MockTales and Blogging (by sarah)

My left hand isnot behaving at the moment but we have resurrected Mocktales - this was our fortnightly writing night we just did in the house and invited people to join us so especially with NanoWrimo being no more we decided it was time to bring it back properly. So far we have mainly been blogging. We've been doing MockTales just for us again for a while and have including admin for writing and poetry stuff so if I have a load of slam performance requests I will reply to them or funding for storytelling etc... but mainly I want to write.

Before covid we were having to cap the nights so everyone got a chance to just sit and write but I don't think that is going to be such an issue these days. We have done some weekend ones mixed up with CreativiTeas but nothing like the numbers we used to have.

Anyway this week I did not blog what I did was try and retrieve stuff I had written on a stupid choice of plateform - not the plateforms fault it was never designed for writers and the writings had kind of been accidental. I do have a copy of these writings but it will mean typing it all out again 🙁 Boo! But doable. The result of my search was all my images are still there but the projects with the writings in are not - sigh.

On the plus side there may be a text reading short cut but it is in a silly font that might not be so readable to the reading devices so we shall see.

This has lead me to ponder weather I want to record this story - I am not sure how to do that as my microphone was broken yrs ago now by over enthusastic kids and grandmothers. It is probably fixable but will it still be compatable with my tech? It was bought from Maplin which no longer exists or at least is no longer round the corner!

I need to investigate microphones.

OF course I invited people round and then had a horrendous migraine so spent most ofthe day asleep whacked out on pain killers and not really functioning whilst awake so only after people left did I realise that the bunny supplies where all in soak in the bath and I hadn't emptied the bathroom bin and these things shouldn't really matter but I do fret about these things but the house will never be perfect for visitors so they get a dining room of half taken down halloween decks and a kitchen where weights are being primed to paint them metallic purple to match my living room gym as I battle with the high risk of osteoperosis and so on. And I boiled milk all over the oven just before hand too!

Anyway - I hope you are all enjoying our attempt to put the blogs all back in order! And hope a few more of our writing friends rejoin our little writing parties! Also you might need to tell us you want to know about them as the social media channels we had been using are getting more unrelable and they weren't brilliant to begin with!

Alaric has written a blog post that will go live tomorrow and is now back on working on the novel/series we concieved on our first date - a mash of the two novels we were writing at the time.

We are hoping to really get going again with our writing - for Alaric they would love to write another technical book but the chapters for collections and the book he wrote are now so long ago everything has changed including who the publishing companies are!

But all of that is the grand stuff - for now we are just spending Tuesday nights writing andhaving nice drinks and snacks.

The drinks this time were:

Toffee Apple Matcha Latte made with oat milk and served with a homemade siced apple toffee apple - the toffee needed more sugar

Spiced Pumpkin Pie Sticky Chai - hot with no milk and made about twice as strong as the instructions

Pumpkin Spice Malted Hot Chocolate with pumpkin marshmallows

Didn't mean for them to all be hot brews but it was tipping it down outside!

Boodles and Drawing Challenges (by sarah)

A few years ago I created Boodles - initially as a thing just for us in our extended hell scape of lock down and on going medical emergencies afterwards. Last year I decided I would share them after a friend said they found Inktober and the draw a whole thing every day too intense and another had said how they alwasy wanted to draw some more inovlved than most people did for the prompts but struggled with what to draw.

So the Boodles are too specific a prompt for many and there are only ten of them at a time but I think they work well for those they were designed for! They can also be used as writing prompts and general creative challenges.

Jean helped put them together and we hope you all find them useful - they will have a perminent page over on Salaric Craft incase you want to find them at a glance all year round!

And just incase it was not obvious they are BOO...dles as in ghosty spooky halloween themed doodles

BOOdles 2025

1) Fox Hole

2) Toad Racing like Pin Ball

3) Mountains of the Moon

4) Star Scape

5) Witch's Kitchen

6) Troll Bridge

7) Puss in Boots Salon

8) Apocathery

9) The Devils Disco

10) Wizarding Ways

Be Inspired to draw when you can, how you can and as much as you want!

BOOdles 2024

1) Space Dragon

2) Snake + Skull

3) Space wreck with mushrooms

4) Ghost Tea Party

5) Zombie Titan

6) Hades and Persephone

7) Hellhound

8) Demon Daycare

9) Pirates of Penance

10) Eyeball

Be inspired and draw when you can!

InkWell (by sarah)

This year thanks to the sponsorship of the Gloucestershire Poetry Society I am running a monthly workshop called InkWell at The Folk of Gloucester. The sponsorship pays for room hire allowing me to offer the 2 hr sessions at an affordable rate (or more affordable than they would have been without it). £10 fall price and £5 concession and I am happy to include low wage, benifits, retired, college student, blue badge holders, blue light discount and so on.

The workshops are 1-3 pm on the first Thursday of every month except January - they will cover subjects such as scrapbooking, visual poetry, journalling, dairy keeping, creative writing, zines, chapbooks, junk journals, ugly sketchbooks, illustration, zentangles, card making, ink work and so on.

There will be a theme for each month starting with Sakura or Cherry Blossom for the first session Feb 6th 2025. We will cover making your own blossom themed note books using binding combs or fabric and ribbons. There will be themed paper, tape and stickers plus other little accessories. There will also be writing inspiration and room for people to work on their own projects using the resources I provide.

The name is a triple word play as The Folk is a 500 yr old timber frame building or rather buildings built in the Tudor era and like a lot of older buildings it has its own well which since the renovations is now viewable.

(backblogged from social media posts to keep a record of InkWell)

Burns Night Poetry and Songs to be! (by sarah)

Tomorrow The Folk of Gloucester (a lovely Tudor timber framed building) will be hosting a Burns Night which is very exciting especially as we are going to have Scottish folk tunes from Jessica Law that we can all join in with! And poetry recitals by me! There will also be haggis of various ilks!

I really enjoyed their last Burns Night two years ago so am very excited!

tix are here (its £10)

Here are some photos from the 2023 celebration:

Finding My Voice (by sarah)

This weekend just gone I sang with The Folk Chior at The Folk of Gloucester for the Christmas Makers Market and then on Sunday I went and rehearsed Wintery type festive music shenanigans for the Steampunks Christmas Reveals event which will be this coming weekend. It was difficult as I had missed over a months worth of rehearsals and I don't know how to read music (yes still) so there were challenges for both endeavours but I really enjoyed it and everyone seems to want to include me in the music stuff. I have also been attending the Folk at The Folk jam sessions - normally I just watch but sometimes I bring one of my songs - this time sadly due to a funeral most of the people were missing and they were desperate not to just have the same few people doing songs and so I gave them camp fire songs which most of them seemed to like. I even got recognised by someone later on - an elderly lady who has designated me as The Lady with the Silly Songs - who turned up at the textiles group I have been attending on Tuesdays.

I've even went along to a song writing cafe and attended a song writing workshop in Feburary all be it that I didn't get to stay for most of it due to Mary but such is the life of a parent and I still came out of it with one song, one poem and a spoken word/beatpoem/rap thingy. All this is not exactly new for me - I have been telling people about choirs and groups I have belonged to previously and even about song writing awards and things I received. But I have also been telling people people about all the times I've been told I am crap and not a musician and to take all my music down and so on. It is important I express these things because being neural divergent I still live with the music teacher's harsh words of primary school (I wasn't progressing in recorder because she had started sending sheet music home and not running through all the notes in class especially as there were now multiple types of recorders involved - she hadn't realised I couldn't read music but my mum sent her a letter asking for some extra lessons so I could either learn to read music or be taught the tunes individually - the teachers response was to chuck me out of the group and to act as a bar to me being in the school choir too). I hold all these comments within me - it goes for the triumphs too.

So there is a huge element of finding the confidence and freedom to actually go and do these things - ie if there is an audition I am probably stuffed, and choirs normally charge a membership fee which at points in the past has been too much. The irony of having sung in the Royal Albert Hall but to have been unable to join the village choir... and am dram clubs sinking so the show I actually got through the auditions for never actually happened and I had a good part!

The lists go on but it is not just the confidence - I have had issues with my hearing throughout my life more so since covid and the head injury left me with permanent tinnitus. I have a slight delay with things as I am feeling the music meaning that I may react slightly after everyone else... but I can guess where songs are going and when I say I feel the music I very much mean that on several levels and it can consume me from the core of my bones - vibrating all the way through me. I think I am more aware of sound than many people even with being partially deaf and at a couple of points in my life nearly completely death. I was too good in fact and people didn't realise how much of a problem there actually was with my hearing.

Voice is an interesting thing - I have spent much of my life being told it has to fit in, that I had to get rid of the extra noises or that I sound like a man or conversely am too high pitched. Well I am learning to point those bits back in my voice - I am learning my voice all over again thanks to covid and the graves disease I lost my voice even for speaking for over a year and have had repeated sore throats and of course the ever present choking lump that I just can't quiet swallow past. I no longer have Frightmare to use the stranger aspects of my voice at and actually I want to sing with them. clicks and whistles and purrs and growls and two voices, the undulations and braids of sound.

Also after dad died writing was hard - I would go to cafes and write with him and we would read each others stories and poems we'd written and without that there I have been bereft and when I was looking after mum there was no energy or capacity either mentally or physically - my hands didn't even work properly - all there was was cleaning and washing and phone calls to argue with everyone from hospitals to family about her care. But I have been trying to write, trying to create once more - but who am I on this flip side of everything? I feel I have been shattered so many times I do not know, I don't know what I like, what I want to do and I am now in my forties so all those dreams of carers seem foolish and lost to the tragedy of circumstance. None the less I am trying, I am putting words on paper even if they are just lists of stories I hope one day to write - I am keeping a diary again - or at least trying - it is a chaotic thing but it is beautiful (it cost too much) and I am even adding stickers because I like stickers and they are accents to my feelings and hopes and imagery has always been part of how I communicate - even if it is only with myself.

I went to a poetry writing workshop - I haven't done that for so long - and the woods whisper stories of the wild wood and industries and peoples vanished in time and I want to share that with the world. There is something of a song there trying to form and I feel like writing when I am there.

I am Finding my voice - again... it is both the same voice rediscovered and something wholey new.