Monday, 9th January: Day 9 & Tuesday, 10th January: Day 10

Again, a bulletin of several parts.

Firstly, the Knotty Knitters returned today from Christmas Vacation - YAY!

While a small meeting, everybody was on fine form and many have completed projects over the break and are about to start something new. For my part, I finished one of a pair of Gents wristies for the shop, and began the pair.

Also, Eugenie has given the nod for a second, complementary club, which will run Thursday afternoons, starting from 14.00 on a drop-in, drop-out basis, in the Cultural Quarters and will be open to all knitters and crocheters who want to come, whether they already go to Knotty Knitters or not. The Tearooms are also open during this time, so come on in and enjoy some stitching and socialisation.

The second piece of creativity for yesterday and today was, the creation of The Cultural Quarters' own blog, which is located here: http://ballinamoreculturalquarters.blogspot.com/

and will be the best place on the web to keep up with all the busy goings on in this fabulous new project right in the heart of Ballinamore.

Last, but by no means least, I did promise you a mini interview with dynamic project leader Tracy Murray, who is spearheading the whole Cultural Quarters development, and here it is:

* So, all this activity and excitement has the town buzzing. What exactly are we doing with the place?

We have been given a fabulous opportunity to open up this historic building as a place for everyone, a venue for arts, crafts, music, poetry, pretty much anything that people want (within reason). The main idea is to keep the centre of our town vibrant and to provide interest for both locals and tourists alike.

* You mention it's a historic building. Wasn't this the old police barracks?

Yes, in fact John McGahern's father was stationed here during that time. The premises were then taken over and operated by Deirdre as a bakery/cafe with a clothes shop above, then later it's returned to those roots with the vintage clothing shop and tearooms now both on the ground floor (with outdoor seating for the tearooms coming this spring) and it has also become an events space as well as the home of the Ballinamore Free Fringe Festival which launched last year.

* It really is great down here! (and anyone who's not already been in to look around and have the "grand tour") So how can people get involved?

There are so many ways that people can help. Broadly, these fit into two categories - material and non-material things that we need. This is our current wishlist:

Material items ~

• Paint
• Furniture (especially tables)
• Plants
• Money

Other, Non-Material Items ~

• Ideas (we have the space, now lets use it. - Every suggestion within reason will be considered and we will support as many ideas as we can)
• Plumber(s)
• Gardeners
• Skilled and Unskilled Volunteer pairs of hands

* Sounds great! When is all this taking place?

We're open every week, Tuesday - Saturday from 10.00 to 18.00 and at other times by arrangement.

Drop in any time or reach us through the Cultural Quarters' page on facebook or through our blog at http://ballinamoreculturalquarters.blogspot.com/

As each room gets finished, it will be up and operational. We currently have the Vintage Clothing Shop, the Tearooms, Antiques Shop and Reading Room all open. The events room upstairs is hosting the regular Saturday Flea Market (10.00 - 15.00) and is available to book at other times.

* That's a lot of things already. What are some of the other things we can look forward to?

• Burns' Night (January 25th)
• Craftsy Crafters Day Party (January 26th)
• Flea Market every Saturday
• Music and Spanish Classes with Leo
• Italian Classes with Al
• Textiles classes
• Knitting Club
• Poets' Breakfasts
• Gigs (Music, Comedy,... you name it!)
• Free Fringe Festival (Annually in August)
• Astronomy Club
• Spiral Scouts International (local level)
• Spaces to curl up with a book or to study
• Indoors and Outdoors spaces to enjoy a cuppa (outdoors coming later this spring)

Thursday, 5th January: Day 5

Distressingly, I can't find my camera cable to upload today's picture :(

This afternoon was spent having SOOOOO much fun painting the wall in the (soon to be finished and operational) reading room of the new Cultural Quarters in Ballinamore. - That's right, the Arts Centre has it's new name - so exciting!!!

So, in absence (temporary) of today's picture, I offer you this:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Cultural-Quarters/213375472081866

it's the link to the facebook page where you can keep up with all the centre's news and photos.

Currently we already have the Vintage Clothing, Tearooms, Antiques Store and performance space up and running, Leo Torres' Music and Spanish lessons, with the regular Saturday Flea Market every week. We hope to add the reading room next week.

In the next wee while, we're hoping to add a sewing workshop space, a gallery and already pencilled for the various spaces, we have a whole host of meetings, special dates and club meets etc.



Tune in again tomorrow for an interview with Project Leader Tracy and (hopefully) some pics!

Tuesday, 3rd January: Day 3

Light and Dark

- that seems to be very much the theme for today!

We got power for the first time today since 03.00 at around 14.00, only to loose it again from 17.00 - 20.00 and gone.

We're the lucky ones though - there are still 6000 homes in the ROI tonight & at least we have the fire whereas many of them have converted to electric/gas run off electric heat too.

So today has been gloriously low tech and has allowed for a variety of creative outlets. (Though today's horoscope advised taking a day off - just pottering around at home has to count)

Quick update on the watch situation - again it wasn't stolen in the night, but when I picked it up this morning, the little dowel fell off and completely vanished. I guess the weight of the clasp on it was too much. So as a theoretical exercise, I'm plotting some alternatives in my head today.
Other cranial creativity today has included development work on the first two fundraisers I want to do this year: A 3Ds night, my own invention. - Everybody shows up with 3Ds with them (namely Donation, Drink, Dessert) - we provide nibbly bits - nuts, crisps etc and then the "dinner" portion of the evening comprises everyone gets to taste as many puddings etc as they want. After that, we sell off the remaining desserts in takeaway tins for say 50c a throw, or gift them in exchange for an honesty box donation.
The second thing I want to do (which Christophe's said he will help with) is a murder mystery evening - so watch this space!

*********

Today's bursts of outdoor creativity started with a 'Mystery Rose'. (left)

We already have our '50c Mystery Rose' the other side of the door - I brought it two winters ago and the woman in the shop only charged me 50c for it because she said it would never grow. It's flowered pretty much non-stop since and seems to be trying to decide whether to be a climber or a standard, or something in-between.

So when the next-door Pitbull pup, Archie, nicked my Rowan Tree Sapling that I was gifted for Yule and chewed it to death while we were away and no-one was looking, we headed out to the post--xmas sale at the garden centre (Ardcarne, in Boyle, Roscommon). Now they're brilliant all year round - one of the best I've ever known, but this time of year is particularly fantastic to be in any garden centre as they often reduce to virtually nothing the touch-and-go plants and as long as you're willing to take your chances you can get some real beauties!

This guy just took my fancy - we wanted something that would prickle young pup if he tries it on again - check! (I'm not into animal cruelty, but a bit of a self-inflicted prickle on the nose might just teach him to leave my plants alone!). He was on his own, alone and unlabelled at the end of the run of scrambler roses (my bet's on creamy with perhaps some pink, I'm not sure) and he reached out and grabbed me by the cardi, so that was that.

Incidentally, because people sometimes ask: I have no particularly special, scientifically proveable method with my touch-and-goes, but I am a huge believer in talking to plants (and trees and animals come to that) and so what I do do is I talk to the plant, ask it if it would llike to come home with me and explain that it will be given a nice patch and then has two choices - to grow or to die. I tend to talk to them on the way home and while planting them, all the while putting out loving thoughts to make them feel 'fussed'. Then I just talk to them and treat them as normal while I go about the place.

Next thing, was the Holly we had over the mantelpiece at Yule.

It was just about beginning to curl up a little at the edges and look a little dry, so the same procedure with that - thanked it for looking so pretty, offered it space in the garden and just pushed the sprigs in to a depth of 5-10cms (about 2-4 inches) depending on the size of the sprig.

Right about then, the power came back on and I got so distracted, I forgot to go back out and get a picture until it was almost dark (silly me!), so I popped out again with Christophe's head torch he uses for his astronomy and got this shot (left) - I'll try and remember to get another one in daylight tomorrow.

********

...and now, for the "piece de resistance" (sorry, I can't make the e-grave thing work on here!):

On the knitting front, this is the progress on the famous sofa throw.

With all the excitement with the on-again-off-again power, I forgot to find batteries for my camera, so this is once more taken on Christophe's video camera which doesn't do as much justice in colour unfortunately.

In the afternoon brown-out, I had a flash of inspiration.

Perhaps because I'd been reading about tonight's Quadrantid Meteor Shower (which promises to be AMAZING this evening - http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/earthskys-meteor-shower-guide?fb_comment_id=fbc_10150099997031478_20101549_10150456976291478) suddenly I had this thought that the next layer would look fabulous as a starburst!

I had hoped to finish at least the North, South, East, and West points as I'm normally pretty good at knitting without looking, but oddly enough, knitting in the virtually dark, with limited firelight is somehow harder (I'll have to practice!) so by the time my hands (and eyes) were saying "enough", I'd only done the North point, - still, I think that's rather an achievement - especially as Christophe says he had to wake me up in mid flow at one point as I had dosed off and the needles were still at it. . .

The cardinal points will all be in this same peacock-aqua. - It's not exactly in the colour scheme, but the gold I have for the other four points was looking like it might overpower the centre somewhat, so I decided to use a complimentary shade to balance it out.


Tune in again tomorrow for a likely shortened, but hopefully still jam-packed installment!

PS - I forgot an item off the original list, I'll add it back momentarily.

Monday, 2nd January: Day 2

Lots going on with the home front today.

Mondays are always special on the FLYlady programme, it's the "big" focus day on the home that sets the week going on the right foot.
For those not familiar with the FLYlady programme, I'm going to say, here and now - if you're a B.O. (Born Organised) person - someone whose ducks fly in a row without any, or with only minimal help, it probably won't make any sense to you, but for perfectionist S.H.E.s (Sidetracked Home Executives) such as me, it can be a life-changing Godsend!

If you haven't already and you think in any small measure the FLY (Finally Love Yourself) programme would be helpful to you, then you can jump right in over at www.FLYlady.net

Actually, now is a very exciting time over there - this month's habits and everything just happen to be natural pause and restart points (though as FLYlady herself always says, just jump in right now, exactly where you are) and the page has recently had a facelift, so if you have been there before, pop back and have an explore of all the new stuff!

So yes, a large part of today has been a FLYlady "reboot" of upstairs. After all the madness of the festive season etc we're starting over again - see, even after nine-and-a-half years (in two weeks time) of following this excellent programme, life still sometimes requires a pause and reboot moment.
The one thing that I have learnt in all this time is, to accept and TRULY understand that sometimes a job doesn't get done all in one go and that is alright. - So while upstairs is not, this evening, completely perfect, I'm happy with the progress made.

Still, it was a very good opportunity to catch up on some music!

Personally, I love classical while I'm doing domestic stuff and this morning was no exception.

While my absolute favourite in these situations is Delius (particularly Songs From the Paradise Gardens) I try not too put Christophe through the same stuff all the time, so this morning I went rooting about for Mozart's Cello Concerto.
Isn't the new layout of YouTube difficult? Though I daresay we'll all get used to it in time.

Anyhow, having unfortunately found THE worst recording in the world of Elgar's Cello Concerto (I have to be in just the right mood for Elgar myself, otherwise his stuff can have me jumping right out of my skin if I'm not ready for it) I finally found a little gem in this recording of Jing Zhao playing the first movement of the Mozart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCh8fTtc_J4 - it was positively fantastic!

To complement that, we also played some Rondo Veneziano (Christophe's go-to favourite for such settings), of which, the "Aria di Festa" is particularly good.

So that takes care of the 'music' portion of the day, onward to the creativity. (Incidentally, I got up this morning to find my watch EXACTLY where I'd left it - score one to Mammy:Kitten Nil!)

So this is this afternoon's offering (fore-shortened session due to a rather prolonged, but wonderful catching-up natter with my wicked, amazing friend Kim)
I'm afraid that the photo isn't brilliant today - I've just, this evening (after I could've done anything about it) discovered that it's right what they say about regular batteries and digital cameras - DEFINITELY a false economy!) so this picture will just have to hold it until I can take a better one.

As you can see, I've added the first border to yesterday's piece. I opted for a soft lilac in a "baby" type DK yarn on size 4mm needles. (Incidentally, if anyone has a reliable link for translating European and American sizes, please go ahead and pop it up - it's always coming up and I'm never quite sure).

In this instance, I've opted for adding the border straight to the previous block, rather than stitching them together - it's just a personal preference thing really, I'm not convinced to date that there's a huge amount between the two techniques as far as strength.

The one thing I did slip up on and had to remind myself of, so it may be useful to mention here was, if you're going to use this technique, where you're essentially picking up and knitting the cast-off (bound-off in American parlance) stitches, it's important to either leave a longer end on the cast-off, or start in the other corner of the cast-off row to prevent the cast-off stitches coming undone.
However, if like me, you slip-up and they do begin to come loose, the first rule of knitting comes into play: DON'T PANIC!

simply catch the loose stitches on the non-working needle and continue knitting along and nobody will ever know (unless you tell them). - Seriously, see if you can detect which corner it happened on with mine.

In fact, put your guesses in the comment section, where corner 1 is top left of the picture, corner 2 is top right, corner 3 is bottom left and corner 4 is bottom right - and then the first one who gets it right will have a prize!

So there we have it. Short and sweet as days go and with the Knotty Knitters (Ballinamore's Knit Club) not back until next Tuesday, tomorrow's creativity will have to be a little more home grown.

Now that gives me an idea . . .

Sunday, 1st January: Day 1

So, to kick us off, here's a picture taken in the new reading room at Murray's (as is, it will have a new name really soon) - what do you think?

I've got a full panorama of the room going up on Facebook as soon as I finish this post. You'll be able to see it at:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150450958836752.354320.580876751&type=1

I'm including this shot because this is one of those spaces that just oozes creativity! - It's quite difficult to explain, but being in this space gives you tingles - almost crackles of some kind of creative static electricity. It would be hard not to be creative in this space. Which is extremely handy given that the various rooms are open for projects, as well as tea/coffee/cake from the vintage tearoom in front. There's also a flea market on every Saturday where crafters and artists can come to showcase (and hopefully sell) some of their wares.

We were up there this afternoon for a little drink to toast in the new calendar and the start of all the wonderful projects this space is affording for our town. It was a great afternoon with good company and great craic (fun, the Irish way). We even took some of the silver streamers from the party poppers and danced in the fizzy energy of the place. (That was wee Olivia's idea - it made me think at the time, while trying to work out how I would explain the whole feeling of the place to you, how interesting it is that children seem to have an instinctive 'feel' for these things and always seem to know the right way to respond to it.)

One of my aims for this year is to use my Teaching Certificate more. As soon as there are people interested, I'm going to be offering classes and one-on-one workshops in Textiles and related crafts from somewhere in here.

***

On the creativity front, I'm really chuffed to have managed to complete TWO small items today.

The first, was this adaption to my watch. (left)

Our littlest cat, Shadow, (below left) has had a thing for my watch for quite some time now and regularly steals it in the night. The upshot of which is, as of this morning, the strap was completely unusable through the sheer amount of being grabbed in kitty teeth and hauled about.

I removed the old yellow (my favourite) faux leather strap and upcycled the watch itself with this keyring fob to give (I hope) a slightly more durable piece that I can interchange between belt loops, or even attach to my bag strap or purse when I'm out and about.

Left is the man himself - our wee stowaway who we discovered had moved in when we got back from our summer trip.








We've established he's about the same age as our other kitten, Mogwai and was roaming ferrol having lost/left his Mum around 6wks. Now that he's been treated for the worst case of worms I've ever seen, he's healthy and happily become a part of the family and is now more at home in a cosy domestic setting than out roaming.

The second thing that I have made today doesn't look like anything very much does it? (above right)

It's actually the start of a much bigger piece I've been putting off for MONTHS now, on the grounds that I "can't justify time working on that because it's for me" (- a habit I plan to loose for good this year!)

We were given a new (to us)

three-piece-suite about four months ago. It's ridiculously comfortable, but as you can see in the background of the photo, it's a very, shall we say, 'particular' sort of colour scheme and pattern, as well as in some hidden away areas, really rather worn. (Not to mention we'd just finished redecorating the living room, with a predominant palette of plum and yellow-gold-ish) So the plan is, that I will gradually recover it.

Having played about with various ideas, we've settled on making large patchwork throws that will either remain loose, or may be fixed in place to cover the suite.
The reason we're opting for patchwork, is that we have large blocks of colour on each wall, so any more big blocky colours would start looking wrong in our small room, so the patchwork will be made of very small pieces, in varying shades of both purple and yellow, to complement the other decor.

This piece then, will become the core piece of the settee cover. I've incorporated some left over streamers from our trip out this afternoon. Not sure why I did that - it was a whim. Perhaps I'm trying to conserve some of that wonderful creative energy we danced in this afternoon.



I'll be putting the rest of the photos up on Facebook in the next few minutes.
Tune in again tomorrow to see how we can build on this flying start!