Linda M Hartley

Washing and the scent of memory

Linda — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:23:47 +0000

Originally uploaded by bobsee

Here’s the washing at North Berwick waving to the famous harbour washing line in Cellardyke the other side of the Isle of May.

Washing.

There’s something about a line of clean washing blowing in the sun in a good sea breeze that gladdens my heart. The washing absorbs the sun and the sea and you get a hint of that when it’s gathered in. Great armfulls of cold, slightly damp fabric that smells of the clean salt sea wind.
When you come to iron it the washing will take the heat from the iron and start to give you back that gorgeous scent. The kitchen will fill with that heady, evocative smell of sun and salt air and it will be softer and nicer than any chemical could ever make it.
Eventually you, or someone you love, will wear that shirt, maybe weeks later and that faint clean, salt, smell will linger, taking you right back to that cold sunny day.
Via a great post on Heroes Not Zombies

Linda — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 12:25:10 +0000

I’ve had a strange few weeks since my last post on here. My December dreamboard didn’t quite bring the space, fire and creative energy I’d hoped for. December brought its own gifts and troubles quite apart from anything I might have wanted.
I’ve been questioning again just what this space is about. I’ve never been very keen on keeping a diary, much less a public one, so that’s a slightly uncomfortable fit.
And yet, I like to blog maybe I just enjoy writing. The dream board experiment was partly to see if it brought engagement with a wider community. From that point of view it sort of worked. People were kind and welcoming, generous with their comments. Six weeks later very few of them have stayed in my feedreader or my twitter and I suspect I haven’t stayed in theirs. Not enough common ground I suspect.
Where to find engagement then? I’ve become so used to this online world I miss the feeling of community interaction but I just can’t work out where to find it. I do know, though, that it is worth finding.
As for the projects in the last post. The main task continues and has had some success. Some of the UFOs just kind of quietly went ahead and formed themselves to the next stage without much thought on my part. So there’s a bit of learning. I can just wait and see what comes up next.
As for the vintage curtains, they should be back up later today. There might be a photo!

Clearing Away the Clutter

Linda — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:44:34 +0000

Clearing away clutter is a great way for me to really start to make progress with things. What things? Just about everything. My mind is a bit of a rag bag of cluttered unfinished projects at the moment.

Hmm, that’s familiar – when I used to sew my work basket was always overflowing with UFOs (Un Finished Objects!) and gorgeous bits of fabric that I couldn’t resist. Hours would be spent planning things I never had time to start let alone finish. So I made it a rule that I couldn’t start a new project or buy fabric, no matter how tempting, till I’d either finished or abandoned and thrown away (eek!) one from the stack. I think I need to re-introduce this rule but apply it to my web projects.

My main focus this month is working on a number of key phrases for our main properties, adding posts, tagging, back linking etc. It’s going quite well I think and I’m enjoying having identified goals to work to for once. Usually I’m much more free flow in what I do so this is an interesting challenge.

There are still the usual round of blog posts for other sites to get through but I’m shelving a couple of little tempting project that have been tickling at the back of my mind and draining creative energy for the last few weeks. Enough is going on already. No more new fabric till these projects are finished!

Oh and I’ve almost finished restoring my vintage curtains .

Muse, where are you?

Linda — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:23:20 +0000

So yesterday my spirit wished for energy but today had other plans. Today will be a day of getting by, of doing what is possible and accepting what is possible today is limited.
My muse has wandered off and I don’t know how to find it. I’m left with even less energy, an aching desire for sleep and comforting warmth. And then, of course, writing this I start to see what needs to be done. I need to be gentle with myself, comforting cups of herbal tea, small portions of good food. Now there, I just noticed I’ve a headache! I didn’t even notice it before. Ok so I’m off to put on a comfy soothing cardi, make a light lunch and a nice cup of roobosh. Later I’ll search for her again.

A nice cup of tea

Wish Casting Wednesday

Linda — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:31:28 +0000

Jamie’s prompt today for Wish Casting Wednesday is:

What is your spirit wishing for?

Sounds easy enough but I’m not used to asking my spirit questions so I’m finding it hard. (Skipping swiftly over intellectual worries about whether we have a spirit at all and if we do what it might be “Hello rational brain, nice to see you’re looking out for me but just relax, this might be fun “ )

My spirit seems to wish for Energy this coming week, it wants to fizz and pop, maybe even spark (ah, there’s that Sami fire again!).It’s a specific kind of energy, graceful and not forced. The kind of energy that burns bright and clear, that gets things done with ease and is purposeful not restless.

photo credit: ashfay
See other people’s wishes for the week at Jamie’s Wishcasting post

Cold Full Moon

Linda — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:54:40 +0000

See the flickr gallery for details of the individual images.

cold full moon dreamboard

In my board I see the clean, dry cold of a crispy morning, frozen rowan berries hiding their promise of life, the flash of a homecoming salmon. And 6 glorious weeks of not teaching! My relief and longing for the quiet calm of a frozen lake, my love of winter. I think it’s a time for taking stock and contemplation of what changes I’ll make in the coming year. A time to let my creativity recover and play.

I have a special love for that rowan berry felt bowl. I once had a coat made from fabric very like that. It was brought from Norway for me as a child and I loved it dearly. Seeing the bowl I could feel the rub of it against my fingers and just for a moment reconnect with that 8 year old who was fascinated by stories of the Sami. So I hope this month my creativity is going to spark and dance like the fires of the Sami on those long dark northern nights.

By the way, I’m not into the whole cosmic ordering stuff. I just see dream boards as a great tool for connecting with my much neglected, often ignored (both by me!) creative side.
You can see other people’s dream boards for this month via Jamie’s Blog

Sneezes and Wheezes

Linda — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:23:11 +0000

Today I am mostly….sneezing and sinusy. The day is dull and driech

Wheezes – in the old fashioned sense.

However, I am not really downhearted. A good wheeze used to mean a good method of doing something, a good trick or a good idea and there have been lots of those this week. These are just a few:

I have tickets to see the final dress rehearsal of a West End play tomorrow and I’m really excited about that!
The birch tree outside our dining room window still has golden leaves that are shining in the tiny bit of London sunshine.
One of my niche blogs proved itself yesterday and this means the start of another hopefully profitable venture.
I discovered a really useful tool for getting articles written more efficiently (write or die)
My class is nearly at the end of their course and things have gone well with them.
Ezine Articles have finally decided they quite like me and have approved a whole raft of articles of mine. So lots of nice juicy back links and maybe some human traffic too!
I discovered Likaholix which is a bit like a fun version of delicious.
photo credit: L`Yoshka

Short Stories

Linda — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:09:43 +0000

I’ve been writing mostly today, article for link backs to one of my main sites. Re-working old blog posts into fresh. Makes me think of spinning straw into gold LOL.
All this writing got me thinking about my own short stories. I have a stack of them and I’ve always meant to do ’something’ with them.
Today I sat down and re-read them. Amazingly I still like them and think that other people might too. So what to do with them?
Posting them on the blog isn’t quite right. They wouldn’t happily fit into the blog format and yet I find I would like to publish them somewhere online. If for no other reason than to preserve them. At the moment they exist only as printed copies.
Andy suggested making them into pdfs that people could download and read. I’m not sure anyone would ever bother but it’s a semi- attractive notion.
Anyone got any good ideas?

At #Tuttle struggling with the network. …

Linda — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:08:48 +0000

At #Tuttle struggling with the network. People hogging the connection with video casting I think.

Tough day for getting going, still got a…

Linda — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:41:03 +0000

Tough day for getting going, still got a sore throat/earache and low energy levels. Going for slow but steady fairly mindless actions today. More creative stuff will have to wait.
Still, I’m not disheartened. Progress and moving forward, but just slower than I’d like is OK.
Did I mention I love my Wordpress theme (P2) ? It makes quick blog posts so easy to pop up and replying to comments feels much more instant than doing it from the dashboard.