I am an emotional worker of wovens. I will not use the word sewer, the fact that it is a homograph for sewer makes me want to leap into the main drain with the effluent. Needlewoman I could do but I’m not sure that drawing attention to my gender is necessary. Anyway, fickle and flightly as it may be, how a garment makes me feel is important. The absolute worst, soul-destroying, I AM WASTING MY LIFE moments of sewing come when a garment makes me feel that I inhabit a body that was hastily assembled on a Friday afternoon from ill-matched components by people who, given that it was Friday, would have much rather been in the pub.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Now whilst I know my place on the Dork/Babe axis – happy nerd with a hint of hippy home-made whose days off for good behaviour are spent avoiding the sartorial inevitability that is the librarian’s twin-set and pearls – there are times when hand-crafted can plummet me into the Depths of Dorkdom.

Tempted as I was to burn the evidence, I offered both items their day in the Court of Appeal.

Verdict? Despite the lace she’s still very chaste. I’m not entirely convinced but I have an attachment to the fabric so she’s out on bail.

Verdict? Not Guilty m’lud.

(Very possibly I have been over-doing the Radio 4 crime dramas. How’s a girl to resist? Rumpole contains a large helping of Benedict Cumberbatch).

So! We live to sew another day. May marches on, day by day new colours are painted into the hedgerow. The cool, bright white of the Blackthorn blossom is joined by the acid green of the hawthorn leaves. Cherry trees bloom. Breezes buffet the laden boughs brushing free the loose petals that rain down in random polka-dots accross the paths. An exhausted male Blackbird shepherds his two HUGE fledglings to the garden: “Feed yourselves you lazy bleeders”. They follow him across the tree-tops to the field beyond. I made a skirt that makes me smile, I’ll tell you about it another time… Px