Of Biopsies and Dreams and 5 Dimensional Poetry (by sarah)

Today I went to the Drs for my biopsies and de/re-coiling and a chat but unfortunatly the chat took up too much of the time - what with the fact I've had a biopsy that showed polyps not being in their records for me etc... But I am actually feeling alot happier about the whole thing after the chat - I've signed the consent forms and have another appointment when it will all happen and have the good news that the swabs were all negative drastically reducing the chances of nasty things like pelvic infections.

I had to go in with out Alaric as the baby was being full of beans and as always I found it difficult to get the words out to the Dr. It's like my brain goes - ARG! A doctor!

I'm going to have another coil put back in as it is pretty much the only option open to me to thin the womb lining down and having looked at family history it seems the best course of action. Unless something happens like perforiation or the biopsies show something nasty up all this should not have an impact on my fertility. But due to the thickness I am looking at a good long stint of bleeding once the coil is put in (hopefully in the right place this time). So I maybe going onto the pill aswell initially to reduce just how much it will bleed.

The coil is going in specifically to thin the womb lining - I hope it works but I have to wait a month for this next bit due to the over capacity nature of the Drs Surgery.

So that is that and then there is my dream!

Last night I had a dream in which I had made this poetry book out of fabric and lace and different textures. It was a textiles visual poem but more than that - it had my written poetry in and the words actually spoke, the words were woven in and around the substance of the book and the substance of the book told it's own story as did the type and placement of the letters - it was a bueatiful thing.

And then David Tennant (spiky haired Dr Who) appeared and he looked at this textile book and was in love with it and the power of my words and he wanted me to write Dr Who episodes with Neil Giamon. He was convinced that anyone who could produce such a book as that would write amazing Dr Who episodes. In my dream I was embarrased and was trying to explain that I had once been asked to try and write an episode before the new lot started but that I didn't as I thought I had to take into account the film that shall not be named! (This bit actually happened to me whilst I was at Uni but mainly as I was on the right mailing list at the right time).

As I was trying to explain assasins from the future appeared to destroy the book and maybe kill me - I had been encoding the concousness of the universe in the patterns within the book and other pieces of my work - that is why they had such awe and power.

Just as it looked like it was curtains for me Alaric (hubby) appeared and turned out to be an actual Dr Who and defeated the assassins with the gadgets within his coat of many pockets (those of you who know us will be laughing at this bit!).

This was a great dream and I was sad to be rudely awoken from it by Alaric asking where the school uniform for Jeany was this morning.

Now last night I went to sleep mulling over the story line/arch for the series I am currently working on - I plan to write the middle book for NaNoWriMo and I have gotten a long way into the first book of this trilogy. This would sort of explain the book being a code but more than that - I have actually been trying to work out how to make a piece of textile visual poetry since seeing the little knitted bits at the Cheltenham Lit Fest. Also last night just before I went to bed I was noodling around on this blog. Add in the Placebo music and the dream makes a bit more sense.

From this dream I now have a much better idea of what I want to make with regards to my poetry and textiles. And that is 5D textile and wearable electronics highbred of visual, audio and the written word. It is not 4D as though there is a sense of narrative there is no one correct direction of flow. The whole thing can fed back into itself and go round in loops, jump over several pages and so forth. I may have it as a ball book rather than a standard bound tome. It is forming in my mind and it is beuatiful and complex.

Green Unconference (by sarah)

Today I attended the first ever Green Unconference in Long Ashton near Bristol, organised by Daniel Lewis. It was an amazing setting with brilliant speakers - I only wish more of the people I'd invited had turned up but apparently most of them hadn't seen the FaceBook invite until the event was actually taking place 🙁

I have come away saddened but optermistic and re-energised about the stuff I do to try and be a bit more friendly to the planet. Everything from government policies to how to garden to how to save/use waste food to feed those who are increasingly needing to use the food banks in this country was disguessed. I myself did an Upcycling and Junk Art workshop - complete with a mini talk and slides.

It was the most gorgous setting for a workshop

The girls were about as well behaved as I think I could realistically expect :/ I think Jeany eat most of the buffet before we officially had stopped for lunch!

I'm glad that people are taking on board that the average family can not afford or percieves at the least that they cannot afford organic food and that steps are being taken towards sorting this out. I wish I had managed to catch a few more of the talks but they clashed with my workshop and we had to leave early due to having triple booked ourselves for the day :/

I am going to attempt write up a few more of my junk art and upcycling projects. In making the slide show I realised I had a lot of material which I may try to collect together into at min an ebook.

(There will be a follow up post or two of the fantastic photos I got of bits of the church though I forgot to take one from outside 🙁 )

And talking of e-books don't forget to download your copy of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry before midnight on the 31st of October! Click the image below for your free PDF.

Green Unconference 2012 (by sarah)

Saturday I will be running an Upcycle and Junk Art workshop as part of the fantastic programme for the first ever Green Unconference.

This pot of flowers made from an old New Scientist mag, a tin can and a jumper will be on of the things I will be showing people how to make 🙂

I will also have some other bits with me including stuff to make visual poetry greeting cards, collage and maybe a festival sheep (if I can fit it in with the kids in the car!). There are going to be some really cool talks going on at the Unconference so if anyone is in the Bristol/Bath area they should check it out 🙂 Its all free by the way.

Wow! And things I learnt (by sarah)

I had over 100 downloads of my The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry yesterday and lots of lovely feedback - people seem to like the poems and love the illustrations. I am aware that it was basically friends or other writers from various social networks which might explain the lack of any negative feedback.

But I was thinking that I would only get 100 downloads over all and that I would probably be begging people on the 31st to download it to make it up to that number 🙂

I now have a cute vid of me and the girls reading some of the poems.

Mistakes I made - I forgot to sort out the IRC channel, and though I remembered Facebook in both personal, writer and artists page and the event itself, I completely forgot about MySpace. I discovered I didn't really know how to use Google+ Hangouts and that keeping tabs on what I'd posted to which twitter account, linkedIn and FB was a bit of a headache (plus keeping three blogs upto date) - the solution to that is to get around to sorting something like tweetdeck out on this laptop which would allow me to see and post updates to all of them at the same time!

I should have also made more banners in a larger variety of sizes and made sure that my websites could express the example images ok.

Another mistake that I only really discovered this morning is that I run the launch party on British time but I have very few actual readers in the UK. This ment my timezones were out and people arrived on the online stuff after I was asleep 🙁 This ment they missed out on author interaction but all the freebies were still sitting there for them.

Also as I haven't have my laptop for months I had sort of drifted off the radar of all the writing groups and chats and things like that and infact found that less people than normal spoke to me on Facebook yesterday :/ But it went well and I am happy 🙂

Having a few people actually physically here helped 🙂

In the future I think I would combine the virtual launch with the physical especially with The Little Books but I'm not quiet decided on that one yet 🙂 I think a listening party is needed at the bare minimum 😉

Jean and Mary thought it was all great.

The PDF will still be available for free download until the 31st of October. Click the image below to download it 🙂

Spoogy Web-Badge (by sarah)

As part of the virtual launch party of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry digital edition we have created a Mummy Web Badge for blogs and websites and what not.

Include this HTML:

<img src="http://www.wigglypets.co.uk/press/ebooks/2012/Little%20Book%20Of%20Spoogy%20Poetry/badge-mummy_pie_bus_stop.png" width="160" height="173" alt="The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry" />

Or right-click the image and click Save As to download your own copy.

And don't forget to download you free PDF of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry by clicking the image below: