RhianCaroline

i think too much

 

i think about a lot of stuff.
but mostly how it all changes. always.

1 of 3 ATCs. Full set here.

5 blogs of Christmas: #3&4

 
 
 

Home made tags and crochet coats for gifts.

 

The glorious return of the Christmas wire. More details here.

sick days

 

So I've had to take 2 sicks days this week. This is not something I really wanted to do during the first term. As trainees our schedule is hectic, I am at school teaching 50% of a full timetable from 8.30 am - 3.30 pm. I get home around 4, and then work till between 8 and 9 every evening.
I decided before starting this course I would never work any later than 9pm each evening. It's working okay at the moment, I'm managing my time to the best of my ability, and am keeping up with planning the lessons okay.
We can only take 8 sick days over the whole year if we want to graduate with the rest of our class. Any more than that and we will have to make up the time at some point before we can graduate. Considering this is my shortest term, weighing in at just over 6 weeks, I really wanted to be able to get through this term with no illness.
This was probably not so much positive thinking as deluded thinking. Let's face it; I'm working in a school. With hundreds of young people, sneezing and coughing and spreading their lovely young people germs. Not to mention it's November. And freezing. The concept of not coming down with a nasty bug/cold was probably never going to occur.
So the last two days I have barely been able to talk and definitely not been able to breathe. Yet all I can do is kick myself for having to use 2 sick days. To lose the lessons I spent hours planning. To not have had a clear run at full attendance.
Blahblahblah getoverit.

on tuesday that feels like a wednesday

two stars and a wish. in the primary school i was in last week, the teacher had created an encouragement strategy that the children worked to for any kind of group work they did, and then presented to the class.
two stars and wish.
you had to find at least two good things about the work, and then a wish, which is a constructive piece of criticism.
i loved this idea. i find myself listing off two stars and wish now whenever i do anything that feels difficult/new.
 
you have a nice hair colour.
your diary is functional and organised.
work a little bit on your paperwork.

you have a creative eye.
you have more experience than most people.
maybe learn what a freakin' pronoun is.

you are a good reader.
the sheets on your bed are fresh and clean.
just remember to breathe in and out...

drive-by-mon-day

 

watch as the sunny day drifts by

 
 
 

I always have multiple journals on the go.
Like my thoughts can't be kept in one book. Like they are too big for two covers. Like they need to be compartmentalised into many many subjects.
Home and tiredness and memories and lists and time and grace and questions.
Always so many questions.

I've got more pages from a circle journals project I started years ago with some marvellous ladies. But I'll do that another day.

I've got a mini etsy update tomorrow. A goodbye summer inspired yarn affair. Including these.

 

lovely things

*This lovely video le frost made of us in Paris. I didn't even know she was shooting this. She's a sly one.

*These ATC's.

My first month as an ArTCee for the first ever challenge over on simplyatc's and the theme is Alice in Wonderland. Lovely.
I'm using the prompts as visual inspiration, but treating my cards as teeny tiny art journals. Come play, because you will immediately be put in for a chance to swap for this set.

*Very nearly completing a custom order, with the prospect of another very soon.

*Tom Hardy.

*Michio Yamauchi's street photography.

*Multi coloured finger nails. (But not wardrobes on the middle floor.)
 

No.28*

*See the wildflowers of Texas. Done and done. And love and love.
They are some of my favorite things now. I can't wait to go back in different seasons to see all the different ones. Especially the bluebonnets.

I decided a while ago I am just going to post the whole book at the end of the year. Because I've been journaling the things I'm ticking off my list too.

As well as trying to make pretty videos of wildflowers. Sigh.

August

It's my final month of "freedom". Come September I will officially be a trainee teacher, and probably surviving on red bull and maybe some illegally acquired ecstasy.
Yes, I start my PGCE. I'm not scared or nervous about the learning and the teaching and the unruly students. I'm absolutely terrified at what it is going to do to my body, and whether this She Devil will even be able to cope with it.

So in this last month off, I'm designing more wedding invites. I'm going to Paris with the bff for a weekend. I'm finally going to pass my driving test (this is merely positive thinking. I will probably crash and be sued.) And I'm squeezing out my (probably) last zine entry for this year. That page up there is possibly a page from it, possibly not, possibly just a mess that needed to get out, who knows. What I do know if this edition is titled, Notes From a Hysterical Woman and will most likely be out at the end of the month, when the wedding I am designing for right now is done and dusted.

I haven't blogged about these last two weddings. But the invites for them have been hell on earth yet oh so beautiful. Here's a glimpse at what this last one looked like at the end.

Yes. That would be a piece of bunting for every individual invitation.
 
 

always remember

 
 
 

Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language - this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable.

- Adrienne Rich

 

I'm feeling like maybe I am finally remembering why I photo, and document, and blog. It was a long 2009 of very little creativity, of a lot of questioning what on earth the point of any of it is; of all the journals stacked high with journal entries, and the hand made fabric art journals.
It was a year of coming out of a situation that left me worn out and amazed. Despite the lovely friends I had made through it. It was a year of denying and dismissing documenting things, because it had been made to feel so forced and compulsory.
It was a year of emotional exhaustions; of cancer and illness and lost friendships.

Yet it was also a year of secret things. Of getting back to the basics; crochet, and fabric, and the written word. And of sharing very little of it. Of keeping it all for myself, just like I used to, just like I started with.
Because it is mine, just for me, and I needed to learn that all over again.

But I know some wonderful artists, people who are free and caring and organic in their creations, and it's reminding me that there must surely be a community out there for me to be a part of. A community of sharing and not competing, a community making thoughtful creations not commercialised ideas.

There are big plans coming, these next two years are going to be the foundation of it all. Starting with a trip to Austin, where said plans may just come into fruition.

But, Rhian, you must start small. You must learn your voice again, you must remember to create with abandon, you must not be fearful to share some of those creations, and you must do it all for the therapy.

Remember this.