Today I took Jenni and a friend to the Galashiels campus of Heriot Watt University for an open day. At this campus they teach a variety of fashion and textile related degree courses, with a very high success rate of placing graduates with international design houses and clothing manufacturers.

I don’t know about the girls. Bit I loved the day. My day job is mostly about getting things to appear on screen, or move information from one part of a computer to another. But this was all so physical, so real. The rows and rows of sewing machines, the knitting machines or the screen printing equipment.

But this was my favourite – the weaving area. There were tens of manual looms – big wooden things with yarn stretched across them, making loud clanking noises as each row of cloth is made. This close-up of one part of a loom is just wonderful, with the wooden ratchet and the wooden stop forming part of the operation of the loom.

It was really exhilarating. Ah to be a student again 🙂