Science, Knitting and Dr Who! (by sarah)

Yesterday was amazing, I came up with a solution to Matt Smiths retirement from Dr Who - it was simple really Alaric's cubs think he is an incarnation of the Dr anyway! I think we should petition the BBC 😉

Then I turned up as a last minute recruit to the Cheltenham Science Festival - I'm doing impact research - basically walking around with shiny tech asking questions for Warick University. The team are lovely - if anyone is about - come over and say hello!

Then I met a lady from Surrey University who is using knitting to explain chemistry - similar to my knitted molecules she is crowd sourcing knitting to create a giant models of minerals 🙂

She is giving out the patterns 🙂 And I am going to be knitting up all my blue wool for the project! I am also hoping to catch the lovely Lizzy Burns who's molecular jewellery and glass ware I had on display in March for Science and Engineering week 🙂

Then to cap it all I found a welcome to UWE email in my in box - it is still stuff about processing applications but it made my day 🙂

For the knit wits out there it is The Perovskite Project and they are looking for more knitters 🙂

June’s and July’sTo-Dos (by sarah)

I am sunburnt (I was wearing factor 50!) and am tired and exhillerated! I had a fantastic weekend running craft workshops at Wychwood Festival, as a family we also took part in many of the activities and listened to an interesting aray of music and learnt new skills. I belly danced everyday of the festival and went back tonight to the classes I was doing before medical stuff hijacked me at the beginning of the year.

May was a great month with me working on children's books etc... but June... well June and July are my FiMos - Finishing Months. I plan to finish projects!

And what alot of projects I have :/ Once again they seem to have multiplied! On top of that there is more art stuff and craft stuff and festivals and poetry to do and I may also have just been roped in as of this afternoon to do stuff at the Cheltenham Science Festival 🙂 Which is exciting!

Oh and just to be extra geeky I also signed up todo treki knitting on Ravelry 🙂

The summer tends to be quiet intense for me - there is also a trip to be in the Hanwell carnival and another to see Neil Gaiman and Claire Armistead at the Royal Society of Literature this month.

So here we go!

The Dangers Of… (by sarah)

The danger of home schooling is that the kids only learn what the parents wants
The danger of forced schooling is that the kids only learn what the governments want
The danger of religous schooling is that the kids only learn what the religons want
The danger of military schooling is that the kids only learn what the soliders want
The danger of no schooling is that the kids only learn what the streets want

Teach the kids to think and question and root out the answers for themselves
Teach empowerment and watch them bloom
Teach don't preach

Find the technique that fits the kid
In a group or on their own
A mix of both
Repeating, making, playing, mimic and more

Never, Ever, Ever Give Up! (by sarah)

When my friend Charlee came to visit she bought stuff in this lovely panda bag. I love the image of the panda kicking the celestial butt and saying never to give up!

So I took a photo and posted it to facebook tagging all those people I know are having a hard to at the moment with various things 🙂

But I also like the style of drawing. It's got another lovely photo on the back saying Follow Your Own Star 🙂 and other inspirational things written on it.

This appears to be the company it is from - I am trying to ignore that they have a Domo cuddly toy 🙂

Weaveworld (by sarah)

I follow Clive Baker's page on Facebook and he/his admin posted a piece on concept art surrounding his novel Weaveworld which is my favourite of his books and one I found important in my development as a reader and writer.

I read Weaveworld when I was thirteen/fourteen - it was a struggle and it was the second of what I think of as full length novels that I read, the first being The Eight. I pretty much had been on point horrors until then. I picked it up on a second hand book stall in Romford market whilst out with my friends Helen and Nikki - It was dark and scary and romantic and lovely and enchanting and it introduced me to Literature - before each section there are quotes and many of these I fell in love with and wrote out into my diary with illustrations, they are from the text book greats but at the time I had never heard of them, it was also the first time I saw poetry coupled so intensely with the prose of a book.

The story made me hungry for more stories and I moved on the James Herbert and Stephen King and Anne McCaffrey and a mirrade of others but the quotes made me want these other things and so I found a plethora of ancient and not so ancient writings that resonated with me and I began trying to craft complex multi-threaded stories, to think of stories within stories and to realise there a wealth of legends and histories around the globe I could 'steal' for my own writing. I would walk home from school with my nose stuck in these books and sleep on the floor of my bedroom as I'd filled the bed up with books from the school library, town library, charity shops and friends. I would set myself the task of reading more and more each day - I was in love with words and stories which had so recently been nothing but the bain of my life.

The memories of this washed over me as I saw the post on facebook. I am sitting here with the book that I last read at 21 - it has been lent to a lot of people and is starting to fall to pieces but I am wondering what I will make of it now? The way I used to choose books from the second hand book stall was to go in and close my eyes and see what book 'called to me' - this yielded a jem everytime though this is probably because I was always starting off in the speculative fiction (Horror, scifi, fantasy) section, The first book I got via this process was The Eight which years later proved to be a wonderous cross over of reading between me and Alaric. I love books - I now have a shelf devoted to Clive. I should read Weaveworld again.