Kirsty Hall  |  Artist & purveyor of mad obsessive projects

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

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! ...

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…

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 ...

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)

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 ...

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

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 ...

January is my least favourite month of the year and this one has been an absolute doozy. My son has been quite unwell with a mystery stomach problem and for the last month, our lives have been an endless round of doctor’s appointments, extreme stress and official phone calls. We’re finally getting somewhere with it, but it hasn’t been a whole lot of fun and obviously I’ve been very worried so I’m not sleeping well. Needless to say, no art is being made, which Really Isn’t Helping. Plus I still have to do my taxes, which invariably turns me into a gibbering mess. I always intend to get them done by the initial September deadline but I never do and now I’m rapidly hurtling towards the final deadline of 31st January with not a thing done.

Unfortunately this combination of events means that I’m very behind in answering comments – I have 51 waiting at the moment. If you listened to the Craftypod interview, you’ll have heard that I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. This means that my brain and body sometimes run very slow and when I’m stressed, I tend to relapse. I’m not relapsing at the moment but I can feel myself hovering on the edge and I know I have to prioritise how I use my limited energy or I’m going to crash completely. Therefore, in the interests of my own sanity, I’m going to read through the comments today and only reply to the ones asking questions. Please know that I do read and care about all your comments and I thank you for your words of wisdom, even if I didn’t manage to answer them this time around. I figure if I start again from zero, I might manage to keep on top of it but right now I feel as though I’m drowning and I need to clear the decks as much as possible.

I’ve also not been posting as often as I like to here but this morning I’m writing up a pile of book reviews and I intend to finally scan and blog the last ten envelopes of the Diary Project. Later this week I’m also going to be starting a brand new series about art materials. I had intended this to be a January project but perhaps we can have a whole Spring of Materials instead.

I thought it would be fun to do some general posts on various types of materials, write some reviews of my own favourites and then open the blog up to guest writers to talk about their favourite or least favourite supplies. So if you have a burning desire to write about pencils, pastels, pens, paper, paint, scissors or other art materials, please contact me and we’ll sort something out. Art and craft stores are daunting in the choices available and art materials don’t come cheap: I’m sure we’ve all got art materials bought in a fit of enthusiasm that have been sitting unused in our cupboards for years, I know I have. Let’s pool our collective knowledge and help each other make more informed choices…

So that’s what’s going on and what’s coming up. In the meantime, have a couple of soulful January photos.

Kirsty Hall: Baroque Branches

Kirsty Hall: Patched Boots

January is my least favourite month of the year and this one has been an absolute doozy. My son has been quite unwell with a mystery stomach problem and for the last month, our lives have been an endless round of doctor's appointments, extreme stress and official phone calls. We're finally getting somewhere with ...

Welcome to the Cheat’s Guide To Blogging – find an old piece of writing, edit slightly, add pictures and serve!

I was just looking up some writing from my degree course for an unrelated reason and found this piece from 1999 that I thought was worth posting

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Abstract art has always had a very different role than representational art. Representational art is very much tied to how well the representation works. Is it “a likeness”: by its faithful representation of nature does it somehow capture the soul of the person, animal or place depicted? We usually judge representational art on how well it convinces us of the reality of the image.

Our response to representational art is also determined by sentimental factors. Is it a portrait of someone we love or a place that is special to us? Can we sense a little piece of the person’s soul as we gaze into their unseeing eyes? Do we even like cats or eagles or horses? These things affect how a piece of representational art is perceived by the person who looks at it. Something that may seem kitsch, unappealing or simply bad to one person will be cherished by another because of whom or what it represents.

Kirsty Hall: Diary Project Envelope from 5th February 2007

Abstract art is somewhat different. There is less to hold onto. It is a Rorschach blot, a screen onto which the viewer can project their own desires and hidden thoughts. Abstract art opens up the unconscious mind, it forces people to think about what they are seeing.

Many people resist this. After all, it is hard to know what to say when faced with something that doesn’t fall into simple categories like “dog” or “cat” or “child”. We are so deeply used to seeing in symbols and categories that images which do not fall into pre-conceived patterns can be hard to look at. Literally not knowing what we are looking at can make it hard to see at all. Yet it can also challenge our brain to new leaps into the unknown. It can open up places in our mind where poetry might begin. It can inspire us, scare us or anger us.

Kirsty Hall: Diary Project Envelope from 12th December 2007

Historically, abstract art and representational art are often pitted against each other. Personally I don’t see them as being in conflict. I think that people make art and look at art for many different reasons and I think that art needs to be broad enough to encompass many different viewpoints and many different ideas.

Many of the problems that people have with contemporary art stem from the fact that they are afraid of it. I think that people are often afraid of looking stupid if they don’t understand art.

But art shouldn’t be a test.

Hey, half the time I don’t understand art and I’ve looked at a lot of it! I’ve also read extensively on the subject and it’s my opinion that most people who write about art don’t understand how artists think and work. So don’t look at those words first, just look at the piece and think about how it makes you feel. You might not know as much about art as an art historian or critic but how a piece of art makes you feel is every bit as relevant, worthy and important.

Welcome to the Cheat's Guide To Blogging - find an old piece of writing, edit slightly, add pictures and serve! I was just looking up some writing from my degree course for an unrelated reason and found this piece from 1999 that I thought was worth posting ..... Abstract art has always had a very different role ...

OK, apparently a couple of you want to see this too. This is long, I’m afraid, since I don’t know off any way to make cuts in WordPress.

Edited to add: Sorry about the weirdness at number 8, I’m not especially happy about that task, it’s just a weird WordPress formatting thing but there’s no way that I’m going to change the numbering on the other 100 just to get rid of it.

101 THINGS LIST

1) Apply to Axis
2) Assemble garden bench and chain to railings in garden
3) Assemble new wheelbarrow
4) Be mentioned in [AN] Magazine
5) Buy a digital SLR
6) Buy and put up nesting boxes
7) Buy binoculars
8) Clear out and organise shed
9) Complete 4 thread drawings
10) Complete 8 UFO’s for the L&V Finish-a-thon
11) Complete the Paying It Forward Exchange
12) Create a promotional pack for Pin Ritual
13) Declutter and re-organise Cupboard of Doom
14) Declutter laundry room
15) Decorate middle floor hallway
16) Develop and perform Red Thread
17) Do 50 drawings to sell
18) Donate £100 to British Heart Foundation
19) Exhibit in London
20) Exhibit The Diary Project
21) Finish & post Mart’s box
22) Finish Gemma’s jewellery
23) Finish organising study
24) Finish Pelt
25) Finish re-organising studio
26) Finish shoalwater shawl in time for wedding
27) Finish the research on the house
28) Finish watching Farscape
29) Finish watching Nowhere Man
30) Fix email problem
31) Frame and post Jeanne’s picture
32) Frame and post Mart’s picture
33) Get big bedroom decorated
34) Get damaged corner in library fixed
35) Get front door painted
36) Get more Moo cards
37) Get my hallmark
38) Get new coil fitted
39) Get notecards made from my art
40) Get over 100 in my Technorati rank
41) Get spinning wheel fixed
42) Get windows renovated
43) Go and see a ballet
44) Go on a picnic
45) Go whalewatching
46) Hem grey trousers
47) Host a tea party
48) Install hanging rail or brackets in studio
49) Invent a new cake
50) Keep a daily log for a year
51) Knit Cat’s jumper
52) Learn how to do the more complicated polaroid transfers
53) Learn how to use my medium format camera
54) Learn to follow crochet patterns
55) Learn to spin
56) Lose a stone
57) Make a ‘where things are stored’ database
58) Make a book of The Diary Project
59) Make a limited edition artist’s book
60) Make a new will
61) Make and send CD of wedding photos to Z. and G.
62) Make Butterfly Mind
63) Meet up with Siobhan
64) Organise Australia trip
65) Organise registration info
66) Paint outside of study door
67) Paint railings
68) Pay back J.
69) Perform Pin Ritual again
70) Plant a border with bulbs
71) Put £500 in my savings account
72) Remake and photograph ‘Annunciation’
73) Renew passport
74) Reorganise the kitchen cupboards
75) Replant my herb pots
76) Rescan the earlier envelopes at high res
77) Save up £1000 for a new computer
78) Sell 5 pieces of artwork
79) Sell a piece of jewellery
80) Simplify my email folders
81) Sort out family lawyer stuff
82) Sort out Irene’s picture
83) Submit my work to Fiberarts Magazine
84) Swim in the sea
85) Take or pay someone to take good photos of my recent artwork
86) Take part in 6 exhibitions
87) Test the plastic etching process
88) Tidy and clean under kitchen sink
89) Update descriptions on Flickr
90) Update my art archive
91) Use or get rid of the pile of slate in the garden
92) Visit a waterfall
93) Visit Achnahaird
94) Visit Hay-on-Wye
95) Visit Ireland
96) Visit Red in Amsterdam
97) Visit Roslin Chapel
98) Visit The Bath Museum of Costume
99) Visit the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford
100) Watch Season 3 of Veronica Mars
101) Write up the knitted brick pattern

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I was most amused to discover yesterday that I’d apparently started a 101 Things list last May. I didn’t remember ever having seen the meme before, let alone writing a list with 50 things on it. It was fascinating to see how many things I’ve already done (only 7 unfortunately), what made it to the final list and what I no longer feel the need to do. It’s obvious already that these lists can change in quite a short time, so you need to stay fluid during the process.

It was especially interesting to notice that a couple of things that I thought were completely off the wall when I wrote them on the final list were also on the earlier one – apparently I have a much deeper desire to go swimming in the sea than I realised.

Well, that’s it for goals for the time being but I’ll probably do monthly updates on how I’m doing, just to keep myself on track. Oh, and if you can help out with any of these goals – especially the exhibition related ones – please do feel free. Indeed, I’m entirely reliant on you all linking to me in order to achieve No. 40 (Get over 100 in my Technorati rank) – but don’t worry, I won’t be asking you to come round and clear out my cupboards!

OK, apparently a couple of you want to see this too. This is long, I'm afraid, since I don't know off any way to make cuts in Wordpress. Edited to add: Sorry about the weirdness at number 8, I'm not especially happy about that task, it's just a weird Wordpress formatting thing but there's no ...

Hooray, the year can officially start now because I’ve finished all my goal lists. I suppose it’s one way to get through the long slog of January – just cut the month in half by arbitrarily deciding that the first couple of weeks don’t count!

I thought you’d all be bored with these posts about goals by now but to my surprise, I’ve been getting comments asking me more about it and wanting to see my mind map. I am getting to the end of this subject though, there will be this post and one more on the 101 Things and then I’m going to stop thinking and writing about it for a while.

MIND MAP

My mind map of the things I want from 2008 was one of the main starting points for deciding on my goals for the year. As requested by Wendy and Amanda, here is a scan of the original. I considered censoring one of the goals (go on, guess which one!) but decided not to bother.

Sorry, I had to do it as a thumbnail so that I could make it big enough to be readable. Click on it if you’re interested

As you can see, most of these are rather fuzzy and certainly don’t count as goals yet because they’re so vague – exactly how many games of Scrabble do I need to play before it counts?

You know what’s really freaking me out though – a couple of the things on this mind map have already started coming true WITHOUT ME DOING ANYTHING ABOUT THEM! And after all those years of internally sneering at affirmations too. Yes, very funny, Universe, I guess that’s me told. I’m seeing it more as, ‘I’ve already put in the work and now it’s starting to come to fruition’ rather than ‘ask for anything you want and you’ll get it’ but still, I’m kind of wishing that I’d put ‘earn shitloads of money and become fabulously famous’ on there now.

JOURNALLING

I also did several pages of writing and art journalling about the idea of goals and completed an exercise to discover my theme word for the year, an idea that I nabbed from the Creative Mom Podcast. It’s a good idea that originally came from Ali Edwards.

If you’re struggling to gain clarity on the goal making process, I’ve found this a very helpful exercise to do. Make a big list of words that might apply to your year (if you get stuck with this part, try browsing through a thesaurus or dictionary) and then just let your gut guide you to the right one. Don’t go with what you think you should want from the year but let your intuition speak. It can take a little time to hit on the right word but both years that I’ve done this, I’ve found that I know it when it appears. My word for last year was ‘nourish’, while this year’s word is ‘balance’.

GOALS

After much thought I realised that since I was also doing the 101 Things challenge, I didn’t need an extensive goal list for 2008. Indeed, I toyed with the idea of not having any goals at all but decided that I wanted a few to keep me focused on those desires. I did halve the list though – my massage therapist will be impressed, she’s always telling me to cut down my ridiculously unrealistic daily lists.

Again, I listened to my intuition and kept the idea of making my list entirely positive utmost in my mind: whenever I felt a little internal sigh or reservation about a goal, I struck it off the list.

MY FINAL LIST OF GOALS FOR 2008

1) Finish 8 knitted items by the end of June
This is for the Lime & Violet Finish-a-thon where a bunch of us knitter types have made a public commitment to completing some of the unfinished projects that are lurking on our needles. I think there’s going be a Flickr group for this project soon but as far as I know, it’s not up yet.

2) Declutter 3 rooms
Decluttering was a big theme towards the end of last year and this still feels like a very positive thing to me.

3) Take part in 101 things in 1001 Days
Yep, this is place that I’m hiding the less positive things! However, I did discover through journalling that ‘doing things’ and ‘ticking things off lists’ is hugely positive for me. I actually get a lot of joy from the sense that things are happening and progress is being made. I’ll post the completed list shortly, it is finished but I want to write a bit more about the process of writing it and I didn’t want this to be a dauntingly long post.

4) Visit my friend, Red in Amsterdam
Pretty simple and the single most important one on the list – if I only achieve one of the goals, I want it to be this one.

5) Keep a daily log
I’ve been doing this since the start of the year. It’s not as pressured as it sounds, I’m just making notes in my little paper diary of when I get certain things done, like journalling, walking, exercising, knitting and er, some of the other desires on the mind map. Sheesh, get your minds out of the gutter, people – I meant the Scrabble, of course!

Hooray, the year can officially start now because I've finished all my goal lists. I suppose it's one way to get through the long slog of January - just cut the month in half by arbitrarily deciding that the first couple of weeks don't count! I thought you'd all be bored with these posts about ...

So, the quest for a final list of goals is continuing apace. I’ve given myself until the end of the week to finalise it because for some bizarre reason, next week feels like the proper start of January to me. Don’t even ask, I have no idea why, I just know that I’m still mentally in an ‘in-between’ sort of space.

One thing I’ve definitely decided to do is 101 Things in 1001 Days. This online project involves making a commitment to complete 101 preset tasks in 1001 days, which is about 2.75 years. If you want to take part, there’s a list of criteria and suggestions here.

When I read about this on Eliza’s Back Yard blog, it totally freaked me out. I wasn’t sure why because I undoubtedly already have more than 101 things on my various to-do lists. After some thought, I realised that it was the time-scale that bothered me.

Now, I have no problem with the concept of doing something for a year, as The Diary Project amply shows, but the idea of publicly admitting that it might take me the best part of three years to complete things seriously bothered me. I’m not exactly your Go-To Girl when it comes to delayed gratification: when I have an idea, I want to do it right now. Actually, I generally want to do it yesterday but even I accept that this breaks the laws of physics because I don’t have one of these…

Yet conversely, I’m also The Queen of Procrastination and many of the things on my to-do lists have been lurking there for so long that they’ve become seriously embarrassing to me. This happens partly because I take on too much or commit to things out of a sense of obligation rather than a real desire to do them but also because my energy levels simply can’t keep up with the relentless slew of ideas that pepper my poor defenceless brain. My family have come to live in fear of the words, “hey, you know what would be a really great idea…”

But the fact that I was a bit afraid of the 101 Things meme made me think that it was probably an excellent idea to try it. Then it occurred to me that it could also act as a handy dandy place to hide all my ‘shoulds’, so that they weren’t on my official goal list. Hmm, perhaps I haven’t completely integrated that whole ‘only having positive goals’ thing yet!

Anyway, for both these reasons, I decided to go for it and enthusiastically started yet another database. However, after several days, I still only have about 75 things and I’ve utterly run out of inspiration. I could probably plump up the list with more things from my to-do lists but a lot of those are quick, small, one-off or rather boring tasks and I’m not sure they deserve to be on this big list. Plus, I’m still trying to stay mostly positive and only commit to things that I feel are worth doing or that are bothering me enough that I need them out of my life.

So I’m wondering if it’s acceptable to start with just 75 things and add the other 26 at some point in the next 2.75 years. Sigh, I suspect this means that I’m still having trouble with the time-scale thing – after all, how can I possibly know what I’ll want next year, let alone in nearly three? As you can see, I’ve never been one for Soviet style Five Year Plans but perhaps learning to think more long term is part of the reason for doing this.

So, the quest for a final list of goals is continuing apace. I've given myself until the end of the week to finalise it because for some bizarre reason, next week feels like the proper start of January to me. Don't even ask, I have no idea why, I just know that I'm still ...

Guess where I’m going!

Image belongs to Virtual Australia

Yep, I’ve just got back from the bank and they gave me a loan so I will be going to my brother’s wedding in Australia. The wedding is on the 8th March but I’ll probably go over in the last week of February and stay for about 3-4 weeks (there’s no point in going for any less). I’m mostly going to be in and around Sydney, Kiama and the Blue Mountains area, although if I go for 4 weeks rather than 3, then I might be in Melbourne for a few days as well.

Anyway, if you’re in that area and would like to meet up, please do let me know. Or if you’ve visited Australia and have any handy advice or recommendations, that would be helpful: obviously, I’m especially interested in art related things but any tips would be great.

Oh, my mind is reeling. I have so much to organise to make this happen, like renewing my passport, organising a visa, sorting out accommodation and about a zillion other things. Of course, now I’m wondering if I could do a little mini-project while I’m over there although I’ll certainly be doing a travel journal in the beautiful book that I got from Kaija in the Paying It Forward exchange and that might be enough.

Er, I think I might need to go and lie down and boggle for a bit: I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.

Guess where I'm going! Image belongs to Virtual Australia Yep, I've just got back from the bank and they gave me a loan so I will be going to my brother's wedding in Australia. The wedding is on the 8th March but I'll probably go over in the last week of February and stay for about ...