trimmingthesails

December Journalling ...

Nearly December already - and I am feeling slightly faint at the thought. There is so much happening here that I fear my December Daily may not, in fact, turn out to be daily or even in December, and that Journal Your Christmas may slump into Journal-A-Few-Memories-of-Christmas-in-January. When time is tight, I often reach for a list; so I've prepared a couple of aides-mémoires to jump-start my journalling ...

The pdf is below, if you would like a copy for your own use - please help yourself. It focuses on forms of journalling, so they can be used for many types of content:
ListsForDecember

 And for those of you wondering which of Wednesday's confessions was false? It was the fourth one. I did, in fact, pass my driving test in my early thirties, first time. All the rest are true. :)

Did you miss it, too?

It was last Friday, and I didn't even know - did you? Use Less Stuff Day, apparently. Right up my street - except that I wasn't in the street at the time. I was even more distressed to learn that Saturday was special for three reasons: National Blow Bagpipes Day plus National 'Have a Bad Day' Day - oh, and World Toilet Day. (I'm hoping there was no obscure connection between the last two.) They were all hotly followed yesterday by the appropriately named National Absurdity Day.

Now, those who've been reading along for a while may remember that I've a fondness for this kind of jollity: International Clothesline Week was a particular favourite. I even made a layout to celebrate:

And today is, wonderfully, National False Confession Day. So, in its honour, I'm offering you a clutch of personal confessions one of which is untrue. Can you spot it? :)

• I failed my Art History slide test three times because I kept falling asleep in the darkened lecture theatre after lunch and only ever had half the notes.

• I once got a prize of a Thesaurus for looking after the school vending machine.

• Due to hospitalizing sickness in pregnancy, I called our first child - semi-jokingly - Stinker. (Though not after birth - that all melted away and it was love at first sight. And second. And third ...).

• I didn't learn to drive until I was forty because I failed my test twice in my twenties and gave up: couldn't face the shame of another possible disaster.

• When Himself and I met for the first time, he was living in a community attached to a monastery. Needless to say, a relationship was not on his to-do list.

• I once played the part of Mary McGregor in the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and had to eat my way through a packet of jelly beans night after night - until the sugar rush made me so nauseous we had to substitute small grapes.

Happy guessing! I'll 'fess up on Wednesday. And if you're so minded, you'll find Hallmark's Calendar of Dates over here: the second of the two on November 30th looks like one definitely NOT to miss. :)

"I liked bad hats ...

... and older men", wrote Lilah Wingfield in her diary in 1911. And I like her already, I thought, as I listened in the car to her grand-daughter, Jessica Douglas-Home, recount something of her life on Radio 4's Midweek. Bold, feisty, a 'force of nature', Jessica called her. That's some epitaph. The youngest of five, trapped by convention and Edwardian etiquette into looking after her elderly mother in London after the death of her father when she was sixteen, Lilah escaped at the age of twenty-three with notebook and Kodak camera, and headed for India by train. This week in London, there's an exhibition of her photos (from whose website these pictures come) to accompany her diary, about to be published as A Glimpse of Empire. From a scrapbooking perspective, don't you just love the contrast between the everyday-ness of sandwiches and the exotic nature of the location below? And, in the photo to the right, that great backstory visible between the two concise lines of the caption?

But the greatest lesson for a scrapbooker emerged as Jessica Douglas-Home spoke about the photograph books she had seen, growing up: "I used to flick through, periodically, the ten pages on the Durbar" (the huge assembly to celebrate the coronation of George V) and think 'How interesting', but they didn't mean very much. It was only when the diary was discovered relatively recently ... that the whole thing came to life."

Something to ponder on, as I finalise my journalling preparations for a December Daily/JYC, in readiness for sharing some ideas next week. I already know where to find the (ever so slightly) older man, but I'm in serious need of a few bad hats ... :). 

You never know what's inside ...

I only reach for it once a year.  It sits underneath a desk, where I occasionally stub my toe on it ...


Yesterday, I leaned down and gave Vincent a tug because it was time for my annual visit to these:

And inside its pages, sandwiched between sheets of tissue paper, lay this:

It had completely slipped my memory, this collograph-experimentation weekend. And I realise now what I must have dimly understood then - that what excites me on the making and doing front is the contrast and tension between the flat smooth surface and the implied textures on it ... I think I'll have to start exporing this a bit more. Thank-you, Vincent. I do appreciate your landscapes, truly - and finding one of my own nestling alongside yours has given me a glimpse into an inner one I hadn't seen before. A gift indeed.

And - somewhere in your Wednesday - may there be a little surprise or 'ah-ha' moment in it for you too. :)

Digital December Daily? No preparation necessary, then ...

... not! It is, as I learnt last year through bitter experience, just as essential for a digitally prepared Book of December Days, as for a fully paper version. Determined to be ready this year, here's my short-list:

• one overarching folder containing all resources on my computer's desktop: no hunting around for it
• inside it, photo folders - labelled and ready, one for each day
• layered templates (left- and right-hand side) with layers helpfully named: no squinting at the screen trying to work out whether the highlighted layer panel holds a top-left photo or a bottom-right one
• text boxes in position, with font and spacing decided and ready for typing
• paper ready for printing the digitally designed pages: I'm using Hahnemühle Duo which means I can print photos and text directly onto both sides
• spare printer cartridges purchased and easily accessible
• extra batteries for camera already charged
• small notebook for thoughts/ideas each day
• elements prepared: large decorative inital letters for the journalling page, decorative paragraph dividers, and possibly digital papers to drop in if photos are in short supply
• front and back covers made/printed

The last two are not quite ready. You'll see below I've been having a bit of a play, wondering whether some additonal drawn images of winter grasses or seedheads on the journalling page might be visually attractive - or just detractive and messy. Opinions welcome as always :).

Next up, after preparing the visual look? Thinking about the shape of the content by the middle of this week: a list of different journalling ideas/forms from which to choose, or to act as a stimulus on  'Help, I'm stuck!" days. There are also some things I know I want to record this year on a very regular basis throughout the month: the temperatures/weather, for instance, and a brief mention of national or international events. Finally, by the end of the week, some reminders to myself about a simple process, camera to page.

Is it just me, or have I got my work cut out? :)

Remembering on 11.11.11

It's a day for remembering here in the UK, the 11th November ... I would very much have liked to participate in Beverley's wonderful 11.11.11 challenge, and urge you to pop over in a few moments and visit her. Here, time and circumstances only made one thing possible for today. Miss Smith's ten challenges this month have been loud in my ears and I wondered if I could set myself a single eleventh: to incorporate them all in one page? They demanded a photo of autumn, a colour challenge (mine is in Design Seeds Autumn collection, Husked Tones), stitching, paint, tell a story, and it has to be a story about yourself, find a new way to incorporate your journalling on the page, use a found object, take  up a challenge from the internet (this is it!), and scrap from a sketch plus scraplift a page. I think I've cheated on the last two and bundled them into one. But here it is ...

Wherever you are in the world, however today is remembered and marked by you, whatever and whoever you are remembering, I wish you moments of the bright joy of being alive in it too ...

Gifts and gratitude ...

... and both in equal measure today. Gratitude for the lovely art mail and cards from Lisa and Alison, for the gifts of words arriving at just the right moment; and to Paula's splendid inspiration for this page ...

Gratitude too for all of you who had thoughts on the merits of hyrid versus digital Daily December-ing, and shared them with me so willingly and usefully. I very much appreciate the encouragment to go with what 'feels' right, and hear loudly the advice about doing what can be handled, not ending up with a half-done project (anyone else got one of these?), and the reminder about what will be available, space-wise. Since it's the journalling I really want to focus on, I am taking a deep breath and opting to go with the digital two page design: journalling one side, photos the other. The pages will be printed out, hopefully every two days, and should there be leaflets, shopping lists, receipts or tickets, they will find a home in a separate pocket, envelope, or insert. Decision made - thank-you! :)

All that remains in the next two weeks is the journalling- and digi-preparation. How are your own preparations going? Are you in the 'sorted-and-trying-not-to-feel-smug' camp, or in the 'I-know-I-made-a-list-if-I-could-just-find-it' gang? Or somewhere inbetween?

(PS Did I really say 'all'? Eeek!)

 

Decluttering? Don't!

I thought I had it sorted. Clean, quick digital December Daily pages, printed out in a jiffy, job done - especially with the (truly delightful and welcomed) prospect of masterminding eleven of us here for at least part of the festivities. If Himself hadn't helpfully popped in with a cup of chai, and if I hadn't paused to drink it and idly open the albums I was shifting, it might never have happened. This was the page I saw first ...

... and then I began to look at the lines and the shapes, the punched out holes, the stitching, the inking ...

... and I started to fall in love with hybrid scrapping all over again. Dang! Now what am I going to do?

Serendipity times a googleplex

Googleplex? No, not another Internet product, but a number that looks like this:  10googol, i.e. 10^{(10^{100})}. I know, I was amazed too (-ish: I'm a linguist) when I actually, err, googled it.  For decades, it's been our family's shortcut for expressing anything huge. I've got a googleplex-worth of homework tonight. You want more bits for your computer? That'll be a googleplex worth of room-tidying and dish-washing, then. But it's what sprang to mind when my Etsy purchase dropped onto the doormat yesterday. No, actually, I lie: that bit came later. First I had the pleasure of undoing the prettily stitched envelope, catching the glorious handful of free tags, stickers and sparkly bits inside, unwrapping the gift paper and stripey string, before shaking out gently the lovely vintage food-related contents ...

Now there's already a googleplex of kindness in the wrapping of this, but the serendipitous part took my breath away. For at the weekend we'd been reminiscing here with my parents, trying to piece together the origins of my youngest brother's family nickname, now lost in the mists of time it seemed. Mum thought it was a contraction of the name of a favourite cartoon character of his, Dad added his hunch that it was from a children's comic or magazine, I had a dim and hazy memory that it was something to do with eating - but none of us could remember any more. As I sifted through Julie's lovely bits, I suddenly saw it right there in front of me!

I ran down stairs - Hey! Look! Their faces beamed with pleasure and satisfaction - yes, that was it! I think I'm going to be googling "How to make a bookmark in time for Christmas", and one brother will be happily tripping down Memory Lane.

Thank-you for all your thoughtful suggestions on December page designs - it is helping me come to a decision. In the meantime, hoping you too have a googleplex of something nice or a lovely piece of serendipity (or both together) in your day. And thank-you, Julie! Times a googleplex, of course :)

December Quandary ...

 ... and it's only November. I thought I had it all decided, a Book of December Days design. It was going to be simply a grid of 3x3 rectangles printed edge-to-edge on A4 landscape, ready for flexible use in lots of ways: grids, columns, journalling as small as a single rectangle, or expanded to two, a column of three, more ... And then I read Amy's post on blogging and scrapbooking, and her lovely page. It reminded me of my Hanger Gang  layout from almost a year ago (they are marginally better behaved this year, you might be glad to hear), with lots of space for journalling - because it's stories on which I would really like to focus. So I started playing around, and one thing led to another ("That's what you get" my Great-Aunt would have admonished "for playing around!") and now I've got two possibilities and can't decide between them. Help wanted and all thoughts welcome!

Despite the chaos in our lives this time last year, I realised to my chagrin - meandering through last November's posts - that by the first of this month, my plans for a December Daily/Journal Your Christmas were already firm. Tucked in there lay a photo, taken almost to the day, of an autumn view on the way back from work, so I stopped today and snapped it again: 2010 left, 2011 right:


It's clearly sunnier today, but it would seem from a comparison of the trees on the left of the path that autumn this year is further advanced.  Unlike yours truly. Oh dear ...