Cold, so very cold

Apparently it's going to get down to -9 degrees here this week. It's been snowing a bit today, but not enough to make it worth getting down to that temperature. The only real upside of it being cold here is that it's beautiful. Sure, I have to sleep with 3 blankets, 2 quilts and 2 hot water bottles and I'm still cold. But in the mornings, the whole landscape is transformed.

Here's some photos from the last time it was frozen here, if I survive the weather this week, I'll get some more on here:

I don't know...

...what this space is for at the moment.

It's quite an unusual thing for me to bring my laptop up to the room with internet connection. It's a little way from my caravan, and not really on the way to anywhere else, so it's too easy for me to just not come up here. Plus, I enjoy reading in my caravan too much to leave it often for the internet.

I started my Morning Pages again today because I had started to get bogged down in insignificant annoyances. I think this post by another caravanlander gives a good idea of what it's like here, and like her I've adored it for the most part. This past week though, I've felt a little of the ways of my old life (gossiping and petty irritations) creep in and take over my thoughts to an extent that I don't like. Suddenly, while churning over some small thing in my bed last night, I realised that getting back into Morning Pages might be just the thing to get myself away from all of that.

Which is my long-winded way of saying that when I needed an outlet, I sought something other than this blog. I don't think that's a bad thing - different writing spaces will suit different parts of my life, and it may be that for now there's not a need for this blog as much as there once was. But I think that I will come back to a place where I'm on here regularly. For now though, it will perhaps be a site for my quiet reflections, and for good photographs of the place I love.

If you want to keep up with the farm, the other Caravanlander's blog is probably better, as she's working hard to keep it well.

Here are those promised photos:


Some pigs! We have 400 here, some pink, some black (British Lops and Berkshires for anyone interested). They're all pretty cute.


This is the litter that I trained to bottlefeed. They're not doing it here, but they were pretty darn good at it.


This is Wilbur, the best/worst pig in the world. He's not very good at being a pig, but he's got a lot of personality.


This is a flower that I saw when it was still light enough to take walks before breakfast.


For some (unknown but surely wonderful) reason, there's a sewing machine mounted on the front fence of caravanland. It looks pretty in the dew.

Back at the Farm

I'm back at the farm now, and I've brought my laptop with me so I can get back to blogging properly! I've also got my camera here, so for my first post here, I'm just going to put up lots of lovely photos of the place I live:


This is the path down to Caravanland, where I live.


This was my beautiful white trash Christmas tree. It was a plastic promo thing that I painted green and I put the lovely fairy lights on it that my dad brought me when he came.


This was a picture I took of the sunrise not long after I got here.


This is my lovely caravan! It's before I made some renovations to my porch, but it still looks beautiful.

A fragment

I never remember the endings of things. I try to tell people the stories of my most favourite books or films, and always, where the ending should be, my mind is just blank. I can enjoy these stories over and over again, and be surprised each time by how they play out. On a good day, I think that this is wonderful, and that it is like being a child who finds things out for the first time. But usually, I feel like a crinkled old shell of a person, with a head full of fragments that don't piece together. Who am I that I can't recall a story from start to finish?
Stories of my own life are even worse, I have to rely on my family for them all. My father tells me of the time my brother and I dug for treasure by the window of an ice-cream stall at the beach, and all of the lost change that came out of the sand were our riches for the taking. My brother remembers everything, but keeps the stories to himself. If I ask him whether he remembers the scene in a photograph, he will say yes, but nothing more.

“Nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful people with talent, leave the house before you find something worth staying in for. ” ― Banksy

The Beautiful Gift

I got the most wonderful book today from the Beautiful Girl for my Christmas present, More Things Like This:

It's a lovely McSweeney's book filled with an apparently unnamable art form that combines words and images, like this picture below (made by me):

It's so inspiring and interesting. It's got lots of interviews and discussions of the art form, and some great examples.

Big day - quick post

I'm dashing about today as I'm leaving this evening for my new job (here). However, yesterday was such a big day that I need to write a quick post about it now, so that it doesn't get lost in all the new job/new home palaver.

The day started with a parade in the centre of town where my dad's army unit got freedom of the city of Manchester. There was a lot of standing about, but it was still quite an impressive event. Here's a picture from the BBC website (taken by Ed Swinden with an amazing lens that I really want).



Then after that I went to a Manchester Literary Festival event, Words on Asylum and Refuge, organised by the beautiful girl for Amnesty International. It was a fantastic event, very moving and interesting. The best part for me was the talk given by Mende Nazer, who you may know a bit about if you saw the film I Am Slave last year (staring my fellow MGCer Wunmi Mosaku). I don't think anything can compete with the effect of seeing her talk about her experiences in person, but I do want to find out more about her, so I will definitely be reading her book, Slave, soon.

Some of mine and the beautiful girl's other friends came to the event, so we went for lunch afterwards, which was lovely. But then I had to dash off to go to the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair. Apparently it's been going on for a few years, but I'd never heard of it before recently. My very thoughtful brother got me a ticket for my birthday, as I'd asked for experiences not objects.

There were lots of amazing things there, which will keep me inspired for a good while. It was quite nice to see that all of the stuff there was out of my price range. Everything was well priced for the work that had gone into it, which I was pleased about. I quite often see crafters pricing their work very cheaply in order to make a sale. But at the fair, there were lots of sales being made, and lots of interest. I've taken a few cards for future birthday requests. The hats in particular were wonderful. I loved these by Sarah Cant, and these by H'atelier, who actually has a shop in Manchester that I have somehow never seen.

It was a very lovely day, and a nice way to round off my very quick trip back home in between jobs. Hopefully, I will have time on the farm to keep up with this blog, and I'll be taking my camera with me in order to capture my time there. Wish me luck.

Adventures in the wild

This weekend I went on a Rustic Furniture Making course. It's something I'd asked my dad to pay for as my birthday present, due to the fact that I don't want to accumulate more posessions, but I do want to acquire more skills.

It was really good - even just the weekend away in the woods was wonderful, and the other people there were really interesting, but also the chair making was really good. I picked the course because it's something that I had no idea how to do; I had originally thought that I'd go on a craft course, but they were all really pricey for something that I could learn to do myself. This furniture making course was great though, I think I'll be able to use the skills elsewhere.

I've not seated the chair yet, so I'll post a picture once that's done (I'm just ordering the materials now!). You can see some more info on the course here, and these are some of the chairs that are made in a similar fashion to mine:



I will also be looking to do some other courses run through LILI in the future, they're really good value and a great learning environment.

One other interesting thing about the course was that somebody mentioned the Incredible Edible movement, which sounded good, and on looking into it, there's been a group set up in Wilmslow, which is not too far from here. I know that a few local people read this blog, so even though I'll be leaving town next week (heading to a new job at Church Farm) I thought it was worth a mention. The Incredible Edible Wilmslow site also had a link to this amazing tree identifying factsheet, which I will be using in future.

Decisions, decisions

I want to record today, as it's the moment of a big decision for me.

I'm not 100% certain that I'm doing the right thing, but I was faced with two very different options about how I wanted my life to go from now on, and today is the day that I have to give an answer.

It's been very difficult to come to this decision...well, no, I think that I made the decision quite a while ago, but it's taken me some time to come to accept it.

There will be times when I doubt myself, and I want to be able to look back on this blog entry and try and hold within it some small glint of this feeling, like a diamond chip secreted within tightly cupped hands.

The real moment of clarity came last night, when I was having yet another session of tossing and turning within sheets. I realised that if I took one of the options (what seems like the most sensible option) then I would be taking the road where I would never love what I do. The other option is not nearly as sensible, and it cuts me off from certain future achievements that I think I will miss. However, I think that it leads me down a road where I could end up in a place that I love.

Last night, I also remembered something that I hadn't really understood properly before. There have been many times when I've been doing things and I've not worried even the tiniest bit about the future or where I was going. Those times were when I was doing something that I loved. At those times, it didn't matter where the thing was going, because the present had been so fulfilling. But where I've been recently has been the opposite of that - I've thought about nothing but how to get on and get out.

The sensible option I'm faced with at the moment would be another step on a very similar road, and I'd always be looking around me for something better, and not appreciating even the good things. But with the other option, I think that it might be more difficult and challenging overall, but I can envision long swathes of future where I feel comfortable and happy with where I am in the moment.

Beautiful Photo

“Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, 1932″ by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

via

The pet

My hair seems suddenly to have become very long. It is like an unruly pet, perhaps a cat, that is always shedding all over the flat. It takes up too much space in the bed and is always trying to snuggle up to my neck in the night until I am tormented by the heat and itch of it. It tumbles and falls always in the wrong places and seems to be in the way constantly. I pin it up and out of the way and then wonder why I don't just get rid of it if I'm going to do that all the time.

That is such a small thing to think about, but sometimes when everything feels so big and bottomless, I like to focus on tiny things until I know them entirely.


*Edit* I forgot, I wanted to post some pictures here. The subject matter is objectively quite disgusting, but up close it looks beautiful:

Just a short post

Because it's been a long time, and though I've thought about posting often, I keep coming online to do other things.

Here's a quote I've wanted to share:

'He didn't know what to do, he didn't know how to live. Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive's sake.'
- Freedom, Jonathan Franzen

Manchester, England, England

That's the place that I'd rather be. I feel a song coming on...check it out here:



I watched the Great British Railway Journeys tonight, the Manchester to Bury episode. It made me feel so homesick - it even showed my street! I found the episode on YouTube, and I'm putting it here to return to when I need a boost.

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3

Lovely videos

Well, would you look at this amazing compilation of Harryhausen creatures! It's amazing, almost unbelievable what that man could do:



Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.

Also, this interesting Google+ hack makes me think that it might be worth a look. The worst thing about considering changing site is that everyone's already in one place now. If that's not an object, I could consider it.

Finally, today at work we have mostly been wasting time doing serious digital marketing research with the Hunter Shoots Bear videos:

Cheat sheet

I am absolutely loving this photography cheat-sheet. I love my camera, but I readily admit that I don't really know how to work it.

It's from Living in the Stills, via My Modern Metropolis:

Jelly shots

We had jelly shots at a party at the flat a few months ago. Sadly, no photographic evidence of this exists as they went down too easily to last long, but I can say for certain that they weren't a patch on the lovely ones in this video:




I post this super-cool film with the taste of the bitterest grapes in my mouth, because it was made by the ladies at Zeichen Press who have apparently made it their mission to lead the life I wish I had. Damn them.

Attention

Thought for the day:

I do not have a short attention span, I simply have a wide range of interests and a finite life in which to explore them.

I'm pretty sure that's a positive thing.

Nice Things

I've been doing some creative things today, as well as catching up on some of my favourite blogs. I came across this lovely list on My Modern Metropolis:



I'll post some images of the things I've been making soon. But for now, here are some pictures from the Silk Mill I visited last weekend in the nearby village of Whitchurch:

Two writing things

Firstly, the very exciting new website for Kohl publishing. Started by an escapee from my work, and now accepting submissions.

Secondly, this delightful list of literary insults.

That is all.

Printing on fabric

Thank heavens for this lovely tutorial from Jezze Prints. My darling super-stylish flatmate wants to use one of my linocuts to print onto a t-shirt, but try as I might, I had not been able find a way to get fabric paint to work - it kept coming out blotchy and parts weren't printing at all.

I was looking online to see if perhaps there was a better substance than fabric paint, but the tutorial showed me how to turn the paint into a useable medium. Jezze Prints is apparently an amateur chemist and she figured out that if you add a few grains of salt to the paint it liquefies a little and absorbs nicely into a felt pad.

I've trialled the printing on a piece of scrap fabric and it worked a dream:





I'll do a few more dry runs and then put it onto the t-shirt.

Also, now I've seen Jezze Print's work, I am really in love with her style, her work looks wonderful: