I have experienced these sorts of connections through art before – dancing and writing. When writing a teen novel about ballet it naturally morphed into a piece on anorexia, pinpointing causal moments and situations in a totally new way for me, like joining up the dots. It is healing. The process was possibly helped along by doing a lot of ballet and watching Pineapple Dance Studios, bringing back more memories. I used to take the odd class there and I attended dance college with the gorgeous Louie Spence

Anyway, to move on from my own personal artistic fun to yours! We are giving away a book. Any book we have ever mentioned on the blog, or on our book page, fiction page, or kids books sections – home education page, aspies and byothermeans included too. Of course it does not have to be about creativity – you can have the Artist’s Way if you like but if you’d rather have a parenting title, a cookbook, a kids storybook, a novel, a gardening guide… choose away. The competition is open to everyone, I will not be judging it but will read the entries to the rest of the family, not telling them the names of the entrants. This means real life friends need not feel they shouldn’t enter and people who have never commented before are equally as welcome and likely to win.

SO, just comment on this post saying what book you would like and maybe why? Link to the blog post or page where it can be found (don’t worry if you don’t know how to do this, I’ll add it for you). Tell us a little bit to grab our attention – why is this book what you need or want? Did you like that post where we mentioned it? Do you just want a nice late summer read? Need something to put under that wobbly table leg? Anything goes Be creative Competition closes at noon on Sunday 15th August, a winner will be chosen and informed shortly after, and I will procure the book for them from Amazon

Competition now closed – Congratulations to Mel, Nikki and Maria

daft photos of 15 year old selves not required (though might be amusing!!)

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borage being my favourite

Great program photoshop I’ve created a few new designs for the spreadshirt shop, some based on flowers from the garden, some ballet, old pictures and still the original vegan and home ed categories too. There is an offer on from today, 12th July to 30th July (2010 for future clarification) – if you buy £40 worth of stuff you can choose a baseball cap, messenger bag or apron for free with the voucher code ADDONFREE

Other designs:

pink

little flowers

rose

ballet shoes

purple pointes

sign at Findhorn

and the old faithfuls, gorgeous...

and not a school bag

editing in another couple, having much fun with it

whizzers on chocolate icing

purple strawberry - from the garden...

shop front here :D

the new designs are also included in our cafepress store for the USA

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Fantine and Toby - not the best of friends but they will share a sunspot

and some ballet feet pics:

in parallel

rise

must learn to pull socks up

… gardening snowed off today… much hilarity reading P.G. Wodehouse’s Laughing Gas

 

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woods and loch

Totally loving the gorgeous springness that is all around now Had some lovely wild garlic pesto yesterday and think may do same today. Seems to have less of a garlic hit when very young though still very good.

freshly picked wild garlic and the sky

Swans are still following us around – whooping ones fly over the garden and woods regularly just now and look – we have new swan taps on the bath following a water gushing disaster with the old very antiquated ones!

swan tap

fitted for us by a Russian plumber, first plumber to come here who didn’t make a soap opera-esque drama about getting the water on and off with our old system and was also gentle and kind to elderly cats and frenzied frogs! More Russian-ness in The Turning Point from the beautiful Misha and Grishko ballet shoes from here:

ballet shoe heel

sandy shore of the loch

 

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rainbow over the trees in the garden

Nora Batty stretches

mirror

flower

narcissus

tulip

primroses

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It’s all very magical down there in the pond – just been out listening to them tonight by the light of the moon Below should be a short video of them – turn up your volume to hear their frenzied ribbuting! Apologies for the poor picture quality – they are more shy than they appear and I had to do it on zoom from a distance.

Thanks to wonderful Davie we now have our own fabulous barre – 4 and a half metres of split-slidingly strong pine

even gets warm in the sun for us...

 

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The only crocus to survive intensive rabbit grazing

beautiful biscuits for a ballet day with the girls...

cake too, no anorexic dancing here

poor mangled nut feeder - deer trample it to get the peanuts out!

soon there will be daffs

willow catkins and the sky

chives

parsley

 free veg seeds from the bbc here

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Dance mania continues with ballet, tap, jazz and contemporary being studied :)

Books and films amany dug out to accompany this in fine home educating fashion. The Ballet Companion is a gorgeous book, it’s been to good for me to read that things have come on with problems such as eating disorders and painful pointework (ouch pouches – love them!) being dealt with much more compassionately in general. High quality vegan ballet shoes are even available As for films… oh so many, from White Nights to A Chorus Line, loving them all, also deeply appreciative of friends sharing the enthusiasm and cost of DVD purchase… Had a nice time reading over T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and then watching Cats and boring delighting others with tales of cast members I knew/was taught by or with… same goes for Billy Elliot… ah to be an old “when I was young — fill in with unbelievable sounding fact–” person – it’s great fun!!

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Had a lovely day with friends morphing into a very balletic afternoon which was great fun. It’s been wonderful rediscovering ballet being for enjoyment, rather than an eternal striving (not to mention starving) for perfection. Looked out the old class music etc. I have but it’s all on cassettes – technology moved on a bit fast for me there

Watched Fast Food Nation (quite good trailer there on amazon), fictional film based on the non-fiction book – strong stuff, a round of exploitation to go with the fries… good cast, making it very watchable though gradually more horrifying.

 

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Our new words in French are quite easy this week (week 5!) as we know most of them from previous study – watched Eddie Izzard again and the kids now understand much more of the vocabulary in there :) This morning we lay flat on the sofas to listen to the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and let it roll over us – talked all about what symphonies are. Think we’ll try and make a regular thing of this with different composers - it feels so good to just lie there and listen… Used the second movement for a ballet exercise routine and then let the rest play as we got on with maths. Have moved on from triangles and Pythagoras to circles and Pi with Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi – all very amusing again

Getting on well with the tenant too… and we watched Miss Potter (lovely trailer there) over the weekend. All loved it – will end with Beatrix’s famous quote: Thank Goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.

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