Herb of the Week - 10

True Maidenhair

"This and all other maidenhairs is a good remedy for coughs, asthmas and pleurisy."
Culpeper

"It maketh the hair of the head or beard to grow that is fallen or pulled off."
Gerard

New Assistant

We seem to have acquired a new booth assistant over the past few days. Eric, the potter's cat from across the river, has been gracing us with his presence in the afternoons, much to the joy of our resident cat lover, Joyce. Eric, not normally known for his friendly demeanor, has been welcoming visitors to the museum and hoovering the post lunch fish scraps off the floor. Here he is with his rather spooky eyes, checking out the suitability of an unsuspecting customer.

Photo Lab

Kerriann photographing Doreen Valiente's scrapbooks

RSI Sets In........

Greetings again. The wrist is feeling a little unpleasant at the moment as I have been spending the last few days photographing, cataloguing, and digitally correcting dozens of images.

Firstly, there is a large collection of Black Pullet silks and cross stitch charts that have been in the store room for years. Luckily they survived the flood because I brought them upstairs to try to sort them out last year. The Black Pullet tapestries are on display upstairs in the museum and we have some written pages of the magic attributed to each of them as well as the silks and charts. They depict 20 magic talismans and rings from a pyramid in Egypt. These are all now photographed and collated in 3 box files and, as with the books in the library, are now available, by appointment, for perusal by anyone with an interest in the subject.

We also have 3 boxes of Doreen Valiente's scrapbooks which have kindly been loaned to us for photographing and cataloguing. The scrapbooks are extremely fragile and the sticky tape is coming off a lot of the cuttings so Graham did not want to outsorce the copying. He has a background in photography so he has competently set up the camera and stand and we're very pleased with how the pics are turning out. I have just completed 1 scrapbook which contained 91 images. Only 40 more books to go in this batch. Graham just told me there are more to come. Should keep us busy for a while.

I think we'll have to get one of those round ergonometrically designed mouses (is that the correct grammar?) to assist in the RSI control.

Herb of the Week - 9

Masterwort Root with Oak Leaf Luck

'It is of rare quality against all sorts of cold poison.'

Culpeper

How many men does it take...???

I happened to stumble across a load of local chaps trying to get the harbour master's boat out of the water for the winter today. After much faffing about it was decided that Graham's Landrover would be useful to drag the unwilling vessel onto the slipway. It worked a treat and here are a couple of photos to prove it.

Success at last!!

Note the satisfied expressions on the faces of the masculine brutes involved.