So apparently getting a lower wisdom tooth out is a really good way to lose an entire week. I had an upper wisdom tooth removed in December and while it was sore for a few days it wasn’t too bad, so I was expecting the lower one to be similar.

Wrong, very, very wrong!

I was well and truly knocked for six by this one. The tooth was only partly erupted so it was a much more difficult extraction, which resulted in stitches and a great deal of bruising and swelling. Then the next day, I had a bad reaction to codeine - it turns out that opiate-based drugs are not my friend because they make me panic, pace relentlessly and cry uncontrollably. I didn’t need to go to hospital or anything but I could definitely have done without it.

Unfortunately, it’s been over a week since I had the tooth out and I’m still in quite a bit of pain - it’s extremely likely that I’ve had a condition called Dry Socket where the jaw gets inflamed, I’ve certainly had all the symptoms. I think it is getting better because the pain is definitely a lot more bearable than a couple of days ago but if it’s not right by Monday, I’ll go and get it checked at the clinic. In retrospect, I should have gone back to the Dental Hospital in the middle of the week and I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t: I think I was just on so many painkillers that my mind was foggy and doing anything at all felt almost impossible.

Still, in between heroic doses of non-opiate painkillers, I managed to finish updating The Diary Project. Yep, all 365 envelopes have finally been scanned, uploaded and blogged - now I just have to work out why the set over on Flickr is mysteriously missing 6 envelopes. Oh and there’s also the small matter of organising an exhibition for the project but I’m not even starting on that until I get back from Australia.

Speaking of Australia, here’s my schedule:

Evening of 28th February - Arrive in Sydney
28th - 2nd March - Staying in Manley and exploring Sydney
2nd - 7th March - Kiama
8th/9th March - wedding
10th - 20th - in Sydney, Manley and Blue Mountain area, possibly fitting in a quick visit to Melbourne if I have the energy
Evening of 20th March - fly home

If you’re a reader who lives in any of those areas and you want to meet up for tea, cake and art chat, email or comment and we’ll arrange something.

I have other stuff to blog about but right now I need to go and take more painkillers and sleep. In the meantime, here’s a photograph that I took on my one of my very few trips out of the house this week…

Kirsty Hall: Trees reflected in a bus stop during a clear winter sunset

Kirsty Hall: Drawings in progress, Feb 2008

Starting a drawing can be scary. Drawing on crappy paper (that’s a technical term!) can be one way to overcome the fear of the blank page.

When I was first learning to draw, my dad would bring home piles of A3 computer paper from his office for me. It was the large thin folded stuff with perforations down the side. Apparently it sometimes used to spool through the printers and couldn’t be re-used - at least that’s what he told me!

It was great paper to draw on because there was never any fear of wasting expensive cartridge paper: it was already waste, so it didn’t matter if I ruined it. I used to sit in front of the TV drawing actors, newsreaders and the like. Documentaries and interviews were the best because they featured a lot of fairly stationary head shots. For a teenager living out in the country with no access to life classes, it was a surprisingly effective way to practice portraiture and speed drawing.

Drawing the envelopes for The Diary Project was similar - if I messed up an envelope it didn’t matter and I felt no guilt about tossing it in the recycling. In fact, I sometimes used to draw on the front and back of a couple of envelopes just to loosen up or to test out new techniques or materials. Now my envelopes are all finished and I want to take what I’ve learnt into making drawings on ‘real’ paper with the idea of making a series of drawings that could be sold. Yet even after a year of daily drawing, it’s still surprisingly intimidating to sit down in my studio and look at those empty sheets of good paper. Maybe I just need to take a stack of envelopes upstairs to comfort myself with…

Ariana Page Russell is a fine example of an artist really working with what she’s got - in her case, a skin condition called dermatographia. Here she explains it in her own words:

My own skin frequently blushes and swells. I have dermatographia, a condition in which one’s immune system exhibits hypersensitivity, via skin, that releases excessive amounts of histamine, causing capillaries to dilate and welts to appear (lasting about thirty minutes) when the skin’s surface is lightly scratched. This allows me to painlessly draw patterns and words on my skin, which I then photograph.

Ariana Page Russell - Index

Russell also takes these images one step further creating temporary tattoos and wallpaper from the photographs of her own skin welts.

Ariana Page Russell - Pivot (detail)

We’re only one day in, but so far I’m liking February much more than January!

Firstly, I finished the tax form yesterday and got it handed in several hours before the deadline. You won’t believe how much better I feel. I swear on Andy Warhol’s wig that I will never, ever leave my tax form to the last minute ever again. Of course, I say a version of this every year - feel free to remind me of this when I’m panicking next January!

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Secondly my son seems to be on the mend. Progress is very slow and he’s still not back at school but we had a good meeting with his Head of Year yesterday and the school are very sympathetic and supportive, which helps so much. Thanks to Sister Diane, Katherine, Cally, Missmilki and Sherrie Roberts who all left kind comments and well wishes on the last post.

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Thirdly, I had a great post day. I absolutely love getting post and I often suspect that the real reason I did the Diary Project was so that I’d get regular and exciting post for a year. Today I got the following things:

1) My tickets for Australia - yep, I am definitely going, I leave on the 27th Feb and get back on the 21st March. I’m starting to get just a little bit bouncy about it.

2) My partner’s last birthday present - this is fortunate, since his birthday is tomorrow. It took its own sweet time getting here from America and I was getting worried that it had been lost, so that was a relief.

3) The new Rowan knitting magazine - there’s a surprising number of fabulous designs in this one and I can’t wait to cast on something new and exciting. I particularly like Eeire, Astral, Auria and Gabrielle: I am such a girly-girl sometimes.

4) The new Cabinet magazine. If you haven’t seen this magazine before, then I highly recommend it - it’s a quarterly that features some of the most interesting writing on art, culture and weird stuff that I’ve read. This issue’s theme is ‘Bones’, which makes me an extremely happy camper because I love dead things with a rather disturbing passion. At heart I’m just a grown up goth girl.

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Fourthly, it was a stunningly beautiful day so I took a slew of photos while the sun was streaming through our library windows. I was literally dancing because I was so in love with the way the light was coming through the lens. It felt more like art than anything I’ve done since the Diary Project finished and I suspect that I’ll be filled with new art energy soon.

Kirsty Hall: Bright Yarn, February Morning

Kirsty Hall: Sort Of Dutch

Kirsty Hall: Dead Tulip