The Jan Recap… (by sarah)

It's the end of January so what has gone on in the household snell-pym in the first month of 2017?

For a start there was the end of Christmas, I am still making the last few Advent vids ready for Christmas next year. We delivered presents though sadly not all the presents so we still have a back log!

Also mine and Mary's birthdays - mine involved a coffee, meal and shopping with Al before hospital stuff but we have only just done the proper celebration with kids and friends this weekend just gone which was also Mary's birthday. There was also posh vegan/Gluten Free brunch. Mary has so far played in the Waterstones cafe with her friend Lilly as her party is going to be in two weeks time. We've planned the party and got stuff ready for it.

This includes me working out how to make upcycled unicorn head bands and tail belts and little roll and pop up horses for the kids to make.

My mother was hospitalised so there was a trip to Essex and the adventures of getting home on the train which were unexpected.

DIY wise we have fixed several toys, remounted a coat rack which had pulled off the wall, dealt with networking and upgrading Jean's computer.

We got a telescope - an amazing thing which was a pool of Christmas money instead of presents for Al and Jean and part of mine and Mary's birthdays. We've seen binary stars so far. It was an undertaking to assemble and we now need to build a storage/transport box but it is assembled and being looked through though we've only had like three clear nights!

I've had three lots of testing at the hospital which took it's toll and norovirus hit the household. I missed a theatre meeting about performing a monologue and a poetry recording evening but I am being given second chances at those so that's all good.

I also missed my Krav self defence one off class and a poetry book launch which made me sad but on the other hand I was live streamed reading poetry at Food For Thought.

Talking of poetry I have also been typing up and editing poems from the BOOKCASE (Not shelf) of notebooks I have. The shear number is insane obv. not all of it is usable but a lot is so I have been organising Turquoise Monster and have even started submitting work again (as in 2 poems so far). I've written three poems this month predictable all about Trump. Of course I am doing my poetry writing challenges so I've drafted a good few more mostly not about Trump.

Jan has also been me gearing up for the poetry writing challenge that I host over at Wopo.

I have also designed, refined and created mini poetry scrolls, story scrolls, made bookwallets etc... for blank scrolls for others to write poetry on, personalised pencils and made write your own poem kits, made and put together 100 mini zine surprise pouches, story boarded two more zines, drafted half a short story, edited a couple of flash fictions, tried to write daily on this blog and started on the mammoth task of trying to sort out the Salaric Craft blog.

Also Storystorm - what used to be Picture Book Idea Month has rebranded and moved to Jan. so I have been idea generating and expanding on those ideas for kids books.

Alaric has been making a cufflink holder for the cufflinks I made him for Advent, the girls have been making invites and decorations for Mary's party and we have all been working on the cosplay outfits for True Believers Comic Festival which is this weekend coming. This has involved sewing, sticking, painting, metal twisting, papier mache and buying new wellys.

I had to get a third print run of my colouring book Love: A Stranger Dream made and in general have been trying to sort out The WigglyPets Press.

I have been teaching myself origami and have folded lit. hundreds of things from geometric modules to make bigger things from to little stand up foxes to pretty little boxes.

We've organised things for getting back down the allotment, so just sorting out containers for soil etc...

I've knitted four hats, made an Ironman craft kit, taken the kids to two (not us) birthday parties. Three projects are still currently being designed and refined including mending a rocking horse that is older than me. I accidently made a pair of slippers from an old coat whilst trying to make a portal gun (please tell me this happens to other people!).

Alaric made my laptop usable again (for now) and we had a chicken fatality 🙁 and we had to fix the chicken run and stuff and general animal stuff to sort out. We've got our new electric car and there was pie making!

NB pie was not chicken Al is veggi!

Jean is still at Scouts, Jujitsu, and Drama and Mary is doing her Ballet, both girls are missing climbing but for one of the parties we did get to go "caving". Alaric is still doing Krav and Hackspace each week. Oh and of course we had to do my tax (sobs!).

There were also visits from and too various family.

So that was January - it snowed and it rained and there was scary fog.

Future Shock (by sarah)

A cold frosty morning with delineated skies of faded ice cream colours, we look out over Gloucester with it's historical buildings as they puncture and frame the ancient landscape around them. The air is misty cool and I feel sick at the sight of a frost covered sleeping bag hidden in a corner, the occupant is alive and I sigh in relief, the air tastes of ozone and fumes and rotting food until it is all over lain by the sugar-fat smell of the doughnut van cooking their first batch of the day.

The progress of time marches on, we seem to have been stuck for a long time, at least ten years we failed to roll with the waves of advancement, we barely noticed them.

Before that we thought we'd march singing and triumphant into a future of virtual reality and medical advancement and the healing of our societies and nature. We are 80's childs though Alaric was born in the 70's - just.

When the mysterious x-box was sent to us for Christmas a couple of years ago and we found we could do physical games with it, we knew the future had arrived and we had somehow missed it.

We think on these things, we park our car... we plug it in.

We have FUTURE SHOCK.

When we drive we can plug in and charge our books, my friend charges her cigs. My mum is in hospital but she is alive, alive because of amazing medical advancements made in the last twenty years, made in my lifetime. My dad is the same, a hundred years ago he would have died in his early 30's, he turns 70 this year. I am alive, one of my children is a c-section babe, we walk paste the homeless on the way to dance classes and I swollow the bile that rises. The future is being good to us but it is rather too threaded through with cyber-punk dystopian chords than I would like. Our eldest complains that people live in apartments with all they could want and swimming pools on balconies that over look slums.... how could they?

I frown how different from that are we?

But we do stuff she insists. Yes we do, we don't know what others do or do not do. The Future is full of mental and moral pit falls I never saw coming, like Brexit... like finding myself on the side of the haves and seeing what it would do to the have nots and despairing as I knew which way they would vote and why and neither side would listen, dipolling themselves further.

The divide is growing. But uneven.

Sometimes it overwhelms me, all the thinks to think about, all the interconnect facets of our time and world and society. The environment, housing conditions, health, respect for others, not becoming an oppressor when you have been repressed but not slipping in the victim mentality, stopping cruelty, allowing freedom. Sometimes I can't process it all and I have to ignore it to function and do anything and that maybe selfish but if I don't then we can't do anything. When overwhelmed we can not organise fundraises or gather supplies for food banks or try and remember to shop ethically when we can afford to do so.

Adaption is key and not being judged for buying primarny when there is no time or money but looking nice is an imperative and the way our society works yes you do need to sometimes look nice... like job interviews etc... I am not saying that is right, but it is a reality.

We are lucky, having had times of not being lucky we are acutely aware of the contrast and how fragile that can be. Yes we've safe guarded ourselves this time - as much as we can - because we can. But we are more determined than ever to make a good future - the future maybe here but that doesn't mean we can't improve it and more importantly it is not here for everybody.

So we change what we can where we can, sometimes the difference is so minute we can not even appreciate it and sometimes it is for many and sometimes it is just a packet of sani pads sent to the food bank or a conversations with someone.

Sometimes it is saving up money to try and pay for surgery privately for a parent and not getting there before the nhs sorts them out and then having a deposit and luck to get a new car on lease, a car that will help the environment and our long term spending as it is cheaper to run. Sometimes it is then giving the other car, the old polluting the air car, to your parents because they no longer have a mobility car because... austerity and the damage it causes especially to older folk who drastically go down hill if they can't get out and about, ending up in hospital costing the tax payers more money than their mobility allowance ever cost.

To miss-quote Terry Pratchett - we can't make everything better but we will make the little bit we can see and touch as bettererererrrrr as we can. Granny Weatherwax says it better in The Shepherd's Crown.

It took us ages to work out how to unplug the damn car so you know the future is never going to be plain sailing.

Meet Sheila (by sarah)

We've finally managed it!!!

This is Sheila she is our new car and she is actually NEW! As those of you have known us for a long time will knew we have not had the best luck with cars... vans fine but cars no.

We have been lucky in that friends and family have stepped in with cars and the little Skoda was lovely and reliable but... was a bit small for multiple sets of hips and a car seat in the back and sadly we wore the poor thing out. It did us good service though!

There have been many adventures of getting stuck on motoways with no phone charge and having to walk and walk... well you can read that fiasco here. Also I am sick of trying to fix engines on the go with what ever we have laying around (remember the time I attempted to make a missing pipe out of empty drinks cans?).

Or the time the car set on fire? (OK which time the car set on fire!).

So we've tried saving up and we've tried buying second hand vechiles from not friends/second hand car dealers ships and well yes you guessed it that ended up with the company we taking to court filing for bankruptcy as they do every single time too many people try and take them to court >:(

You can read that one here.

Obviously a lot of this was not having money, having to go for what we could get, we borrowed my mums little car, it red, white and blue and it failed catastrophically. Bear in mind it's not like we don't do maintinance - in general a large chunk of our weekends was often spent faffing around with the cars and vans but this is what happens when you can't afford new cars. It costs more to have little money than it does to have alot!

Anyway long story short - we have a shiny new car with funky lights - I will try and get a better pic!

Did I mention it's electric? It's ELECTRIC!!! Not hybrid but full on electric - it is not a Tesla (boo), it is not a funky colour... it isn't even the blue or silver we would have preferred and of course... it is ours but it is not ours. We've leased it.

a) This was basically the only way we were going to get any new vechile ever and b) it is electric and as much as we've always wanted electric it is still an emergent technology and so we really don't want to be investing tens of thousands (even if we could!) into something that is pretty much still prototyping.

I am very excited about it being electric!!! I used to enter all the New Scientists comps to win a hybrid back in the day!

One little note on the old car thing - I was coming from a back ground where my relatives were autocar mechanics and there was always access to tools and maybe even an apprentices to fix the cars. In that environment it's doesn't matter that the car is old and also it means you don't get ripped off because cars that need a little work kind of accumulate and you're sorted. Outside of this environment and there are dangerous crooks who don't care if what they are selling you for all the money you've scraped together is dangerous.

And breath.

We are incredibly lucky to get our car - it is glacial white, it smells of new car. We picked it up this afternoon - it is now getting muddy because... Cranham and Scouting. It comes with polish and high viz. I love the lights... asthetically I really LOVE those lights. I was in fact mooning over those lights on a Zoe (make of car we have) at the services not long ago... it's still not a Tesla. No more road side fixing!!! Remember I can't actually drive and am kind of fed up with stupidly put together engines that are actually designed so that it's hard to fix outside the approved dealership because.... money.

The vans a Ford Transit - we know what we're doing with those 🙂

So yeah its a Zoe 🙂

Which is why we've called it Sheila 🙂 (Sheila's are often called Zoe incase you didn't know!).

So yeah... we has new car - we kind of thought this would never happen, we are very nervous about it but it is here now and we have charging cards and a big fat cable!

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.

A Mix of Things (by sarah)

Today has been lovely and annoying, destructive and creative in turn.

Mary Elf and the Tinsel Dragon Cat have been up to shinanigans - I wonder which of them decided to poo on the table cloth this morning - the nice white one with shiny white flowers on it that snags easily that my aunt bought us? I assume it was the cat, it smelt like cat - I was not happy but here they are being cute - the sequence will be storyfied never you fear.

The Tinsel Dragon Cat was lonely and felt quiet rightly that it did not have enough tinsel so it called to the Mary Elf, a little rainbow of a thing that hopes here and there and everywhere and never EVER stops talking.

The Mary Elf attended the great Tinsel Dragon who was once again in it's most comfitable of guises as the young cat Lithium. Mary Elf listened with care to the instructions of the Tinsel Dragon Cat.

The instructions where simple... go forth and fetch all the tinsel that abounds across this fair and mighty land and bring it back for a snuggly bed was to be crafted.

So the Mary Elf went and had many adventures over great lakes that others called puddles and scoured vast deserts of "the super market", onward the little rainbow bounce trekked until the was a montain to scale of stairs scattered with toys which she had to tidy.

Until she bought home much tinsel for the Tinsel Dragon Cat to sleep upon. So pleased was the dragon in it's guise as little Lithium the pusskin that with paw and claw Mary Elf was Knighted most valiant in all the land of Front Room. There was much rejoicing.

The End

But not of our day. Unwanted turd cleaned up Al's cousins turned up and we did presents and things and had tea and headed out for a lovely greek meal in Gloucester Docks.

Except our car wouldn't start - this has increasingly been an issue we need to take the battery out and top it up (or that was our first thought anyway). So we headed out in the van after we'd moved all the tents and greenpeace signs I picked up at the wood recylcing project to turn into something for the garden - if we ever get stopped by the police (happens a lot when you drive a van) then we might have trouble convincing them that we are not militant activists or something!!!

The meal was lovely though Mary did not like the octipus tentical that was served up to one of our number - she loves octipi and talks to them when she sees them. She almost tried a prawn.

I felt guilty that all the presents we handed over where home made and embarassed that the scarf and hat that glow in light where knitted using the looms and not just on needles - I kind of feel it's cheating but I am getting neat results with the looms and still struggling about with needle knitting.

I got a lovely wooden bowl.

I hear there is a computer game and things too and Mary is excited about knitting the little mouse that is her present 🙂

The resturant we were aiming for was actually closed so we ended up the opposite side of town to where we had parks, there was a cunning plan of Al and Maurice getting the car and van and picking us up. It went abit haywire as plans often but all was well with a bit of twoing and throwing.

We said goodbye and headed back home, it was getting dark, the sun set was a beautiful striation across of the city and sea scape of the dock, I failed to take a photo I'm not sure why.

There were swans.

Our car was clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking when we got home, it had been locking and unlocking itself continously whilst we had been out. Roll on car madness involving origami, welding and drinking straws.

The moon was a finger nail sliver and venus (I think) was bright and garish.

I used Jean's head as a camera stand. I also had to help her with her homework by taking photos of her in posses from some famous artist. His drawings look like Mary's, no honestly they do!

Back to fixing the car... we needed to take the battery out but a terminal cover was needed and there wasn't one on the battery so origami came to the rescue!!!!

I am so proud of this that you are going to see it in action from three different angles!

It was to stop accidental contact and sparkage!

It is folded from half a page from a very old and battered copy of an Enid Blighton book. It was beyond salvage and has been used in three different craft projects and now fixing a car.

The contacts were all pretty corroded - enough that I am wondering if that is part of the problems we've been having. We have like a spare jump start battery - the car reset itself with that and stopped the damn clicking which must have been driving our poor neighbours made as it was outside their window 🙁

The fault also left the car basically unlocked, there was only really some loom knitting and survival tools and some cuddlies and colouring in books of the girls in the car but still I'm sure we would be grumpy if they got stolen!

Turns out there's a battery bracket/brace with a slightly inaccessible bolt.

I held the torch and after accidently getting Imperial and Metric round the wrong way Al got his long bolt undoing tool firmly in place and turned, all locked home and good seeming there was a crunch and then the thing went round and around.... because the force had broken it :/

The bolt had not moved.

Other tools where got but would not fit or reach etc...

Queue the welding and adapting of a screw driver to make an undoing of the bolt tool. The new belt sander I got Al for Christmas was also used, the go pro failed to record sadly so there will be no funky video 🙁

He tried it... it needed further adapting.

And again. He was resigned and cold.

Back out in the ice he went and... the damn thing broke and the bolt was still firmly in place.

Kids fed and in bed, we ate our Christmas pudding - it's a gluten free one so it fell to pieces but we had some special brandy butter and it was nice and warm and filling.

We decided to add penetrating oil but the reason we had not already done this is that the little tube for getting into narrow spaces was not long enough so a drinking straw had to be used to extend it so that we could actually get the oil down to the bolt. A special tool will have to be got to get the battery out. We used the jumpstart battery to lock the doors and packed up for the night. School run in the van which will be interesting as car share kid has a broken leg so will need help getting in and out 🙁

But it should be possible, other down side is that Al will have to pay for parking as the free carpark for his new job has a height restriction (£8 a day and it obv. ates fuel).

He is now PC minecrafting it to calm down.

I've been doing more origami...

This is what I mostly made 🙂

Muse Monster Book Corners or origami bookmarks, they are a variant on the hats I used to fold out of newspaper 🙂

I am making them to go with The Monster Blog Zines and Wiggly Pet publications that I make. They will be making a debut at the Ok True Believers Comic Book Festival in Cheltenham this Feb.

And then I wrote this post.