My Freedom: Time

Watches I'm doing another class with Shimelle. It's called My Freedom and while we don't know exactly how it's going to go yet, it's meant to be personal, spontaneous and reflective.

Today we were taking pictures on the theme of time. I realised that I have three little quirks related to time.

This is a photo of my little drawer of watches. Don't ask me why I have so many old watches. I don't even have stories for them all or anything. I keep my watch pretty basic, I've been given a Seiko twice in my life, the rest of the time it's a basic Timex or Swatch.

The second little story is all about how I don't now wear a watch. I used to wear one all the time. Last Easter my watch battery gave up at the beginning of a week. I freaked out! I had no time to replace the battery and surely I couldn't function without a watch!!! Yeah, well, 15 months later I still haven't put my watch back on and I'm fine. I do my job, I meet my friends and if I'm late, it's NOT because I don't know what time it is.

The quirkiest detail is that those kinetic watches don't work for me. Generally they work by storing the energy produced as you move, especially your hands. Well, I don't know whether it is the way I talk with my hands, or how busy my hands can be at times, but with me they get all over-energised and go racing ahead. This happens with good-quality, well maintained watches.



Read More

The Highs

Jools cheered me up enormously be nominating me as a Rgb ! I have to nominate some people now, so I will have a little think. (Post-little-think nominations: Carla Sonheim - just such a shining  spirit; Anahata Katkin - Her name means 'heart chakra' and you can see her heart in her work; Dawn Sokol at D'Blogala - fab art journal prompts happening every Friday, and very cool pages from her journal; Shari Beaubien - exploring art and BALANCE; Tori, who I met through Sunday Scribblings and whose writing engages my heart and makes me know myself better; took too long thinking and Judy Wise got tooken already - check her out anyway for lesson in how to live.)

I am scrapping away at the moment, but can't share as I have submissions in here and there. Which is quite exciting. So that's a high.

Read More

The Lows

Sometimes I have an uncomfortable relationship with scrapbooking. In some contexts it has such a bad reputation, cutesy and twee, represented by the heavy use of certain items and a style that I will leave to your imagination. I certainly don't mean to disrespect anybody's work, I am speaking about a stereotypical image of scrapbooking. If I feel someone won't understand and I am not in a position to show them what I mean, I'll keep quiet about it, which feels like a betrayal of myself. I've had pages published, both in readers galleries and by commission. What I am aspiring to is my artwork and my scrapbooking becoming more integrated. I definitely believe that scrapbooking can be art. Any doubts? (check out Emily Falconbridge).
Windowcat

It has been an uneasy week. I haven't been sleeping well over the past week or so. I have neither been ill or healthy, just the usual teacher collapse at the start of the holidays, no doubt. I took our cat of beauty to the vet to have a couple of lumps looked at and he ended up being admitted today to have them cut out.  He is home now and well, but it has been a worrying few days.

Read More