could spin some rough thread. And a further joy was that passers by could watch us – and join in. We might even have got some converts.
So we companionably turned the flax into spinning gold and then Aaron-the-spinner turned up – a kind of cavalier in cowboy boots – to put the wheel together and… spin. Turned out we ran out of time (a kind of Cinderella scenario with the meter on the hire car running out) but he’s taken our skeins away with him to spin his magic at home.
To quote from Zoe’s email this morning, “I read from Making is Connecting by David Gauntlett yesterday …’collaboration and social projects are good for happiness’ – so true! It was quite tiring though.
Next workshop: 11th October at the London College of Fashion, Mare St.
Cordwainers Garden 
great photos the lying down sounds good!!