Coming up Trumps. (by sarah)

An inauguration of an argument nation
Security guards are stationed
Protecting Towers of Guilt
How long before first blood is spilt?
Highlighting Golden hair
A lapdog caught in it's very own snare
Showered and showered and gleam
But never clean
Because underage sluts are keen
To be queen with key to the plantation
Or so they say
They girls say...
No one cares what they say
No one cares
Everyone ware the new wares
The fashion accessories, dress and bow You can never bow too low
Sow the seeds of trepidation skies
Bombs flying high
Impact zones
Tweeting inanities from unsecured phones
Furry moth with micro dick
Is sick at it's new name
Humans? Are they all insane?
This ones... an orange ball bouncing
Flouncing to some anthem
But which Super Power is singing?
Who's conducting?
Who's leading?
Blonde fluff, golden stuff...
The tribble aint the trouble
No no that is piggy eyes
'Cos money buys
Apocalypse rise
And divides with fear and hate
Such bait awaits
Social media waits
Workers in the grave
Again, again
Broken dreams, smashed, who bleeds?
The people of no consequence
Shuffled off their coils
For not being faux Royals
Sitting up high
In thrones of...
An inauguration to split a nation
Remember the klu klux klan Think - His the MAN

Celestia and Watching the Night (by sarah)

Thankyou so much to everyone who gave Alaric and Jean money towards the telescope at Christmas. It has arrived!!!! We put it together last night. The actual telescope arrived a few days ago but we couldn't really do much other than play with the finder scope looking out at Robins Wood Hill through my attic window - which was of course all upside down!

This was because the tripod had not yet arrived but it arrived yesterday 🙂

It's the kind that bounces light around inside of itself and is kind of the biggest a beginner should get.

Jean and Al have been very excited about it and I was being reserved though I have dug out lots of my old astronomy mags and what have you but I kept reminding myself it was theirs and not mine. Turns out it is also for me and Mary 😀 With our January birthdays!!!!!

Mary loves the thing!

Infact both kids pretty much rushed straight over to this morning when they saw it sadly I don't think we are going to get to play on it tonight as it is currently thick fog here.

We are going to make a case for it with good made to fit holes in padding because we are going to be bundling it into the van and going up into various bits of the cotswolds!

Al and Jean made sure there was a camera mount so I can take my "arty" photos as Jean has started to call them (whilst looking down her nose at me!). Sadly my camera doesn't fit - also said camera is rubbish at low light levels as in REALLY bad. It is an amazing camera and takes magnificent photos of animals in broad daylight - which is what it was bought for, but low light... just kind of no. I'm sure it's me and I should read the manual or something.

And.... I want to look at the moon, Jean is interested in stars, Mary wants to look at the smoke (nebulea) and Alaric... I think is looking forward to motorising it and linking it to computers and stuff but that is a guess.

Local peeps are already interested in a starparty but we need to work out how to use the thing first!!!

Getting a camera that fits is high priority for me, Alaric reckons we can 3D print and adapter, which might be a waste of time with the low light stuff. However my friend reminded me that some amazing photos have been taken by smart phones including iphones that are the model before mine so that is an option as well though again is going to need an adaptor of some kind.

Thinking of my friends who have and are working with the large observatories and how they will no doubt laugh at our enthusiasm for our little Celestia. But I'll remind them of this when they have to go out to break the icilces off their huge one 😉

Lastly I am getting myself some new make-up, I was tempted by it anyway as it is all on sale reduced from £6 to like £1.50. The nail vanish is called eclipse and the perfume midnight and then there's galatic glitter and so on... And well they match the telescopes glittery finish so I can match the telescope!!!

Yes yes I know shhhhhh.

A Flambe Lunch (by sarah)

So yeah - looks like I still can't really cook on my own. I'm fine with popping something in the oven to heat and nuking stuff in the microwave and even things that cook quickly in the frying pan though I still tend to burn them. But yeah I was grilling some bacon, I knew it was an off day, I couldn't find half my craft supplies that turned out to be exactly where I left them and so on.

Issue - weekend was busy with poetry performances, kids parties and tax returns. I think it might have been the tax return I had to think about which years stuff happened in and that is often different to the year it was paid for in which might be a different calendar year to the tax year and might not. Al did the reciet checking but I still had to work out dates and where I'd filed (or hadn't filed) various invoices etc..

Basically I am on my own during the day, Al normally makes food for me to just nuke for lunch or I have dips and veg etc... but there wasn't time to organise that because the weekend was busy and I didn't even do everything we were supposed to do! ie I was supposed to have a self defence class - something kind of needed after the van being smeared in shit and yobs throwing sexual insaults at me and my daughter.

Getting back to it - I decided what I wanted was bacon because it was being a slow day and I couldn't get my head around anything so working was a no go. Everytime I tried to do my naps someone was at the door delivering stuff (yes Christmas stuff is still arriving at our house!!! And we still have presents to hand out - go us!). I put the bacon on, I don't like cooking it when Al is around because it stinks and he's a vegi and its not nice for him.

Not really sure what happened, I was in the kitchen, the bacon was under the grill, it smelt like bacon cooking and then suddenly it smelt like bacon burning and when I looked there were flames coming out of the grill and I was like "AARRRGGGGGGGG" I oiked the grill tray out singing my oven gloves (booo hissssss) and popped it in the garden where the flames where leaping and spitting as the rain hit the hot fat.

I looked for our fire putting out thing... cylinder. It wasn't there - this is because it is actually in the workshop where it is more likely to be needed but Al says we can get a fire blanket for the kitchen which will make me happier.

When I looked the flames had signif. calmed down in the rain and I thought it would be ok so I got my camera and took a pic - because you know that is just what I do! Here's a picture of my lunch or rather the lunch that would have been.

Of course I was then too worried about burning things to attempt making the kids dinner and was just setting them up with cheese and biscuits (remembering Mary can't eat cow milk and is refusing peanut butter I wasn't very sure what I was actually going to be feeding her - we were going to be having fish fingers but the grill tray was/is still in the garden and I am not sure it will be much good). To the girls delight and my relief Alaric came in brandishing shopping and started cooking pasta.

This meant Mary went to bed an hour past her bed time as he comes in just before her bedtime. So kind of failure - kind of funny - kind of scary - very frustrating but also I am starting to see the correlations with things. I did heavy brain load stuff (tax) whilst not having my naps - I will get there with this one but it is why Al worries about leaving me on my own.

Poetry Scrolls and Food For Thought (by sarah)

Saturday afternoon I went along for the third time to Food For Thought, this is a monthly spoken word event in Gloucesters Cafe Rene. It is a relatively diverse group who attend though it is down stairs one of the reasons I've only just discovered there is a basement venue!

It was live streamed - I read twice - I did Shy and Ice and managed once again to walk into the speaker making it a hat trick!

There was a good variety of works ranging from classical, comedic rhyme, rap type styly and stuff from behind bars.

Next month is there Two Year Anniversary!!! Sadly for me it classes with The True Believers Comic Book Festival but hey - COMIC BOOK FESTIVAL!!!!

I will be at the comic book fest as WigglyPets Press if anyone else is going. There is also a LARP craft fair thingy going on in Gloucester that weekend too!

Anyway... Food For Thought was great - it ended up being standing room only and there was a little dog!!! And babies.

I took along my mini poetry scrolls which I have been making since new year. These have my art work on side and a poem on the other. Alot of the art work I have used for the covers of my poetry zines etc... so the poems on those are ones from the relevant collections.

I took along a whole bag of them and scattered them around the room before the event started. Someone thought I was scattering money on the tables because of they way they are rolled up. I laughed and said, "Money!!!! Don't be daft I'm a poet where would I get money like that from!".

I was kind of shy about it once people started to open them and read them - it's kind of an arrogance to assume people will want my stuff. And some don't want it, some people ignored them and others looked and then discarded and that is fine.

Some however picked them up and tracked me down and asked me questions about things like career or just wanted to state they liked them or wanted to know if the art work was mine as well (it is).

There are currently eight different poems, I am hoping to get that up to ten in the near future - as in before the end of the week.

I am filling up a little barrel full of them to take to book fairs and things. They have come out much nicer than I was expecting!!!

I've been developing this concept since New Year and part of it stems from the idea I had for our resolution jar and part of it came from something I read in one of the origami books I got. I've always loved my paper craft and the origami has helped spark so many ideas.

I've even created some boxes and things from traditional origami to display the scrolls in. This part of the project is still under development but I think it's super cute so have decided to share it with you.

The scrolls are small as shown by the coin for scale in the above photograph. However I still plan to make some even smaller ones. The idea of making really little writings like this is not new to me. When I was a kid we'd spend a lot of time in Wales visiting family and one day me and my brother were given the tiny tiniest bible - it sat in the palm of our hands. I loved it so much that a little poetry book about the same size was found or made for me (I'm not sure if my great uncle was making them or not). These were beautiful and I have always sort to create something similar.

I want to display my works in lovely ways, this is my nature and something I feel has been some what repressed by me trying to make my creative stuff profitable/bill paying. The lid is a mock up in scrap paper where zine printing went wrong and does involve glue, I think once I've perfected it, it will look amazing!!!

I have several other box prototypes being tried out as well.

Now within the origami book it talked about making paper and different types of paper being used to convey part of the message or the feelings surrounding the gift. I felt this was almost an extension to visual or concrete poetry where the structure of the poem and the font of the works as well as where on the page etc... is part of the message or feel. And I also make textural artworks to add a sensory depth so this made me feel all goose bumpy, I could apply this to poetry!

Then I thought about what paper I could maybe write on and draw on and what textures it should be and then I thought... hang on rather than buying patterned paper I can use art works that I have already created to compliment/add depth to the poems. They are there already and I knew I wanted them to be scrolls, little one off treasures.

I considered making my own paper - I used to do this as a child with scrap office paper and food colouring, it tends to catch my pens so I only like using it for making boxes etc... I realise I probably just need to try different things but I am happy with my scrolls.

Yes they are held together with loom bands - silicon ones - I did ask the kids if I could have them and will be replacing what I use from their stocks and hey they've had all the ones people bought me!

And that leads us onto the butterflying effect of ideas: ideas beget ideas and you end up with what I term a thought cascade - sometimes it can get too much and stops you thinking all together!

So from this I now have story scrolls which are still in development and are big, micro scrolls which are titchy! And are actually a resurrection of an idea I had before the head injury of putting stories in jewellery. And then there are the poetry notelets!

The kids wanted to steal the poetry scrolls but they wanted to make their own but they want the pretty pictures and I run writing sessions and creativity drives etc... so I thought... blank poetry scrolls! Ones people can use to write their own poems on.

So I selected the art work and made them. I rolled a set up to see how they look and I think they are fab! The girls love them 🙂

I picked art works of mine that I thought would be inspiring in and of themselves. Below is my favourite photo of them.

I am planning on releasing a templates PDF with them in. I might have to charge money for it or something because... bills. But I will also be leaving little sets of them around for people to find 🙂

They work best stored flat so I have been making little books and boxes for them. And also there are a couple of workshops I have worked out in and around this idea from creating your own from scratch to just using as writing aids but more on that later 🙂

Making and Creating (by sarah)

So today has been a making things only day - when I got up I knew writing was going to be a no go as I am still recovering from the cognative tests at the hospital yesterday. This is what I made:

An upcycled book-wallet from graze boxes and colouring in books.

A little flip notelet holder also made from graze boxes and colouring in book (ie off cuts from the one upbove). Including a half pencil I have customised.

Origami boxes made from special card Al bought me yesterday, for the large illustrated scrolls both story and poetry. Decorated with patterned tissue paper and stickers of my art work.

These are all still in the concepts phase as I need to see how they hold together etc... Also I have seen the colouring I did after the head injury and it is not pretty but mostly salvagable by help of black marker round the edges.

Here is more of the same from different angles:

I ended up using a cheese knife to remove a section of the vanished wood so that I could ink onto the pencil. Very pleased with how they came out though.

The book-wallets are for blank poetry scrolls which can be used as note-lets. I am so so pleased with how this came out!

It is lit. some card cut out from a graze box with colouring in sheets stuck to it.

Using origami skills I then folded a double pouch which I stuck on the inside. I folded it out of an off cut from the uncoloured colouring in sheet I used from the inside.

I put the blank poetry scrolls which are little pieces of paper with my art work on that I have printed and cut to size. I hope they will help people get writing 🙂

These boxes came out lovely but the reason one has stickers on it is that it is actually very easy to buckle the cardboard, I ended up using a cheese knife to score lines where I wanted to fold and I added in a fold to make popping the boxes together nicer and avoid the ripping that occured with the first box. p.s. if anyone has seen my craft knives and metal ruler I would be most pleased to have them back but to be honest I don't think I've seen them since we moved from Essex!!!