Spring jollies 2009
Ah, spring jollies, one of my favourite trips of the year. This year we went somewhere new in Belgium where the beer was strong and the artwork was piercing.
Clippy Mat Making at Beamish
Researching for my novel Pearl of Pit Lane I spent the day at Beamish Museum on a clippy mat workshop. And if you're wondering what a clippy mat is, it's also known as a proggy mat or a rag rug. The BBC puts it like this: Proggy mats were a common sight in working-class homes in the North East of England until the mid-20th Century. Made from old sacks and recycled fabric they were an economical option to keep feet warm and toasty in an era before fitted carpets were the norm. I remember my grandma had proggy mats in her house and I also remember her making them, but I was never interested back then in learning how to make my own. As Ione of my characters in my novel makes proggy mats, I could have read about how to make them or even watched on YouTube, I wanted to discover for myself what the process felt like, smelt like, sounded like. And so I booked myself on to a workshop at Beamish Museum, a place I love to visit. There were six of us on the proggy mat workshop...
