Happy (Belated) New Year

Ok, so I'm 23 days late... but already 2010 is shaping up to be a good year*:

Reason #1 - Thanks to the lovely Bethan, my jewellery is now on sale until 31 March at Norden Farm Centre for the Arts in Maidenhead.

I have never been to Maidenhead, but my jewellery has. And people seem to like it, so hurrah for that! (This means that my Folksy shop is down whilst I work out how much stock I actually have, but it will be back soon).

Reason #2 - I have lots of fun things lined up like sewing classes at the Minstry of Craft, another craft fair in April, mushroom foraging in Scotland in the autumn, and The Big Knit at the Nexus Art Cafe tomorrow.

Reason #3 - I'm moving (again!) No more mouldy, damp (possibly haunted) house and shuddering windows at 5am as the train goes by.

* Touch wood and hope that the laws of sod and tempting fate don't seek me out and strike me down.

Mind The Gap

My life is in a state of limbo at the moment. I no longer live in Edinburgh, I'm back in South Manchester waiting until I can move into my new house in Cheshire. Being from Stockport I have always been able to claim, postally at least, that I was in Cheshire. However Stockport isn't really Cheshire... it's 'Greater Manchester', that hazy grey area that borders numerous counties but lays unclaimed by pretty much everybody. From the 3rd of next month I shall most definitely be in Cheshire.

I have been spending my half-unemployed days (I have freelance work which doesn't really feel like work as I can stay at home in my pyjamas and do it) re-learning how to knit, filling out a million plus one job applications, contemplating a career change so many times I think I ended up back at journalism, and reading a ton of books I got out on my rediscovered Stockport Libraries card.

The summer reading list looks a little like this:

If This is a Man/The Truce - Primo Levi
The 39 Steps - John Buchan
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Dream Angus - Alexander McCall Smith
The Tent - Margaret Atwood
Moderato Incantabile - Marguerite Duras
Weight - Jeanette Winterson
The Life of Hunger - Amelie Nothomb
The Third Man/The Fallen Idol - Graham Greene
Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
The Moon Opera - Bi Feiyu
Bitch Lit - Maya Chowdry (ed.)
Eating Myself - Candida Crewe
Man Walks into a Room - Nicole Krauss
When I Was Five I Killed Myself - Howard Buten
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

I have a pile of about the same number to go.

Because everything is so up in the air , I'm of no fixed abode and half my life is in storage it is hard to know what I'm doing. It's hard to pick one thing that I want to do and run with it. Though one good thing about being back here is the sense of being 'home'. Even if it has involved a nostalgia trip of horrible school days and cringeing at things I wrote when I was thirteen.

Edinburgh was beautiful but perhaps a little too beautiful. Having only lived in industrial northern towns I was a little untouched by the apparent 'culture' of the place. It was like some unattainable level that I couldn't reach, I never truly felt as though I 'fitted in', and the fact that I wasn't enjoying such a beautiful city ("how can you not love it?" people would cry) made me feel worse further still.

So I'm pretty sure that moving was a wise choice, but what now..?! That is the exciting bit I guess. I have a list of projects as long as my arm to get started on. Now if someone would just like to give me a job to fund them, that would be great...