Changes Coming Soon

I am working up a new blog using Blogger so am going to be doing a transfer fairly soon. Casting Pods show notes are already hosted by Blogger (there’s a new podcast episode by the way, featuring a live recording of my stand up comedy routine at Gwdihw which I mentioned in my last blog post). The reason I’m going with Blogger is purely financial. WordPress is free but won’t allow adverts or a paypal button, and although I do most of this for the love of hearing the sound of my own voice, it would be nice to be able to generate a bit of revenue from it as well.

I’ve been reluctant to let go of my static website because it has a lot of information about my book and photos etc. which would be a nightmare to transfer. But most of it is very out of date and it’s not doing me any favours to have out of date information on the webland where it’s expected to be zing up to the minute. Even with a twitter feed I can’t escape the fact that most of my web pages were written in 1998 and haven’t changed since. So I’m going to bite the bullet and switch my main url to the blog, losing all but a few of the original pages. These few will be transferred to the new blog as static pages, and will probably relate to my writing and art. The stats tell me that my karate page is the most popular, excepting the main index, however this only tells me that stats are not always to be relied upon and google has a lot to answer for!

This wordpress blog will remain here, possibly indefinitely, or I may delete it in a year or so if it becomes troublesome. I’m hoping I can slurp the posts into Blogger somehow. At the moment I have only been able to work out how to paste the feed into a sidebar. So call back soon for an update and you may notice some changes to the appearance of the site. It’ll still be the same old me (older still and even more me) but there may be a colour change.

Stand Up Open Mic, Stonehenge Podcast, North Wales, Halloween, Plarn Project, Test Knitting and a Power Outage

I’m all over the place this week as you might notice from the title of this blog! I’ve found an open mic comedy night that I can make and invite you all to join me for cheering and general merriment. It’s 8pm next Tuesday (9th Nov) at Gwdihw cafe bar (pronounced Goody Who? for those of you who don’t speak Welsh) which is in Cardiff, just off Churchill Way. If you’re able to, please come and support me. If I’m good please tell everyone I was because I’m hoping to do it more often, but if I die on stage please never mention it again! I’m going to record myself so if you never hear it on the podcast or hear me mention on the blog then you’ll know that I decided not to be a stand up comedian after all. Note, very much not for children. I’m planning to do the ‘angry dyke’ act, so just a bit more over the top than I usually am when chatting in the pub.

A new episode of Casting Pods was uploaded this week, in time for Halloween. It features the Pagan Pilgrimage to Stonehenge in the summer and I urge you to go and have a listen. My stats are picking up madly for the podcast and I’ve got various plans for sponsorship so need them to keep on picking up.

Halloween was fabulous. Happy Halloween everyone! Happy Samhain, Nos Len, Night of the Veil, Night of the Living Dead, however you like to put it! I’ve been ill all week so wasn’t able to throw myself into it with my usual vigour but Alys was fabulous as usual and made some wonderful food and we had friends over and general loveliness. Remember, a witch is for life, not just for Halloween.

Last week was half term and we went up to North Wales to visit an old friend of Alys and some old haunts. Conwy was one of them which is most definitely haunted! We went up the Orme and down the copper mine (photo is me in the hard hat about to go underground). Lovely. I even managed to fit in a flying visit to the woollen mill in Trefriw on the way back and got two beautiful purple bundles of I-think-it’s-yarn very cheap. Maybe even enough for a cardie, I haven’t investigated yet as I’m back on a sock kick.

As is usual when I have a lot of work on, I’ve started some new projects. One of them is a plarn bag (not sure what plarn is? Plastic yarn. Read on for illumination). I’ve been collecting plastic bags for years because I use them for all sorts of things, bin liners, boots bags, stash hiders etc. Plus I just can’t bear to throw away something so polluting to the environment. Mainly I use the bag for life option but a lot of places insist on giving you bags even if you’ve brought your own and I have to admit that I often forget to take bags with me if I’m planning to shop, and also often shop spontaneously. So I do have quite a lot of bags hanging around in various cupboards and drawers. But every now and then Alys goes through my plastic stash and chucks them all out! Now at least I have a reason for my plastic bag obsession and can hopefully generate some more bags for life which might last longer than the bags for ‘life’ that I have which usually last a few months.

So, to make plarn. You basically cut the bag into a long strip of an inch or so wide, roll it up into a ball and use it for knitting, crochet, macramé or anything of that sort. You can make table mats out of them apparently, but I was most interested in making a bag – ironic you see, a bag made from bags.

I can’t tell you exactly how many bags I will need, this is three bags’ worth and I’m still only on the bottom section of my proposed bag but it is quite thick and will be a sturdy one. I’m crocheting which is something I haven’t done in years and my hand keeps cramping up. The plarn is quite stiff, reminds me a bit of raffia (who remembers that fabulous crafty material from the Seventies and isn’t google wonderful because now I’ve found out that it’s still around?) and I broke my first crochet hook with it so got a thicker one and tried to concentrate on a loose tension. I will keep you updated but meanwhile you can check out my facebook photo album Making Things for more photos and the plarn bag project on ravelry (both public links).

So, yes, the sock kick. I’ve just started the second Turquoise Alpaca Sock which marks my return to socks after a detour into gloves and the snood. After vowing I would never knit another sock (10 socks made and 8 of them given away) I started wearing the first pair I’d knit which were so bad I could only keep them to myself. Even though they look awful, they’re so warm and comfortable that I’ve been wearing them for the last week. Honestly by the time I’ve finished the turquoise socks the pair I’m now wearing will be walking off me by themselves. I realised that I have to knit some more because once you wear hand knit socks you can never go back. And I started digging around my stash and oh look, huge piles of sock yarn that appear to have been breeding!

Then I listened to this week’s Cast On knitting podcast and Brenda asked for test knitters for her new sock pattern. And of course I volunteered. So then I had to go out and buy another set of circular needles so I could start the test socks. I heard from a rav friend that the curtain shop at Culverhouse Cross is having a ‘discontinued 50p for everything’ fest on their knitting needles so shot over there, as I needed a new crochet hook for the plarn anyway. Came back very smug with purple dye and pins too, then had a look at the pattern again and realised I’d need more needles! Sigh. So I’ll have to go back again. Oh well, 50p each isn’t a prob it’s just a faff to get there and quicker to walk really.

No photos for the test knitting as Brenda obviously wants to get the pattern right before it goes public, but here’s a photo of the yarn I’m using. It’s a gorgeous Araucania wool/silk/bamboo blend that I got from Stash Fine Yarns – same order as the turquoise alpaca – and was only £5 for the 100g skein, usually £10 or £15. I love the purples and blues but there’s too much white in there for me for anything but socks. I decided to knit two socks at once so am here winding the yarn into two balls from opposite ends. And I’m about to start a swatch (yes! a swatch! I’m that conscientious). I do know about the method of using the beginning and fishing around for the end inside the ball but have two probs with this – first is how to do this from a skein and second is I tried it once with a standard acrylic ball and got into a sweaty swearing tangle so would rather just have two balls! I also am aware of the ‘magic loop’ method of knitting two socks on the same needle but can envisage lots of swearing on that one, especially with a complex test knit, and at 50p per item I may as well just get another circular needle.

Then this morning we had a power outage and I was struck by how much of my life now relies on there being electricity. It was approx 9 am and I was heavily into the report I was writing due today at 4. Meanwhile I have a pile of ironing and washing because we got a new machine this week since the door broke on the old one before we went to North Wales, and Alys is due to go away for the week so needs clothes, also a pile of washing up and various other housework duties that have been neglected due to the 4pm today deadline. The lights and washing machine went off and at the same time at least two house alarms sounded outside. From this I figured that the electric in the whole street had gone off, not just our house. I checked the battery on the laptop to find I had at least 2 and half hours, plus if I could save to flash drive I could always use Alys’ laptop or even the boy’s to finish off the report. But! The modem is powered by electric so there was no internet, which meant if the electric didn’t come back on then I wouldn’t be able to submit it. Aaargh!! I managed to stay calm and continue to work with the battery power I had, but got increasingly worried as I realised that my mobile phone was on ‘emergency calls only’ mode, and wondered if the power outage had gone as far as Wenvoe mast. For all I knew it might be the apocalypse already with no way of finding out! I thought, well I could put the TV on if the internet’s down, to find out what’s going on, yes I really did think that. Then thought, hey I could phone Alys at work, but the phone is an answer phone and won’t work if no electric!! Double aargh!! I tried to stay calm thinking about the report and wondering if I should try to do some housework (my usual method of de-stressing) but no vacuum, no ironing. I could try to make a cup of tea by boiling water in a pan on the gas stove but wouldn’t want to risk opening the fridge for the milk. Anyway, to cut a long story short, my neighbour called round and said she’d phoned Swalec and they said it’d be back on by eleven. I took a drive over to the curtain shop thinking now would be a good time to get those dpns, but it was closed with a sign up saying ‘due to a power outage…’ goddammit!! And the cash machine was out too. So that was 20 mins wasted. Well, not entirely wasted because at least I had my iPod charged up and have been re-listening to the archives of Cast On, so thank you Brenda for keeping me sane *puts hands together and looks at the sky* why did I do that? I don’t know, maybe Brenda is a goddess.

So that’s about it for now. Updates on the comedy, socks and podcast will be (ir)regularly posted.

Behold as my voice takes over the Podosphere!

This has been a big week for my megalomaniac podcasty self. I uploaded a new episode of Casting Pods (Lesbian mother writing knitting life), Heather played my message on Craftlit (the podcast for crafters who like books) and my first voice acting appearance on QN in Scottish Lass was broadcast (and will remain available here). Up to now my appearances on QN have not been acting, but just being myself! This one was a monologue where I play a homeless woman. Do not be perturbed, I don’t attempt a Scottish accent. The character is actually from England so I speak with my normal voice.

I was very impressed with the quality of the audio considering the mess of repetition, mumbling, coughing, laughing, slurping tea, talking to the cat and ‘um I think I did that bit wrong’ that constituted the recording! Sage is obviously a genius editor and producer. When I started listening to it initially I didn’t recognise my own voice. Wondered if she’d done something with the pitch. But I know it’s me because I distinctly remember doing it, and as the monologue progresses it does start to sound like me.

So what with all of this attention, my statistics have shot up which is always gratifying. Now, if I could just work out how to make money from it then my dreams would be answered. Meanwhile, work and more work as usual. Teaching, studying, writing and not getting enough sleep.

Oh and knitting. The snood is nearly done. I’m going to keep on going until I run out of yarn. The benefits of doing a snood not a hat so I don’t have to worry about having enough yarn left for a decrease, only enough to cast off.

Media Whoring Again

Today was a strange day. I was all set for a work at home day ploughing through PhD thesis when at eleven I had a phonecall from ‘withheld’. So I paused my winding the beautiful Rock Candy yarn I bought from King Becky (hand dyed yarn) to answer, expecting it to be someone trying to sell me something, and it’s a researcher from BBC Wales inviting me to take part in a program at one! Two hours’ notice is the shortest I’ve had for something like this so I said yes that’s fine but I’ll just have to go and get dressed first!!

The topic was the portrayal of lesbian and gay people in the media and the researcher asked me how I felt about Eastenders, which I haven’t watched in several years. So I quickly posted a panicked message on Facebook asking for ideas and did a trawl of soap blogs, and a general google search on gays in the media. Found out the reason why it’s suddenly topical and had a quick read of this article in the Guardian which says that one in five people are uncomfortable with the portrayal of gays in the media and the Stonewall report that lesbian and gay people appear realistically & positively in 0.6% of popular TV in the UK so I’d be at least a little informed.

Of course I couldn’t settle to any work after this so finished winding the Rock Candy yarn and cast on with my sock needle to knit some gloves I’ve been planning. I’ve been listening to the Craft Lit podcast (combining knitting/spinning and literature which is excellent) back to back in preparation for meeting Heather and her entourage next week at a big Americans meet Welsh knitting meet in Cardiff, advertised on the Ravelry Cardiff knitters group if anyone is interested. So that kept me sane while I was nervously waiting in the BBC studios (which luckily are just down the road from me).

I love the BBC studios, especially when I’m a guest because I feel special and get the star treatment! I had a cuppa and even had a quick visit from Marie Irshad, who is every knitter-podcaster’s hero. The researchers were quite impressed that I managed to knit while I was talking on the show (hey, it’s radio, no-one noticed except them!) but it helps me to think and is something to do while other people are talking. Plus I think they were quite impressed with Becky’s lovely yarn.

Anyway, the show! It was very interesting, I got to make some important points I think, and there were people phoning in and I hope I sounded sensible. I was sharing the guest spot with Julian Bennett from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Kathy Griffiths who is a TV critic for the South Wales Evening Post.

So the program is available on the BBC iplayer for a week here. It’s a 2 hour show and our slot is the last 45 minutes or so, from about 1 hour 13 mins onwards. I even managed to get a plug in about my novel which is always good.

Once I was all done I went to a school parents’ evening, where I did a bit more knitting since I was hanging around, so now I’m quite far into the first glove.

Dragon, Knitting and Nudity

I’m writing today’s blog using new software Dragon voice recognition. At the moment. I’m watching the words appear on my computer screen while I am knitting a green sock for Alys. In the next room I can hear Alys performing her own dictation. And also giggling As she hears me repeating the words
knitting and deleting all of the options that software comes up with it as it obviously does not have a word knitting in it vocabulary. I am hoping that if I repeat the word knitting enough times it will learn that this is a word I use quite often perhaps not my academic work or even in the novels but certainly in my blog. One of the problems we have already discovered is that we can both type faster than Dragon recognises our voices which sort of defeats the object of this software. Hopefully
Alys’s plan to write as she’s driving my plan to write while
I’m
knitting and ironing and even
walking the dog will make this all worth while. The reason we selected Dragon software is because this has been recommended from two different people when we mentioned voice recognition software. One problem with multitasking that has already appeared that in my frustration at Dragon not recognising the word knitting I started to purl when I should be knitting in the
round. Then when I concentrate on knitting I notice a whole host of errors in this transcription which I will need correct afterwards so that I have not actually saved any time at all. Still it is fun to have a try. I just need to train software to recognise my voice and learn my standard vocabulary and understand that when I take a sip of tea I’m not talking so I don’t want it to transcribe the bizarre word that it thinks it’s heard. But right now I’m not going to be let Dragon loose on my thesis
there are also options to surf the Internet navigate software and update Facebook Twitter etc using voice. However my fingers haven’t stopped working so I will try this at least not until I have successfully written pages of text.

This is what you might call a learning curve that any attempt to save time and may well
end up wasting more time than usual.

I decided not to edit this any further so you can see the kind of should have to put up with.

(Typing now) by the way, also this week a new episode of Casting Pods was uploaded. This features my story in 10 Journeys which I read to an audience of artists as I was their life model. Check it out here.

Roll up, roll up!! Books and More Books!

I went to Cardiff Mardi Gras on Saturday, here I am sitting next to a suitcase full of copies of my book, Silence. I had the bright idea to flog them at Mardi Gras as I thought I’d be more likely to find people who’d want to read them at a gay event rather than in a book shop. Sadly most people who visit book shops actually don’t want to read novels, and most people who come to Mardis Gras don’t read.

Before setting up, I did a trawl of the stalls to see if there were any book stalls that I might persuade to carry some copies of Silence. Plenty of teeshirt, bandana and jewellery stalls, plenty of food stalls, political parties and charities, but not a book to be found.

Anyway, I did manage to find a small percentage of the thousands of lesbians on Coopers Field on Saturday who a) can read, b) had a fiver and c) saw the value in my book. The suitcase was significantly lighter on the way home and I sold more books at Mardi Gras than in any other book event. I also learned a lot about book selling (set up near the toilet queue and approach people who you know would love the book but would never talk to you if they hadn’t had a few beers).

I have also been promoting my latest book (10 Journeys available from Legend Press) recently, here I am in Waterstone’s in Cardiff. I recorded some of this for the QN podcast, including a random customer asking me where the electronics books were shelved, I hope Sage keeps that bit in!

I do have a few copies of Silence left, so if anyone is interested in a signed copy, please leave a comment here and I’ll send you details of how to order from me for £5 including postage. I have several ideas for using these spare copies as promotion such as book crossing and competition prizes. If anyone has any other ideas (clean ones!) then please also leave a comment here.

So as well as lots of book promoting, and of course PhD work, I’ve been camping and knitting a lot over the summer. Here is my latest attempt at a sock, first one for about 25 years. I’ve recorded an inordinate amount of audio for Casting Pods which I’m editing now in my quiet moments and hope to upload some episodes over the autumn.

New reality TV show ‘Fake Families’

I propose a new reality TV show where you take a group of actors of various genders and ages and mishmash them together into family units, put each ‘family’ in a house that’s done up like a different decade from the last two centuries and they can’t use anything that’s outside of their time zone. Each person must represent an embarrassing physical or mental illness and manifest in their own unique behavioural problem. The houses have internal and external cctv so the actors can’t go anywhere or do anything without it being caught on camera. Every day they have to cook a meal for each other and judge each other on their cooking and presentation skills. Every week one of each of the family members is switched to the house on the left so that the new family has to reform and we get to watch all the grandstanding and in-group behaviour all over again. Then two days after this switch the families have to perform as a band in front of a live stage audience and panel of second rate musicians making snide comments. Finally the TV audience have to vote to have the show stopped or it will continue for the REST OF OUR LIVES. Okay, rant over thanks.

New podcast episode uploaded – 10 Journeys book launch

This month I’ve been obsessed with progression and conferences so have been a very diligent PhD student. Hence the delay between the book launch for 10 Journeys and the podcast featuring the recording. But at last, here it is available. Episode 19 of Casting Pods and new Casting Pods website woot! www.castingpods.co.uk

Also I have been knitting rather a lot recently (I seem to knit more when stressed) and am always available on facebook.

One of Seven Voices – Blogging for LGBT Families

I recently recorded some audio ramblings for the QN Podcast. The question was: what were you doing 10 years ago? I love how Sage does these ‘voices’ episodes (this one was seven people) where the different people have their stories interspersed throughout. QN is a great podcast anyway because it’s so varied but there’s always something interesting, and the political/social commentary is quite matched to mine, but being based in Canada it’s a different perspective to what I’m used to.

Sage actively recruits contributors to QN and I’ve been wanting to contribute for some time so when I saw the call for participants I volunteered straight away. I really wanted to talk about this one because ten years ago I was at home with the boy when he was a very busy toddler and I knew I had lots to say about that. About being a lesbian parent, the ‘other mother’, leaving a high-powered job to be a stay-at-home mum and yet being completely dismissed as a parent by many people we met, moving from England to Wales and encountering racism and homophobia in my partner’s home town. So many, many things to say. There were some great highs and lows. On the one hand I was being very creative: knitting, painting, writing, yet I was also frustrated, trapped, isolated and living in virtual poverty.

Many things have happened over the ten years between then and now, and yet I find myself at home again and being creative. I’m beginning to wonder if my life goes in cycles. Do have a listen to the podcast, there are some other very interesting lives explored on that episode as well as mine. And once you start listening to QN I swear you’ll get addicted like me. One of the best episodes I’ve heard is Surviving the 1950’s which made me laugh and cry and love both Kite and Sage. Through QN I’ve discovered any number of other podcasts due to there being such a variety of contributors. I hope I’ll be able to contribute again.

This is my blog contribution to the annual ‘blogging for LGBT families’ jaunt on Mombian, which I took part in last year for the first time. Coincidentally it’s relevant to the podcast so I can talk about both in one blog post!

10 Journeys Book Launch – Report back

Had a great evening yesterday in the Phoenix Artist Club, Charing Cross Road in London. For a start having a trip to London is always a treat! And then I got to see the book for the first time, which is always nice.

I met some of the other authors, some of whom I’ve facebook ‘met’ but not in the flesh, and also met up with the Legend people. Seven of the ten authors were there so I think the crowd got a good deal! We read some extracts and sold a fair few books and my hand almost dropped off with the signing.

I went on the ‘funfair’ bus which makes it cheaper to get from Cardiff to London than to do the tube journey once I get there. It was a long day. Left home at 11 am and got back at 3 am this morning. Would rather not stay in London due to expense and also here I am at home already doing this, whereas if I’d stayed I’d still be travelling. Mostly I sleep on the bus but last night I must have been too wound up because I didn’t sleep very much.

Got a lot of audio recorded for the podcast but haven’t edited it yet! That will take some time. Meanwhile I have managed to get a video on youtube.

More photos are available on my new Facebook album. To buy the book, go to Legend Press website or order it from any good bookshop!