Invent Design Make

The clay plastering of the FE workshop is completed and we are between coats on the exterior lime wash. The only reasonable thing to do is use our spare plaster experimenting bale to carry out some destruction tests! So we have had most variants of the predictable jibes and japes about straw as a building material: it will burn, […]

We had our first plastering party, hoorah! A really good fun weekend, with lovely people and lovely mud. Here’s a quick low down on what we did and learnt. Since our testing of different clay plaster mixes and digging mission (documented in the previous blog post) there was quite a bit of

Plastering party: 18th-20th May Duel purpose post here: a little update on workshop happenings and an open invite to come and learn/do some clay mixing and plastering on the straw bale walls. So the weekend: the scene is set, we have some bale walls crying out for plaster, a lovely load of clay earth and other ingredients […]

The Straw Bale walls so far… It has been some time since the main wall construction was completed, but I see that the last blog post on it shows it in early stages, so lets have a little update. We were not able to properly render finish the wall last year because of the cold weather – […]

A little update and some funny happenings from the adventures of Flowering Elbow: Project workshop/lab/studio/lair! The workshop seems to be at a confusing stage. On the one hand, as our old and beloved geography lecturers might have said, 

The Flowering Elbow lab/shop is starting to take shape as a slightly less barn-like entity. Here’s a little annotated photo round up of some of our recent goings on.  

It was a mad day-and-night floor laying mission. Lets consider it.  The order of things and

A few major stages in the FE workshop have been made since the last post. The insulated roof is now on! The old firewood, twigs, building rubble and other organic rotting matter have been dug or carried out, and floor roughly shovelled level. Somewhat more excitingly after a non-stop day and night mission (with a […]

So we have been planning and working towards setting up a ‘proper’ Flowering Elbow workshop for some time now. One that has enough room for some decent machinery and tools. A place where we can make and design things, and a place where people can come to visit, learn and join in. Ultimately, we want to […]