I’m recovering from my half-work, half-holiday in West Sussex. Littlehampton was full of fishermen and swans – both waking up to go out on the tide at 5am, but with beautiful pearly skies I didn’t really mind watching them while sipping coffee on the jetty.
The Weald and Downland Museum was very interesting too: a great resource on types of brick, medieval cruck houses, amongst many other things. The place comes to life I think during events, when the buildings are full of people and animals, like at the Rare and Traditional Breeds Show. The mill, though, is always grinding: flour for the shop, but also commercial stone-ground flour: modern as well as ancient. The damp air from the stream keeps the flour dust from igniting as well today as in the 1600s.
The Design and Craft Fair at West Dean was in the most beautiful parkland – every morning I walked along a bubbling stream with its patches of flowering water hawthorn.
My stand was by the door of the tent, so I got lovely wafts of cool air. A side-effect of shows is meeting other makers – Sarah Packington with her elegant and refined jewellery; Kim Abbott, making me very nostalgic for St Ives; Joanne and Sheena from The Sorting Office.
I loved Elisabeth Beverley‘s plant dyed wool: my favourite, cow-parsley green: but managed to resist buying any – I will be collecting cow-parsley instead.
What did I actually buy rather than drool over? A teatowel from Sarah Young: Red Riding Hood, and you can make it into toys, like the ClothKits of old, now also resuscitated!
