I checked the OU website and found that my result is available for the A215 creative writing course that I completed this year. I’m really pleased – 80% average for my continual assessment and 72% for the examinable component. Perhaps I can write after all. Now, where did I put my pen?
Author Archives: Carole
Home Sweet Home
It’s drizzling. My chest is heaving from walking up the steepest, slipperiest steps I’ve ever encountered. Even when we get to the road, I have to hold Rick’s hand as I feel vertigous. This is Stephen Street where we are meeting the agent to view our first property. The rain is dripping off my hood. We walk past a part-boarded up window of a house with a rabbit hutch outside, and another with a For Sale board up. I already know I don’t want to live here.
We walk back down to the agent’s office and he drives us to another property in Todmorden. I’ve never been there, but I can’t see out of the car windows as they are steamed up. The house is cold and smells of gas – but the only gas it uses is the gas fire. It has storage heaters (the first models ever invented) and an electric hob. And no shower.
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Through the drizzle, we viewed endless houses that were beautifully painted in magnolia, with laminate floors or cream carpets and smart new kitchens. All the cupboard doors hid white goods (which we don’t need) so that there was no storage space for food. The paint hid (badly) the damp patches. The beauty of these places was skin deep. And the stairs – how does anyone get furniture up there?
There was just one house that we had seen details for that might do. We phoned to view. They had to contact the tenants. The tenants didn’t phone back. We drove round to look at the outside. It was perfect – a quiet neighbourhood, up a gentle hill, views across both sides of the Calderdale Valley. Meanwhile another agent phoned to cancel a viewing for a property that had been applied for. Rented places get snapped up fast. So we drove through the rain to the agent and started the application process anyway. I practically begged them to hold it until we’d seen it. The agent looked at me pityingly. We finally got a viewing – and it was perfect. Big, warm, comfy. Not at all stylish, but we don’t care. It has a garden, a shed, a greenhouse, compost bin and water butt. Bliss. 
We’ve found a new home!
More news to follow.
Scary Woman
I started teaching myself to draw in 2003 with Betty Edwards’ book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. She suggests that you do some pre-instructional drawings before you start so that you have something to compare your progress with. Well, here is my pre-instructional self-portrait drawn three years ago. I do hope I’ve come on since then, and I also hope this doesn’t look like me!
It all begins here …
I’m feeling rather strange this week. Yesterday was my last day at work, and I spent it surrounded by balloons and good wishes. I feel very sad to be leaving my work colleagues as I’ve enjoyed their company over the last two years.
However, we are moving on. Today, we booked to view seven properties to rent in Calderdale. We are travelling up to Hebden Bridge next Monday and staying for a week to view places. There may be more that come up between now and then, so we are hopeful of securing somewhere suitable. I also plan to visit Todmorden College to see if I can transfer my art and design studies to them.
I have also taken on a piece of careers writing work for AGCAS. I need to find three ceramicists/pottery designers to interview. Anyone know any potters or ceramicists?
Busyness Update
My business cards arrived yesterday. I feel like I’m finally in business! Full marks to Goodprint – the card quality is very good and the print as good as it could be given the quality of the artwork I gave them (I’ve still got a lot to learn).
I’ve spent this afternoon writing my pricing list and designing a letterhead to match the business card. I now have an A4 price list on headed paper sitting next to me on the printer.
This morning, I saw a client for a second session. I love this work. I get so much satisfaction from helping people figure out what they want from life.
Yesterday I got to grips with planning what I need to do for my business. I created an overwhelming number of postits, most of which fell into the ‘start-up’ category. After an initial panic, I managed to sort out a few which need to be done first – one of which was my pricing strategy – tick.
I’ve also been sketching people. This week in art class, we sketched from a skeleton and from sports photos. We are learning how the body is put together, and how it moves. I need to make legs longer – I always draw people with short little legs. Perhaps that’s because I’ve got short legs 😉
STOP PRESS!
A date has been set for the Season of Inspiration writing course for next year – 19th February. See here for details. Will I sign up? Probably, depending upon when we are likely to be moving. But I would so like to get writing again. Anyone else up for it?
A business card is born
This week in art class, we started to look at visual communication. This involved getting lots of magazines, ripping out pictures and text and sticking them together in odd combinations. Great fun. It also taught us something about how images and text together can be presented on the page to communicate a mood or a story – design basics.
Which gave me the confidence to have a go at designing my own business card. I’ve used Paintshop Pro (which you can get at a fraction of the price of something like Photoshop). However, there isn’t much documentation to help you use it as a design tool rather than a piece of photo manipulation software, so I had to do a lot of ‘click and see’ type learning to find out how to use it. I’m quite pleased with the results though.
I’ve uploaded the artwork to Goodprint and ordered my first batch of business cards. They do 400gsm which is a good weight, but I’ve yet to see the quality. Fingers crossed.
Spoon
Another challenge that is harder than it sounds! I fancy having a go at this in paint, or with black paper and white pencil. Maybe tomorrow. It’s been a long week.
We bought these silver teaspoons from a junk shop in Masham, North Yorkshire. It’s one of those shops you can get lost in for hours, and we usually do.
Egg Box II and the Shop
What is there to do on a grey wet afternoon except draw? Realising that I’d cheated on the egg box challenge (not reading it properly!) I thought I should challenge myself to draw the box open rather than closed. I have enormous respect for anyone who has attempted this challenge in paint. It is hard enough in pencil.
I’ve also drawn a previous challenge – our local store. We are lucky enough to have a local Co-op in the village, and it does a great job of stocking most things that we may need.
