Hat block care in drought conditions, tolliker-making, and flat felt blocking

We're in the midst of a drought (yet again) in the Carolina Piedmont, and yesterday one of my students, Samantha Greaves, noticed that a couple of her personal hatblocks were cracking and splitting from the lack of moisture in the air. Another student, Nora Rogers, is a woodworker (among other things) and recommended that she oil the cracking blocks with linseed oil, so Samantha and fellow millinery student Jennifer Mohrman spent part of their class period oiling the cracking blocks--we're all in the midst of a unit on blocked hats, so it was a great activity to do as part of their process.

Unfortunately, our state is affected by drought enough that i've written prior posts on how it can affect your day-to-day work processes and how to minimize its effects on your shop's functionality. I've now created a new post tag for them called "drought."

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