Shiitake mushrooms, revered in East Asian cuisine, offer rich umami flavours and significant nutritional benefits, including B vitamins and immune-supporting compounds. Cultivated for over a millennium, they thrive on hardwood logs. Various cultivation kits are available for home growers. Always cook shiitakes for enhanced taste and digestibility.… Read More The Remarkable Shitake Mushroom: Flavour, Nutrition, & Tradition
The text emphasises the importance of inclusive and sensory-aware design for individuals with sensory impairments. It highlights how these individuals utilise their unique perceptions to innovate design, transforming environments into tactile, auditory, and visually accommodating spaces. Such designs enhance personal agency and comfort, promoting co-design collaboration and sustainability for a more inclusive future.… Read More Making Sense of Space: How People With Sensory Impairments Shape Their Own Environments
The language of design transcends functionality, embodying identity and community through textiles and architecture. From the symbolism of flags to biophilic principles, design fosters connection and care. It emphasises balance, harmony, and the relationship between materials and human experience, reflecting our shared stories and emotions in every stitch and structure.… Read More Episode Five: Woven Worlds Textiles, Space, & The Design of Meaning
Before and after images rebuilding with filler Living with a fluctuating neurological condition and navigating neurodivergence means that decorating isn’t a straightforward task. It’s a layered process shaped by sensory thresholds and emotional pacing. I don’t decorate quickly. I decorate slowly, with care and consideration, because it’s important to me. The process isn’t just physical—it’s… Read More post three: decorating as emotional labour
See image credits (below) In an age of fast fashion and disposable goods, slow stitching offers an antidote—a practice rooted in care, patience, and sustainability. At its heart, slow stitching is more than just thread on fabric; it’s about valuing time, honouring materials, and creating something that carries meaning beyond its stitches. What Is Slow… Read More slow stitching: sustainability through needle & thread
From superstition and stigma to celebration and skill Left-handedness has long carried cultural weight—far beyond which hand holds the pen. For centuries, it’s been viewed with suspicion, framed as a weakness, or romanticised as a mark of creativity and talent. Clean vs. Unclean in Ancient Cultures In many ancient societies, hands were not equal. In… Read More the cultural history of left-handedness
Pack a notebook—left hand or right, it’s all the same—and set out for a hillside, or even a breezy stretch of beach. Let the wind make the first marks: the shiver of grass, the metallic clink of a gate, the faint hum of a distant train. You’re not here to get it “right”—only to let… Read More Ideas: how to sketch your own soundwalks
Image credit:“Left Handed and Proud” graphic © Left-Handers Day.Available at: lefthandersday.com/left-handers-day/graphicsUsed with appreciation to promote awareness and celebration. Today is Left-Handers Day yay! — a moment to celebrate the 10% of us who grew up flipping scissors, smudging ink, and quietly questioning why everything seemed to favour the right. Growing up in Britain in the… Read More left-handed and learning to bend: a quiet rebellion from the left side
On the evening of January 3, 1831, Thomas Ashton, a 24-year-old mill manager from Hyde, Greater Manchester, was fatally shot while out walking from his residence at Pole Bank to Apethorn Mill. This act of violence occurred during a period of significant social and economic upheaval in England, marked by the Industrial Revolution and the… Read More the murder of thomas ashton: a tragic chapter in industrial england
The history of Greater Manchester is layered and complex, but one often-overlooked aspect of its administrative past is the Salford Hundred — a term that once defined a vast and influential region in south-east Lancashire, long before the modern city boundaries we know today. What Was a ‘Hundred’? In medieval England, a hundred was an… Read More the salford hundred: a forgotten division of northern england
Rachel Bakewell 