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Hi all, I went to Amsterdam for a week to visit my dear friend, Red. It was great but I've come back with a nasty cough that I caught from her daughter. Either that or I contracted Swine Flu whilst perusing the sex shops! Either way, I feel a bit shitty. Of course, it may also be a reaction to the indulgences of the week - I don't smoke but many people around me were toking up on a regular basis, so I think I spent the whole week on a passive high. Plus we drank a fair amount... And ate large quantities of meat and cheese, the Dutch don't seem to be big on vegetables.
Amsterdam is a strange place, I don't feel as though I really came to grips with it. Still, hopefully I'll have the opportunity to do so again, since I'm planning to make visiting Red an annual occurrence. It's a lot easier for me to visit them than it is for her to organise childcare, take annual leave and get over here.
Best bits:
Seeing Red
Visiting aforementioned sex shops
Going to see an awesome exhibition about Vodou
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Steve Bell is having a whale of a time with Thatcher this week, using the 25th anniversary of the miner's strike as a thinly veiled opportunity to put the boot in.
Yesterday's cartoon and todays. Can't wait for tomorrow's...
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| 2009-01-16 15:23 |
| Moo discount |
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| The Big Sky - Kate Bush |
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Just a quickie. I have a 20% discount code for any one Moo product, so that would be nearly £2 off if you were ordering a pack of their mini cards. If you’re interested, contact me with your email address and I’ll wave my magic wand so that you get the discount. You need to be a new customer and the code has to be used by the 31st of January. They also say that it’s until stocks run out, so you may need to be fairly quick.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll get a free Flickr Pro account if anyone orders from them using the code but that’s not why I’m offering, I just really, really love their stuff.
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I have my first ever London show this month - how awesome is that!
It's at Prick Your Finger, which is a haberdashers crossed with an art space - an inspired combination, if you ask me.
I emailed them in late December to see if they were interested in showing my work. Not only did they instantly email me back to say that they loved my work but they asked me if I could do an exhibition in January and February because they had an unexpected gap in their schedule. I immediately said yes.
I’m going to be showing some of my pin work, which I’m very excited about because several of the pin pieces - including Quiver - have only been shown once before. Plus it’s been an age since I did my beloved Pin Ritual performance.
Prick Your Finger is at 260 Globe Road, Bethnal Green, E2 OJD and the opening hours are Tuesday to Friday from 12 - 6pm and Saturday 11am - 6pm. The show opens on Friday 23rd January and runs until Saturday 28th February. If you’re in London, I hope you’ll get along to see it.
There will be an official opening on Saturday 24th January from 2-6pm. If you’re in the area, please do come along and meet me. I will be performing Pin Ritual and I believe there are plans for tea and cakes.
There will also be additional pin performances on the following days:
Friday 23rd January from 1-3pm
Friday 27th February 1-3pm
Saturday 28th February, again 1-3pm
If you visit when I’m not performing, there will be a book of pin stories to read and you’ll have the opportunity to leave your own pin story.
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Happy New Year everyone. I hope that 2009 is better than 2008, which I personally found a bit of a tough year. Wishing you all wealth, health and happiness.
Right, I'm going back into my cosy little hibernation. I have internet, blankets, hot water bottle, books and knitting. I may be some time...
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So I went to the dentist today. I thought I would need a root canal on my dodgy tooth but after discussing it, I decided to get it extracted instead.
( Cut for the dentist phobic! )
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Hey, just realised that I didn't get a chance to blog my new haircut - with exquisite timing, I managed to have an appointment on one of the two days between the extremely nasty virus and the bronchitis!
I had a new hairdresser because mine had left. She got very excited about cutting it and went a bit shorter than I was expecting but I like it a lot.
Looking a bit librarian!
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I've had a lovely birthday filled with lovely treats. Thanks to those of you who've sent kind wishes. I wrote about it here with some festive photos.
Right, I'm off to end my day by bathing in a mass of coconut and liquorice bubbles from LUSH. Yummy!
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Well that was the weirdest and most disturbing dream I've had in quite a while.
I dreamt about a guy was being fucked up the ass by a ventriloquist's dummy with a small wooden penis. This was made worse by the fact that the ventriloquist was doing the voice. Jeez brain, I really didn't need to see that, thanks.
I'm now wondering if 'ventriloquist porn' exists but I'm a little afraid to google it.
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Oh joy, the cold - which seemed to be getting better on Friday and Saturday - suddenly turned into bronchitis on Sunday. Every time I coughed, it felt like someone was stabbing me in the chest, so I finally admitted defeat and went to the doctor this morning. He listened to my chest, made concerned faces and wrote me a prescription for antibiotics which Cat, who is marginally better than me (but not by much, poor boy) has gone out to pick up for me.
Oh, and the toothache has returned with a vengeance, which I suspect means that I will need the root canal after all. Bugger it. I'm going to phone the dentist and make an appointment to get it fixed but I think I need a couple of days on the antibiotics first - getting dental work done while I have a raging infection just doesn't seem terribly smart!
You know what, it's been a shitty fucking year for me and I'm looking forward to it being over. However, I'm hoping that next year is going to be better - I had a genius idea at the weekend, which may help a lot.
Z. was here helping me clear out my studio and she jokingly said that she was being my artist's assistant and it struck me that it would make a huge difference if she really was. I thought it over and realised that I can afford to pay her for a couple of hours every fortnight. I asked her about it and she's very excited by the idea so once we've finished organising the house, we're going to start organising me! She'll be helping me with things like framing, documentation and admin.
We work really well together; she keeps me on track and I trust her. We've been systematically decluttering and organising the house for the last five months and it's made a huge difference. The household is already paying her to do that and she cleans for us, so I'm pretty sure that me paying her won't affect our friendship.
Having a bit of practical support, even if it's just a few hours a month, may make the difference between being able to have an art career and not being able to manage it. This year I just haven't been able to manage - I've made some work but I haven't been well enough to apply for shows, keep on top of my admin or move my career forward in any way. I want my career back but it's clear to me that I can't do everything myself. Even if my health wasn't shot to pieces, I'd probably struggle but as I am now, it's verging on the impossible. I'm not prepared to give up on my art and it's unlikely that I'm suddenly going to become miraculously well overnight, so I need to find ways to carry on working whilst accommodating the Chronic Fatigue and my compromised immune system.
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...I have the sort of cold where death seems like a sane and preferable option. I have been sneezing explosively for the last four days - the sort of sneezing where you wonder if perhaps your brains have just shot out of your nose. Also, smells hurt. WTF is that about? Surely with a cold you're supposed to not be able to smell things, they shouldn't hurt! After half a day of thinking that perhaps I felt fractionally better than yesterday, this evening I suddenly started feeling much, much worse because my body suddenly treated me to the delights of swollen glands in my armpit and my neck. If I develop black buboes, I promise to go to the doctor...
Poor Cat also has this but fortunately not quite as drastically. The Kidlet is a bit stuffed up but he is in love for the first time, so his immune system can shrug off colds with a merry laugh. I am also in love but unfortunately after 14 years it no longer provides quite the same tonic effect!
Oh, and the bedroom is looking great. I managed to strip two of the walls in the end and the remaining one is not as obnoxious a pattern, so I didn't mind leaving it although if I'd had more time I would have done it. Z was able to slap three coats of paint on during the space of a day and even though it's just a temporary stopgap job, it looks pretty good. She's a goddess!
I've got candles arranged in there, the bed is made up with my lovely bedlinen and my rugs are down on the floor - I don't know why I didn't think to do this before. The blind still needs to go up and I have some stuff to move back into the wardrobe and some drawers to clear out, but overall it's a much nicer place to be.
The mattress came and I think it's comfortable but it's a bit hard to tell because I'm so achy from the damn cold. Unfortunately it turns out that Ikea kingsize and normal kingsize are not the same and so my mattress is ten centimetres smaller than the damn frame and yes, I do know that I should have measured the frame. But I didn't. Because I'm an idiot!
The only place that seem to make the stupid Ikea size is Ikea and I don't want an Ikea mattress (had one of those on the bedframe originally and it was not at all comfortable). I probably don't want to give the nice expensive mattress back, so I'm going to be looking out for a new frame in the January sales. Or maybe just living with the slight discrepancy for a while depending on finances. The mattress is so solid and good that it doesn't move an inch on the frame even though there's a gap at one side, so I could live with it for a while if I had to. I want to pick up a reading lamp, a wall hanging, a low bookshelf and ideally a new bedside table and they might be more of a priority than a new frame.
OK, it's cold down here, I'm off to cuddle up in my lovely room with my book, my hot water bottle and the candles and incense going.
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So, to recap, on Thursday my friend Z. is coming to slap a couple of coats of paint on my bedroom wall. This is not intended to be a proper decorating job, just a stopgap measure to tide me over until we can afford to get the room properly done up. My job is to clear the room and get the painting things out. I can do this. I have already started doing the 'clearing things out' part.
Unfortunately Z. made the fatal mistake of saying "if you get the time and you have the energy, you could start painting over the various paint swatches on the wall because they'll take more than two coats to cover". Now, to a normal person this means 'paint out the paint swatches'. To me however it somehow translated as 'you know what would be an excellent idea? Stripping off the wallpaper! No really, that would be a great thing to do when you have to have everything ready for the painting on Thursday!'
So it was that last night at about 10.30, I dragged Cat down to the basement to retrieve the steam wallpaper stripper and promptly set about stripping off the admittedly very ugly and extremely damaged textured wallpaper. The textured wallpaper comes off surprisingly easily. Unfortunately there's another layer of what I thought was very shiny paint but turns out to be very shiny paint on ancient lining paper. This does not come off so easily but because I am a) obsessive and b) stupid, I gave it the old college try. After an hour or so of successfully peeling off wallpaper it occurred to me that instead of a selection of small patches of bright paint that needed painting over a couple of times, I now had most of a bare plaster wall that needed sealing before it could be painted.
Er, that would be an 'oops' then.
In my defence, the paint was so shiny that it didn't look to me as though an ecological water-based emulsion would have gone over it very well. And it had already started coming off a bit because unsurprisingly, it had got wet from the steam. And really, if you're using a steamer on wallpaper, you can't just decide to stop at one layer because then you wind up painting over wet paper, which seems like a great way to end up with damp and mould. See, see how I justify my madness!
Of course, a sane person wouldn't have started stripping the wallpaper in the first bloody place...
Today I've done another hour or so of wallpaper stripping and I'm a bit knackered. In a small fit of something approaching sanity, I am absolutely finishing the wall I'm on before I tackle either of the other two (fortunately the last wall is entirely covered with built in wardrobes and a large window and has no visible wallpaper). And I'm allowing myself to not do the other walls if it looks like an impossible task timewise. From places where the wallpaper has already come off, I don't think the other walls have the lining paper but I could be wrong about that and I'm going to finish prepping the wall I'm working on before I investigate.
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My friend, Z and I disassembled the big bed in the master bedroom this afternoon. Last week I ordered a new mattress for my king-size cast iron bed frame. The two mattresses on the big bed (it really is HUGE) had reached the end of their life and needed replacing and I decided I'd rather have my bed in there. Since both Cat and Malabar prefer to sleep in their own (nicely decorated!) rooms, the master bedroom seems to have defaulted to being more or less my space and I decided that I wanted to have a bed that I actually liked, dammit. My cast iron bed used to be in my room on the top floor but we dismantled it when I turned that room into my studio about five years ago. It was in the spare room for a while and then in malabar's room until her new bed arrived and then it was in bits again. I'm looking forward to sleeping on it again and being able to use my lovely grey flannel sheet from Habitat and my beautiful pale blue duvet cover.
On Thursday, Z is going to give the walls a quick lick of white or cream paint - whatever we have in the shed - because it's seriously grotty in there. There are bare plaster patches where work has been done, stains from when the roof was leaking, three kinds of textured wallpaper and a whole bunch of different coloured paint swatches that I've done. The ceiling was probably white once but is now an indeterminate grey/brown/cream colour and covered in cobwebs. There are no curtains or blind and haven't been since the start of the year when we had the window refurbished and insulated. The floor features a particularly hideous peachy-brown carpet that's in such a dire state that hoovering doesn't make a whole lot of difference. The whole room just exudes grubbiness, even when you've just cleaned and tidied it: it's not a pleasant space to sleep in. It was yucky when we moved in 12 years ago and although we've done stuff like insulating the window, rewiring and getting two wardrobes built in, it's never been decorated.
So it desperately needs to be properly done up but we can't afford that right now and it'll be at least another six months before we can. However, cleaning the cobwebs from the ceiling; slapping two coats of neutral paint on up to the picture rail; putting down my nice rugs; hanging a picture or two; installing the blind we bought (a couple of years ago!) and having my own bed and lovely bed-linen back again will help until we can get it professionally decorated. Even though it won't be perfect, it'll be a fuck of a lot better than the depressing disaster zone it is at the moment.
The new mattress for my bed should be arriving in a week or two and then I'll have a tolerably nice room to sleep in and something comfortable to sleep on - hooray!
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I am a stupid nana, I have been knitting on my clapotis shawl and have only just noticed that I've been using two different sized needles all week. Apparently at some point this week I accidentally picked up one of the slightly smaller needles from my knitting bag and started using that alongside the correct sized needle. Fortunately it's quite uneven yarn, so it doesn't seem to have made any difference - at least, I can't see where I made the switch - so I'll be able to carry on without having to undo loads of rows. But seriously, what a dumb thing to do. I think it might be a wise idea to move the smaller needles into my other knitting bag for now.
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I'm thrilled that Obama won, it makes me feel much better about the future of the world. I know he's just one man and a politician at that. I don't think he's the Messiah come to save us and we all still have a huge job to do in adjusting to a world with diminishing oil and a rocky economy. But at least crazy rightwing fuckwads who believe in the Rapture aren't going to be in the White House anymore. That makes me feel a little safer.
However, I am fucked off that bigotry and hate won out in California with the passing of Prop 8. I know that gay bans passed in other States but I was expecting them too but I thought California might have had a bit more sense.
What the fuck is wrong with people? I wish they would get their damn religious noses out of other peoples lives and sort out their own shit instead. As some smart dude once said:
"You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
When the fundies have lower divorce rates and less spousal abuse, then I might consider listening to their stupid ass views on gay marriage. Until then, I think they can shut the fuck up.
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Dammit, our fridge freezer is dying of old age. The freezer part stopped freezing overnight. It's been complaining about being too warm for several weeks now so yesterday we moved it to clean out the back in the hope that it was just a bit fluffed up (which it was) but overnight it's warmed up so that it's now almost the same temperature of the fridge. We did notice when we moved it that the bottom was very hot and I felt that it was probably on its way out.
Of course this happened the day after I had a huge 'cooking for the freezer' day (12 portions of tomato and lentil stew, 7 portions of carrot and coriander soup, 7 portions of pea and mint soup). I suspect this may have been what pushed it over the edge but it was on its last legs anyway. Still annoying though.
Fortunately we have another small freezer and with a huge amount of triage and tetrising we were able to save most of the food. We do have a couple of drawers of stuff slowly defrosting in the old freezer that we'll eat over the next couple of days. So this afternoon - on a nice sunny day that I'd planned to spend very slowly pottering around in the garden - I have to go and look at bloody fridge freezers instead. Grrrr...
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Dear me, between plurk, the Ravelry forums and my real blog' over on my website, poor old livejournal has been getting short shrift lately. Must do better...
I got back from Scotland fine - I could have done with longer to see stuff and people but a week is about enough emotionally because I miss ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) catvincent and malabar too much. The Kidlet is still up there, he'll be back a week today. We've all missed him but it's also been quite nice having the summer to ourselves to do adult things like visit historical and ancient monuments. Although sadly we haven't got as many days out as we'd hoped due to clashing schedules and lousy weather. But we did visit Tintern abbey a couple of weeks ago and then the ever-so-lovely Virtuous Well at Trellech for malabar's birthday. I'd really like to do a day out this week too but I'm not sure when it's going to happen as there seems to be something on every single day this week. All I want to do right now is visit nice places, especially sacred wells for some reason.
Art - not a right fat lot happening, to be honest. I can't concentrate on anything that feels like 'real' work but I have been playing around making little 'drawings' with soldered and melted silver wire. I love how they're coming out. There are also a couple of potentially exciting things in the offing but I can't talk about them because they're not confirmed yet.
My health has been rough and I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything (especially vegetables - why are vegetables so hard? I love them and I need them but I find them a bit too much trouble to prepare). I'm not sleeping very well because I need a new mattress. The one I'm sleeping on is about 11 years old and has just about had it but buying a new mattress is proving to be a source of great anxiety to me. I think it's because it's such a huge decision - they're expensive and what if you get it wrong, you'll be stuck with it for the next ten years. I have found somewhere with a three week returns policy though so I should psych myself up and go and try them out again.
I am mostly knitting baby hats right now. I've set myself a target to knit 10 of them for the Save The Children knitting appeal. If you're a knitter it's a great way to get rid of any single balls of wool in your stash and they're so quick to knit that they're very satisfying. Plus it's for charity so you get to feel good about what a wonderful person you are!
Knitting, visiting wells, watching Arrested Development with catvincent and pottering around in the garden - I guess I'm sort of on holiday. Got to get my autumn head on and get on with some work but I hope things will get back on track next week when school starts. Although I'm not planning on doing any courses this year because I just can't afford it, I usually get a rush of 'new school' energy at this time of year - I'm so institutionalised! Hopefully I'll get a whole lot more studio time when the Kidlet is back in his normal routine. He hasn't been in school since Christmas because of mental health issues, which was obviously hugely worrying but also kind of annoying because it totally threw off my daytime studio routine. It put a huge dent in the first half of the year, let's hope the second half is a bit better!
OK, dinner smells ready. Catch you later...
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Hey ho, I'm surviving OK in Scotland. I've been keeping myself busy by going into Edinburgh a lot. Took the Kidlet in to buy clothes on Tuesday and then went into town yesterday for a meeting with a fellow blogger and had an awesome time. Also went shopping -I mostly got things for other people but did buy myself two cones of exciting stainless steel and silk Habu yarn in a beautiful pale grey. I'm thinking of using it for sculpural purposes - because of the metal content, it can be formed into shapes and will stay that way - also, it totally doesn't count as yet another yarn purchase if I make sculpture with it!
This afternoon I'm hoping to go to Rosslyn Chapel but I'm waiting for my son to be picked up first. He's only been here a couple of days but he's managed to score a job doing some gardening work and dog walking for some family friends. Plus his granny is going to pay him to help lay their patio, which I wasn't expecting. He's going to be rolling in it when he gets home at the end of the summer! I shall open him a savings account so he can start saving for his gap year. Can you believe we're nearing that stage already... I'm looking at the five weeks apart this summer as a bit of a practice run. Why do they start leaving home just as they're getting really interesting?
Other family news - my brother and his wife are definitely coming over from Australia in November, so we'll get to see them then. This is very pleasing news.
OK, got to go and do some knitting and drink more tea - aren't holidays great! Oh wait, that's what I do at home as well...
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Arrived safely in Scotland after a busy but fun weekend with my brother and his wife. We barbequed, went for a walk in the Dales, ate proper Sunday lunch at my SIL's parent's pub, hung out on the patio, playing bowls on their Ninetendo Wii, drank lots of wine and generally had a pretty good time.
The trip up to Scotland from Yorkshire was a bit spiffy, my brother had scored us free first class tickets. The Kidlet was most impressed and never wants to travel budget class again - tough luck, kid!
To my great delight, my parents have finally got broadband, so updating won't be the chore I was expecting. Wonder if they can be persuaded that a better keyboard would be nice!
OK, must dash, the Kidlet and I are heading into Edinburgh this afternoon. We're going to have lunch at the museum (one of our special little rituals) and then score him some new clothes since I didn't have time to take him shopping before we left.
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Right folks, I'm off to Yorkshire to visit my brother and his wife for the weekend and then up to my parents in Scotland for a week. I'm back on Monday 1st August.
I'll try to update when I'm away but I wouldn't hold your breath - my parents have dial-up, so using their internet is like watching paint dry. I won't be checking my mail but if you want to get in touch, emailing me on here may work or leave a comment on my Plurk account.
Later...
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cold
amused
pleased
tired
sore
indescribable
sick
listless
determined
ditzy
annoyed
hungry