Late again

I'm going to have to get more creative on here. I've been looking at lots of other lovely blogs and now I feel ashamed. Maybe I've just been using this place as a kind of journal/sketchbook and receptacle for other rubbish I just don't know what else to do with. (Notices handy looking waste paper basket beside desk. Notices it needs emptying.) I may even have to learn, omg I'm going to have to say the dreaded word...Photoshop. (I'm an artist - it's just so much quicker to get out a pencil and a pair of scissors.) (Notices also that she has used the txting acronym omg and wonders what is happening to her.) Hmmm, I may have to give this some more thought. I did see the Rss symbol in a fetching purple colour on one of those blogs I mentioned earlier - what do you think, will that do?

Omg, look at the time, I have to be 10 miles away in less than 10 minutes on 40 mph roads. Bugger, blogging makes me late again. Sodding bugger. (If you try and say all that really fast, like one of those little ditty things I've forgotten the name of, you realise it actually comes out as 'sodding blogger'!!!!). TIME!!!!

Don't ask

Well, I just got a bit bored. No, I know, I didn't give the look of the old blog a face lift, so much as a punch in the face - hence the lovely bruisy purple colour, obviously. I'm envious of other people (aka other bloggers) who manage to make their pages look so understated, contemporary and slick, but as you can see I just don't know how to make the grade in that department. Still, if you want a bit of vulgar, mismatched artsy fartsy colour, a lot of textual crap and whinging you know where to come. If you're lucky I might even add some more pictures soon.

You can, of course, leave any comments on this fetching new look by clicking on the no-longer orange comments link below, or mutter them into your sleeve for all I care, chances are the next time you drop by I'll have got bored again and changed the damn thing anyway. Or run off with the milkman. By the way, do you think I really need to bother to go through all the posts on this metaphorically not-so-well-thumbed blog and change any orange highlights to purple? No. That's just what I thought - I can't be arsed.

By the way, did I mention I'm going to be offering an interior design service one day soon?

Oi! You two!!!!

I'm going to cry and hide in a hole if you two don't even bother to vote :(

Time for a change?

Yes, I'm still here drinking my coffee. Now I'm pondering whether I ought to make some changes to this ere blog. It's been a rather fabulous orange world for sometime now, but I'm wondering whether it's time for a change... You could just call it another diversion, another way to keep myself out of the studio. You could call it another attempt to try and attract more than 2 regular readers, although I notice I've had almost 3,000 views now - so thanks you two. You could actually call it what the hell you like. However, should you have an opinion I've added a couple of those lovely poll things to the top of the column on the left of the page and you can leave me your vote. I can't guarantee I'll let your vote influence me in anyway, but you never know I might be persuaded if more than the 2 of you respond!

Studio? What studio?

Been asleep from 11 - 1 again today. Not just napping, more the coma-sleep variety; the sort where you wake up, sit up and feel like you still left your head on the pillow. What was I doing before 11? I can't remember, but I'm sure it was scintillating. A visit to the building society was included, I remember that much. I hate my building society branch. There are always queues out the door and halfway to bloody Exeter, whatever time of day, and only ever two miserable-looking cashiers. I suppose they have a right to look miserable, I guess I would if I could see my day's work trailing round like a snake out the door; no pleasant surprises as to who might walk in, no anticipation of a genial chat or gossip - you can see all the oap's and you know all they'll want to talk about is the price of bacon and the bloody queue. Ho hum.

I'm getting a bit worried about the lack of creative thought going on in my brain at the moment. There is a drought. I have been in the studio though; in fact that's where I went to sleep. But it's beginning to feel less like a studio and more like a wardrobe in there lately, they're are clothes everywhere. Okay so they're my clothes and maybe it's just a sabotage technique, but it's distracting and who wants to get the ink and wax out and get them all over your favourite underwear? A very good sabotage technique this one, I wonder how long I can make it last? Well, I've only got an hour or so before I have to make the trip over to the school, so there's not much point in going in there now is there? No. I could just have another look at a couple of good blogs I like, like reasons to be cheerful or maybe unreliable witness (bloggers after my own heart these seem to be). Or coffee. I can smell how wonderful it will be (see my imagination does still work). Maybe food though, I've just realised I'm starving; had nothing to eat since my porridge this morning. Food. And coffee. Over a couple of blogs...

Lovely blogs

I found another lovely blog today me and my big mouth. Why isn't there somewhere on the internet called 'lovely blogs' so that I don't have to trawl around all the crap that's out there (including this one). I suppose that's why some clever bugger thought of rss (I must remember to look at my Bloglines feeds more often). But feeds are only great once you find a lovely blog; how do you find the bloody things in the first place, that's what I want to know.

Unreliable Witness

Found this blog courtesy of today's (Saturday's) Guardian (it does have it's uses), I like it very much and promise to go back...

unreliable witness

Sustainable Batik

My wonderfully creative, ecologically aware friend Robin has a new blog Sustainable Batik. Go and take a look - or else!!!

Review me!

I've listed details of this blog on the site below (which is great by the way!)

It's the place to be!!

You can review the blog on it's art baby! art! by following the link below (it's also in the column on the left for future ref!)

Review Narrative Self

Formatting

I've had a bit of a break from the blog over the Christmas period, as you may have noticed... Not through lack of wanting to write, but through lack of being able to get my hands on the computer because it was supposedly being 'networked' (in inverted commas because the network still doesn't work properly...). Finally I've claimed it back!

I spent my first few hours messing about with the layout of the blog - I realised that in the transformation to the new format I lost the feed and stats links. I've put them back on, but you may have to re-subscribe to the feed because it's got a different address, I think... To be honest I'm not entirely sure what's going on with it, so if your feed's not working please try and re-subscribe and let me know if you have any problems.

I hope my readers had a very merry Christmas? I will post some pictures of the lovely Kim later on for you to get a flavour of the festive season we had here in Cornwall. In the mean time, I'm off to make some porridge!

Blog update

I've just updated to the new beta blogger so please bear with me while I get all my links, etc back online - it could take some time.

I've made the change now, before google do it for me, and of course because of all the great new features there are. You can already see some of them, the 'labels', for example, should help you navigate around the blog more easily. Anyway, enjoy! I'm going to go and have fun getting it all back up to date now...

I am a genius!

Well okay, so I just managed to sort out the problem of the diminishing text in the side bar - some naughty goings on in the css that I caught in action. I think it deserves a break and a piece of cake (or maybe a trip to the local shop for some chocolate), if not the accolade of genius!

Links updated

I've just added a few more interesting links to the side bar, but I've noticed that as the text goes down it gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller...I have no idea why! I can't find anything in the html that might have set this in motion, so I'm afraid I'll just have to leave it until I found out what's happening (hopefully!). In the mean time you could use a magnifying glass...

Da da daaaa!

I've just checked the blog's stats and am pleased to let you know it's now been looked at over 520 times! I'd like to thank all loyal readers, Linda, for your curiosity and staying power! And since you read it so often I promise to carry on with more rants and musings over the coming months - poor you...

London

On Monday I took buses to Aberdeen in glorious sunny weather. The hills looked inviting and I was sad to be leaving them, and new friends, so soon. I felt like I'd just got settled in and was finding my way when I had to upsticks and return home. Still, a good few hours of gallery going in London beckoned before I finally made it back to Cornwall. I bought a Time Out at the airport and used the flight back to plan the next day.

I met my brother Dan in Camden, then we visited the Turner Prize Exhibition (utter crap) and the Holbein (gob-smacking!) at Tate Britain. Then it was on to Timothy Taylor near Oxford Street to see Kiki Smith (whimsical). On the way to our next gallery, Tate Modern, we took a detour to Hamleys for you know who! I insisted on taking this cheesy photo for Kim; Dan was impressed that 'pirate ted's' coat matched his jumper!!

When we finally got to Tate I realised that I had less than an hour there if I was going to make it back across London to get the flight down to Newquay. We decided that a journey down the biggest slide would be the icing on the cake at the end of a great day. Major disappointment. The slides were fully booked... It was now decision time: art, bookshop or coffee and cakes. We were starving, so the cakes won and we had a 'Cornish' cream tea!!!

I'm still in shock that I didn't make it down the slides or more importantly into the bookshop - I feel withdrawal sypmtoms coming on and must find one soon. Dan was disappointed that he didn't get a go down the slides and is planning to go back with his son nearer Christmas. I think he's just using his son as an excuse not to look like a big kid, and should just go over in his lunchbreak!! I know I would...



I got to Newquay at five past nine, spot on time, and then had a 45 minute wait for Paul and Kim to arrive - I knew I was home!

Subscribe to this blog!

Well, it's a while since I put the RSS logo on this blog (that lovely orange icon on the sidebar) so that all you interested people can find out when I've updated without actually having to visit. Being such a long time, I thought I'd check out my Feedburner account and see how many of you have clicked the orange button and subscribed to my blog updates (it's FREE to subscribe by the way!). And so far I have ONE subscriber - and do you know what...it's ME!!! (I just wanted to make sure it was working the way it should...)

So, what I want to know is why aren't you subscribing? Is it because it seems difficult? Is it because you're not that interested in the blog? I don't mind why, but it would be nice to know the reason - maybe there's something I could do to help.

Feeds (as this 'update service ' is known) make life so much easier - you should JOIN IN!! If you want to know more about feeds check out this info on the Feedburner site. If you want to join in and be able to click the little orange button on all those sites you see and view updated content from them (including the BBC!), subscribe to Bloglines (or any other service) (it's FREE!!!) and take the pain out of surfing the net by nolonger having to trawl through all that stuff your not interested in!

NB I have edited this post to reflect the better mood I'm in today! So if it seems different, it's because it is, a bit!

There's a bit of confusion about feed services I think (see the comments below) - and I'd like to add that your inbox won't be inundated with any emails if you subscribe to them! You have to go to your newsreader (eg Bloglines) to read them. The BBC also publish some very clear information about them on their RSS Feed page.

2 blogs or just the 1?

I haven't blogged for a few weeks now and that's because I'm becoming a confused bunny (well, an even more confused one than usual!) This blog is making me feel a bit like I've got a split personality, or, to be more precise, a split audience - I hope it doesn't hurt! I picture you, dear readers, as two distinct groups: those interested in what I do as as an artist and those interested in Kim! My circle of artist friends is becoming wider and while I'd like them to read some of the art stuff I grumble on about, I'm not sure I want them to see me arsing about on a trampoline (I am a serious artist don't you know)...

So, I'm wondering if it's time I split myself in half and become two blogs? What do you think? Would you read both, or would you have a preference for just one of them? Would it be worth my while? If I was only to keep one blog going my inclination would be to keep a kind of on-line art journal, which might end up with a wider audience than family and friends and would make it worthwhile. But if there are enough of you out that there that want me to carry on with a family blog let me know and I will. However, my sitemeter reports tell me that I only have a couple of regular readers at the moment (thank you!), so maybe you're not as interested as I'd hoped!! (I told you I would be keeping an eye on you...)

If you have any opinions on this at all, leave me a message! I probably won't make a decision until I get back from Scotland in mid October - but then on the other hand wouldn't it be nice to keep a blog of my time in Lumsden for all those hordes of arty-types out there!!!!!

Long time no blogging!

This is hard - how do you write a blog that doesn't just become one long 'round-robin'?! I haven't posted anything lately because I've been away! I've also been hard at it in the studio - well on the admin side of being in the studio - and taking part in Open Studios, and an up and coming art project at an old mining site near Camborne. Er, and the normal stuff you need to do to get by - which hasn't been that interesting lately... So, I think that's enough of the round-robin stuff. If you want more details you can take a look at the individual posts that I plan to do over the next few days!

Bye bye for now!

New Icons

Check out the new icons on the left above the links - the gorgeous orange one (I had to have it just for the colour!) is an RSS feed. By clicking on this beautiful button you can subscribe to my blog and be notified whenever I update it. How cool is that! You won't need to check in to see if I've had a new rant, and I won't have to send you emails to remind you that I'm still here!!! Do it - subscribe NOW!!!!

The other button (the one that isn't so aesthetically pleasing in my wonderfully orange world, and can't be pasted in this post to make it easy for you to recognise) will take you to my viewer stats, so you can find out how many people have been checking me out - and just where they come from! This is excellent for me, because I'll know which of you has been ignoring me again!!!!!! You have been warned!

This is BORING!!!

I set this blog up over two weeks ago now and not one of you has left a comment or a message!

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS CLICK ON THE GREEN COMMENT LINK BELOW - IT'S NOT HARD!!!!!

I thought that a blog would make me feel less lonely, less like a sad old anaorak - but I was wrong. This is worse - because now you can leave a comment and you haven't I just feel like you don't love me at all!!!!! Well obviously you don't have to love me to leave a comment, and a couple of words would mean so much (as long as they're not Bog Off, of course)....

lots of love Stephie xxxx (I don't know why I'm giving YOU kisses!!!)