Badges and Books and Yay! (by sarah)

Yesterday I received through the post the little button badges of one of my illustrations - it is the Mummy Eating Cherry Pie. I am so pleased with them! I gave the girls their badges as soon as they came home from school.

There are a hundred of these and they are for the launch of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry And to just add the icing to the cake yesterday - they themselves arrived! I thought I need to go and pick them up so was really chuffed to get them delivered to my door

I'll be sending out the pre-orders at the weekend and shall be finishing off the book marks today!

To say I am excited is an understatement, the girls already have a copy in their room and insisted I read it too them last night Mary is actually responding to the poems now which is lovely

A Month of Chickens (by sarah)

I ment to do this post at the weekend but just didn't get the time! We have now had the chickens a month.

The anti peak spray seems to have worked wonders! And they will now let you stroke them though they do still spend a lot of their time running away from Mary who still excitedly cries 'Chicken!' everytime she sees or hears them.

My dad has decided they are velociraptors and they do have a tendency to come and stare in at you whilst you are cooking, they also tap their beaks on the door. I found this shopping list in his hand writing:

spread, olbas oil, cake, toothpaste, nappies size 5, cheese, bananas, VELOCIRAPTOR

Now cake is a bit iffy but velociraptor?

He says he just needed to check how it was spelt and the shopping list was a scrape piece of paper - I say LICKLY STORY!

But back tot he chickens - their feathers are looking really good!

We are still collecting the stats and the eggometer tells us that we are now under a £5 an egg but we are still out of pocket! However it has gotten down to that in a month and I ended up buying a run so when I do the cost benefit stuff I will do different combinations to show how economic this keeping chickens business actually is! They seem to go through about a sack of food and just over one of straw a month. When the jet washer needs replacing it will have to count as a chicken cost as we are jet washing the decking weekly at the mo but again that should reduce once we build the larger run - but of course you then have material costs for that!

The run should be sorted by the spring hopefully but I'm not too worried about it over the winter but chicken poo in summer will be a different matter!

The girls have been sitting in the autumn sun watching the birds and we do the main feeding and watering when Jean comes in from school - the corn is proving a very good tactic. Jean sprinkles that, whilst Mary sort of throws it about a bit (including on the poor things!), then Jean puts their food out and Mary does their grit. We all check for eggs and if needed I clean things up a bit and put fresh straw in the nest boxes. They mustn't have too much corn as it is a treat but I wanted something where we were properly interacting with them and weren't the scary things that just come and catch them!

They put themselves away in the hen house when it is getting dark but are also now more wary of being caught in the first place! They fluff themselves up if a cat gets two near them and spend their time trying to get into the shed (where we keep supplies) or into the bunny's run to eat his food, he on the other hand has been found eating their bedding in the nest box (though this was the day I'd run out of straw and say had put hay in instead and he loves hay!), I am forever having to remove him from the chicken run as he will eat their food!

We love the chickens! Also they have fluffy legs! (and yes the photo is upside down - I'll try and sort it later!)

Stickers and Proofs and Zines and Stuff (by sarah)

This week has been hard work but amazing! Really amazing.

Firstly I performed at Well Versed in Cheltenham on Wednesday - then Thursday I headed off to college to learn science writing and discovered there are things I am good at (though that whole spelling thing still evades me!).

Then there was the Bristol Comic and Zine faire with pre parties and after parties and some amazing work - I was at college for most of it so only caught the very end of the actual faire but then stole my friends comics to read whilst at dinner with some of the illustrators and co. I really enjoyed the pre-party where people did power points of their books - including a rousing song about S&M and cystic fibrosis which they made the audience take part in. I also doodled badly on the sketch pad put in front of me.

Whilst I was in Bristol the proofs of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry arrive and so will hopefully be going to full print/press soonly

Incase you've missed what's going on - I am having a book launch at the end of the month! With goody bags - one offs for the first 100 books. The stickers arrived this week too!

I am now only awaiting the badges and material for the bags. I am making the bookmarks myself

Anyway my mind feels suitably stretched and I survived college and really hope I can actually take part in the zine fest next year though am sort of glad I didn't get a stall this year as Alaric would have had to man it whilst I was at college - also I now have more of an idea of which of my work would fit in there!

College Induction (by sarah)

So yeah I went to college yesterday (without my Drs note as they receptionists didn't know where he'd put it as it isn't a sick note as such and he wasn't in - who would have thought that it could be so difficult :/ ). Anyway - I got there with the minimal of shouting to get myself out of the door - I thought I was going to be late and then got there like an hour before it started so orientated myself and picked up a tea.

I really enjoyed meeting the other students and discovered I know lots of stuff that is relevant to others like the different ways to run planitariums (planitaria?) and a slight astrophotography knowledge, theatre and science and so on... Of course I still can not spell for toffee and babble at people or stammer and my legs hurt from sitting down too much and so on but I am really looking forward to my first lecture now

Also the insight I gleaned from how others work was interesting and I feel valuable already even though we've not yet done any of the course as such! The library is amazing with all the electronic stuff etc...

My first course is...

Science writing

I ended up with two free sessions at the end of the day which I used to go and sort out the fact I wasn't appearing on the system but had been sent the welcome stuff etc... as expected it was the issue with my English GCSE cert :/ I lost it in the 2007 floods and didn't know what exam board I'd taken it with - I didn't even know you could get replacements until a despairing update on Facebook got the teachers and ex-teachers amongst my friends telling me how to sort it I emailed my old school Gaynes and got no reply I phoned them to no avail and got quiet frustrated then I did abit of internet stalking and tracked down one of my old teachers and messaged her - she responded the next day and I sent the form and the cheque off to the likeliest place. They had to go and check weather it had turned up at the college and clear me as qualifications varified - so I should be able to complete registration this afternoon from home and then set things in motion to get my swipe card etc...

This is feeling a lot more organised on the university part than my experiences with either IC or Birkbeck.

After the admin faff I had some lunch and read the print out of the stuff I couldn't yet get too online and did most of my 'homework' whilst awaiting a friend for an afternoon tea. I was in quiet a lot of pain at this point and had to take the pain killers which did not help my tiredness levels but I was still feeling engaged and happy - I was finished with the work I could do there and knitting a teddy bear when my friend turned up

He helped sort out the bus navigation and things and I headed off to the Bristol Hack space where Alaric goes on a thursday - I was really hoping he could do a 3D printer induction as I found creepers I wanted to print for Jeany's very late birthday party but alas it didn't happen - instead I knitted more bear and he helped someone with an electronics project - I met someone into computing projects for the visually impaired and wibbled on about stuff to do with that (I've done the In Braille exhibition etc... ). Then I went and slavard over the lathe and talking wood work with the guy using it - I also found a design for my monster boxes for the writing game I've made - the hack space now has a little library going on

Alaric had bought me a packet of sticky tabs and a kitten note book and sparkly gel pen for college

(by sarah)

Oh my godo what a morning :/ I have been chasing to get this drs note for college which resulted in me being informed at 9:30 that I needed to come in and see my new dr at 10 (apparently the one I'm supposed to be under has retired not that I ever saw him as it has all been womens problems since the move). I went in a t-rex bite me t-shirt and belly dancing skirt as they were the first clothing items I came across. Then I managed to get Mary into her pushchair and out the door and closed it - guess who did not have her key? Tried to phone Alaric and phone died - white screen kaput! Walked to the Drs surgery as fast as I could which as I was in pain wasn't that fast :/ Arrive at Drs fifteen minutes late but that's ok as he was still going through my notes - get in there and he's like - your notes are vast and a mess did you ever actually get a diagnosis? Me: erm I don't really know I know what they told me I had... go through med history, he's rushing me off a note today so I can pick up tomorrow for college on Thursday and he wants to sort it all out so I am now booked in for a sweet of blood tests and have to keep a pain diary :/ Then I leave and find a pay phone - phone my parents house which is like the only number I can remember but got answer machine so left a message to phone Alaric and tell him that I was walking to his office to get his keys - I made it there and back - was gifted with crisps by an elderly man on a scooter who's way I blocked by being slow and lathargic with a pushchair and now I think it is time for a cup of tea - as soon as I can stand up again :/ Mary liked her adventure.