Making a tatter jacket

I'm currently making the first tatter jacket for anonymous morris.  (no I'm not going to make them for all the team, though I may lend a hand here and there).

It works like this :

You take a shirt in a suitable colour - I found a dark red one - and remove the sleeves.  My shirt had a good deep armhole, which I regard as a plus because that will allow more air circulation inside the jacket.  It's a thin shirt - so I don't get too hot, but not so thin that it will tear too easily.

I've cut loads of fabric strips - all roughly 5cm wide by 20cm long.  The colours we chose were red, black, red satin, black with a red skull and crossbones pattern (very close in colour to the plain black and red), white, and black with shiny stars.   The combination looks very good together.

Starting at the bottom of the shirt, line a row of tatters all round the shirt and stitch a line along the top of them (IF you've got a decent sewing machine, then this is very easy.  I have a very crap sewing machine that I can't even remember where it came from.  I've gone back to sewing by hand). 

When you've done the bottom row, move about 15 cm up the shirt and repeat the process.  Mix the colours of the tatters to avoid blocks of one colour.  Keep doing this until you get to the top.  The end result will look a bit like a shaggy bird. 

You'll need to do something intelligent with tatters around arm-holes, either leave gaps, or cut tatters to the correct shape.  Likewise, you'll need to something neat at the top.  I'm just getting to the top...

I don't think I'll quite manage to finish it for tonight's practice session, but I'll give it a shot.

Meanwhile, I shall go and write instructions for the dance we're going to learn tonight.  It's got a trickier chorus than anything we've done so far, but it does look really good.  It's called 'Not Not for Joe'.  (One of the traditional Border Morris tunes is called 'Not for Joe' and it's a catchy tune to dance to.  The original dance to the tune is a little dull, so this is a modern version developed by Hunter's Moon)

Harvest Mice

Via katlinel , the most gorgeous set of photos of our tiniest native mouse.

Climate Change summary by Royal Society

"Climate change continues to be a subject of intense public and political debate. Because of the level of interest in the topic the Royal Society has produced a new guide to the science of climate change. The guide summarises the current scientific evidence on climate change and its drivers, highlighting the areas where the science is well established, where there is still some debate, and where substantial uncertainties remain.

The document was prepared by a working group chaired by Professor John Pethica, Vice President of the Royal Society and was approved by the Royal Society Council."

Download the guide here (PDF).

I've only skimmed it so far (need to get some stuff ready for this evening) but it looks like a summary that should take no more than 20 mins to read and be accessible to anyone with a general science background..  It does indeed seem to do what it says on the tin, say what degree of certainty we have for different factors relating to climate change.  I'll probably comment further tomorrow when I've read it in detail.