Words

Eilean hopping, pt. 2
Linen: it doesn’t grow on trees. And, even if it did, those trees wouldn’t be anywhere on the British Isles. And, even if they were, you’d need fields and fields... More
An unassuming wardrobe
The workshop has upped sticks. Taken itself up town. The lot, everything, the workshop wholesale — all paraphernalia and people — can be found, for one week, and one week... More
Eilean hopping, pt. 1
There is one matter for which the debate is truly settled. For which any referendum is redundant. An issue about which not only Scotland, but the rest of the Isles,... More
The reversible overshirt
Often gets sold short, the overshirt. See, no matter how many pockets are thrown at it, no matter how thick the cloth given to it, it is only a jumped-up... More
Some Ventiles, pt. 2
Some Ventiles are grainier than others. Well — one is, and the name by which it goes happens also to be the easiest way to describe why it is so.... More
A spectacle frame, pt. 1
What a trade, the optics trade of Great Britain: what glorious and era-defining ups and downs over the last 100 years. Just ask the spectacle frame factory in East London.... More
Some Ventiles, pt. 1
The new navy blue car coat fits like a tent. But not just any tent: the sort of tent pitched up at the South Pole by none other than the... More
On crotch-pieces
The thing with the crotch-piece is that it can’t help sounding like a joke. It is, after all, a piece of cloth, and what it does is, it straddles the... More
Iteration, iteration, iteration
“If it ain’t broke,” it’s easy to say, “don’t fix it." How unambitious. How very much and completely the wrong way to look at things. No — if it ain’t... More
Two new cottons, pt. 1
The story of a cotton mill newly opened for business in North Lancashire may sound as if from the annals of the Accrington Observer — but it isn’t. It is... More
Two new cottons, pt. 2
Airweave. Exciting name for a cloth, airweave. And the thrills don't end there. Airweave, the second pick from the new North Lancashire cotton mill, is a deceptively simple cloth —... More
Hand-woven herringbone indigo
After the blue-stained trail of farce and fiasco wrought by the rope-dyed indigo of 2013, not to mention the self-inflicted tribulations of weaving cotton on looms built a century ago... More