Mess

So, you saw the studio all nice and sort of as tidy as it is between working projects. And it seems to have caused angst amongst some people with less tidy studios. So. Time to fess up. I started a new quilt yesterday and this is exacty how I left the studio when I walked out of it last night. Feel better?!

PS The three pairs of scissors and the rotary cutter and ruler are under there somewhere!




 

Carmelite wall

Everyday I drive past a wall behind which a sequestered order of nuns live. I always wonder what their life must be like.

I am equally fascinated by the wall which changes as it goes around. It has many different shadings and striations. I could not resist getting the camera out much to the bemusement of the local dog walkers.

 It is begging out to be used as quilt inspiration. But I am not feeling ready to do it just yet so if anyone else wants to use these photos feel free. There are more where they came from and if you want a full set let me know and I will put them in a variable Dropbox folder.

Studio tour

Hey there! Remember me? I used to come here and blog all the time? I know. I have been remiss. But I am back now and I thought you might like to see where I have been hanging out. I had lunch with Curry in a Hurry Queen Nisha Katona today ( check out her videos especially this one touring the Indian food shop where she encouraged me to drop some money today). I tried to show her my studio on the ipad and realised that I never did post finished photos.

I was going to tidy up and give you arty detailed shots like these wonderful african baskets from The African Fabric Shop

But I didn't. So this is what it all looked like today. We have blazing sunshine today so excuse the odd line of light on the pictures. I try to keep it sort of vaguely tidy. When I am mid creating it gets lots worse than this. Sometimes it gets a bit better. Mostly this is about it.  The whole area as you see below is 26 1/2 feet by 24 1/2 feet.

The studio is a loft conversion so you enter by these stairs, at the top of which is a silver magnetic dry wipe board for  inspirational photos and scribbled reminders. although on the photos the wall in the studio look white in fact only the ceiling ( including the eaves) are, the rest are Farrow and Ball Pavillion Grey and Crown Mojito.

You turn right at the top to enter my reading nook. I am pleased that I have room on the bookshelves to grow into! The stair bannisters makes a handy storeage/ display area for some of my older semi-traditional quilts. I still need to find a good rug for this area. Chocolate is kept in the drawers under the kettle along with silk, abacca tissue and hand sewing threads.

Walking with the bannisters on your right you enter the main part of the studio.So as you walk from the reading nook you are walking towards the gap between the desk and the cutting surface you see here.
The design wall is not as high as this quilt so I have the desk temporarily pulled out a little. The only real compromise in ths studio is the size of the design wall as being a loft there are only two walls on which it could go. This one is the one you can walk back further from so I chose to put the design wall here and the bookcases on the other as seen in the next photo. The design wall is insulation board wrapped in white wadding and screwed to the wall. ( Thanks Dad!!)  It is 80 x 48 inches.

The black drawers you see everywhere are incredibly cheap and versatile. You can build any combination of depth drawers and stacks you like ( they are all the same width and come in a variety of colours) and they are from Really Useful Products. You can also put lidded boxes in the same stacks should you prefer that. I like them because they all match and you can take the whole drawer out and put it on your work surface. The drawers behind the desk are full of fabric and threads. My A3 Epson printer sits on the drawers to the left.  The light over the sewing machine is a Triple Bright Light from the Daylight Company and I highly recommend it. I am thinking abut getting a blind for this velxu window now it is getting summer. The light comes from this side in the the morning and the dormer window in the evening (where this photo was taken from)  so I get light all day long.

This is looking from the desk towards the dormer window. Under the window seat is lots of storage - spare machines, rolls of PDF fabric,wadding etc. The little face on the bookcases was a gift from art quilter Pat Dicker  and it reminds me of the great time I when I was at retreat in California. The sewing desk above and these bookcases where the furniture I had in my room in Chambers when I was still practising as a barrister before my current day job. The cutting surface you see is made of black high gloss kitchen cabinets on castors with a platinum lamiate top. ( Howdens, if anyone in the UK cares). The black drawers on the right hold papers, some backing fabrics and some commercial fabrics.

So is my pressing station on which I have a piece of MDF covered with two layers of wadding and a cotton top.  I store my rulers on the island to the left of the pressing surface.The two freestanding islands (which are each 35 x 64 inches) can be pushed together to make a bigger surface if I so desire. Inside are lots of Really Useful boxes and, well, stuff! Putting the iron on the wall was, if I say so myself, a stroke of genuis design. I also bought an iron which turns itself off after a certain time ( you can reactiviate it quickly with just a shake) so no worries anymore about leaving it on all night which I was known to do! The african basket on the floor is my waste basket. The lime quilt on the wall was a gift from Diane Perin Hock and reminds me of our wonderful friendship everyday. The cross stitch is of three African Women and was a kit I bought and did about a square inch of and my Mum finished for me! Hidden behind the bar stool are more black drawers with art equipment in. You can see the flourescent tubes which have daylight bulbs in.  there are also inset lights in the low beams over the reading nook and the sewing desk/ office desk.

From the reading nook and the dormer I look out over fields. Beyond the fields is a Safari Park and I can hear elephants and tigers roar from time to time as well as the bleating of sheep and twittering of birds nearer by.

Over by the sewing desk is my office desk.The photo is one Diane Perin Hock took from the Bishops Ranch where the retreat I mentioned was held and, again reminds me of good times and gives me hope for a return trip. I still need to buy a new desk chair. I bought a glass desk so that with a lamp under it the whole thing becomes a light box. The floor in the studio is laminate. The phone on the glass shelf has an intercom and my husband frequently uses it to ring me and tell me that my meals are ready! You can see some of my filofax collection on the desk.

Behind the green wall you see there is 'my' bathroom. I am lucky. My husband insists that the main family bathroom downstairs, in which we have a huge shower cubicle but no bath, is 'ours' but this one is 'mine'.

(Ooops. I left my acrylic paint sheet propped up by the sink! ) It is not the pink Dennis says makes it a girl bathroom, or even the airbath,  but the position of the toilet, which is absolutely fine if you sit down.... :)

If I push the door back more I can see the design board from the bath which is great for thinking through a design issue!

The bathroom gives me a water source so I can dye/ paint up here but as you can see the sink is designed for beauty not functionality and whilst its fine for teeth brushing it is not good for washing our paint laden brayers. Opposite the sink but not shown on these photos is a large storage area built into the eves in which I keep screens dyeing equippment etc at the moment. I use Really Useful Boxes put into the sink to wash things up in and pour the water down the loo. I keep a printing surface (MDF covered with acrylic felt and broadcloth) under the pressing station island and have drop cloths to cover the islands. So messy work is doable. I've packed up much of my tools in this photo - I was scraping and stamping fabric with screen inks.

But its not ideal. This is not a design flaw as the plan always was to convert the garage downstairs to a 'wet' studio/ utility room combined and we are just saving up now to do 'Phase Two'.

So this is where I am if you want me.

Vilakazi Street

Today is the reveal for the Twelveby Twelve 20/12 Map theme quilts and you can see my quilt and another that followed on from it over on the blog. It is based on Vliakazi Street in Orlando West in Soweto and I have written the story that inspired the quilt all over it using a Pitt Artists pen. This photo marks the text sections which are reproduced below for anyone who wants to know the story. Sorry about the dodgy ipad photo with added  glare! The official blog photo is better!

1.

The Sowetan uprisng on n16th June 1976 began when, as part of the apartheid policy of giving black and coloured children poor education the Apartheid givernment issued a decree that certain school subjects should be taught in Afrikaans, a language with which the children were unfamiliar and which was associated with the opressive regime. the response to the decree was initially that some teachers resigned their posts and children began to boycott classes. The South African Student Movement (SASM) organised a march to the Orlando Stadium on 16th June 1976 as a peaceful protest. One of the gathering points was the Phfani Junior SecondarySchool in Vilakazi Street. the route from others schools to the stadium was baraccaided by Police and the leaders asked the crowd not to provoke the Police and took an alternative route ending up near the school in Orlando West. Here the Police shot at the children. Eyewitness accounts vary as to whether some children threw stones at the Police first. Over the next two days up to 600 were killed and 1000 injured.

2.

the iconic photograhic account of the 16th June 1976 uprising was takenby Sam Nzima of The World newspaper. He said, " I saw a child fall down. Under a shower of bullets I rushed forward and went fo rthe picture. It had been a peaceful march. The children were singing Nkosi Sikelele. The Police were ordered to shoot." His picture showed Hector Pieterson,who had been shot, being carried by Mbuyisa Makhuto, an eighteen year old student with Hector's sister Antoinette running along side. Sophie Tema, a journalist stopped her car and took them to the Phomalong clinic but he was pronounced dead on arrival. The photo was seen around the world and helped to fuel the subsequent international outrage and political pressure about apartheid. Hector Pieterson was shot on the corner of Vilakazi and Moema Street. However, he was in fact not the first student shot. That was Hastings Ndlovu who was shot on a bridge on the corner of Klipspruit Valley and Khumalo Road. He was taken to Baragwanath Hospital where he dies after being in a coma. Hector therefore probably died first.

3.

The Soweto uprising was but on event in the long struggles against apartheid but it was a significant one. Prior to June 1976 the black resistence had been stilled when, in June 1964 the top echelons of the SNC had been sent to Robben Island.

The uprising energised the black youth. Many left the country to join the military wing of the African National Congress or the Pan African Congress. The incident drew strong international condemnation including UN Resolution 392.

The protests of the school children were successful.A short time later the requirement to teach in Afrikaans was dropped and teachers training improved.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and his wife Leah retain their home in Vilakazi Street.

4.

Vilakazi Street is now a tourist destination, the redevelopment having beenoverseenby the Johannesburg Development Agency. Mandela House is the main attraction.Now a museum it has been restored to how it looked in 1946. The site of Hector Pieterson's shooting is marked with a memorial wall and a short walkaway on Kumalo Street is the Hector Pieterson museum where his sister Antionette works as a guide. There are several public works of art on Vilakazi Street as well as restaurants serving traditional food.

5.

Nelson Mandela lived at number 8115 Vilakazi Street from 1946 to 1961 when he went underground.nHe moved in with his first wife Evelyn Ntoko Mase. Winne Madizekele Mandela moved in in 1958.

6.

Nelson Mandela spent eleven days at Vilikazi Street after his release in 1990.

7.

The Soweto Uprising is depicted in Richard Attenborough's 1987 film Cry Freedom and inspired Andre Brinks novel A Dry White Season.

Matchstalk tears

I had a very odd experience today. I was on the way to yoga this afternoon, flicked on the radio to a show playing down the top twenty from this time in 1978 and this song came on. Within seconds I was in tears.

( This is my first attempt to embed a video using blosgy so just in case it doesnt work the link is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rczfvybq-2g&feature=youtube_gdata_player)


Please ignore Noel Edmonds and his apalling joke at the beginning!

 

Now I often do get an emotional response IN yoga classes. But not driving to them!

Some may say it is a natural reaction to the dreadfulness of the music. But it was not that. I am well known for not having highbrow musical taste and am well inured to such criticisms.

Later, hanging in Down Dog I decided it was one of two things. Or both maybe.

I have been spending time with someone close to me who is very excited about impending parenthood. This has got us talking about our childhood memories. Whilst we never discussed the paintings of LS Lowry I certainly remember the song and being shown some of the paintings. In hindsight that was probably because of this song which was number one when I was eight. It is possible this was the way I first learned about art. They originate from not far from where we live - Salford and Ancotes - are inner city areas of Manchester and places I have driven through to get to and from work on many occasions. So maybe it was a sort of flashback thing.

Two weeks ago I began to work in my home town again after years of working anywhere but. I have been feeling a strong sense of localism so, although Salford is maybe half and hour away maybe it was still close enough to touch a sense of belonging/memory that has been simmering underneath my consciousness?

But more, I think it was a sudden clarity about what can be the sheer simplicty of making art if we choose noto to complicate it.

"He took his brush and he waits, outside them factory gates and he waits to paint them matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs."

As the song tells, he was not exactly well received at the time but now there is a rather spectacular theatre complex and art gallery named after him and showing his work in Salford. And a five star hotel down the road also called The Lowry. And all because he perservered painting his matchstalk cats and dogs because he liked them.

The Lowry Theatre

I am curious... Did this song make it to the USA? If so, did it lead to the belief that we all wear cloth caps? And, Working Mum if you are reading... I have vague recollections that our school might have done something relating to Lowry about this time. Do you recall?

 

Overheard

At the Hockney Exhibition:

Two Irish ( I'm not stereotyping, they really were) Ladies looking at the large ( just over a metre by a metre and half) printouts of the ipad paintings he did.

Lady One: So what's special about these ones?

Lady Two: He did them on a really, really big Ipad.

At the Tate Modern Yayoi Kusama Exhibiton

There was an installation which consisted of a dark room full of furniture. Over the chairs, tables, TVs etc and over all the walls she had placed round flourescent stickers of various colours. A little girl was told by her Dad not to pick the stickers off. She looked up with a mixture of confusion and outrage and said, "At home, this would be naughty."

Bad restaurant day

1. We went to Lime Lounge in Bath, usually a favourtite of ours. it opens at nine for breakfast. At nine forty we arrive. The staff greet us at the door, let us sit down, let us examine the menu then come over.

" I'm sorry. The kitchen is nowhere near ready to serve breafasts yet."

Sigh. So why is the door open to customers then? We leave.

 

2. A couple of streets away the door to Cafe Lucca is open. Snother usual favourite. We walk in. Through the open door.

"Sorry. We are closed," the waitress says.

So why is the door open to cust.... Oh never mind.

 

3. We go to Same Same But Different. the door is open and so is the kitchen. but the teapot arrives with a chipped spout. i say, very nicely, in a very pleasant way, " Did you know the spout was chipped?"

" Oh," says the waitress," Sorry about that." and walzes off leaving me with a chipped spout. i rather meant her to change the pot.

4. Now in London and pre the Hockney exhibition I agreed to meet Dennis at Pontis. It is not there. There is a building site but thanks to mobile phones we find each other and go to Ristorante Biaggio which has an upstairs and a downstairs. Ŵe are seated downstairs and I see that, unlike all the other food I see coming from the back of the ground floor, our dishes are carried down from upstairs into the lobby which is open to the street and thus the rainy air and back inside to our table. My pasta is cold. So is D's pizza. We ask the waiter to reheat it. No he says. It is not cold, the plate is cold but the food is hot.

No. It. Is. Not. Quite possibly because you put it on cold plates.

He is persuaded to take it away and comes back suspiciously quickly with very hot plates. And barely luke warm pasta. I call him back. I tell him is is still luke warm. He tells me it is not. I tell him it is and I am happy if he just puts it in the microwave. He tells me it is not cold. I tell him he will give people food poisoning and I am not arguing with him, he should just microwave it. He says it is not cold.

We leave ( without paying for cold food or the drinks) and in the twenty minutes now available to us cross the road to Pret A Manger who CAN do a hot sandwich.

Is it just me?

 

 

Still no photos..

I am trying hard to solve my ipad blogging problems. I tried to explain the technical work arounds to Dennis who stared at me and said, "So there's all that carry on or you could pay £3". Put like that.... So I got my credit card out did the deal and was told it could take up to twenty four hours to upgrade the Google storage. Then the credit card company anti- fraud department started to text demandng that I ring them immediately. Despite the fraud department being based in India thay seem to have a problem wih me using this card on line for anything overseas.

So I rang. I told them that I knew that the Google payment had triggered this. I went politely through the usual rigmarole of confirming everything from my next door neighbours cats name to my sisters haircolour to confirm my identity and confirmed that yes it was me who bought shampoo in Boots and clothes from Spirit of the Andes and, yes, yes, yes it was me who was trying to spend all of £3 on Google. He said he was authorising that payment now. I was polite if formal throughout. My response may have been a little curt when he asked if there was anything else he could help me with today. What did he mean anything else? How had he helped in the first place?

And the result? I got home to a message saying that Spirit of The Andes had rung to say my payment had failed. So I did that all over again and now I come to blog and realise... The Google payment has not gone through either. Grrrrrr.

I did find a free app called Photopad which easily resizes photos to the size at which they are not supposed to count for your Picassa Slbum storage. App works fine. Blogsy still will not attach them. I give up for tonight.

The Queen and I

You may have noticed that this blog has been a little lacking lately. I skip a few days because life intervenes and then I look at my life and think, well what is interesting to blog about? Or alternatively, oh there is too much to blog about now, where to start? This is the disadvantage of being a lawyer...I can quite convincingly argue the diametrically opposing sides of an argument and make both sound credible!

Then there are the technical hurdles. Thanks to the nice people who run the help on the Blogsy ipad app I now know that my Picassa Web Album storeage is full. Who knew that could even happen? This means Blogsy would not upload pictures and we all know that Section 7(1) ( iii) Blogging Act 2005 prohibits posts without visuals save in certain proscribed circumstances. ( Blog posts without pictures which are about the inability to post pictures are covered by Schedule 2 Para 3 ( a) so I am fine today.)

It seems I have two options. First, pay a very small and entirely reasonable fee to upgrade my storage (which goes aganst the grain because I got on line when I only knew one other person with an email address and am thus of the generation that is used to everything online being free, even though I know it must cost somene somewhere something to produce all these services). Or it seems I could set up another web album account and link it to Blogsy. Or my blogs, or something. Which goes against the grain because that takes time and effort to figure out and the Internet is supposed to be fast and easy. Sigh.

So, I am going to have to align myself to the Queen who just rededicated herself to the service of the nation. And I assume the Commonwealth and any other country out there who might have had a little strop about some tea in a harbour but which still stays up all night to watch Royal Weddings.( You know who you are.)

I hereby rededicate myself to sorting out the technical problems and the motivational problems and coming back in a few days with a regular blog schedule and some interesting material. And photos.

Meanwhile, if you will excuse me I must go and walk these Corgis.

 I am delighted that my quilt The Things We Carry has been juried into the Beneath Southern Skies exhibition.

 You can see the other quilts in the exhibition and find the dates when it will be on view by clicking on this button.

                               

Can you guess....

...what this is a photo of?

SAQA Auction Quilt

Tourist Photo Call

I am feeling very self satisfied having done my SAQA Auction quilt in time for the Early Bird deadline ( assuming nothing goes wrong during the more than adequate postage time I have left!). It should probably have been called  Killing Two Birds with One Spear as this is also part of my production for the Quilt University classs I am doing with Elizabeth Barton  on Working in a Series in which I have been working with - yup, you guessed it! - Maasai images.



Thank you Google

 It is a standard joke that if I am not well everyone in the world has to know about it. But achieving that can be a bit tricky when it is 4.42 am, you are alone in the guest room to give your spouse a chance at sleeping and in any event have no voice. Unless you have a blog to use as a platform for all your whinges and whines that is.  But that's such an easy way....

In I'm Feeling Lucky: Confessions of Employee Number 59 Douglas Edwards writes about his time at Google in the early years. He says that there used to be a screen in reception at the Googleplex which showed a constantly scrolling report of what people were searching for and that he liked to go and watch it now and again. Now, he is no longer at the company, but I like to think that somewhere over in California, some geek now knows from my desperate middle of the night searches that I cannot sleep because I cannot breath and that I need to know why I cannot breathe, whether it matters what colour the substance that is causing me not to breath is, when exactly I can expect to be able to breathe, what I can do to enhance my chances of being able to breath, whether Sudafed Extra or Lemsip has a greater concentration of phenylephrine hydrochloride and whether there is a cheap red A5 Finchley Filofax on sale anywhere.  ( Hey, I'm ill, not dead. Some things in life are important. Plus I need a pretty place to write down the answers to my searches).

But seriously, Google ought to get the Nobel Health Prize. ( There is one of those, right? Hang on, let me google that.) Because tucked in its pages, after all the usual stuff involving steam and eucalyptus oils and the stuff like that I have been trying since Thursday)  was the advice to lie on your front in your bed with your waist at the end of the bed and hang your top half of your body hanging to the floor.  And that was it!  Days of pain, stinking like a koala passing wind and feeling like concrete had been poured down my nostrils. Gone. I can breath. And as a happy by product I can tell you that if you are not to slide off the nice matress protector and smack your aching bonce on the floor, you get a good abdominal toning exercise too.

I notice Google has a new privacy policy. Do I care if they store enough information linked to my IPP address to be able to tell the FBI that I have a nocturnal interest in neti pots? Nope. I just told the world all of my own volition that I was making out like a bat in the middle of the night. I don't care.

I CAN BREATHE!!!!!

 

 

 

Topiary Haven

For anyone who might be planning a trip to Tasmania, who is thinking of a holiday but is not sure where to go or who is an armchair traveller with dreams may I recommend a visit ( preferably physically, but initially virtual) to the Topiary Haven. This is a self contained apartment which we were able to use over the Christmas period during our Grand Round the World trip when it was being prepared  for rental as a business and we found it fabulous.  And  as regular readers know we had five star expectations for that trip which this accommodation easily fulfilled.   The owners have now launched for public holiday rentals. It is close to the Launceston Gorge as shown above where I swam in the open air pool and was very excited to come face to face with wallabies during my picnic.  The very professional website has lots of goregous slideshow pictures of all the rooms, to just the endless detail this pickypicky traveller needed when planning her trip!

 

It ought perhaps also to have a blue plaque on the door ( or whatever the Australian equivalent is) as the place where my chapter of the Twelve by Twelve book was written! 

 

I should be open that this place is the new business venture of my Uncle Barry and Auntie Diana but I think you will see that I would have recommended it anyway. Now, let me just go to expedia to plan my fanstasy return visit...

Free art catalogues

I have stumbled on two sources of free art catalogues as PDF files this week.
The first is the Adam gallery which is a real gallery in London and a branch in Bath, which is where I was persuing their paper catalogues last week. But then I found that they have many for free as downloadable PDFs. Go to their website and click on contemporary artist and then the artists name. There is then a link on the left for artist profile. If there is a PDF there will be a link to it on that page. There are three by Barbara Rae and two by Julio Rondo for example.

Then my beloved October gallery in London ( oh how I miss the days of working near that and nipping in after work)  has a new PDF catalogue of El Anatsui's ASI exhibition.
I love having these PDFs on my ipad in Kindle and having them handy for odd free moments or lunchtimes at work.

Oh and whilst is it  not free, for those who like Aboriginal Art, their bookshop has copies of  Kathleen Petyarre Genius of Place  for just £10 plus postage. When I checked, new copies were £86 on Amazon!
I would also recommend their small catalogues of Ablade Glover and Nnenne Okora's exhibitions - I return to mine all the time. At £5 each a good buy. They do post internationally. ( I have no connection to them - just  love the art they show!)

Peter Burke sculptures

Today I went to the Victoria Gallery in Bath which is currently showing an exhibition by Peter Burke called Earthworks. His sculptures are made of bonded soil. He uses a variety of soils all found within twenty miles of

Bath, which vary dramatically in colour.

All the works were easily viewable as a whole in the large open room.
 

Although these forms were quite flat they cast intriguing reflections on the floor.

Identical cupped hands protruding from the flat panels were made in a variety of soils which differed not only in hue but in how they cracked creating greater or lesser fissures.

The exhibition was certainly relevant to the working in a series course on which I am about to embark.

Quilting arts magazine

I haven't actually got my subscription copy yet but I am pleased that one of my fellow Twelves has given me a sneak preview photo of the articles in the latest edition of Quilting Arts which features our Twelve by Twelve group. We each have one piece of work featured including my In Memoriam quilt for the Volcano theme ( bottom left, the black and orange one). 

Cakes

In response to Working Mum's request my sister Jenni has supplied a photo of the finished cake.

And while she was at it she sent two others. Just showing off I suspect...

Hmmm, maybe we are quite alike after all!

Sh

Its genetic!

My sister borrowed my kitchen tonight to make one of her Celebration cakes. 

Clearly, making a huge mess whilst creating is in our genes!

I always thought that when she made a shaped cake she did it in a special tin.Not so. She made a big square  one and trimmed it to shape.

And then made extra buttercream and donated jam so I could enjoy the 'wasted' bits. 

Yum!

On being a notebook polygamist

I made a discovery at New Year. Did you know that there are whole blogs dedictated to Filofaxes? They are quite fascinating. Blinging your filofax, collecting filofaxes, comparing  filofaxes, considering which diary inserts to put in your filofax. All topics for blog fodder. And it is strangely addictive to read all the details about how people set up their filofaxes.   I sent Dennis a link to the woman who changed her diary about eighteen times in one year. Just to show him that, in comparison, I am normal, even if I am a notebook polygamist as you will see...So I am reciprocating with one filofax post of my own to contribute to the genre and to show how to meld a business tool with creative activity.

When I was at the Bar and travelling to speak at conferences I  used a filofax and it was stuffed with appointments, train bookings, flight times, hotel names, invoice details, all the stuff neccessary to keep a self-employed career alive. As I left the bar my filofax (personal sized)  was on its last legs and was graciously retired. But now I drive the same route every day and there is a whole department of people whose job is to keep my diary, print it out each day and give me the necessary files. I may be senior, but basically I do what I am told. So what need for a filofax?

Well, they are nice to touch and fun to write in and you can buy specialised stationery for it. So, when I returned from travelling I bought a new one and decided to go larger (a5)  and hotter pinker on the basis that this would now mainly contain details of my personal and creative life. Which was fine until I went to Apple and became married to the ipad. I spent less time with my frst love as I explored the ipad diary and productivity apps. The ipad is great, but I missed the actual writing with a pen. Although the business like nature of a filofax was not quite working for my creative brain.

So come new year it was time to try to come up with a System for information managmenet. Not just a diary because there are, ahem, one or two other affairs with pretty little notebooks going on as well. After much thought and blog reading I now have a System to justify endless buying of notebooks  and the use of pretty pens maximise informational control and making the filofax play nicely with the Ipad.

I intend to do some tasteful blinging of the filofax but so far the only step in the direction is to add in as my front cover this photo taken by Diane Perin Hock of two chairs which are waiting in California for us to return to them together one day. It reminds me of good times and gives me hope for the future. Then I have notepages so I can flip it open and jot notes quickly.

Next is a horizontal year planner. This is where the Ipad cannot match up for a colourful visual view of where I have made my main committments. This really helps to show when and why I cannot take on anything else. Red is for holidays or travel, green is for major art qulting committments like mini retreats or classes. Black is work travel and soon I will be adding in blue for the Olympics when I intend to join in the sporting actvity by sitting on my butt in front of the TV for a month.

The next tab is my diary. I would have liked a timed page but Filofax do not cater for people whose committments are 7 amd to 9 am and then 5pm to midnight so it is a plain week to two page setup with weekly goals in the top box. I track my studio time and art committments in green and add personal appointments and daily tasks in black. In between I keep some ongoing to do lists so I can see how I am doing with bigger projects I have broken down into steps. Finally at the begining of each month I have a coloured piece  of notepaper to contain monthly goals both personal and creative. Behind the diary I have tabs containing notes on my overall life plan, lists (shopping, books read etc), my personal financial accounts, a quiting tab with details of classes and shows and spare paper.

I tend to keep the filofax on my home desk most days but the ipad comes with me everywhere. So on the ipad I have major dates replicated in the diary but I also use the Daily Notes and To Do App. This app is linked to a diary and allows you to have different subject tabs for each day. so I have tabs that correspond to those in my filofax. If i am out and about I can jot a note in there and later I can clear those notes off either by actioning them or putting them in the appropriate place in the filofax. This is especially useful when I am web browsing and see a link I want to follow up later or if I am shopping and want to make an note of expenditure. The aim is to keep this app as empty as possible which is odd but it works for me!

I also use Nozbe to keep track of the different steps on my art projects. I could do this by paper list but I like the way it will give you one list of all the next steps you have to do and how you can change the due dates without scribbling anything out.  I use Evernote as a big collection of virtual notebooks. This is great for collating emails or clippings from the web on a given subject. So my Evernote notebooks include travel bookings, creativity articles,  and research on individual artists or topics of inspiration. So much easier to collate images and notes than trying to print them all off. Plus they are then available to me on any computer. If there are any images I think it would be fun to share I also stick on a Pinterest board.

But then of course there are the rest of the notebooks. I like to journal. The sitting down with a good pen and writing thoughts down kind of journalling. For years I have been using the same type of journals which come in two kinds of covers but in both you can replace the stock postcard supplied ( of which this owl is  one) and  I use blue fountain pen ink on the lined pages and tuck clippings, tickets etc for memories in the back cover secured by the intergal elastic band. Sadly these journals are becoming hard to find and I am currently trawling the web for lone copies. I may have to join a notebook dating site in due course to find a new version. (Moleskins are recommended but they are so drab!) At New Years I spent happy hours and hours scribbling in this journal. Dennis was somewhat bemused when I told him I was writing my plan for what to write in my other notebooks.

Then I keep a creativity journal. The nearest I get to a sketchbook. I doodle and stick things in and write down what I have done and what I plan to do.  It is a thought bucket and must be plain pages and written with a black pilot drawing pen.

I am happy to change the style of my creativity journal as long as they are smooth plain pages. This is the current one.

Then, one day I found these journals. They come in so many colours, Far more than I have here. I have dedicated these notebooks to my Art Learning Notes  where I pretend I am still in education and make notes from books or internet sites about material I need to know. So one is about crtiquing art, another about art history etc. One has some work in on the theme of African Ladies.

How, you might say, do I cart all these around? Well, they live in this special basket which I do move from room to room. In the morning I decide which items I might reasonably have time to use out of the house and put those in my work bag or handbag and in the evening they come back to sleep in this basket which also has some book on creativity in it. The exception is when I go for my Sunday morning ritual tea and reading session at Cedar Farm when I just take the whole basket.  I am assuming that is what my husband meant when he said I had become a notebook basket case.

So, that is my complex system and it is working for me. Except, best Quilting Buddy came last week and bought me a red Magma notebook and a little Orla Kierly notebook. So Now I need to review my system.....

What works for you? show me!