Having assembled their chairs and oiled them yesterday, Mandy and Rhys posed in the morning sun with their chair frames before returning to the workshop to seat them.

I tried to tempt them with one of the Irish seating patterns that we have developed over recent years but they both decided to go with a plain weave in Danish cord. The ‘warp’ was woven in ‘blocks’ of 5. To deal with the trapezoidal seat shape, they wove 2 ‘binds’ at the back and 5 binds at the front. They helped each other with the ‘warp’ for each chair, making it much easier to keep the tension but that also gave them the benefit of two brains on the case to spot any mistakes. They were then able to complete the ‘weft’ individually with the odd bit of interference from me. Job done!!

This proved to be a very successful start to the 2016 courses at Greenwood Cottage. This spring will be spent building a new outdoor shelter so that I can manage four people at a time between May and September.