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 .

A nice cup of tea

]]> http://lindamhartley.co.uk/muse-where-are-you.html/feed 0 http://lindamhartley.co.uk/wish-casting-wednesday.html http://lindamhartley.co.uk/wish-casting-wednesday.html#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:31:28 +0000 Linda http://lindamhartley.co.uk/?p=122 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 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

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

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?

credit: Tim Green aka atoach

The Boy in the Chestnut Tree

She could see him sitting in the chestnut tree, his dark head moving amongst the leaves. She could just make out the frown of concentration;almost see the pink of his tongue escaping from his pinched lips. He moved and the leaves rustled. Gone. There was no boy.

Once there had been a boy. He had sat, in the high branches of the tree, listening to the ships, far out in the Solway. The old tree had the best reception on the farm. The day his strange listening equipment arrived he had wandered all over the land looking for the exact spot.

He read bits out of the newspaper aloud to them over and over until Father had gone near daft with him and told him to forget this nonsense. Undeterred he saved all his pennies, did extra work for other farmers and sent off for the equipment. He kept trying to explain about Marconi, radio and why it was so important. He wanted them to see the new world he could see coming. To them it just seemed like a boy’s fad, soon to be left behind like the clockwork train set.

Her father went about the farm without his usual cheery whistling. The silence grew, harsh and tense. Only the boy was happy, dreaming in his tree. He had always been The Boy. His name was never used. It wasn’t needed. The softness in her father’s voice when he said “Boy” had meant more than any name.

There were weeks of argument after his birthday. He wanted to leave the school and get on with life. Mother had hoped for something grand, a doctor in the family, perhaps. The rector at the Academy said it was a shame to waste his talent for maths and science and spoke of university. His father would have been happy for the boy to give up his studies and join him on the farm but that was not what he wanted. The noises in the ether called to him and he wanted to be away. Now, at fourteen, he was near a man. He would go.

After a week a letter came from Glasgow. He was training and enjoying the work in the telegraph office. After a month a letter came from London. He was doing well and London was a fine place. The telegraph office was a fine job for a boy and he was happy. The letters called her Mouse, just like he had and told soon she could come and see the sights for herself. Her mother prattled on, consoling herself the boy was fine. London was not such a bad place. She lived there herself before her Andre had enough to claim her as his bride, a Scotch scullery maid become a farmer’s wife.  Father said little, and nothing about the boy.

Then a letter came from France. They were not to worry. The boy could not have stayed. He was a strapping farm lad, big for his fourteen years. The girls in the office with their teasing had been bad enough but then there was a white feather on his desk. After that he had to go. The war needed men who understood the new world. He was a Royal Engineer, a sapper, no ordinary soldier. He would be safe.

All through the war the letters came. Once he even came himself and brought a London girl with him. Her name was Mabel and when all this was over they’d be married. Mouse would come and stay with them in Peckam and see the sights.

But the war went on and the letters changed. They were from someone she didn’t know anymore. A man who’d seen this he didn’t care to speak about. Sometimes they were cold and brisk, asking after their health, as if they were strangers. After he moved into the tanks the letters changed again.

Now they were always about the farm, the land and childhood, no mention of a future, only the past.He wrote of the mist on the Solway and the call of the geese at night.

The Armistice Dance was about to start in the village. She was getting ready when she looked out the window and saw a boy in a uniform cycle up the farm track, past the chestnut tree, and she knew. There was no Boy. Safe in his tank just a few hours before the cease fire he was blown to bits.

She didn’t go to that dance but she went to many others. Every step she danced she knew he’d never dance again. Everywhere she went she heard the sound of music and the voices he had only dreamed of were soon everywhere. Only the farm was quiet, only there was silence. Her father had become an old man. He didn’t understand this new world, he didn’t understand this wild new daughter. No one would ever call her Mouse again.

Looking up through the branches of the chestnut tree she could almost see him there, his head turned away from her, listening to something she could not hear. On the farm nothing moved. There was no boy. She turned away and did not look back. She would not remember him with silence but with life, and music, and the joy of the new world.

In Memorium

Sapper  Andrew Thomas Wilson (Boy) 1900 – 1918

White feather