Craft

Objects with meaning – do you want to join in?

/ The Magpie at Midnight / 31 Comments

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A few weeks ago I started running a series of posts about ‘objects with meaning’, by which I meant objects that have personal importance to us, so that they may make up part of our emotional story or landscape. You can read that original post here should you want to know more. You can also have a look at some of the objects here and here.

Anyway, I found that something pretty exciting had happened at the beginning of this week when writer Scar (of blog SCAR) took up the idea behind this post and wrote her own lovely post about her own poignant ‘objects of meaning’. You can read her post here. I was particularly taken with the tale of her Ukulele and of her Happy Wagon. No spoilers – if you want to know more you’ll need to head over there to get the full story. If you like books, or ever have occasion to roam London looking for good places to hang out or eat, her blog is also for you.

So I really like the idea that other bloggers may want to write about their own ‘objects of meaning’ and the stories behind them. I think ideas are best shared. If you would like to join in I would be happy to host guest posts here, or link to posts on other blogs to direct some traffic. I really like the idea that we could together develop a web or map of stories through interesting objects, nearly forgotton pieces of clothing and long cherished toys – it would be exciting to act as a hub for that.

Please grab my attention by posting in the comments below, or you can email me at rose@magpieatmidnight.co.uk if you would prefer that.

I also make art. You can things with my designs on at my shop here. Could even treat yourself if you wanted to. Just saying.

New Design – pink flamingo

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flamingo portrait

I’ve been sitting on this design (among others) for quite a while. This one was made through hand cutting and arranging a sheet of pink flowers, and hand drawing and cutting a flamingo silhouette. I pulled the finished design together in photoshop. It’s been snowing outside here in London for the last few days, but I think spring is on the way. It feels like a good time to release this flamingo into the wild.

If you like this design, it is available as a print and on other things at Redbubble here.

What is it that I blog about anyway?

/ The Magpie at Midnight / 4 Comments

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I’ve been thinking a bit about what it is I am doing (or trying to do) when I’m writing this blog recently. Looking back over previous posts there are bits and pieces about my art, other people’s art and being creative, and sometimes (but not as much as I initially thought there would be) on trying to sell it. There are bits about being in nature (mostly in the woods), or out and about in lovely bits of the UK, and on appreciating the wonderful things we may have that may often go unnoticed close to home. There are also some thoughts on mental health, wellbeing and some of the tiny steps that may be part of the journey to getting us there. I think for a while I have felt a bit like this is a messy blog with out a central theme, which, while it may suit my messy brain, may ultimately not be of that much interest to other people.

I’ve been looking around at some of the ‘alternative lifestyle’ movements for a while and with each one found that it wasn’t quite for me. I like some of the principles of minimalism, but am far too (proudly) messy to be minimalist. I can see that living a ‘laptop lifestyle’ while travelling and living on a shoestring may be exciting, but I like my home and my friends and family too much to feel like swanning off into the sunset would be my thing. I don’t rage against my day job, which is meaningful and I think involves important work, but I do want to do a bit less of it. I have always been a bit anti-consumerist, but at the same time have a deep appreciation of (and am very happy to pay for) the sensuality and materiality of objects and food that have been made with skill and love. I find some of the writing coming out of the self help movement useful, but find they often promote an approach that for me is uncomfortably self absorbed. I like being with people, but also like my alone time too much to consider some form of communal living to be the answer. So I kind of didn’t really fit with any of the alternative lifestyle tribes that would require quite radical changes to my current way of doing things.

I think I’ve come to realise that the blog is all about me efforts in trying to carve my own pragmatic (and messy) path to living a creative, purposeful, connected, meaningful life.  While I may not be a perfect fit with any of the currently available ‘alternative’ tribes, I do think that what I’ve been trying to think about is living a different kind of life to one that is normal and heavily promoted in western culture (striving, ambitious, busy, individualistic, resource and spending heavy). I think that in particular I’m beginning to see the kind of isolation that kind of life can lead to, and how frankly unhealthy that is. There has got to be a better way that may involve slightly softer lifestyle changes. I’ve been pretty inspired while reading the blog of Mrs Craft of Craft and other crazy plans, who seems to be doing all sorts of interesting creative and outdoorsy things and generally enjoying that. And I’ve been thinking about more collective ways of doing things. I think over the next year or so I’ll be posting a bit more about this as I work things out as I go along. We may even start our own pragmatically, proudly messy, creative tribe, together. Would love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments below.

Reader, I was played

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We are away at the moment for a long weekend in Cambridge.

I like spending time in different UK cities and towns as I always, without fail, find something a bit interesting, unusual, or inspiring. Here I have been particularly taken with this blue roof.

We’ve not been out and about as much as usual on this trip, but have been spending a bit more time just being together. I thought we were here as a birthday getaway, but it turns out that the lovely boyfriend had other plans.

For quite some time he has been telling me that he doesn’t really believe in marriage or that he has some issues with inequalities in the legal structure of it. Put it this way, I was convinced that he wasn’t for the idea. So I was completely suprised when he proposed on Friday evening. He had been planning it for quite some time. Reader, I was played.

And now I am engaged.

Taking the rail replacement bus

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This morning I went swimming with my sister for the first proper training session in preparation for swimming in the Great North Swim in June. I have signed up to swim 5k (which is just over 3 miles), which is the furthest distance I will have swam. Eventually I want to work up to swimming a 10k, which is a marathon style length for swimmers. We swam a mile, and it was pretty tough going. I think it will take 2 swim sessions a week, and an additional session in the gym a week to build my stamina between now and then. So we have work to do. I will try to keep track here I think.

On my journey there this morning, one of my trains was replaced by a rail replacement bus. I normally travel on the train, and which is a relatively direct route. The bus takes a less direct route, and as a consequence I was able to see parts of London that I do not normally see. London is a huge city that has developed and evolved over time, slowly swallowing up towns and villages as it expand outwards. This process has left a patchwork of buildings of different styles, sizes and ages, with different parts of the outer edges of the city having distinct atmospheres and styles of their own. While it took me longer than i expected to get to the pool, I was great to spend some time looking at these bits of this city that I do not always feel at home in.

It got me thinking a bit about doing things differently, or what I may try to do differently last year. Over that last year and a half I have been working on just trying to finish things, which has been helpful in getting me to a place where I feel my creative work has purpose. I have also begun to really appreciate that doing things slowly, and building things over time, is actually the better way for me. I can be comfortable with this. However some of the work has felt, if not trivial, at least a bit light, or thin. In the last few months I have begun working on some pieces that are emotionally more close to home. I’ve been avoiding finishing bits of work like this in the past, as putting it out there is a bit anxiety provoking. When you already have anxiety, adding in more sources of anxiety is a bit of thing. So this year, I will be trying, gently, to push my self a bit more in that direction. Stay tuned to see how that goes…

Is there anything you’ll be having a go at doing differently this year?

Imperfectly vegan

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I’ve been unwell for the last few weeks and so am behind with basically everything, including the ‘It’s new year, how was last year, what will this year bring?’ type of post I had been thinking about for a few days.

So, belatedly, here we go. This time last year my boyfriend and I decided to give Veganuary a try. We had done Dry January the year before and got on well with that, and thought it would be good to combine it with something a bit more challenging. I say more challenging because up until the end of 2016 we were ferocious carnivores. If there was meat in it, we would try it. We loved buying it and talking about cooking it, and cooking it and inviting other people to share it with us. So we expected Veganuary to be a challenge.

So how did we get on? Well, one year on, we are still vegan. Imperfectly vegan, but we have made a significant change in our lifestyles. In fact we have really enjoyed learning a whole new way of cooking and thinking about food, and we no longer buy meat, eggs, fish or dairy products at all for out home cooking. We try to eat the vegan options when we eat out, and seek out vegan restaurants when we go away.  I am not, however, very good at checking labels, and have had a few vegan fails this way. We also don’t make a fuss about insisting other people cook vegan when we visit them at home (the majority of people we visit have been amazing in doing so anyway, and I am grateful to them for that). I think we have a few new tweaks on the vegan diet this year to explore new tasty options, but I think that counts as a success.

I’m  not really a fan of new year resolutions, but there are a few things I would like to do this year which at least give me something at aim at.

  1. I have signed up to the great north swim, which happens in June, and have begun training with my sister. We trained for a swim together last year and really valued spending that time together. This year I’m aiming for a longer distance, 5km, so I have lots of training to do – and should be fitter at the end of that.
  2. Finish a rough cut of the documentary. I have been working on this for several years now and I have other projects I want to move onto. I’m beginning to get the hang of animating the sections I want to animate so really just need to put the time in now.  It’s time to try to put this to bed.
  3. Revise my play and send it out to someone who may want to make it. Or turn it into a novel. It started life as a novel so this feels like a nice option to me.
  4. Spend more time walking in the woods, less time in front of the telly.
  5. Art, art, and more art. To keep me sane.

Do you have exciting plans for the new year?

I’m ill, hopefully back up to speed next week…

/ The Magpie at Midnight / 2 Comments

I’ve not posted very much for the last few weeks as it was Christmas and since then I’ve been ill at home. On the run up to Christmas I was actually being quite careful to take care of my self, going to the gym and eating well, but I think it was a bit a a too little too late situation – for lots of us last year was quite a slog. At the moment I’m concentrating in just doing what my body seems to want – lots of sleep, watching trashy telly and eating good food. I have been very fortunate to have my boyfriend looking after me.

However, I did manage to finish the Christmas presents I was making before Christmas in time to hand them out at the appropriate time. Here is one of them below, minus it’s frame as the reflection off the glass made it difficult to take a photo. What do you think?