Actually, I got back home on Monday evening but needed a couple of days to a) recover from London, b) catch up with everything at home and c) do my dratted tax return.

The later isn’t going so well, I’ve done all the maths but the website won’t recognise my password so I can’t file it. Needless to say, I am not too happy about this since the deadline is on Saturday. And yes, I know I should have done it before now but since I can’t do anything to fix the problem this evening, I’ve been sorting out my pictures from the show.

Here’s Quiver hanging in the window of the shop.

Kirsty Hall: Quiver at Prick Your Finger, Jan 09

The inside of the shop is very colourful and busy…

…so my calm, white corner is quite a contrast.

Kirsty Hall: Pin Installation at Prick Your Finger, Jan 09

This was a comfortable chair to pin on – just the right height – and Pin Ritual looks lovely draped over it.

Kirsty Hall: Pin Ritual at Prick Your Finger, Jan 09

The wide window ledge is a perfect place for the Pin Stories folder, my bowl of pins, the comments book and the little leather and pin Touch Objects.

These pin drawings are two of my personal favourites…

…but these two monoprints with their pin, needle and thread imagery also proved popular.

That’s it for now. If I can sort out the tax thing without having a nervous breakdown, I’ll be back tomorrow with a proper update of some of my London adventures.

Wow, London is hectic and exhausting. I am always amazed that anyone manages to live here but I know loads of people who absolutely thrive on it. Just traveling around tires me out but I expect if you live here, you get used to it. And I suspect that I always try to pack far too much in when I’m here: since Wednesday I’ve installed a show, meet up with several different friends, visited four art exhibitions and gone to a book launch party!

I arrived safely on Wednesday lunchtime and managed, with some difficulty, to drag my suitcase and a long and unwieldy art tube across London on the tube. I had planned to send the exhibition by courier but in the end, I decided that didn’t feel safe to me and so I packed it all up and carried it. It wasn’t too bad but I was very thankful to arrive at the space and be fed a sandwich and a much-needed cup of tea.

After I’d revived, I hung the show. I finished it all on the Wednesday afternoon just before my friend, Alice arrived to take me out for a cup of tea and a chat.

The show is installed in the window and the adjacent corner of the shop and I’m very pleased with how it looks. Quiver looks lovely in the window, really intriguing and mysterious from outside and all glittery and enticing once you get inside and can touch it.

I went back today to do my first session of pinning. I enjoyed sitting next to the window, partly concealed by Quiver and pinning away while the world went by. We had a few visitors but it was fairly quiet. It felt like a respite after several busy days. The shop is a delightful place to sit and pin – the walls are a riot of colour and texture with mostly British yarns from small producers and wonderful art yarns jostling with books, equipment and crazy kits for things like pink knitted beards! And Rachael, Louise and Rosemary who run the space couldn’t be lovelier; the three of them have a genuine passion for art and textiles that I’m really enjoying.

Right, I’m off for a cup of herbal tea and an early night because tomorrow is probably going to be hectic.

Just a reminder: if you’re in the London area, I shall be pinning at Prick Your Finger from 2 – 6pm tomorrow and I’d love to see you.

I am delighted to announce that my first ever London show will take place this month at Prick Your Finger, which is a haberdashers crossed with an art space – an inspired combination, if you ask me.

I emailed the lovely folks at Prick Your Finger in late December to see if they were interested in showing my work. I was aware of the performances and knitting activism of one of the founders, Rachael Matthews from the Cast Off knitting club. I’d also been following their blog after discovering a link to it when I was researching artists who use darning.

Not only did they instantly email me back to say that they loved my work but they asked me if I could do an exhibition in January and February because they had an unexpected gap in their schedule. I immediately said yes.

I’m going to be showing some of my pin work, which I’m very excited about because several of the pin pieces – including Quiver – have only been shown once before. Plus it’s been an age since I did my beloved Pin Ritual performance.

Kirsty Hall: Pin Ritual Performance, Dec 2001

Prick Your Finger is at 260 Globe Road, Bethnal Green, E2 OJD and the opening hours are Tuesday to Friday from 12 – 6pm and Saturday 11am – 6pm. The show opens on Friday 23rd January and runs until Saturday 28th February. If you’re in London, I hope you’ll get along to see it.

There will be an official opening on Saturday 24th January from 2-6pm. If you’re in the area please do come along and meet me. I will be performing Pin Ritual and I believe there are plans for tea and cakes.

There will also be additional pin performances on the following days:

Friday 23rd January from 1-3pm
Friday 27th February 1-3pm
Saturday 28th February, again 1-3pm

If you visit when I’m not performing, there will be a book of pin stories to read and you’ll have the opportunity to leave your own pin story.

I spotted this incredible work on the Dear Ada blog.

Günther Uecker: Tanzender Stern, 2000

I’m not entirely sure how Günther Uecker makes his work but I strongly suspect that it’s embossing made with a printing press. However it’s done, I absolutely adore it. I would love one of his exquisite white works – not an accolade I give out lightly because I’m fussy about the art on my walls. However, since he has work in the Tate, it’s probably fair to say that he’s a little out of my price range!

The top picture is definitely my favourite but this image of scattered nails, reminiscent of my beloved pins, comes a very close second. In fact, I just like everything of his that I’ve seen.

Günther Uecker: Strömung I

Isn’t it fantastic when you see art that just makes your heart swell with happiness – I’m doing the Snoopy Dance here.

You can see more of Uecker’s work at the Zimmermann & Heitmann gallery.

Hail Janus! God of gateways, doors, ending and beginnings.

Roman Coin Showing Janus

The last post looked backwards at 2008. This one is about looking forward to 2009, with a bit of reflection thrown in for good measure.

Drifting aimlessly is something of a natural condition for me and I can do it for quite disturbingly long periods of time. This can be a good thing; the ability to daydream is one of the sources of my art. However, it’s not good for me to stay in that space for too long, so I’ve always used external deadlines and self-imposed goals to combat that tendency towards feyness.

Last year, I had great difficult setting goals – a reflection of how overwhelmed and burnt out I was. Although I clearly needed the time off, I found I struggled without the structure that goals give me. About halfway through the year, I started making a monthly list of the tasks in addition to my usual weekly lists. However, I discovered that unless things were obviously urgent, they had a tendency to fall off the bottom of my lists and never get done.

I realised that I was mostly being reactive rather than proactive and that’s something I’d like to change this year. Thankfully, I’ve found a new tool that may help. Eliza from the Backyard blog recently plurked enthusiastically about Toodledo, an online task organiser. I tried to resist her siren call because I’m an absolute sucker for organisational systems and I can easily get sucked into endlessly re-organising my lists instead of actually doing any of the things on them!

I’ve tried lots of organisational tools over the years but they often fall by the wayside. I either find that they simply don’t work for me or I start using them with great enthusiasm and then abandon them as being far too much trouble. It’s early days yet but I think that Toodledo may be different – in less than a week, it’s completely embedded itself into my life. I like the fact that it plots things on a calendar and you can easily assign folders, importance and deadlines to tasks plus it’s quick and easy to alter things. It’s nice and visible on my bookmark toolbar (I’m both visually orientated and forgetful – if I can’t see something, it may as well not exist), opens instantly and most crucially, it’s very intuitive. So thanks for that one, Eliza.

Anyway, on to my goal list…

2009 GOALS

1) Finish or frog three unfinished cardigans
I have already started working on one of these – I’m teaching myself how to crochet properly so that I can finish a cardigan that just needs a crocheted border. Two of the three cardigans have been nearly complete for at least two years now so I am determined NOT to have this unfinished knitting still lurking around at the end of this year.

2) Finish decluttering the house
Decluttering became unexpectedly important in the second half of 2008 and it still feels very vital and satisfying.

3) Visit Red in Amsterdam
Another repeat from last year: the current plan is for this to happen sometime in the spring.

4) Get my son through his GCSE exams
I’m clearing my calendar between April to June for this one!

5) Plant a vegetable garden
I’ve made a barter arrangement with a friend to share the produce in exchange for some help with the physical labour. So if I get too sick to garden, it’ll still get done and we’ll have home-grown vegetables – I’m very excited about this.

6) Get chickens
Having ‘get chickens’ as a New Year’s Resolution makes me laugh. Regular readers may recall that chickens were mentioned last year. Well, my family have come round to my way of thinking, so Project Chicken Is Go!

7) Continue to do daily stretches
I’d like to do more regular cardiovascular exercise in 2009 but I haven’t listed it as a goal because it felt too prescriptive. I’m more concerned with maintaining the successful stretching habit that I established in 2008.

8) Do 30 things from my 101 list
I’ve got three things in progress already.

9) Successfully grow things from seeds
I got a fantastic book for Christmas called The Thrifty Gardener. It’s encouraged me to believe that I can grow things from seeds, even though my past attempts have not met with much success.

10) Start the linen series
Ah, an art thing at last. The linen series has been brewing for a while now and if all goes according to plan, it should be 2009’s major art project.

It was good to re-read what I wrote last January about letting go of ’shoulds’ when setting goals. Unconsciously, I replicated that attitude when deciding on my 2009 goals – all ten things on the list feel positive to me rather than restrictive or guilt-ridden.

Happy New Year, folks. I’ve been meaning to update for ages but the urge to hibernate was too strong, so I gave in to my inner hedgehog.

Baby Hedgehog by Riude.
Image found on Flickr and used under a Creative Commons licence.

Left to my own devices, I’d probably carry on hibernating for at least another month but I have a busy January ahead of me, so I must poke my nose out of my comfy little nest and get back into the swing of things.

Traditionally at this time of year, I always spend a few days reviewing the old year and attuning myself to the new one. First, let’s look backwards.

2008 REVIEW

Oh dear, 2008 was a bit of a grim experience. My word for the year was ‘Balance’ but it often felt that I only achieved it by lying on the floor and holding on for dear life! Although nothing absolutely dire happened in 2008, it felt like an unrelenting slog and I was damn glad to see the back of it. My son was ill in the first half of the year and missed six months of school, which was obviously very stressful. Then I spent much of the second half of the year being ill and quite profoundly unmotivated (probably because of the stress of the first half).

Art
Art-wise, this wasn’t a very productive year for me. I continued making art whenever I was well enough but I didn’t have a single exhibition – the first time this has happened since I graduated in 2002. This was partly because there seemed to be fewer interesting opportunities available but it was mostly because I couldn’t face applying for anything. Whenever I thought about sending in an application, I just felt like crying. In retrospect, it’s obvious that I was slightly burnt-out after the daily intensity of The Diary Project in 2007.

Although I’m a bit irritated at myself for this wossy behaviour, I accept that after 6 years of working hard on my career, it’s OK that I took a year off. And it was ultimately helpful because I’ve barrelled into 2009 with my enthusiasm for my career renewed.

Personal
The highlight of the year was obviously my fantastic trip to Australia in February and March. I’ll be paying it off for the next four years but it was so worth it! If anyone wants to offer me any art opportunities in Oz, I’m totally up for it – it’s an incredible place and I can’t wait to go back.

Kirsty Hall: Rainforest in the Blue Mountains, March 2008

I also achieved the following:

Knitted 27 items, including 20 baby hats for a Save The Children appeal
This is the first time I’ve done any charity knitting and I found it hugely satisfying.

Read 81 books
This sounds impressive but this is actually a low total for me that reflects the amount of illness I was dealing with: normally I’m around the 100 – 110 mark.

Completed 21 things on my 101 List

I planted a flower bed in my garden and grew herbs, strawberries, tomatoes, sweetpeas and other flowers in pots. I also successfully propagated cuttings for the first time.

Completed 3 of my 5 2008 goals
Due to scheduling difficulties I didn’t manage to visit my friend Red in Amsterdam, which was a big disappointment. I didn’t complete all of my unfinished knitted items either. Never mind.

I started stretching daily
Apart from three days when I was incapacitated with bronchitis, I’ve done this every day for the last 35 weeks. This is huge for me. I’ve always struggled with exercise, I’ve never been sporty and in the past I’ve tended to throw myself into a new exercise routine and quickly give up because it hurts or I lose interest. So 35 weeks of regular stretching is incredible. I started very slowly with a couple of repetitions of half a dozen stretches and I’ve gradually increased both the range and number of repetitions that I do.

House
A lot of my art energy was redirected into domesticity in 2008. Since the summer, I’ve been engaged in a massive amount of decluttering and organising. A friend and I have tackled 11 different areas in my home and frankly we’ve worked miracles.

Although not directly related to my art on the surface, I know that decluttering has put me on a much stronger footing in that area. Crucially, my studio is now a manageable working space. I finally know what materials I have and where everything is: this should make a big difference.

I also accepted that I simply can’t do it all and I need to concentrate on the areas of art that really matter to me, so I gave a lot of art and craft materials away. This has freed up a lot of physical and emotional space and I feel that my art is better grounded than it’s ever been.

I’ve always been a ‘leave it to the last minute, then work like a banshee’ person but I’ve finally come to see that running on adrenalin isn’t a sustainable model for my art practice. If I’m going to sustain and nourish my art without destroying my already precarious health, I can no longer indulge that excitement-seeking aspect of myself. (I know my family are going to be rolling their eyes at this bit; they’ve been trying to tell me this for the last bazillion years!). I’m overdrawn at the energy bank and I can’t keep counting on ‘exhibition energy’ to pull me through – my inability to apply for exhibitions last year proved that much. I had simply exhausted myself past the point of being able to show and that’s no bloody good!

An important aspect of moving towards a more sustainable art practice is the need for more structure and organisation in my life. I don’t have the time and energy to constantly turn the house upside down looking for something I’ve lost. Nor can I afford to buy multiple copies of things I already own.

Conclusion

After several years of concentrating intensely on my career, I had a year where I focused on friends, family, my home and my health instead. One of my hopes for 2009 is that I can find a better balance between these often competing needs. I am already feeling much more positive than I did at the start of 2008 and things are already looking up for my career (more big news on the later very shortly).

My focus in 2008 was very much turned inward, which I found difficult at the time but now see was very necessary. It was a year of ‘clearing the decks’, re-evaluating what I want from my life and my career and laying strong foundations for my future art practice. Bring on 2009, I’m ready!