A Woman's Work is Never Done

I understand that now. Now that I have a baby. It would be impossible to count the number of times I have to put down what I've started, as Megan unexpectedly wakes up after a shorter than usual nap, or when she suddenly misses me in the other room. The house is full of unfinished jobs. Piles of dirty laundry, yet to be washed. Baskets of clean laundry, yet to be hung on the line. Dirty dishes; an overflowing compost caddy; squashed strawberries on the floor under Meg's highchair; clothes waiting to be photographed and put on eBay. Upstairs there is further chaos. Papers strewn across the floor in the bedroom, waiting to be filed. Toys littering the landing. Nappies and nappy inserts, jumbled in a heap. A random pair of green overalls.

Outside, there are jobs which will never truly be completed. The cardboard amassing in the pole barn must be torn up and layered with the grass cuttings in the compost bin. I am trying to get it done before more boxes are added to the stack, but who am I kidding? It's like trying to race the sun. My (slightly OCD) need for a ticked box, and a task fulfilled is being somewhat challenged. I am trying to roll with it, trying to learn a freedom and flexibility. It's not easy, but I am enjoying the slow process of giving up what appears to be a very linear mindset.

Today I re-cut the edges of one of last year's vegetable beds, took out the grass roots which had been threatening to engulf the soil in a sea of green and then planted out the beetroot seedlings. Even without digging over the bed (I took out what few weeds there were), it was still quite hard work. Another thing to have to do every year, to every bed (we looked into making raised beds, but so far it seems too expensive at about £30 per bed. We'll have to try to source much cheaper wood than we had in mind).

Our lawn is a jungle, with long grass more than a foot tall. I almost lost Meggie in the grass today (not really, I just said that for effect).

Nine months old, and almost ready to play at getting lost in the foliage.

A woman's work is never done. I looked it up here.
It says: Prov. Housework and raising children are jobs that have no end.

I think I need to work on acquiring a love for things which never end. Things which are half finished. Things which are on-going. Things which do not tick the boxes.

Garland Gift

My friend Kellee at Yellow Lamp has been spreading her magic again, this time with a Garland Giveaway. These beautiful, soft and colourful felt garlands have been handmade with love, and I was so excited to receive one of my very own through the post! I am thinking about incorporating the delightful string of bright circles into a mobile for baby Squiggles (though it's lovely on its own!) - if it works out, I'll post pics when it's done.

It's amazing how exciting it is (even at the age of 32!) to receive personal post (ie., not bills or bank statements) - a handwritten envelope (decorated in this case!), a letter, maybe something else... I have always loved to write and receive letters and plan to be doing it a lot more often now that I have more time. Though I suppose once the baby's arrived, my time may disappear once more! Anyway, thanks Kellee! :D


As evidence of my passion for handwritten correspondence, I have collected several bags full of letters over the years, some of them must be over twenty years old by now. I've never found it easy to let go of these personal symbols of love and friendship, so they have multiplied and started to weigh upon me... During the dark, rainy days earlier this week I managed to go through most of them, reading them one last time before putting them aside to recycle. Or burn, I'm not sure I want anyone accidentally coming across them and reading them! It felt strange to be getting rid of love letters from French exchange students dating back to 1991, but what need do I have for them now?!


Ah... I feel lighter already!
:D

Pregnant Pause

Thursday 18th Feb.

Sorry for my silence lately, I realise that I am now at least 25 days behind in the 100 Day Project, and I am soon to add several more days to that number. This has been a hectic couple of months, finishing off Ember's 5th album, planning and organising our 10 Year Celebration concerts, and generally trying to tie up loose ends before we take a long break from playing together at the end of the month. We're excited about moving on to other projects, but I expect we'll be doing some grieving too, once the reality sinks in.

This morning I am preparing to leave home for our last UK tourette - taking in Burnham-on-Sea, Camden, Cambridge and Hitchin over this weekend, and then we have two final gigs in Holland on the 27th and 28th. It's impossible find time and internet access to update the blog when we are away, so I am resigning myself to catching up in March, hope that's OK with you! :)

There is another exciting development which has been partially responsible for the pregnant pause, which is just that - Phil and I are 14 weeks pregnant and have been given a due date of 16th August. So a new life beckons, in more ways than one! :) I've been thinking (and worrying!) about the blogging (and all of the catching up I might have to do!) and have realised that this 100 Day Project has fitted almost exactly with my pregnancy - no wonder I quickly developed an obsession with de-cluttering - isn't it all about nesting, somehow? The early exhaustion makes sense too, no wonder Christmas was so draining... We are both really happy (and nervous!), and hoping that it all goes smoothly.

Well, I shall be back at home next week, but won't promise anything, but you never know, I may surprise myself. Early March (once I return from Holland) will see me with more time, and that's when I hope to catch up properly.

Bye for now.
:)

Spring Clean

Day Fifty Eight.

What a lovely sunny day! Perfect for staying indoors and sorting out the piles of STUFF in our upstairs sitting room, right? Er - right. I did manage to get out and enjoy a bit of a walk as well as visiting my friend Jenny and her 6 month old baby, but before that I had a successful day of Getting Stuff Done.

You might have liked to have seen a before and after picture, but due to the camera battery situation, that was impossible. And when I looked at the mess before I started I was actually quite glad that no one would ever see it! It was disgraceful, to say the least!

As I have hardly any time before I go out to what I'm expecting to be a lovely party with music and food, I'll keep it brief:

I fixed the hoover (again - the sucky part keeps falling off, but I managed to re-attach it for the time being) and sucked up a ridiculous amount of cat hair as I cleared new areas of the room.

I've moved lots of things which I won't need for the next month (but wish to keep) downstairs into the spare bedroom, ready to go to the smallholding. These included our very few Christmas decorations (we usually collect holly and ivy and foliage in general, so have limited tinsel and a few red and gold baubles); the bag of carefully selected teddies; some wooden CD racks; and some more books.

I cleared the HORRIBLE hexagonal coffee table we have hated sine we were given it by a friend who was moving house and had no room for it, and Phil Took It Away, never to be seen again. Now there will be one less ugly clutter magnet in our world.

There was a whole pile of scraps of paper with people's phone numbers and addresses on them, and I've 'downloaded' them into my diary. At least now I might be able to find them if I need them, ha ha.

The folders full of the accounts were out, all over the sofa, so I put them away - out of sight and mind.

I can't believe I can see so much floor now, and moving around the room has ceased to be an obstacle course. If you could see it, you'd be amazed. :)

Better go and get ready now - in the coming days I hope to slowly catch up with myself and fill in the missing days... That is the plan, anyway. Maybe if I do two a day... Got a gig in Walthamstow tomorrow night (so sorry you can't make it, Tammy, I was looking forward to meeting you in person!), so leaving before noon - not sure what I can achieve before that time, but if I don't have time to blog, I shall write it up early next week.

Robot/Zombie

Day Forty Seven.

You don't want to know what I've been doing ALL DAY. It made me feel like a cross between a robot, a data entry clerk, and a zombie. I was preparing the songs for mixing, and it doesn't half take a LONG TIME.

Like I said, YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW the detail, it's all very tedious.
But now that it's done, rest assured that I have de-cluttered my computer by deleting all of the unnecessary GarageBand and iTunes files. I hadn't realised how many versions of a song one goes through when making an album, sometimes eight or ten - over time. Well, the old versions have gone now, and my computer is a lot happier.

I'm looking forward to having done the final mixes so that I can be rid of the last few remaining back-up versions. And of course, by then we'll also be a huge way towards having the finished product in our grubby little paws.

Good night!

Bottles and Jars

Day Forty.

Horray! Day forty! I can't believe the time is passing so quickly. By the time the One Hundred Days Project is complete, I'm hoping that we'll be settling into the smallholding. Not only that, but Ember's ten years of endless touring will be over, and there will be time to breathe, stay still awhile, and put down some proper roots. I have been trying to cut down on our (OK, my - !) belongings, ready for the move. Once you get into the swing of it, it gets easier. Well, no, there are good days and bad days, I suppose, if I'm to be truly honest.

Today was a good day in some ways, and a bad one in others. I decided to tackle the built-in kitchen cupboard, which could accurately be compared to Pandora's box:

Chaos!

Disaster area!

War zone!

DANGER
KEEP
OUT!

So I took everything out, gave the shelves a little wipe, got rid of the empty (empty! Who - I would like to know - WHO puts empty packages BACK INTO THE CUPBOARD?!) boxes and cleaned out the jars with nothing more than scrapings left at the bottom, and replaced the remaining items. In a slightly more orderly way:

Ignore the middle shelf in the picture below, it's packed full of our tenant's food :)

Yeah, now that I look at the pictures it seems like I've hardly made a difference, but it was quite a satisfying task, and it served to remind me of what we actually have (mostly lurking at the back) and now I feel that I am equipped to start eating through some of the emptier jars...

I feel better, anyway, ha ha :)

Music Magazines

Day Thirty Nine.

The sitting room is also my office - much to Phil's continuous dismay. I must admit that the clutter of boxes, folders, files and paperwork (not to mention all the random miscellaneous little things - argh!) is an ongoing eyesore for me too, but we've never really had the spare cash to buy appropriate storage 'solutions' (as they seem to be known nowadays - years ago people didn't have 'storage solutions', they just had cupboards, and that seemed to work for them). I'm not going to post a photo of the mess, but trust me, I'm working on it :)

The project I set myself today was to get rid of all of the magazines that have been piling up, most of them barely read. As a member of the Musician's Union, I receive their quarterly 'Musician' magazine. It often has some interesting and helpful features, ranging from guides to finding the right agent to tips on home-recording, but a lot of the articles are fairly dry. The PRS (Performing Right Society) magazine is also quarterly, and somehow I find that I've not read the last issue before the new one arrives. And so they grow in number, taking up space and making me feel that familiar guilt. Then there's the 'Properganda' magazine, sent to us by Proper Music (our distributors) every so often, and which is just what it says on the tin: a platform to showcase and advertise the music and new releases of Proper's artists, which on our 'entry' level means that we would have to pay them to promote any of our releases, and possibly write the reviews ourselves! It was an eye-opener which made me realise that a lot of the music media today works on the same (commercial) model.

I got quite good at speed-reading today! So that I wouldn't feel too wasteful, I tore out the articles which may still be useful in the coming months, but managed to put most of the pile into the recycling bag. Here's a pic of just a few of the glossy lovelies which will no longer be gathering dust and snagging the eye:


Off they go... I'm sure the reinforcements will be plopping through the letterbox soon enough.

Exorcising the Attic

Day Thirty Five.

There's been a growing feeling that something is weighing down on me, a dark shadow is looming over us both. Sometimes figurative speech is as close to the mark as you can get. It's emanating from the attic. Where all the carefully packed boxes are, gathering dust. They've been there, virtually untouched, since we moved them out of our last house. Possessions have a weight, possessions drag on the psychology of the owner: with ownership comes a strange costly responsibility.

I feel it!

I have so many things. Thus the reason for this 'de-cluttering' theme. Apart from his tools (he's a builder) and brewing equipment, Phil tells me he owns about two boxes' worth of stuff. I can believe it. He's not a lover of books, as I am; he has no crafty hobbies (whereas I have far too many!); he has no instruments other than a beaten up guitar (strung backwards due to left-handedness) - I have three violins, two guitars and a miscellaneous banjo, amongst other things... When Phil moved in with me at our last house, he arrived in a friend's Land Rover, and before I knew it he was calling out "OK, cheers for the lift - see you!" I was thinking "Where's all his stuff?" Then he burst his way into the sitting room, scarcely visible behind the biggest box I've ever seen, and that was it. One (albeit giant) box, and he was moved in.

Back to the task in hand. Up in the attic I counted twenty boxes in all, mostly books, but the other random things included: one hand-operated Singer sewing machine, an ancient and huge accordion (which is unplayable due to its awesome weight!), a chimney flue (?), a box of random CDs which I have kept as back-up in case my laptop dies), some camping equipment and a big bag of tangled miscellaneous cables.

I have no desire to get rid of any books at this stage,but I am looking forward to going through the boxes at the smallholding - who knows, the books could serve to insulate our sitting room walls once we have renovated the house and put up a whole load of shelves! Our current plan is to prepare the items we plan on taking to the smallholding, ready for when the snow disappears. We want to clear most of the stuff out of this house, ready for the last touches prior to putting it on the market. We are so lucky to be able to move all of the boxes out before the sale!

Phil helped me to get everything down, and we carried it all into our spare bedroom (recently vacated by a tenant) - I know it's all still there, but it feels good to know that it's gradually working its way towards the door. Phil even sorted through his cables and has minimised the camping things, so the pile is getting smaller.

After I'd swept the attic, I climbed down the ladder, closing the hatch behind me. "No need to go up there again," I thought to myself, and you know what? I think the heaviness started to fade.

PS - No photos, I'm afraid. You wouldn't want to see a picture of our attic anyway. And capturing that 'dark shadow' I mentioned? Impossible with a flash :)

Flipping Floppies

Day Thirty Six.


Three and a half inch floppies...

What were they all about? And more to the point, why do I still have about twenty five of them in a messy, regularly collapsing pile which not only takes up valuable space, but which also offends the eye several times daily?!

Why, indeed. As I recall, by the time they were officially well and truly outdated (some years ago, ha ha!), I tried to get the files off them and onto a memory stick, but without much success. By this time the disks were claiming that they needed formatting, or that their files were corrupt, but I couldn't give them up for dead as they contained rather a lot of my own stories, poems and song lyrics - things I would hate to lose. So I kept them, hoping that one day I would find a machine futuristic enough to be capable of solving the technological blunders of the past.

And the pile kept being knocked over, but I got used to that - it became a familiar routine to reassemble those dusty squares without even registering what they were any more.

Today I gathered them up, along with my memory stick, and took myself over the road to the library, where the lovely ladies provided me with a floppy disk reader which could be attached to the computer via the USB port. Very modern! Getting the info off the disks wasn't easy, and I think I've lost some bits of writing, but the important thing is that I've gained most of it, and can now throw away (alright, put in the recycling bag) those horrible plastic squares which have been bothering me since I bought them sometime in the year 2000.

A Most Difficult Goodbye

Day Thirty Three.

When my parents were getting ready to move from their Pembrokeshire farm to the smallholding, Phil and I helped them to get everything out of their attic. We helped them to go through the boxes - some of them had not been unpacked for over twenty years! - and sorted the items into four big piles: to keep, to sell on eBay, to take to the charity shop, and: to bin. Amongst the glassware, old suitcases, framed prints and wedding photos there was a big, bulging, green bin bag full of teddies. You may well laugh, but seeing their little faces after so long filled me with dread - because I knew it would be wrong to hang on to them, but getting rid of them would leave me feeling guilty forever! Why? What could possibly make a thirty-two year old stall when it came to throwing away the things of childhood?

OK, I'll tell you why. My brother and I never had the view that teddies were just cuddly, fluffy things which were a comfort before you went to sleep. No. We made an entire Teddies World. We had a Newsagents (a specially altered cardboard box) which sold the newspapers we wrote in tiny handwriting, a Video Store (a two storied cardboard box, as I recall, with accommodation above the shop) which rented out the many "videos" we created (like cartoons) in frames on strips of paper, which were pulled through a "video-player" (a small cardboard screen which showed one frame at a time... There was a School, and everyone had their own handmade exercise books, a Bank (Big Ted was the manager - funny that!) with "real" coins and notes. Some of the naughty teddies smoked, and I remember going through the process by adding red felt tip to the end (when it was being "lit"), then cutting about millimetre off at a time as the "cigarette" was smoked down to the filter. Each time you cut a bit off, you had to add the red pen again, to show it was still burning.

We played out many, many scenarios with the teddies; homelessness, scandals at school, running a successful businesses, struggling with debt, dealing with crooked politicians, amongst many others. So you see, the teddies really were a big part of my childhood, they were our closest friends, and throwing them away would be the greatest betrayal...

Despite this, I thought I'd better bite the bullet and at least take them out of the bag to have a look at who was in there, and to see what condition they were in. I lined them up, and found myself greeting each of them by name. They looked... well-loved. Some had ears or arms missing, others had holes with the stuffing poking out. Some actually looked OK. I decided I would have to be quick. Choosing the least characterful first, I started putting them gently back into the bag, and that's how I was left with the ten threadbare favourites, the ones who were the main characters in all of the teddy episodes, if you like.

Here are a few of them, posing for their picture in the sun:


The others will go to the nice people at the Dog Shop, I'll let them decide what to do with them.

DVD and Youtube Killed the Video

Day Twenty Four.

Another easy one today, but it's all good. I figured it out as I lay totally devoid of energy in bed: if I get rid of something I don't want today, then it's a success. So I dragged myself over to the video shelf and did the first purge (of many, I hope - this was only a small one)...


Some of these were bought at charity shops for Phil - he loves Bottom and Steve Coogan - but he won't miss them. He hates the video player anyway, and I can't remember the last time we actually sat down and watched a video. I think I'd like to watch some of the remaining videos before giving them back to the charity shop though... Or am I just making excuses not to get rid of them?! We shall see... :)

Boxing Day: The Story of One Box

Day Twenty Three.

This is going to sound stupid.
I was so knackered, that I thought I'd do a very easy job today. Since we cleared all sorts of crap into our bedroom to get it out of the way for Christmas, I found myself tripping over this one annoying thing every time I went into the room.

It's this:


Nothing wrong with brushing up on your Welsh, that's not the issue.
This is the stupid thing about it:


There's only ONE tape in the damned box. And it's not even mine. I found it in my last house after we moved in. There was only one tape in the box THEN. I have kept it for five or six years! And I have since bought another, full set. Why am I holding onto this piece of useless, guilt-inducing rubbish?

Well, that's the last you'll hear of it. That's IT. It's going in the plastic recycling.

Getting the House Ready for the Family Visit

Day Nineteen.

Bought loads of food for Christmas and a couple of presents, cleared the landing of all the boxes and general crap which has accumulated, started sorting out the bedrooms where my parents and brother will be staying, had a lovely long bath...

Now waiting for Phil to make us some tasty pizzas, whilst watching some Derren Brown.
It's good to relax! :)

Christmas Cards are GO!

Day Thirteen.

I've got to admit that I've jumped into this whole "Do Specific De-cluttering Task; Blog About It" thing rather naively, without any initial concept of the amount of time and effort required on a daily basis by what is, in reality, two tasks. I can only drop my jaw and gape in wonder at the wonderful work done by two of my favourite bloggers - Beth and Tammy - each of whom has a small child to deal with, as well as all the usual household tasks, as well as the daily blog and One Hundred Day Project. Argh! Much respect to you guys.

My boyfriend has started complaining that he never gets to spend any time with me. True, I am a workaholic, but this blog thing takes the biscuit, I reckon. I'm loving it though! Apart from the anguish it causes.

So today, I killed two - no wait! - fed two birds with one grain. As the washing machine is broken, I've been going to my mum's house to do it, but only once it has amassed itself into a giant pile of offensive sights and smells. While I was waiting for each load to finish, I wrote my Christmas cards, which will assuage my Christmas-themed guilt no end. I don't normally do Christmas cards. Or at least, if I do, I don't do very many. Raised with a strong work ethic, I usually feel that I should make them all by hand, deliver them by hand, accompanied by a home-made mince pie or somesuch. Then I run out of time, and quickly write out about half a dozen shop-bought cards. It takes a long time! I am not happy to send a card which has a pre-printed message, which is preceded by 'To Bob' and followed by 'From Joe' - what's the point in that?! So I like to write a little in each card, hardly a catch up, but something personal at least.


Here is my stash of ready cards - all that is needed is Phil's signature, and the envelopes have yet to be addressed. Getting there, getting there...

Day Twelve

Day Twelve.

The smallholding is in the bag!!!!
Contracts have been exchanged, finally, we'll have the keys next Tuesday, just in time for Christmas, oooh, I'm so excited! Phil and I went out to the pub and had a couple of special-occasion Whiskeys tonight. Then we went wild and had a lovely meal at the Taj Mahal Indian restaurant. Feels so good to celebrate after such a long time of waiting for news.

Very full now. Phil is already asleep beside me. Completely conked out. I fear I must soon hit the sack too. Will catch up tomorrow. x :)

EDIT: This news meant that I could do some appropriate de-cluttering - I deleted all of the digital smallholding brochures from my laptop, and put all of the physical brochures in the recycling. That's one less folder full of pointless information, horray!


Goodbye to all the other potential properties, none of which were quite as compelling as the one we hope to own with my parents next Tuesday! :)

There. That was easy.

Wardrobe Disaster Area

Day Eleven.

Not yet run out of things to do and areas to de-clutter. No, it'll be a long time before that happens. And way before that time comes around, the beautifully clear areas will be piled high with junk again, no doubt, so we'll be back at square one.

I've had a long and stressful day. The smallholding we're buying with my parents is still not ours, and we are starting to feel that after months (and years!) of hoping and dreaming it may yet fall through. But they're meeting with the solicitors tomorrow, so who knows, maybe everyone's finally ready to exchange contracts and set a date for completion.

Anyway, here's my project for today - the horrible open-fronted disaster that currently stores our clothes in a permanent state of chaos:


I'm so tired I can't even muster a joke about it. It makes our bedroom so untidy. One day ("When we're on the smallholding..." as we keep saying to each other, making ourselves and each other absolutely ridiculous promises) we'll have a bedroom which will serve only two purposes - to be a relaxing space to hang out together, and a calm place in which to sleep. There will be NO clutter, no tangled visions of hell in sight. The clothes stored therein will be behind doors, preferably smooth white doors, or lovely, simple doors made of lovely, simple wood. There will be no bookcases, these will all be DOWNSTAIRS. Perhaps one or two books may enter the bedroom, but only if they are currently being read. There will be a laundry basket, with a lid. The walls will be white, or cream; one wall may be deep red. There will be no overhead lights, only bedside lamps and perhaps some uplighters. Of course, as ever, there will be no television, but I'm betting we'll each have our laptops in there upon an evening. That's a given. :)

This is the tidy (or tidier) version:


Oh, I wish it had doors. Or a curtain, or a cover of some kind. Something to keep all of that random visual activity from getting into my brain! Ah well, when we're on the smallholding...

Taking the Weight Off the Windowsill

Day Ten.

It's not easy on the eye. You walk into a room and there are piles of random stuff everywhere. There are no clear surfaces to be seen. Entering through the pinhole of the pupil, the clutter starts to penetrate the brain, and eventually the entire body is stifled. You start to feel depressed, though you can't seem to put your finger on the reason for slow, all-engulfing stagnation.

I heard an urban myth about a hoarder who filled his house from floor to ceiling with stuff. He kept old newspapers in giant heaps, books, clothes, furniture and things which no longer had a use. Each room was a carefully built fortress, with a narrow pathway from one door to the next. One day, the milkman noticed that the bottles were accruing on the doorstep, each one sourer than the last. He raised the alert, and the police broke into the house when it became clear that no one was coming to answer the door. They eventually found the hoarder dead. He wasn't easy to find, within the maze, but they had followed their noses. When they found him, they quickly realised the cause of death: he had been picking his way over one of the massive piles of random crap, had slipped and fallen into it, became stuck tight, and had died slowly, imprisoned by his own weakness for things. It sends a shiver through me every time I think of it!

So today I thought I'd attack the windowsill in our upstairs sitting room. It's been bothering me for a long time. Here's how it looked before I started (oh, the shame!):

I found a whole array of different random things:
Used batteries (Phil insists we keep them as they CAN be recharged - did you know that?! - if you use a very SLOW, old-school charger - that way they won't overhead and explode), broken headphones, out-of-date malaria pills, a small record collection (the records will go straight to the Dog Shop - I don't even have a record player!) which I got for free, some copied CDs (they've gone onto iTunes), a couple of nice blank books made with handmade paper (never used as somehow their niceness makes me afraid to mar them with words or sketches), some very old bank statements and phone bills (why am I displaying them on the windowsill?!), DVDs I have yet to watch and a few Desmond Morris hardback books which could just as well go on the book shelves in our bedroom. Oh, and shit-loads of coins from various countries and eras... from Ireland, Morocco and India... Euros which could be used next time I go to the continent... old pennies and five-pence pieces (why?!), and a whole bunch of current one- and two-pence pieces (I know who put those there - men are not capable of parting with pennies - it's too embarrassing, apparently).

Not a great pic, but you get the idea :)

Might put some plants up there soon.

Topping and Tailing Tracks

Day Seven.


Yes indeed, I have organised the tracks for the new album! I hope this will be allowed to pass as de-cluttering! I've been deleting unwanted tracks, and nipping off the beginnings and endings of every single recorded track on every single song. Which means there will be no unwanted throat-clearing, rustling, twitching or space-bar sounds on any of the songs, horray! It's all sounding very lovely now. The sound is clear and pure, apart from the occasional crackle from the fire, the odd tweeting bird outside the window, and the obvious jets roaring around the Mach Loop faster than the speed of sound. No, amazingly, we managed to avoid the latter, as well as the unexpected phone calls and slammed doors somewhere in the depth of the house. A miracle!

It took about two hours to complete this task, as well as composing a list of what each track on each song consisted of. Now it's much easier to see what has yet to be added to each song. I spent a couple of hours recording guitar and violin parts for 'I'll Be There' (working title) and I'm feeling pretty pleased with the results. I'm afraid I can't put them up here, partly because I don't know how to, but also because we want to wait until it's ready before we unveil the finished album. I can share some screen clips though! The one at the top of this post is our version of Woody Guthrie's 'Do Re Mi,' still relevant in these days of economic uncertainty.

And the one below is mine - 'I'll Be There' - the four tracks on the right are fiddle (recorded twice with two microphones each time) and I'm very excited about that addition to the song - even though the violin is an integral part of our sound, somehow it seems to be the last thing you'd expect to hear at the end of this song :)


Side note: Originally I had thought I might need to take an actual photo of my screen, but a quick search on Mac Help revealed 'Grab' to me - a tool which can be used to capture a window, or even your entire screen. Very handy indeed! That reminds me, yesterday Tall Paul came round to use our wi-fi, in orderhook up to Skype and have a logistical conversation with his web designer. He said to me "I wish there was a way I could see his screen! This would be so much quicker!" so I told him about the 'Share My Screen' button on Skype. It wasn't available on his version, but once he'd updated it and downloaded the latest version - there it was. The miracles of technology never cease to surprise and delight :)

Oh, by the way, I'd like to introduce you to John Whipple, bare-footed bluesman and songwriter extraordinaire from Salt Lake City, Utah. Here's his Myspace page and here's his blog. He's just joined The Tangled Yarn crew. I got to hang out with him in SLC this summer, where I recorded a bit of fiddle on the track 'Too Good for Me' on his latest album 'Bible Milk.'

If you'd like to check out my music, you'll find it on Ember's Myspace page, and our website.
(Can't fault a bit of harmless self-promotion!)

Day Six of One Hundred

Day Six.

Well. It's been a long day, but a good one.
I took the cassettes (this is the LAST you'll hear of them!) to the Dog Shop, and didn't stop to look about and be tempted by more crap.

I cleaned the hoover filter and hoovered our bedroom, bathroom and the stairs. This is how horrible it looked before I sorted it out:


I reckon there was enough cat fur to make another entire cat, at least. Nice. I mistook more than one mega hairball for Jekyll. OK, I didn't really. :)

The yukka plants have been looking really ropey, so I stripped off the dead leaves. Phil put them in the woodburner ready to be kindling for our next cosy fire.













I bought a two huge bags full of fresh vegetables from the market, and did something I've been meaning to do for months now - I went outside onto the garden and collected a giant bunch of kale and winter greens, and made a nice big pot of soup. :)

I was so excited I didn't think to take a photo...

At 4:30pm we went up to Bec's to do some more recording... Nearly there now, the album is taking shape, in a lovely low-fi way. It feels so good to be recording it ourselves, so much less stress!

Ooo, before I go, I would like to point you towards some of the '100 Days to Make Me a Better Person' blogs I'm really enjoying at the moment - it feels great to connect with other people who are getting into this project!

The Yellow Lamp, The Heartful Blogger, My Name is Beth.

Signing off. :)

Discovering My Musical Influences

Day Five.

Oh, BOY.

I've been listening to the tapes I held onto yesterday.
I didn't expect to find such a huge range of sonic treasures! Well, OK, not treasures exactly, but such a variety of different worlds for my ears to dip into. I've only listened to the beginnings of each side, as my object is to find home-recordings of my own songs over the years (and I always recorded my songs at the beginning of tapes so that I had some chance of finding them. I never marked the tapes. That would have been as despicable as scribbling in books).

Bloody hell, though, doesn't it take a LONG TIME to rewind an entire 90-minute cassette?! And then the names on the recordable tapes took me back:
Memorex, Ferrick, TDK AD-X 60, Philips FE-I, CP II 90, Sony Hi-Fi, Maxwell UE, Sky FX. All "High Fidelity for Music and Voice" no doubt.

The one that made me laugh out loud was BBC Normal Bias. :S

Here are some of the things I encountered, so in some ways you could probably define them as my INFLUENCES:

Popular bands: Nirvana, Pink Floyd, REM, Jewel, Johnny Cash, UB40.
Festival bands: Kangaroo Moon, Space Goats, FOS Brothers.
Classical: Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
World music: Indian flute and drums.
Mediaeval music and Dead Can Dance.
Eighties pop: Neneh Cherry and plenty of nameless radio bands.
Loads of trance music.
Some of my old songs, YAY!

University lectures recorded on a dictaphone:
"the history of tragedy"
"it's like looking at someone looking"
"this may not surprise you, but it may interest you: very often your marks for the essays are in direct proportion to the lectures you attended" *

Miscellaneous:
A song called 'Shut Up' written and recorded by my Slovenian friend Matevz, about his father.
A spine tingling musical/poetic take on Apartheid.
Elvis singing "Maybe I didn't love you quite as often as I should..."
Machine gun fire - for literally 5 minutes. I don't know how or why I ended up with that.
Ultra-slowed-down singing, only after deciphering the lyrics did I realise that it was ME, recorded on a 4-track.

Result: Many more tapes for the bin. I've discovered a brief history of my musical tastes. AND, I have found some of my earliest songs, horray!

Good night :)

PS - Kellee, thanks for your offer to turn the tapes into art, but I simply must get them out of the house before I start regretting getting rid of them! Maybe you have some of your own you can create something beautiful out of? Failing that, Imogen's got BAGS of them! :)


* This was the module on Shakespeare's Drama. I missed a few lectures but sent a mate in with a dictaphone. When the time came for me to take notes from the recording, I ended up writing out the lecture word for word. My essay was the lecture minus the anecdotes. I got a first.