The Beth Project

Which sock are you on?

I ended up having a reasonably creative afternoon today, after being pretty staid (and sleepy) all week. General messing around with ribbon (see that cute little bow?), wire and acrylic paints. I've never used anything other than watercolours or poster paints before, so this is an interesting (and blobby) new medium for me. I like its versatility and its ability to cover stuff up, it's great for altering plastic and metal things that otherwise would be useful but unpretty.

For example, this is what I shall for the sake of argument call my "uterus tin", which contains things that I generally like to keep conveniently by my bed. I think it came from a charity shop, and it used to have a logo on the top left corner, but no more! The pink is acrylic paint and the black is shoddily-applied permanent marker (I will be going over the baskets in paint, they look completely awful in reality). Okay, I'm incredibly narcissistic about my drawing style but I really like these little heart balloons, not least because they bring together my love of buoyant aircraft with some appropriately red and suggestively-shaped imagery. Also - aww, can you see the little polka-dots? Awwww.

I would at this point like to share with you a song that was written by a completely wonderful young woman of my aquaintance named Iona (otherwise known as my future bride).

"Which Sock Are You On?" - to be sung to the tune of "Which Side are you on?"

Come all you good knitters
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how to knit a sock
Which inside the other dwells

Which sock are you on?
Which sock are you on?

My mother was a knitter
and i'm a knitter's girl
I'll keep on my knitting
til every stitch is purled

They say in Knitting Counties
there are no neutral men
You'll either use the magic loop
or knit on DPNs

Oh knitters can you stand it?
Oh tell me what you do,
will you knit just one sock
or are you knitting two?

We would have the most adorable revolutionary knitted children together.

Now, onto the wire issue (and by "issue", I pretty much mean "thing I made") - necklaces are pretty! And they get tangled together if you put them in a box, I have found through extensive research. So, I think to myself, what could stop this awful chain of events? Why, hooks of course! And so I got some wire and some sparkly beads and made some hooks. And lo, it was good, if somewhat difficult to photograph. I'm really happy with how this came out, since the hooks are quite nice to look at and they show off my jewellery, which is also rather nice to look at.

Speaking of nice to look at... somebody wonderful (she is one E away from Astride) made me the moon on a stick for Christmas, which is where this whole mad wire idea came from.

I know the nicest people. The book I am reading (which was leant to me by someone who definitely comes under the category of "nicest people") is called "Bad Science" and it is by this guy, who you may recognise from the Guardian.Â It's basically a nonsense shredder - a very approachably written critique of health fads, with an excitable attitude towards the scientific method which I find very appealing. I'm only up to the bit about homeopathy so far because for some reason my employers don't like me reading when I'm supposed to be doing things. I should talk to my union.

Lady Ada Lovelace and some haikus.

The first and most important thing I'd like to talk about in this post is Ada Lovelace Day. It's an international day of blogging about women who work in technology, on Tuesday 24th March. I'll be taking part. Will you?

I've got some decent ideas for my post, although since I don't technically work in the field (I'm more of an amateur geek) I might go and interview some ladies in the know. It appeals to my feminist tendencies and my fascination with steampunk. Oh, blogging is fun.

Oh, and check out this bit of Ada-craftiness.

I went up to Sheffield for the weekend, had some wonderful fun, took a tiny number of photographs. Brilliant not to have exams in January, not least because it makes me insufferably smug. I am enjoying, in Tom Lehrer's words, my copious free time. And my non-free time, my job is still going well. Although I have to say that now, my bosses have Googled me. Hello, Jeremy and Mary, if you're reading this.

Most of my creative activity recently has been sending cards and writing letters to friends, a very pleasant diversion. Sending things through the post is fun, mainly because recieving post is fun, and the one tends to lead to the other.

Soon this blog will actually have some kind of style and/or layout. No, really.

Check out my Haiku Review page, a way of keeping track of the books I've read this year, with brief, 17-syllable synopses. So far I like it. And need to read some more books.

Embroidery, pictures and one unhappy kitty.

Ah, the sweetness of gainful employment. I have returned to my local hospital to work as a ward clerk, envelope stuffer, PA and/or general skivvy. And I love it. There's something lovely about being good at a somewhat mindless job. I think that's one of my themes for this year: allowing myself to be good at things. Challenging myself doesn't necessarily mean doing something more difficult - sometimes it just means doing an easy thing better.

Other recent news: for a Craftster swap (I'm angel-ing, I wanted to give myself a craft challenge) I've made a little "How to Embroider" kit for my partner. It has demonstrations of stitches on squares of fabric and then an illustration of how to do the stitches. I really enjoyed drawing the pictures - and I consulted a stitch dictionary for a lot of them and so have incidentally learned some new stitches!

I like embroidery, since I feel like it fits with my style of artwork, and it's an easy way to make incredibly geeky t-shirts (sucrose molecule, anyone?). Now I've done this I think I'll be exploring it some more. And I think I'll embroider something to put inside the parcel as well!