Cuddly Science has a new puppet 🙂 Mary Leakey - an paleoanthropologist who along with various other members of her family and team found alot of the early homonid fossils and moved our understanding of our own evolution on in leaps and bounds.
Mary Leakey was one of my science heroes when I was a teen - during my GCSEs and A'levels I read all the books the library had or could get on her discoveries. And she was in the original list of ten puppets to make for Cuddly Science. My Mum and Dad worked on her mainly in secret for me, knowing I was uber busy with things.
She also doubles as a general geologist, archeologist and explorer! Which is just what I needed with various archeology festivals and geology based workshops coming up this summer!
The puppet was in fact barely finished before it was being whizzed off to the Cheltenham Science Festival to help explain the Cheltenham Hackspace's magic sand box!
This 3D projector that maps the sand contours in real time and projects and ever updating graded colour system on top was amazing! I do have video but haven't worked out how to extract it from my phone etc...
We had over 10, 000 kids through the Makers Shack at the festival which was amazing and also exhausting! Mary Leakey and Ada Lovelace both enjoyed their outings and I have a hell of a lot more photos and vids to put up from the festival including trying to launch a robot into near Earth orbit! But for now I shall end with this pic of Mary Leakey chilling and relaxing behind the scenes.
Cephalopods are things like squid, octopi, cuttle fish and the nautilus or at least that is all there are today in the rock record it is quiet another matter. Ammonites with their curly shells pretty much ruled the seas at one point and were so wide spread and abundant and varied that we use them as markers in the geologic record i.e. you know what type of ammonite you've got - you know the time period the rock was formed.
I love my fossil cephalopods (lit. head on legs) and the modern ones are pretty amazing too!
There are so many videos on youtube of them doing amazing things like escaping from jars and squeezing through very small gaps, mimicking walking and so on.
The Natural History Museum London has an entire twitter feed dedicated to cephalopods which is well worth a look and can be found here.
The Guardian has an article on Snake Stones i.e. our friends the ammonites again, which you can find here 🙂
The New York Times has an interesting article on the genetics and intelligence of squids and octopuses, which is stuff I am putting straight into one of science fiction stories as it really is quiet weird! You can find that article here.
Ever since I was a child I've loved the way cuttlefish skin changes colour, squid skin is pretty fab too 🙂
I also have one crotchet squid for my hair and one cuddly octopus for snuggling that have been given to me - surprisingly they are both purple 😉
Over at ChemKnits they happen to have collected a load of free patterns for our cephalopod friends which you can find here.
The drawing sheet still needs some work done on it but will soon be up for free down load though sadly not this week. I will also be creating two different boarders for it - one for workshops and one for the third of my adult colouring in books - Colouring Rocks!
Enjoy what's left of Cephalopod Week and I will try and do better next year 🙂
I've made a new poetry zine, it was planned anyway and then there was the offer of doing poetry at the Sea Shanty Festival in Gloucester so I thought - it is time! And so I made it! There are quite a few other things I've put together for Saturday poetry starts at 1 in Kings Walk shopping arcade and then there is a pirate walk and a zillion other things on plus the actual Tall Ships Festival.
But ... but before all that there is Villanelles tonight at the Fountain Inn in Gloucester where I will run a poetry writing workshop from 7 pm, it is then followed by a series of recordings of poems being performed and interviews etc... which you can watch and/or take part in.
Also there is putting poems on pigs but more on that later 😀
There is just so much more going on at the moment and I am organising exciting events including archaeology, science, art, history, science, technology, craft and sustainibility - I am quite tired! (but I am pacing myself!)
Hope to see peeps both on line and at physical events 🙂
p.s. the workshops are free and happen on the last Thursday of every month.
At the end of April me and Jean were sitting in the Gloucester Waterstones Cafe - she was doing her home work and I was working on my graphic novel script. I think I swapped what I was doing to making stuff for a writing workshop and she finished her homework stole my sketch pad and began drawing. Her drawings have been improving drastically this year and she love the general idea of anime and comic book art. She wanted an activity book so she could work through a series of exercises - not like the shelf of how to draw/art books we have on the shelf at home but more... interactive ie you get to draw in the book but it's not a colouring book type thing.
So off I went to look at what the bookshop had (well actually I popped off to the loos but noticed they had some books that matched her description so nabbed a few on the way back), none of them were quiet what she wanted and she decided they were too expensive...
"Could you make one with your tea cup and mug picture in it?"
So I started work on it and she vetoed and swapped things etc... until we have ended up with this booklet - it is along the lines of the Cuddly Science Activity Booklet and the Christmas Activity Booklet I made.
And also because it is us it has an essay on cave art with examples from around the world!
There will be a free downloadable PDF version on WigglyPets Press when I get round to it 🙂
In the mean time it will be coming with me to workshops, festivals and shows and physical copies can be bought from my etsy shop.
Thursday 27th of April Villanells Gloucester Fountain Inn from 7-11 pm - I am running a workshop at the beginning of the evening followed by recording performances and interviews organised by The Gloucester Poetry Society
Saturday 29th of April ReneGade Festival 2017 3 -1:30 pm which is opening with Food For Thoughts Poetry performance
May 4th - 15th Cheltenham Poetry Festival, I'll be in the Slam Friday 12th May 8:30 but will be generally about the place 🙂
Saturday 20th of May A Pint of Prose organised by the Gloucester Poetry Festival
Plus as many regular nights as I can get too 🙂 Feeling very excited!!! (there might be another slam as well but it just depends on fitting things in!)
Regular Poetry events in Gloucester and Cheltenham are:
Buzzwords 1st Sunday of every month in Cheltenham
Speakeasy 1st Tuesday of every month in Gloucester
Waterstones Poetry Night Monday evenings in Cheltenham
Poetry Cafe 2nd Wednesday of the month in Cheltenham
Food For Thoughts variable but during the afternoon once a month at the weekend in Gloucester
Villanelles last Thursday of every Month in Gloucester
Cheltenham Poetry Societies Kickstart Workshops 1st Tuesday of the month in Cheltenham
Jam Back at the Tav every Wednesday evening primarily music but accepts spoken word in Cheltenham
Archeology, Education, Geology, Relatives, Sarah, Sci/Tech | sarah | 
Mon 26th Jun 2017 7:18 am | 
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