This is a very quick update because I’m meant to be packing. My son and I are heading up to Scotland this evening to visit my folks.

Firstly, the talk went well on Thursday. I was quite pleased with the Powerpoint that I put together – only having a week to master the software made for a bit of a steep learning curve and a lot of late nights but I managed to put a simple presentation together. The talk itself was very well attended & the organiser said there was a good response to it. I think that I did OK, although my mouth was so dry from nerves that I got through two bottles of water in quick succession! But apparently I didn’t look or sound too nervous, which was good. I had practised at home a lot, which definitely helped. I also watched this long but fantastic video by Garr Reynolds on how to structure Powerpoint & do presentations, which helped immensely. If you’ve got a talk coming up, I thoroughly recommend watching it – it’ll be time well spent.

There was so much that I wanted to put in but had to leave out – 20-30 minutes isn’t nearly long enough to give a good overview of blogging – so I may do some basic intro posts about the subject in the next week or two.

Secondly, I’m taking my laptop up to Scotland with the aim of writing 5 blog posts. I want to take my blogging up to the next level this year and my first priority is increasing the frequency of my blogging. I’ve been blogging ‘hand to mouth’ for far too long. I need to get a good backlog of posts written so that my blogging is not dependant on my dodgy health. So, if you’ve got any burning issues that you’d like to see me address, please let me know and I’ll try to write about it. On a related note, if there’s anything that drives you nuts about my site, please do let me know and I’ll see if it can be fixed.

Lastly, congratulations to Gwen from Murphy Grace Home who won the Gary Vaynerchuk Crush It! giveaway. Thanks to everyone who commented. I wish you could all have won.

Right, I must go and pack, I’m just procrastinating now!

Edited to add:
Oops, I forgot this bit of news. I’ve changed a whole bunch of my photos over to the Creative Commons license. I’m retaining full copyright on my art photos but the more documentary ones are now available to use commercially. I would appreciate a Flickr comment if you do use them but it’s not obligatory.

Awesome sauce – I got a paid speaking gig. Apparently the University Of The Arts in London think I’m some kind of blogging expert. I tried to tell the nice lady on the phone that I wasn’t really but she said lots of lovely things about my articles page and how they were looking for an artist who blogs and I guess I qualify on the later.

Did I mention that the speaking gig is next week and I have to learn Powerpoint between now and next Thursday? And right after I said I was going to be taking things easy too – ha, the Universe does like its little jokes. But I’m certainly not complaining; it’ll be cool and this could be the start of an actual income stream for me. Fortunately I’m feeling significantly better I was than last week. I’ve been doing lots of pacing and listening to my body, so I should be fine.

The event is all booked up but they’re going to be taping it and putting it out as a podcast, I’ll let you know when that comes out.

Kirsty Hall: Waiting For Seeds, April 2009

Other cool things have been happening – without very much effort on my part, I might add. It’s slightly odd that I decided to stop pushing and just let things come to me and they promptly started doing exactly that.

I’ve started guest blogging over at the wonderful Make & Meaning blog. I was hugely flattered to be asked to be part of a venture that includes such incredible bloggers as Dudecraft; Craftypod; Kim Werker; Craftivism; Meet Me At Mike’s and Futuregirl. To begin with we’re going to be reposting some relevant posts from this blog but I’m planning to write some original content for them soon. Just as soon as I’ve got this speaking engagement out of the way!

I’ve also joined the brand new Third Tribe initiative, which I’m enjoying a lot. It’s the first time I’ve joined a subscription site like this but so far it’s definitely value for money as the calibre of bloggers involved is just awe-inspiring, plus you get monthly seminars and other exclusive content. It’s half price at the moment but the price goes up at 6 pm Central US Time today (that’s Friday 5th Feb) from $27 to $47 USD a month. If you join today, your subscription price will remain at the lower rate for as long as you’re a member, which is great because otherwise I couldn’t afford to do it.

Finally, for no particular reason that I could see, the lovely people at Vaynermedia sent me a second copy of Gary Vaynerchuk’s fantastic book, Crush It. I hope they meant to because I’m about to give it away! You can read my review of Crush It here.

If you’d like a chance to win this great little book, leave a comment on this post telling me what your passion is. I’ll draw a winner on Wednesday 10th February.

Hi everyone, sorry for being so quiet. Unfortunately I was so exhausted after the Front Room art trail that I collapsed in a heap for several days and then promptly caught a virus (possibly the mild version of Swine Flu) from my son. So I’ve spent most of the last two weeks in bed with a pile of books.

I’m hoping to do a proper art trail update in the next few days but since my muscles still feel like lead, I’m not making any promises.

Oh dear, I’m hopelessly late in getting this out here. But if you’re anywhere close to Bristol, I’m showing in the Front Room art trail this weekend and I’d love to see you.

I’m at 105 Oxford Street, Bristol, BS3 4RL where I’ll be showing some sculpture and premiering a brand new performance piece. It’s the first year that I’ve taken part in the trail, so I’m pretty excited.

The opening is on Friday 20th from 6 – 9pm and then the trail is open from 12 – 6pm on both Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd November.

Front Room aka The Totterdown Art Trail is the longest running art trail in Bristol. People in Totterdown kindly open their houses up as venues, so not only can you see lots of fantastic local art but you also get to have a good nose at other people’s decorating choices! If you’re in or near Bristol, it’s an excellent day out with lots going on including workshops for kids and a street party on the Saturday. The Front Room website has more details and maps.

Check out the beautiful staircase I’ve got – it’s a very ‘Kirsty’ sort of space, all greys and whites with fantastic light streaming in from a huge skylight on the top landing.

Kirsty Hall: Totterdown Staircase, Sept 2009

Kirsty Hall: Totterdown Staircase, Sept 2009

I’ll be performing in the space where that pile of books is.

Kirsty Hall: Totterdown Staircase, Sept 2009

I’m doing a new performance piece called Red Thread where I’ll be sewing red thread to a white dress whilst I’m wearing it. In a deliberate contrast to my Pin Ritual story-telling performances, I’ll be gagged so that I can only communicate with my hands and eyes and I’ll be encouraging people to sew bits of thread to me. It should be… interesting! It’s a piece that I’ve been working out in my head for a couple of years, so I’m pleased to finally be bringing it to fruition.

In case you just can’t get enough of me, I’ve started a Facebook fan page for my art. I’m not quite sure what I’ll be doing with it yet but I’m trying to make it a little bit different from my Twitter and this blog, so that it’s worth joining.

I’ve been doing some housekeeping on the blog this week. My lovely web designer, Steve, taught me how to play with widgets. If you cast your eyes over to the right you’ll see that I’ve been shuffling things around on the sidebar. I’ve added an interviews section and some copyright information and there may be a few more additions and changes to come. I’ve now moved on to exploring plugins. If anyone else is using Wordpress, I’d love to hear which plugins you find effective on your site.

Oh, and I’ve been sorting out the comments too.

Confession time: I had unanswered comments from November of last year. Oh, the embarrassment!

I’ve been replying to the most recent comments but I’ve decided not to reply to most of the older ones. Sorry about that. I do love that people take the time to comment here and I promise that I read and appreciate every single one; I’m just really, really bad at replying to them. If it’s any consolation, I’m a bit rubbish with email too. Wait, that’s no consolation at all, is it!

One change we’ve made that should hopefully speed up the way I answer comments is by adding a button at the end of your comment that lets you decide if you want to see follow ups. This means I’ll just be able to reply on the website instead of having to copy and paste my replies into email, which is what I have been doing. I know it sounds like a very small change but I’ve learnt that I am easily defeated by very small things, especially when it comes to admin.

I’m currently working on this issue. I plan to start blocking in some time every week to reply to comments and I’m experimenting with ways to make email less overwhelming, including unsubscribing to things and improving my email folders. I also want to get into the habit of only checking my email if I’m mentally prepared to answer at least some of the stuff that comes in.

…………………………………

I don’t know about anyone else but I find the amount of information in modern life very overwhelming. It seems like we’re all constantly running to catch up, doesn’t it…

Here’s a few good articles about the overwhelm problem:

A good general overview of what overwhelm is and how to tackle it.

An excellent article from Christine Kane, whose blog I recently discovered through Twitter.

6 tips for organizing your email – short and to the point.

10 Tips for Organizing Your Email – some very useful information on the different ways people organise themselves. Are you a searcher or a filer?

I was VERY flattered to make it into the ‘Best Artists Blog’ section of the 100 Best Scholarly Art Blogs list this week.

Congrats to Katherine from Making A Mark, who also made it into the Best Artists Blog section and to Dion from the Art News Blog, who very deservedly made it into the Art News section. I was also pleased to see the New Curator blog mentioned – I only discovered this blog fairly recently through Twitter but it’s rapidly becoming a favourite.

I haven’t checked out all the other blogs mentioned yet but it looks like there’s plenty of good stuff to get your teeth into.

So I’ve finally been assimilated to the Twitter side of the force after listening to this Craftcast podcast with jeweller and Twitter devotee, Timothy Adam.

If you’d like to follow me, I’m kirstymhall over there. I’m still not entirely convinced by the interface and I’m concerned about getting swamped with too much information but I thought I’d give it a go because there are several people I’m interested in following over there. Besides, if it turns out that I don’t like it, well I can simply stop.

Oh, and rest assured that you won’t be seeing any tweets on this blog: I absolutely loathe it when people link their Twitter feeds to their blogs, it looks so messy and I find the information difficult to parse.

I’m off to Amsterdam today to visit my lovely friend, Red. I’ll be away for a week and I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to update while I’m there but I shall certainly be taking lots of photos and journal notes to share with you on my return.

I’m planning to visit some art galleries and I hope to see massive amounts of these…

Kirsty Hall: Red Tulip, April 2009

OK, got to run, I haven’t quite finished my packing yet!

Firstly, some of you may have noticed that comments aren’t always appearing straight away. Unfortunately we’ve had to tighten up security after the site was hit by a bot that can crack the anti-spam word feature. So if you’ve not commented on the site before, your comment now won’t appear until I’ve accepted it. I’m checking every day to make sure that comments don’t languish in purgatory for ages. If you’ve commented before, your comment should appear straight away unless you include any URL’s.

Secondly, in celebration of April Fool’s Day, here’s an art-related Absolutely Fabulous clip to brighten up your day.