Colour, Design and Butterflying (by sarah)

It has been a long time i.e. the time of the head bang, that I have been unable to think of a zillion ideas all at once. Where I have been able to learn a skill and cross threaded it back on itself and mix and match it with my existing tool kit of skills.

But it is happening again 🙂

Very very much happening again though I am needed some help in my visulisations. This means that Alaric ended up spending two hours working on a template for me and we are not done with it yet. What we are working on is going to fit into the colourful pouches at the top. These I have folded by hand and the project is designed to nicely fit 🙂

No you can not yet know what it is.

I've also settled on a style of fancy box for the sweets and things at Mary's birthday party so will have to get folding them too 🙂

Now I don't mean that I have not been having ideas at all since the head injury or that I have not designed things because I have. I made a colouring book for adults for goodness sake and created a lots of colouring for kids and so on.

But that is not butterflying - yes I think I might have made this term up or maybe nicked it from the poly community where it refers to lots of partners or something?

Anyway butterflying is where I have a thought cascade, I get so many ideas and possibilities that I have to splurge them all out as little prototypes or write/sketch great big long brain dumps, just so that I can see clearly what all the ideas are!

In my mind they are all superimposed on one and other but once out I can see them and then the design process can really begin. I suppose it's design and development to nick jargon from the business world. I begin tweaking things and making them fit together, I have lots of bits, lots of building blocks and I know they will fit together but they can fit together in an almost endless mirade of things... not all of which are going to produce some thing I can use.

So I whittle and I add and I change things and sometimes things get bunged in a box for 3 yrs at this point, half formed and impotent and I worry that I wasted all that time and money. Then one day: BING! The idea flashes and pops and I scurry upstairs to find it all and hope it's not perished (fimo is really the only stuff I've had problems with storage but mainly because I had the problem with it so therefore now check shelf lives ie resin and mould stuff shelf life is small, felting materials need protection from moths... and so on).

And then we can begin and it all slots into place and BOOM I have five new things for workshops and sales and presents.

However this is often not the finishing line, no not at all. I often use junk, scrap or low grade materials to work out how something should go together... these are not mock ups as such but rather mk 1, 2, or 3 - I can't really make "practice" things, if I think of it as such then I can't actually get my head round making it. But if it is something made with the kids or an upcycling project then that is fine.

Once I've gotten all of this done then I can start thinking about colour and materials and embellishments. Sometimes this process takes years... sometimes it takes half an hour for the whole lot.

Of Test Drives and Zines (by sarah)

This is a Surprise Pouch - they contain one mini zine each plus some other bits and pieces like but not always stickers, page corners, charms and so on 🙂

I love them, I am very pleased the idea worked so well. They will be coming to shows and things with me, they are 50p and will first appear at the OK True Believers Comic book Festival in Feb. I'm there as Wiggly Pet Press and there will be cosplaying and things a foot but I'll bore you with all that at some later date 🙂

I've spent the last few years writing and illustrating and constructing zines (little homemade comics and booklets) but have not always had the infrastructure to actually birth them completely into the world. Now I do. Now I am finishing off all those little zines that have been langishing on hard drives and the like (or worse in my head!).

So be prepared to see alot more of these little butes 🙂

Also I am in general mixing the writing up with the arts and crafts side of things, making tie in necklaces and writing stories for the steam punk accessories I'd made and so on.

Yes I'm aware I need to sell it all on line or something... I do have various e-shops I just don't always remember to list new things or tell people when I have!

Mary had Ballet today it was her first time in the new more advanced class, she was shy and with drawn, it is probably because she hadn't really slept but it was also because her two friends are not in this class. We are seeing how the next few weeks are going but if she continues to be distressed then the teacher says she can drop down again.

Then we went to test drive the Zoe - an electric vechile - we've wanted to have an electric car... well since before Al could drive. I used to enter all the comps to try and win a hybrid when they first came out - of course we never won 🙁 But now we are in a position where we might be able to do a lease for three years. Electric cars are still emergent technology so we wouldn't really want to invest as such in owning one (at the moment) but leasing one would cost us less than running our car plus we wouldn't have to do the maintinance and that is driving me insane (haha!).

Yeah I'm sick of spending weekends crawling under cars getting my cloths drity when it's a desperation factor because I need to be somewhere - also bare in mind I can't even drive!

The show room where lovely and we got hot drinks and we all got to go in the car. Jean likes it because it's smooth, I like it because it's quiet, Al likes the way it handles, Mary doesn't like it because a) it is not a red tesla (kind of agree on this one as we don't really have a choice of colour and they are all erm... muted but at least they are not biage!) and b) it was too "jumpy" this was actually Al getting used to the breaking system.

I like the back lights stylistically not too keen on the front ones, am sad that if we get it then I can't really put decals or anything on it and we don't even get funky hub caps because that all costs more or ment we had to wait longer or something.

I was pleased and yet embarrassed that I was asked if I wanted to test drive it.

We were supposed to then go shopping but there had been ceiling fans all rotating at different speeds around the lights and I'd had to think about numbers without the naps I am taking for the head injury during the week - the result was that I completely crashed and we came home, not really sure what we then did until I started folding things for comic book festivals but I know I slept.

Whilst Mary was in ballet I got another origami book from Waterstones because it has the little baskets/boxes I want to fold for Mary's birthday party in. I think it is counting as my birthday present from Al but I already have it because I finished all the projects I can do in the other books and have infact started to improvise weird geometric structures out of multiple sheets of paper and altering simple folds to be other things. Hence the Surprise Pouches which probably do exists elsewhere but for me are an adaption.

Alaric is helping me out with some zine formating as my brain is just not playing ball at the moment. The Christmas decorations are still sitting in piles in the living room but I am taking things at my own pace.

Christmas Slinks Away (by sarah)

Last day of Christmas :'( I am not ready for it to go. But the decorations must come down for it is twelth night so the lights are on for the last time and I shall play the music once more. The festiveness has slunk away - now is the season of birthdays so I suppose its ok.

Of course my neighbours have yet to celebrate their Christmas and I here traditionally it ends on the 2nd of Feb or something so whilst the fluffiest sequined reindeer jumper and those with the flashing lights and the christmas tree and christmas pud hats are being packed away my Christmas onsie and two plainer Christmas jumpers shall stay, with their geometric pointsettiers.

Also I am still working on the craft advent for Salaric Craft the idea was that if I started it this year for the 10th Christmas it would be complete for next Christmas which I think is actually the 10th birthday either way I knew such a big project would take time 🙂

It is basically recorded I just need to edit it and put the photos and write ups in. Then it can sit there all ready for next year. Main issue was my tech is old and shonky and every couple of videos the tech needs a good over haul which is reliant on Alaric having time!

I failed to actually post christmas cards to people - I have some notion in my head of sending new year cards but we shall see how time goes etc...

I still need to decide what I am doing for my birthday :/ The actual day I will be at the hospital so that pretty much wipes that out and the weekends are filling up. Not even really sure what I want to do if I am honest.

This is the grey bit of the year with no Christmas but cold or dampness blocking out the light. My family often used to leave the Christmas decorations up until my birthday but when I got to uni people moaned that it was bad luck and stuff and that thought kind of got wedged in my head and ruined it. And that hacks me off because if people can put their decorations up in mid November why can't I keep mine for an extra week which is still Christmas in many places anyway?

Anyway my general way around the bleakness is the New Year Resolutions and general spring clean type stuff. So I have made action plans and I have chosen things to learn in 2017 and it is I suppose time to be getting on with them and it will be good to have my exercise bike back in the living room so I can use it 🙂

So I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and you are having a Happy New Year 🙂

Confessions and Sadness (by sarah)

I have a confession, last year was mainly spent pretending that I was ok and everything was fine. But they weren't.

In the summer of 2015 I hit my head, it was a daft stupid accident that was very me, I was dancing and having a good time with Jean as we awaited a band I had stayed late at a festival to see. I work at festivals but due to the physical illnesses I've had I have rarely stayed at them late we have either gone home or slunk back to our camping.

Something happened, not sure what, weather I went dizzy or slipped or passed out etc... but I remember feeling weird and falling. I feel off of the grass and hit the back of my head on the concrete path. My head rang and I thought my eyes where closed.

Jean says they were open, she thought I was dead. I was a pool of pain but remember thinking a) I'd killed myself and thinking "oh know" and b) when I started seeing people standing around me that I needed to get up other wise there was going to be a palava. I then discovered I could not get up...

Several hours later after x-rays and what not I could move again and due to scary people in A&E threatening to kill us all, and police and nurses having to reassure us it was all fine, we just wanted to go home. I could move again by this point so they let us go.

They gave us a leaflet on concussion saying it would last a couple of days and what to do if various things happened. Now my memory is that we met up with Al's parents the next day but apparently it wasn't and I'd just slept for a day which for me doesn't exist.

We went for a meal with Al's parents, I was glazed but coherant, like I was when they were questioning me, I knew who Jean and Al where I just couldn't recall their names, and struggled with my own initially, but I knew why I'd been at the festival. It of corse did not help that medical personal did not believe I wasn't drunk, this has actually left me with a resentment though the medical treatment was great there was definately dismissiveness due to the assumption that you can't be having a good time without intoxication.

So the few days passed and I woke up and things suddenly got worse my speech slurred and I got slow. I posted on FB in dispair about how long was concussion supposed to last, and got a phone call from a friend who heard my speech and spoke to Alaric. The up shot being we called on the medical insurance he had and they were horrified I'd just been left and sent me to A&E with a list of scans and things I needed.

Interestingly going to A&E on a weekday morning meant no one thought I was drunk, I got the scan and there were no major bleeds but I had bruised my brain and it had taken a couple of days for the swelling to act up. It was not bad though and there is basically nothing they could do.

They also found I had growths in my sinuses, they are none cancerous polyps and would be expected in people with food allergies etc... as the allergies being acted up makes them grown (or this is what I've understood).

So basically it was a waiting game, the polyps/sinuses could have made me dizzy, my migraine medication could have lowered my blood pressure, I could have slipped... the festival was fantastic at looking after me when it happened as where Churros Bros.

There were oppointments and things, I don't really remember about 3 months, I know I did stuff, I know I posted to FB and twitter etc... I know I was mainly using speech to txt to do so. I thought I suddenly got brilliant at sudoku but I hadn't I was just filling the grids in randomly and my writing was garbled.

Al says unless we were out I slept, I had lucid realistic dreams that seemed like reality. I was stuck in a mash up of Mad Max films and Water World when I was lucky, at other times it was old sitcoms like Friends and soaps such as Eastenders, Neighbours etc... Alaric run my workshops for me whilst I mainly sat and coloured in but by September I was drastically improving, my speech was mainly normal though I still kept just nodding off and having periods of slurred speech.

I started doing stuff again, I think there was a Science Show Off, a few poetry events and my first acting job which Al was very nervous about and used his lunch break to check I was where I should be etc...

Then Christmas hit - from about mid november I started struggling again. Slurred speech, random times in Bristol where I was taking part in an art initative pop up shop and exhibition, my parents had taken me in for the set up and day shifts and that was fine but I thought I was well enough so I went in by myself on the train, it got dark whilst I was traveling, I was supposed to meet my friends for the launch and my shift. I ended up in the completely the wrong bit of Bristol on the pavement, a worried lady thought I was drunk or something and helped me find my friends and then right bit of bristol.

It slowely became apparent that I was having over load of some sort with all the lights in contrast to the dark nights, the more the contrast and the more flashy the worse it got. Just sitting in the carvery with my parents with multiple sets of christmas lights made my speech slur.

Damn concussion.

Then I went to see the star wars film - this was last year so it was the Rey film. We had free cinema tickets at the time. I didn't remember the last half of the film, so of course I went to see it again with my dad... there are flashy fight scenes. My dad was so worried about me, he said if he hadn't known about the concussion he would have thought I was having a stoke, my speech slurred, I was falling and stumbling as we left the cinema, crashing into people.

Now my dad is a skin flint with money, so I knew something was very wrong when I became aware that I was sitting in the posh coffee place in the Docks with posh coffee. It was the nearest place and he thought I needed to sit and rest.

Flash photography also, including at the comic book festivals cosplay, I have huge guilt over this event. My family where all in the crowd watching I'd managed to find someone to cover my stall so headed up to watch but could not get to them. I stood watching planning to take some photos but... but I started to feel weird and dizzy and realised I was getting over loaded so went to walk away. Coordinating walking was hard, my arms were pins and needles. I saw a young man/boy collapse into a fit and being first aid trained I instinctively went to help except I could not coordinate and kind of just collided with someone who asked me what the matter was, I tried to say the boy had collapsed but found even slurred speech was not happening I think I made some sort of noise.

They looked where I was looking and rushed over, there was lots of help now and I knew I was useless so I got to the hand rails and waited for the vertigo to pass. I then had to have a sneaky nap/eye close at my stall. I still feel so bad I didn't help.

Through out the year there have been other incidences including lasers light, airports and other parents thinking I was drunk at kids parties.

My left hand side doesn't work properly - Alaric says you can't see it until they do the cognative tests and then it becomes obvious I am putting so much extra effort into controlling my left side.

It mucked up my drawings prespective went out the window faces where distorted, drawing took an age.

Sustained concentration made my speech slur. But hey I wasn't sleeping all the time anymore.

Now obviously I've still managed to do stuff and physically I am as fit if not fitter than I have ever been. But numbers... I can't always do numbers and if I am not expecting to see people I don't recognise them, I even lost my friend in a cafe because she put her coat on so she didn't look the same as when we'd met up.

This is a scary position to be in as it means if someone realises this they could pretend to know me. I can't even find my own way to our allotment though I did manage to find the Drs so I should try finding the allotment again!

I'm on a new rest regime as basically my brain is still healing and can't cope with large sustained load, there are no information filters. So lights etc... are a tsumani which floods me.

The seizures are more likely to happen when I am tired and take 3 days to 2 weeks to get over though I'm sort of normal as soon as I've rested I'm just abit clumsy and mentally slow afterwards.

Sustained writing and reading are hard it's like all the coping mechanisms for the dyslexia and ADHD have vanished, the nurologist says this is because they take up more brain power and I just don't have the capacity for that at the moment. I still have voice to text but my god it's an editing mess!

As you can tell by the spat of long blog posts I am finding things alot easier with the rests in place but they do eat the day and any day that I go out is a struggle. The acting in the autumn was fine but lit. it was all I did those days and when I go and perform I have to ask for no flash photography and arties can't seem to help but take flash photography often because they are now drunk and can't remember what I said about it all :/

Also it means I am a pain as I have to ask the events organisers and venues to change the room lighting, I think this is going to plummet the amount of people who want to book me :'(

On the other hand I can now get up and down flights of stairs so all those little venues that where out with the pelvis issues are now accessible to me (if it's not one thing it's another - sigh).

It was this fear of ruining everything I'd built up which lead me to try and hide how hard things where being that and people kept saying things like "concussion only lasts a few days" and "use it or loose it" over brain function.

But I need to be honest because these are the new restraints I am working within and if I am to achieve all I can I need to be working with people who understand and want me still. The summers festivals were more than doable - yes I can't really stay once the light starts to fade so that is the same as when I had the fatigue and pelvic issues it just a different type of fatigue and issue.

And the fatigues are different which is bizar but they are.

Basically I can now get 2 hours of high brain function stuff done a day, this has to be broken up and is still not high high stuff like my maths SOBS. And I spark out into sleep which I awake from and then can do physical house and kid looking after stuff. What I had before was muscle fatigue and inability to sleep due to pain. It is a weird contrast especially as both are called fatigue.

On the plus side - this is all probably transient, in that as my brain rests it heals, the little connections re-grow and retrain and the over loads will hopefully stop and I can have my sparkly flashing lights back.

However there is a sad sad price I have had to pay for this. We were trying to adopt, know when Al attempted to contact the adoption people to explain the head bang when not long after it happened he found that we had dropped off their list and it was going to take ages and I was getting better and a good rate so we spoke to them and started the process again.

And had been moving forward with that and I was improving drastically through the summer, my time lines are a little muddled in that for me 2015 and 2016 are kind of the same year due to memory holes where I just seem to not have put any new memories down :/

So it all seemed fine but then the clocks changed and then nights got dark and the sun got low and flashy through the trees and... well I'm kind of count as a vulnerable adult and it's going to take a while to go away and we made a clanging error in judgement resulting in me having a kind of mini pre-seizure thing whilst out with Mary trying to get her to her Christmas play and the thought of if I'd had a little one with me too was not good. So we decided we'd need to put it all on hold after the last head injuries clinic. Plus it turned out they wanted us to start the process AGAIN!!! Including sending out the stupidly long ref. forms which one of our refs had already filled out twice. I am so sad if the origonal time line had happened I probably wouldn't have been late at the festival as there would have been a small person to look after obv. I might have slipped somewhere else and you know even if my parents had been baby siting them then it would just have been one of those things as they would have already been part of the family. When we thought it was all just going to take a couple of months to get better it was the right thing to continue but we have no idea of time scales at the moment and adopted kids tend to have settling in issues etc... and it just wouldn't be fair. So I am kind of angry at the adoption stuff for being ineffiencent and wasting their chance of finding a home for kids with us. But I also feel guilty because there have been house visits and training courses (we've done twice already as the process keeps changing to make it quicker :/) so I feel we've wasted time and money when all we wanted to do was help.

This is heart breaking for us, we wanted more kids, if/when I am better we can try again but I kind of fear they will be annoyed with us for dropping it this time 🙁 But in all seriousness it scared me going into the seizure stuff whilst out with Mary on my own, I was in the village so like we were bumping into lots of people we know but what if it had been elsewhere?

So yeah I hope we can still adopt or foster in future and I hope that the festivals and events still want to work with me and that I get my shiny lights back. If I don't then I plan to just make winter my creative time and hide in the house as I mostly did this year however that eats into pretty much one of my busiest work periods so is really really not ideal.

Also train travel etc... has been hard as I have to rely on the station staff telling me what train to get on and of course I look normal so sometimes they just fob me off. I was bad enough with trains before due to the dyslexia so if you've wondered why I've not been to see you this is one of the reasons and I am sorry I am not making all the parties and shows and things.

Yeah and shows and cinema, I still enjoy going but do have to spend time looking away and shielding my eyes and I know this is combined with then trying to wine and dine me with my stupid dietry requirements is not brilliant, so I understand if that is not what people want in an outing.

Which is why I am completely failing to organise anything for my birthday.

Paper Folding (by sarah)

Origami and me... I am still in a paper folding craze.

So for Christmas I got a flower folding kit but realised that I wasn't really good enough for the flowers and did not want to waste the nice paper. So I started cutting up bits of old books to fold and ordered 1000 little origami scares.

As I'd attempted the flowers I began to remember paper folds I'd done as a child, things for the playground in infants and juniors 🙂 And hats my nans and great aunts and uncles would fold to entertain me from newspapers.

We used to make little fortune telling paper puzzles that would turn inside out and boxes and bags where always useful.

I remember discovering the word origami when my brother got an epic book with a red T-rex on the front (it might have been a dragon but I wanted to fold dinosaurs!). So when he got board of it me and dad would spend hours folding. Paper is kind of the medium we made things in anyway, I remember making dinosaurs and seascapes and houses out of papier mache and folded cereal box cardboard. Dad would make elaborate hats out of sugar paper from the docks where he worked when I was little and I still remember me and my brother both winning the different categories for our paper easter bonnets.

Mum showed me you could curl it to make fringes and waves and bows out of paper, then there was the quilling which I would make pictures out of. There was a lot of paper about when I was little as there was office waste which got brought home.

My brother's book had some paper with it but he used that (and rightly so it was his!) me and dad would cut old copy paper and magazines and things into squares and then his penknife wasn't about I found you could make paper rip if you keep folding it first one way and then the other and run your nails along the crease repeatedly.

One of my nans showed me how to make paper beads and I made loads and attempted to sell the jewellery I'd made out of them - I was 5 yrs old - amazingly all the old ladies in and around "the corner" of our streets bought the damn things! Rolled up paper on scraps of wool with felt tip flowers and spots on.

The other nan showed me how to make paper straws which are amazingly useful including being used to weave straw dollies, baskets and used in general as construction materials.

Paper... I've made alot with paper from my poetry dragons to treasure chests to vases of flowers.

But back to paper folding, I never managed to make my dinosaur, it was modular and a big fold and I found most of the paper we had was just too thick when folded small.

Roll on university where friends would make little jumping frogs and penguins and things and give them to me. They showed me how to make them and one even tried to drag me along to her origami club... but university was not a great paper folding time for me.

I was loosing the use of my hand, they were turning to rubber with RSI, reactive arthritis and general joint inflammation. Then there was crutches thrown into the mix which kill your hands. I didn't realise this was happening until the end of my 3rd year (actually my 4th year at uni), when I loss the use of them completely for about 2 weeks just before my exams!

My roommate at the time had tried to show me how to fold these most AMAZING modular spheres but my hands would have none of it 🙁 I still have two of the little spheres we use them as Christmas decorations - paper balls folded well over a decade ago. I have no idea where my room mate is now I should have told her how much I loved her origami.

During Jean's pregnancy my hands swelled and again it took some time to get the use back but the first thing I did when we started running the Cubs and Scouts was design what was to become the poetry dragon but again the concept came from a Christmas play I'd done in junior school about dragons in the moon and sun. I was the bum of the dragon, we made little models - when we were learning the story - my model is different in that I took the square concertina fold we used for Christmas decorations to make the long wiggly body rather than cloth and then I drew a dragon head and tail which you could fold and cut and stick and fix to the body and I did not have budget for sticks so used drinking straws.

I have ended up taking these dragons into schools, run poetry workshops with them, made them big and small, they've been to music festivals and even for various chinese new year celebrations.

I adapted it to dragon boats using over lapping circles - they are not origami I think because they use scissors and sticky and my floating lanterns used paper clips.

More it like origami is an added tool to my paper repitoir to go with the papier mache and stamps and punches.

It is however something I am considering a new skill, I've never before applied myself to origami. I got a voucher for Christmas so I ordered some funky paper and a few more books - I do not have my brothers books instead I have two falling to pieces paper backs from the 70's which I've inherited from various elderly relatives. They pretty much contain stuff I just needed a little reminder of or rediculously complicated projects! So I also ordered two books one is Easy Origami and the other was dragons... yes I know but I could not resist 🙂

Of course I also ordered some more felting needles.

Interestingly I am having lots of ideas and inspiration with the origami not sure if it's because I am having all the rests and naps the nurologist suggested or weather this is just normal with origami. I spent today designing two workshops for festivals etc... and making bits for when I take my books and zines to shows. Thinking about it the making of the zines is paper craft too.

As I fold shapes say the hearts at the beginning of the post I think... this could be the top of a dress, or if we stop the folding at this point you could turn it into a fox and if we squeeze it like this and drew some whiskers it would be a mouse...

Turns out they also fit as page corners!

I made Alaric a load of cufflinks for advent, he is currently making himself a cufflink holder out of metal but it is going to take a while so I folded him a temporary cufflink holder.

The hearts are for Mary's birthday, I have also worked out a couple of the flowers from the kit which she wants for her party too 🙂 and it's a little tricky but I found a tutorial for 3D diamonds which I will attempt (It's My Little Pony themed and we are also making lots of hama bead decorations too!).

She wants some nice boxes for sweets and things to sit in too so some of the funky paper I got is very pink and pretty for this purpose - I improvised these boxes on the base of a basket.

Annoyingly the funky paper all arrived before the books I've ordered and then today the dragon book arrived but not the easy origami! Still the internet has helped, I've started up a pinterest board call Folding Space.

So year origami - I'm loving it, finding people on twitter and youtube and blogs and things too 🙂