So the year turns

Winter blossom starting at the arboretum at Marks Hall.

Pollarded willows, showing coloured stems.

Some of the hats I have sent off to Knit for Peace.

And three pairs of fingerless mittens for the same cause.

This last for the present drawer: a simple lace scarf in a wool/silk yarn, proving how blocking makes a huge difference to lace.  The sheen on this piece shows the silk in the mix.

This week the Winter Clean at Paycocke's reached a peak.  I spent Wednesday on the annual task of scrubbing out the servery.  Bucket after bucket of hot soapy water as I worked with a scrubbing brush.  Yesterday I was in again applying polish over the same floor to feed the wood and provide what is known as a sacrificial layer.
 
It's not all hard manual labour, however.  Thursday morning was spent pulling together some notes on the historic wool trade and how our village was involved.  The notion is to make the connections between our properties in Essex and sister properties in Suffolk.

Amazing fact: In 1193, the whole of the country's woolcrop - 50,000 sacks representing the fleeces of about twelve million sheep - was confiscated to pay the ransom on Richard 1 who had been captured on his way back from the Third Crusade. "It was the sheep that paid for all", as someone said later.