What I do when I’m not sewing…

You might have noticed that I’ve been doing an awful lot less sewing than I used to. That’s because I’ve been preparing to go back to University in September to start an MA in History. To get the fibromyalgia used to the idea of actually Leaving The House And Doing Things, I’ve been doing some volunteering with the University’s museums and collections.

I’ve been away from the Cole Museum of Zoology for about four years. Firstly I took a job which clashed with the time allocated for volunteering, and secondly that job ended up making me so ridiculously ill that it’s taken me almost two years to recover from it. But! I recently made it back to the museum, and to be quite honest, sitting down with a bench full of spirit specimens in front of me just felt like home. I’d really missed it, and it’s so good to be back.

I’ve been volunteering at the Herbarium since last October. I’ve mostly been working on one project, the Cyclamen Society collection, helping to prepare it to be added to the University’s cataloguing system.

Occasionally I get to do other things too. Last week I had a lovely time looking through the collection for very specific specimens, all relating to gin! July 8th was World Gin Day, and Alastair and I wrote a blog post all about botanicals.

I also wrote a Twitter thread about some interesting coriander specimens – something I also got to do for Museums Week. The theme of the day was “rainbow”, so I wrote about colour retention in the cyclamen specimens, historical hair colours (don’t do it, folks!), and plant-based textile dyes.

I’ve also been taking full advantage of the University’s Special Collections, and getting a bit of a head start on my MA dissertation research. I recently requested two agricultural books, printed in 1585 and 1614. One of them was in absolutely immaculate condition… and the other one was very clearly a well-used working book!

I’ve written a post about them on my second Patreon blog, Mrs Magpie Writes. (My first Patreon is for Miss Mouse.) My next task is actually to re-write pretty much all of the information about that Patreon project, as I set it up before I decided to go back to University, and I’m no longer doing, well, any of the things it says I’m going to do. Oops.

So, this is a bit of a heads up to say that I’m going to be blogging about all sorts of different things from now on! There’ll be a bit of history, a bit of museums, and I might occasionally still manage to sneak the odd little bit of sewing in from time to time.