Molecular Knitting (by sarah)

This is my knitted sucrose molecule still missing some of it's hydrogens. It has worked out both better and worse than I expected - as a first attempt I think it's great personally. My long term plan is to knit molecular assembles so groups of molecules as say found in tea, comet tails and chocolate... you get the idea 🙂

The finished knit is part of the work I will have on display at Centre Arts Cheltenham as part of their charity Exhibition Please Touch. The idea behind my knitted molecule is to give a tactile visualisation as it were of what how a molecule fits together - it is basically a model.

They have also asked for The Tree of Life Coral to be there which makes me very excited - I would have loved to have the sound cave up and running for this but it took too long to get the basic funding so that is going to appear later in the year and at a few things next year. There is still time to fund the Sound/Sensory Cave though not much! I have reached target but the excess money will go towards a science-art exhibition next year in March.

Grumpy, Dumpty Had a Fall (by sarah)

So yeah - things have been great and everything is on the up but today I am more than a grump 🙁

Yesterday I decided to try out my new walking stick and took it out for a spin which I was very excited about - it being purple and not the crutch and therefore it felt more me and more like a step forward. I am sick of the crutch and I don't need it for say the outward bit of the walk but after a bit I do need it so a walking stick I could pack away seemed like a good idea.

But it turns out to be defective and the pin to hold it in place is not long enough so the top bit slides. And so whilst out I had a bit of a fall as it basically 'collapsed' as in the handle came right off. This jarred my left shoulder which is my weak akward shoulder. This hasn't acted up alot in the last few years due to all the pregnancy hormones running around in my system but as the bleeding has slowed so the pain has come back along with the weakness and the alarming clicking, colour change and all the rest of it.

This ment I was in quiet a bit of pain when I got back especially as walking with the stick wasn't as easy as with the crutch and my pelvis was acting up by the time I got home. I was also very tired from the weekend where admittedly I had rather over done it.

So I thought I would have a nice bath to ease the pains away.

Which was great especially as I had stolen my dad's new book Snuff - a Discworld novel I haven't actually read.

But then it came time to get out. Due to the pelvis I have to heave myself out with my arms sort of like the horse thing with handles on the top that we used to use in gym when I was at school. Until about March Alaric was still having to get me in and out of baths but I've been fine for ages. Anyway my shoulder was bad and my hand and arm just lost all strength meaning I fell back into the bath.

Now I am still 12 stone 🙁 so you can imagine the tidal wave that poured over the side, plus, I hit my head and slipped under the water which really scared me. It jarred my pelvis and I hit the top my right arm on the bath.

I then tried to get out of the bath but couldn't and then found that I had not taken my phone with me - and so I called and called and called and cried and shouted and screamed as I was stuck and coughing up bath water still. The main issue wasn't the pain it was realising I was completely helpless.

I woke the baby up but still no Alaric, he it turned out had gone to his workshop thinking I had my phone plus I'd been fine for weeks and had even had baths whilst he was in Bristol though they are normally timed so I'm getting out once he is home.

He rescued me and had to help me put my pjs on and get into bed. Where I was in too much pain to sleep even with my pain killers, my right arms had started swelling and so I tried to read and make the best of it.

Today I've not been as bad as I could have been - I can still walk and there is just a dull pain at the side of my tail bone on the right hand side, my ribs on the left hurt for some reason, the shoulder still aches and left arms a bit floppy and the right upper arm is still swollen and bruised which has been interesting with the baby today. I'm afraid I gave her carb rich food and warm milk and put her back in her cott at lunch time for a nap so that I could take my stronger pain killers which wipe me out. Al phoned just before Jean was due home and we were both still asleep.

I have completely failed to do anything constructive today including going to the Science Festival which is now a no go for me until about Friday which really sucks 🙁 I'm sort of cheering myself up by stalking the people I was going to see on Twitter and reading their webpages and watching talks they've done on youtube instead.

Stroud Water Festival 40 yrs Party (by sarah)

Last weekend we went to the Stroud On Water Festival for me to read my poetry - it was on our wanting to do list anyway so I was very happy to be asked and in some ways wish we had been able to spend the whole weekend there but obviously I had originally been booked for another festival which had to be canceled due to flooding. (Today we are off to another wet looking festival!).

It was a lovely festival with victorians wondering in to listen to poetry.

I got fed coffee, eton mess and other goodies whilst listening to the other poetry - Alaric and girls missed my performances which was a shame.

After the poetry we wondered about and bought plants and things and looked mainly at bees!

It was the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the restoration of the canals - so here are some photos of work on the canals 🙂

They had a steam roller!

But for me I think the highlight of the day was that as Alaric and the girls left a tent I heard '....good to see the Gotye impersonator has bought his children along...' I missed the rest of the conversation so am not sure it was Alaric that was ment but I think it must have been 🙂 On top of that random people he meets are now saying the same to him :/

Festival Sheep for Wychwood :) (by sarah)

This is Ianto and Yori who are really looking forward to Wychwood at the weekend - they are hoping that all the festival goers will make them lovely multicoloured fleeces to wear just incase of the rain.

Creativity the River of Intent (by sarah)

I decided whilst pregnant with Mary to make our lives what we wanted and began to think how we could get out of the negative feedback loops we had found ourselves in. I wanted to guide where we were going rather than just reacting to events - having decided on what was needed and what was wanted and examining the intersection luck and family and friends helped us out.

I love this guys thoughts on this especially as I grow my creativity networks via Artournament Glos and Centre Arts (for arty-ness), Hack Space Bristol and friends for geekery and social networks for interest groups and publishing oppitunities - I am now in the Positive Creativity Feedback loop and am nearing my tipping point.

More over today I reached my crowd funding target for the my Sensory Cave and have in fact exceeded it! Excess funding is going to be used to run a Science-Art Exhibition in March next year - which I confirmed with the Centre Arts yesterday. So feel free to still sponsor me 🙂

I really feel that things are starting to take off. The last few months have been amazing with winning medals for songs, getting invited to other counties to read my poetry, having my art work shown in science cons, getting short stories published and being booked for more and more festivals to do my crafts. I am completing projects that I started at Uni. It really is amazing and it seems to fitting in with having the girls as well.

But more than this - part of the issue is that we really were in a feedback loop of negativity before - if things are on the edge like say finances are tight when things go wrong there is no buffer, no safety net and so things are worse and the impact of the next thing to go wrong is even worse. Now you can try and plan for these but most people will not be able to cope with more than two big things going wrong at once or in close succession - even on the business course I took they admitted this, including the bank guy.

The issue is breaking out of the loop, to a certain extent you have to reboot the system, you have to crash the situation you are in. In giving up and going to the CAB we basically began to take control of our lives again.

It is a bizar apparent contradiction.

But I gave up struggling to follow the career path I felt SHOULD be followed, the prescribed course that was supposed to happen - it had been shot in the foot by circumstances out of my control. In trying to cling to it I made things worse, in trying to maintain the apparent control in the increasingly ever desperate situation, I helped send us off even more erratically into the network of fail loops that bound us.

We forgot to assess things, everything seemed running away with us and to be pivoting out of control. But it became apparent that the core of us was resilant to this. The US was still an us, we the family and so the reassessment - the important thing?

Me, Al and the girl/s.

Strip it back to basics and build the new system on this.

But there was something else - I needed to do what I enjoyed, the things I was passionate about that I could still do. Moon rocks and impact lithologies denied to me I turned to the more arty things -things that began to grow. They had been growing before but when I tried to force things it didn't work. So I just enjoyed it and it began to flourish.

And opportunities began to present themselves to me. Alaric's theory with this is that if you do what you are enthusiastic about the more you notice or are noticed by those who provide the opportunities in that field. Getting to meet the right people in the first place can be hard and then you can find yourself up against the Old Boys Club. But we are lucky, there is the internet and I have verbal diarhea (even if I can't spell it!) and so things found me or dropped into my radar senses on the internet and now the networks, real and electronic are meshing and melding and growing new constructs which appear to be a career for me.

Also just as a little aside many of you know that I feel that creativity is above Science and Art and that they are simply different uses of the creativity. The thing with feedback loops is that I do very much feel that science and art feed into each other - this does not mean one is the other but more that they support each other and are essential for the continued development of each other.

Science needs art - to communicate and teach and to show the wonders that are there or are being hunted for and Art is forever in need of new inspiration and on a more practicle level new substrates and mediums to work in.

Increasingly I note science friends who are artists on the side or as full time and art/writer friends who have found science isn't the dead subject they were shown at school and who have gone back and have or are currently studying science at some sort of further education level.

Wibble over.