2010 December | Sleep is for the Weak

Thank you

Posted by Josie on Dec 20, 2010 in Kai, Me | 15 comments

This is just a quick note to say that Sleep is for the Weak is packing up ‘official’ business until the new year now. Most of us will be busy with Christmas preparations this week (including me as I madly try and finish knitting all my presents) so it makes sense to leave the Writing Workshop now until January 10th when I’ll be back with some new prompts for you.

I might have the odd post up before then if the mood takes me, but if it doesn’t I wanted to use this opportunity to say a massive thank you to everyone that has read and supported this blog over the last twelve months, a thank you to everyone that has supported Kai and me.

It’s been a hugely significant year for me and one of much unanticipated change. There has been a lot of pain and a lot of loss, something I’m still struggling to come to terms with and that is still very, very raw. But as my strange year of contrasts comes to a close I am mostly left with a feeling of enormous gain. I cannot believe the gifts I have been give this year: a boy grown tall and full of imagination, spark, creativity and personality; the best year of health I have had since I was a child; new, life-changing friends; a blog that took me from London to speak at Cybermummy, where I met more wonderful, inspiring and supportive people than I ever could have imagined, all the way to Bangladesh and meeting the Deputy Prime Minister.

I feel very, very blessed, surrounded by love and good things. The generosity that has been bestowed on me over the last few months has blown me away. There are too many people to name personally, but for all the people who sent emails, left comments, offered new opportunities, gave gifts, or just told me they were thinking of me, thank you. You will never know how much it all has meant to me or how many bad days you’ve got me through.

The girl that ends this year is a very different person to the one that began it. She has new scars, hurts more, feels more, but she is stronger, too. Much, much, stronger. In some respects the world makes less sense now than it ever has. Loss, grief, the need for self-reliance, and witnessing extreme poverty have changed the way I see everything, they’ve changed ME. But not in a destructive way, maybe more in the sense of a sculptor chiselling out chunks of wood to make the empty spaces needed to make the sculpture in the middle more discernible, simpler, full of knots and imperfections but worn honestly, and, I hope, bravely.

I start a new year not knowing where I’m going, but knowing, perhaps for the first time, who I am.

I am terrified and sad and excited and full of hope and gratitude and new, fierce kind of passion.I have new eyes that discern new things and hands and a voice that are learning to express that.

Life is good. Next year I intend to live it with every single cell of me. Next year I intend to pay back some of what I have been given. Next year I intend to make the changes count, to make them mean something.

Thank you.

And Happy Christmas

Stationary lovers, writers, journal keepers… meet Hope House Press

Posted by Josie on Dec 17, 2010 in Art, Artists, Reviews, Sponsored Posts | 30 comments

Good morning. Delighted to have another designer to introduce you to today as part of my new (almost) weekly feature showcasing artists, craftspeople and small businesses as a way of supporting their work, with some very lovely giveaways and discounts to boot.

Today is the turn of Sarah Phillips, owner, designer and crafter of Hope House Press, personally creating stunning leather-bound stationary using vintage bookbinding presses. Her beautiful notebooks, journals, and diaries are every stationary-lovers dream, coming in a whole range sizes and finishes. I think I’d line a whole shelf with them if I could.

Take a look:

Sarah started making books about three years ago, after attending a bookbinding workshop run by a local Arts Festival. She sources her paper from one of Italy’s finest stationery houses and searches for beautiful leather wherever she can find it. Sarah wraps the bound pages in luxurious leather covers, carefully dried in one of her bookbinding presses, to make books that look good, feel good and smell fantastic – something I myself can vouch for after being lucky enough to receive one for myself, the soft leather inviting unwrapping and touching and the sheets and sheets of creamy, thick paper making me want to fill them with words and words and more words.

(Oh I love a good notebook. Can you tell?)

In fact, that’s why I thought Hope House Press would be a good company to feature just now. Every new year I contemplate keeping a journal, a proper one, not a diary so much but a chronicle of thoughts and feelings and impressions, secret and mine. Next year is going to be my year for journalling, I have decided, and Sarah’s book is the perfect invitation for me to dig out my best fountain pen and let the words tumble out.

So if you have been thinking of starting a journal in the new year, or a writer’s notebook for morning pages, or a diary that’s a bit special, and have some spare pocket money, or have been given money to spend on yourself over Christmas, then this, my friends is for you…

Discount!

Hope House Press is offering Sleep is for the Weak readers 20% off all orders over £20 until Friday 7th January. Delivery costs £3.95 to a single mainland UK address and is free for orders over £50. All you have to do is copy and paste the code SLEEPISFORTHEWEAK into the discount field at the checkout.

Orders received by midnight on Monday 20th December will be despatched by Christmas Eve (but unfortunately can’t be guaranteed in time for Christmas). Orders received on or after Tuesday 21 December will be despatched when the studio reopens after Christmas, on Friday 7 January.

Giveaway!

Sarah is also generously giving away one of her gorgeous books to one of my readers.

The winner will receive a Sidekick Journal (normal price £28.95/£29.95) in their choice of one the nine luxurious leathers available to choose in the online shop at www.hopehousepress.co.uk; The winner can choose to have their book bound with either the no-fuss standard cover or the stylish wraparound.

The Sidekick is a perfect writer’s notebook and ‘sidekick’ companion to take with you everywhere. At around 17x12cm it’s chunky and feels lovely in your hand – plenty big enough for extensive journalling or for sketching, even, but portable enough to pop in your bag. With 200 sheets/400 sides of plain buttery cream laid paper, there’s plenty of pages for ‘page a day’ journalling in 2011 and lots of space to let your imagination run riot.

The winner will be announced this Monday 20th December so that the winner’s prize can be despatched on Christmas Eve and arrive in good time for any New Year journalling resolutions!

All you need to do is leave a comment to enter, and for an extra bonus entry tweet about the competition with the hashtag #HopeHousePress and follow Sarah (@HopeHousePress) on Twitter (which you should anyway, cause she is proper lovely).

Good luck!

- All images courtesy of Sarah Phillips and Hope House Press.co.uk

If you’re an artist or a designer or own a small business offering unique and interesting products and would be interested in me having me feature your work here in return for a small giveaway or discount for my readers, I would love to hear from you. Just use the contact form here.

*** DRAW CLOSES TODAY (MON 20th) AT 2PM!***

Writing Workshop: The girl with faith in her hands

Posted by Josie on Dec 16, 2010 in Me, Writing, Writing Workshop | 15 comments

My childhood self sits, bum balanced on the kneeler in front of the pew on which her mother sits, wriggly brother on lap, as she listens to the voice of her father from the front of the church.

In her careful, cupped hands sits the round orange of her Christingle, which she had helped the women of the church assemble that afternoon, one of hundreds, one for everyone, her tummy full of sultanas and raisins that she had spent the time popping into her mouth when no-one was looking. Her nose is filled with the smell of hot wax and the sharp tang of citrus as she watches the flame burn and flicker. Her father’s voice tells what each symbol represents: the orange is the world, red ribbon the blood of Jesus and others that she now forgets. But she doesn’t hear, doesn’t need to, the meanings as familiar, then, to her as the grainy wood of the church pew and the rough, worn fabric of the hymn books, more lost in the candle’s burn, for there seems to be some meaning in that, though she can’t fathom it.

She is six or seven. Utterly safe. Utterly loved. Her world is as certain and steadfast as her father’s confident sermon. That’s what faith is, I guess.

There aren’t many times where I miss the religious aspects of my upbringing. As someone that can find meaning in a dirty puddle these days, or the way the trees move, I never feel like I ‘need’ to believe in a specific religious teaching. Well, it’s more fundamental that, less that I need to believe, more that I just don’t. I’m quite happy enough feeling my way on my own and enormously grateful for the freedom and the sense of peace shaking off most of childhood beliefs has brought me. But as the daughter of a Baptist Minister, my dad later becoming a lay reader in a busy Anglican church, religion has always been something very firmly entrenched in my experience and in my memory.

Christmas is the one time I miss it. I almost ache with it. It’s not a spiritual longing, more a deep-set nostalgia, but I find myself drawn to the churches and the choirs, the candle-lit vigils and the nativity scenes. It makes me feel like a child again. Yes, I think that’s what it is. It makes me feel safe, held in a familiar blanket where everything is certain and predictable, where the sheep always follow the shepherds down the aisle to be placed in the straw filled stable, where you primary concern is whether or not you’ll be chosen to carry one, maybe even one of the more important ones, cradling the the tiny, swaddling-wrapped Jesus solemnly past the rows of the congregation to place him in the manger.

I almost wish I could believe again, maybe even just pretend, just to have that feeling back.

So this Christmas I have a feeling that a girl, now long grown, may be found sneaking back into churches to light a candle and listen to soar of the Christmas carols, her mouth still shaping the words, all of which she remembers. Not to believe, but just to remember.

Yes, I think I would like that a lot.

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This post was written for this week’s Writing Workshop, a mix of childhood remembering and traditions.

Now it’s your turn. What prompt did you chose?

Leave your name and the URL to your post in the MckLinky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) If you have the time it would be great if you could try and read and comment on at least two other entries.

If you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve still got till Sunday to enter your link. Or just wait till next week, when there’ll be five brand new prompts to get you thinking.