I like to listen to podcasts while I work. I can't read, write or do anything too complicated whilst I listen but I do often scan and edit photos, knit or work on pieces of art that require fingers and time but not too much thinking. Quite a lot of Pelt - the latest pin piece - has been done to the accompaniment of podcasts.

Kirsty Hall: Pelt, April 2007

Pelt in progress - photographed in April, back when the weather was nice enough that I could make art out in the garden, sigh.

One of my favourite creativity podcasts is Craftcast by Alison Lee. I just listened to the episode with arts business coach, Bruce Baker. I laughed out loud in several places when he touched on issues that have been repeatedly coming up for me recently. I love when the Universe gives you really obvious messages like this. OK Universe, I get it, I'm meant to be thinking about money, selling and learning to give up control of the bits that I'm not so good at!

As I say, I'd already been thinking about these things and I feel that I'm making some pretty big internal leaps in relation to how I feel about my art practice. For example, getting the website up has been a big thing: after years of failed attempts and dithering, I finally recognised that I needed to employ someone to design it or it just wasn't going to happen.

In a similar vein, I recently joined the Spike Island Associates Programme as a way of networking with other artists and overcoming the invariable isolation that comes with having a studio at home. I went to a private view there on Friday and then to an interesting talk yesterday by Lucy Skaer & Rosalind Nashashibi, who'd collaborated on a film together. The bit where they were talking about getting permission to film in the Metropolitan Museum in New York particularly resonated with me and it forcibly struck me last night that I'm now in the position where I should also be applying for funding and working with institutions who can give me more support than I've had previously. I suddenly feel that I'm ready for that and I know that my work is too. Inevitably perhaps, my own perception of my success as an artist is as much about these sudden internal jumps in confidence, as it is about external markers of success.