Oh dear. I get so distracted. Ian just looked round the door and found me guiltily knitting. I found some lovely, soft grey-green and white (with some spangly bits) wool in the sales and I want to make a bag out of it. It's so soft you want to rub it against your cheek. I might make some Alien soft toys out of it too.

I've also bid on some suiting fabric on eBay. Ian's mum said there's a guy selling shoulder bags made out of suiting in Affleck's Palace in Manchester, so he's requested a custom-made version. He doesn't know about my "design and research" charges yet.

Anyway, since I always get distracted from doing boring work, I've decided I'm going to start doing things I really want to do, instead of spending ages watching rubbish on TV or browsing idly on the internet. That is the first of my New Year's resolutions.

The second is to make a website and actually start selling (or at least making to sell) things.

New Shoes

I love the colour red and I love converse.

Newcastle in Winter

Mustering Enthusiasm

As best I can on a not-too-cold-but-certainly-very-dull Winter's day. I walked up and down our garden patch spotting the spring bulbs that are coming through. If they flower as they should then come Spring we'll have an array of daffodils, crocuses and tulips, and some other strange things that I sent off for from the Guardian but whose names were too obscure to remember.

I tried to find a hot water bottle for the cover I just finished knitting but failed to locate one. It put me in a bad mood, even though I'd just bought my Patrick Wolf ticket (hooray! Even though it's not until the end of February), and our New Year's Eve tickets. On the NYE tickets it says, "Fancy dress is encouraged", which I found bizarre. If you merely encourage fancy dress then nothing will come of it. In fact, even when you stipulate that fancy dress is obligatory, often half the party (males, usually) turn up in their usual clothes.

I love fancy dress, but I don't know enough other people who do to have a successful fancy dress party. I may well set up a Fancy Dress Society on Myspace and see if anyone joins.

Anyway, I'm going to get back to reading some more Agatha Christie. I picked up a Poirot mystery when I was home, and since then I'm on my fourth book. Next time there's National Book Writing Month I might try to write a murder mystery . . .

I don't know what it is about being at home, but I always feel so tired, and I'm incapable of getting out of bed at a reasonably early time.

I just went into town for the sales and, as predicted, it was entirely unsuccessful. Some cheap wool and penguin ribbon were the extent of my "bargains".

I seem to be permanently fed up and generally pessimistic at the moment. I think this is due to my uncertainty about continuing my teacher-training course. I have an assignment that needs to be done for 2nd January, when we're back at university for some doubtless pointless sessions, and I really can't bring myself to start it. Everything regarding this year seems so prescriptive and overly-demanding. Really: 5 of the most boring assignments I could ever imagine. If we, as teachers, were ever to give out such relentlessly crap work we'd be rightly deemed shit. It all seems ludicrously unfair, and I don't think I can be arsed with it.

I need to start a "For and Against" list to work out what I should do . . .

It's Over

For now, at least.

I had to be a rabbit twice over in the exceedingly lame school panto, but now I can finally relax for at least a little while and do something I enjoy. Hooray! I might actually finish this quilt I've been working on for months, though it's unlikely.

It's finally going to get cold enough for a frost too. Maybe there will be snow this Christmas.

X Factor Finale - a rant

God, what a farce. It made me feel physically sick to see how Simon Cowell's little cronies tried to whip up national hysteria with some big screens, a D-list celebrity and a live video link. And there were Leona and Ray (boring, boring people) thanking Simon Cowell for the opportunity he'd given them. Yup, you're gonna be thanking him through a giant hole in your wallet for the duration of your success, darling! What an awful man he is. All the people who vote: why do you do it? Why do you put money directly into the pocket of this terrible cretin who unleashes personality-less crap under the guise of "talent" onto our airwaves? (It's not even an original song for fuck's sake! It's by another of his acts, the failed-to-convert-UK-audience Kelly Clarkson.)

Who, after all, has won a TV talent show and endured? Only Girls Aloud. The rest of the bunch have merely shown that there aren't enough talented songwriters to keep them fresh and popular.

I can only hope Simon Cowell suffers a hilarious, seedy, fitting death along the lines of autoerotic asphyxiation.

Corduroy pants

I received a package of La Redoute clothes this morning, amongst them a pair of grey-brown cords. I ordered them on the off-chance that they'd actually fit, seriously not expecting them to, and what do you know, they do! As soon as I put them on my mind reverted back to its 14-year-old state (ten years ago, ouch), when I used to constantly wear a pair of second-hand smokey blue cords that went thread-bear from overwearing. I think it was just the unique sensation of feeling corduroy against my skin. So soft, so comfortable. Mmmm . . .

Sickness and murder

If I had a laptop and wireless broadband I could be writing from my sick-bed, but instead I'm at my aged iMac (6.5 years!) which needs a new battery to stop it reverting back to 1970 and telling me that "the security certificate for this site doesn't come into effect for 36 years". Funny how the only place you don't feel terrible when you're ill is in bed. You begin to think your illness is psychosomatic, or that you've just got better, then you get up to get a drink of water and almost fall over with your head feeling detached from your body. Rather like this overloaded computer actually: give it an instruction, and it takes a little bit longer than you'd hope to put it into action.

Oh well, at least I have Jessica Fletcher on TV to keep me company. Apart from the fact that I love almost all whodunnits (excluding "Midsomer Murders" and suchlike), I think the reason I like "Murder, She Wrote" is to do with loving the film "Bedknobs and Broomsticks", also starring Angela Lansbury, when I was little. Interestingly though, when I was little I couldn't watch anything with a murder in it because I became so scared that I wouldn't sleep: the image of the dead person would be imprinted on my mind and the mindset of the murderer used to terrify me. Now I can't get enough of murder mysteries.

Too close to Christmas . . .

For teaching, that is.

I've been looking at the blogs that Jess Hutch links to, and just feeling a deep yearning to be an artist and craftsperson for a living.

School was too hard today. I still feel ill after two days off school, and stupid comments from staff and kids alike had me feeling very fed up on the interminable drive home (I just reminded my mum how lucky she is to live a 5 minute walk from school--so nice to be so close).

The shorter the time until we break up for Christmas, the more unbearable making the effort seems.

When I was at school surely by this stage we were all watching videos and playing games, weren't we?

Winter Warmers

Ian terms everything he cooks a "winter warmer" at the moment, so I've started calling breakfast cereal soup, pasta and anything else a "winter warmer" too. The reason this is on my mind is because our heating isn't working and it's so cold that my nose and other extremities are looking slightly blue. So I've jammed myself into one room in the house with the fan heater, wrapping some more presents. I'm still feeling remarkably Christmassy, despite a trip to Meadowhall which had me feeling extremely unusual, even though it wasn't completely packed. All I could think was "buy things and get out!"

Anyway, I forgot about posting up some of the flyers I've made in the past. If anyone wants quirky flyers done for them I'd be more than happy to oblige. I also take commissions for any other objects, but the time-scale for making them will be fairly long because I'm so busy with school-work at the moment.

Here they are:

Catalogue of Original Creations

Hooray! It being a Friday, I have finally found the time to do a photoshoot of my recent-ish creations and upload them. I now slightly feel better for having done nothing recently of any creative value.

Happy weekend people.

Birdie Handbag (ft. red bear)

Pink Cherry Shoulder Bag

Slightly larger shopping bag

In a different, bright fabric. The cute nursing chair it's on was rescued from a skip.

Funky shopping bag (front & back)

Paper & Textile Collages: Pope JP & Dove

Paper & Textile Collages: Lolita

There's something really satisfying about machine-sewing paper, as long as you use a stitch length over 3. The background fabric is a hideous 70s print that I got from never-used pillowcases from a charity shop. A truly ace find.

T-shirts

I printed the designs on these T-shirts using a labour-intensive batik-style process. I had to draw on the design and paint liquid wax onto the areas that I wanted to remain the original colour. Then I had to cold dye the shirts. It's quite cool to do, because both using wax and cold dyeing are highly unreliable, so you never know what the result will be until the shirts dry and you can iron off the wax.



















The dark blue t-shirt was the first one I tried: it should say "Lieblings Blume", but some of the wax didn't go through all the cotton fibres. Trying to get detail with this method is virtually impossible.

Toy "bears"

I have made many of these bears, in a range of colours and patterns and a range of ear-types, but these two like chilling out watching TV with me.

Toy Kebab Lamp

Toy Kebab Lamp close-up

Children's Hoop-la Lamp

All Wintry and Wrapped Up

It's effing freezing here. As I was walking home from the shops I kept spotting people looking at me with pity from inside their cosy houses. At times like this, with the wind whistling through the telephone wires and freezing your nose and lips instantly, I always think how much colder it is in Newcastle upon Tyne. Lovely Newcastle, with an extra added wind-chill factor thanks to the freezing North Sea.

This is the first Winter in ages where I've been feeling consistently upbeat and not in the least bit SAD (except for those little bouts of being fed-up and arsey which everyone suffers from, particularly me). Ironically, I think it might be due to the early horrible hour-long drive to work every morning: the sun gradually rising and blasting through my windscreen (well, not blasting exactly, being Wintry-type sun), entering my eyes, stimulating my hypothalamus and resetting my circadian rhythms.

I may well draw a diagram to represent that.

Another reason for not being so SAD this Winter is that I have things to look forward to (the Joanna Newsom gig in January, a Patrick Wolf gig in February), things to be doing (making a simple quilt) and making use of new skills (knitting better).

Fiddler on the Roof was fun. Angela had booked us front seat tickets at the side of the stage, so the action was so physically close that it felt like we were almost part of it. It was a preview, so there were a few technical hitches, but nothing major that made it less enjoyable. It made me yearn for my 6th Form days when I was in Oliver!. I was intrigued to see how they'd do a musical in the Crucible (usually the musicals are on at the Lyceum, which has a normal proscenium arch), and it was staged excellently. Plus, the orchestra was under the stage, which otherwise would probably distracted me.

The BBC weather website says it's between 7 C and 10 C but with winds of 23mph.
It feels colder than that. On Wednesday night it might be 3 degrees C. Perhaps a frost, finally?

Oy Vey!

It's Friday (hooray!) and we're off to see Fiddler on the Roof very shortly! I can't believe I'm actually doing something sociable and fun.

Last Saturday I bumped into Lucy from my Literature degree course who now works as a wool consultant (yes, that's "wool consultant") in John Lewis. I am therefore going to a knitting class tomorrow morning, which should be fun too.

I want to be able to knit cool robots and monsters like Jess Hutch can on that link over there. - - - - > I can do simple casting on, knitting and pearling, but find patterns pretty incomprehensible.

Almost finished my Christmas shopping too . . .