over at figs and roses...

if you don't follow my other blog about my newly launched business - figs and roses - you will have missed me talking this week about the inaugural bristol knit club (pictured below) and about raffaele's inspirational nonna who is still working as a seamstress. at 92!!

you can read more about it on the other blog (just click on the 'figs and roses' badge under the blog heading and it will take you straight there). you can see more photos there too. as you can see, theo didn't knit but i'm sure we'll have him casting on soon enough.

so, here is a friday night shout out for my new company before i attend to the more pressing matter of my thesis.

did you know you can show your support (which would be most welcome!) by becoming a fan on facebook? all you have to do is click here and click 'like'. easy! you can also follow @figsandroses on twitter to be kept up-to-date with developments.

right, back to work. a chapter deadline is looming...

a reassessment of life on-line

for those of you who follow me on twitter, you might have seen my increasing uneasiness about twitter. don't get me wrong, i think there are huge benefits. i have met lots of people (in bristol) in real life through it and have plans to meet the (mainly london-based) knitters at some point. i also think it is a truly fantastic resource for new parents and for people promoting small businesses. there are lots of other plus points too.

but i do worry about the extent to which many of us perform our lives on line and think aspects of it can be unhealthy and competitive. i know i am very guilty of this since i post at least one picture a day on instagram (and then flickr and twitter), sometimes regularly tweet and also blog. i just feel, perhaps only temporarily, that i want to get back to a life before social networking.

my first experience of it was with myspace and facebook (when i started my masters at edinburgh) and it quickly became addictive. but during my undergraduate the only e-mail access i had was once a month or so to access my UCL account. and mobiles were only just starting to become popular and i was perfectly happy living life to the full, hugely sociable and enjoying taking photos for myself, not to share them with everyone and anyone. i exchanged hand-written notes (and letters and cards) with friends - in fact, i still do but to a lesser extent.

so, i'm not saying i don't want to record or document aspects of my life through photography or writing. i just want to declutter my virtual life and think it would be good to step away completely to focus on the everyday in a private way without feeling the need to perform aspects of it. because it shouldn't mean any less, should it? i guess it's like a personal experiment.

so, i have a strategy. i am going to continue taking a photo a day for my 2011 365 project but i'm going to make them private so that they are for my consumption only. i am going to take a complete month off twitter (so, no reading anyone's tweets and no tweeting myself). and i am also going to stop posting pictures to instagram. i will use the app to edit my iPhone pics as i love it but that doesn't mean i then have to share them. i might continue to still look at intsgram pics that others post though as that has nothing to do with my performance or sharing. plus it is not nearly so overwhelming. facebook, as explained in earlier posts, is no longer an issue since i quit it a few months ago and still have zero regrets.

i am undecided about blogging. i myself won't blog for a month. i have hugely reduced the blogs i subscribe to but i'm not sure i want to miss out on my favourite ones for a whole month. after all, that is not part of the experiment. it's about not feeling that i want to share things via blogging not about not delighting in the everyday lives of others. once i return i might decide to continue to blog about anything and everything. i might just decide to focus on knitting. or bristol. i'm not yet sure. after a complete break i might even decide to return to everything with as much vigour as before. i just want to see how it feels to step away.

so, back to my private life, to be enjoyed by me and by the friends and family i see in person over the next month :) and back to my thesis of course (which is going pretty well).

x

adrenaline antidote

source

project hermit (see previous post) is going well. taking a step back from social media / social networking (well, twitter to be precise) is very refreshing indeed. and since quitting facebook, i have no regrets.

my work is off to a good start (*breathes huge sigh of relief*) but i've noticed i'm quite hyper. i got myself geared up to doing this final push but i need to calm down a little.

so, i've found myself reverting to a technique i've found very useful in the past when life has been full of anxiety and stress. it's so simple (just take five minutes out to slow your breathing, control your deep breaths and visualise a calming scene). the scene which i picture each and every time is the beach above - flora bay on the bigger of the two perhentian islands in malaysia. raffaele (my ex and now dear friend) and i went there about ten years ago. we'd been snorkelling every day and seen basking sharks and seals but hadn't spotted any turtles.

on a day when the beach was completely deserted, we were swimming around in the shallows and spotted a turtle. we swam after it, managing to keep up with it for quite a while. it was beautiful and such a serene moment. sitting back and picturing it now.

and relax...

 source

hurrah for meeting twitter pals in real life

source

this title should actually read 'hurrah for making new friends' because that is what has happened.

say what you like about twitter but it has some huge plus points. now, i don't normally blog about my social life. this isn't what this blog is for. plus i think it's important to actually live my life rather than feel i need to document every twist and turn. in fact, dani hampton writes a lovely 'small reminder of being in the moment and blogging' here.

however, i have made some truly wonderful connections through twitter. i am a very proud 'twitter knitter' and was all set to meet many of the (mainly london-based) twitter knitters at a party but then couldn't afford to get there last month. but there are more parties being planned and i'm so excited to meet people in the flesh that i've been chatting to on twitter for almost two years!

there is a huge community of tweeters in bristol and i was invited along to a foodie gathering at the lido last summer. it was great fun and i met some really lovely people. because i was planning to move to brighton, i held off on meeting more bristol-based people since i already have a good amount of friends here and didn't want to meet new people that i would then not have time to keep up with. i have always been someone who doesn't have tonnes of friends but the friends i have are very dear to me.

then it turned out i wasn't leaving bristol after all and, after quitting a facebook and (temporarily) falling out of love with the internet, i decided to throw myself into reconnecting with old friends (which has been just lovely) and meeting new ones. i had initially followed emily when i thought i was moving to brighton as i thought it would be a great way to establish a set of people to meet for coffee etc. despite culling lots of brighton-based tweeters, emily and i had regularly chatted on twitter so i stayed in touch with her. there were regular attempts (still ongoing i'm pleased to report) by me, hels and fritha to get emily to move to bristol. emily mentioned she'd come to bristol to meet us but i never thought it would materialise. but, the other week, on her way back from a long weekend in devon, emily stopped off in bristol and met me and fritha for drinks at the deco lounge (hels was in thailand so unable to join us). it was *such* a lovely evening and i regularly cried with laughter.

a week later i met up with lia for the first time. we had hoped to bump into each other at the inaugural montpelier basement supper club but i was unable to go. we had drinks at moreish on chandos road since it was near where we both live and it was *so* lovely to meet her in real life. i know we'll stay in touch and i'm looking forward to knitting on her veranda at some point over the summer.

last week, i organised a big bristol twitter meet-up and 11 of us had drinks at the lido (pictured above via). i was *so* nervous (as i often feel anxious about big gatherings) but a great time was had by all. about half of the faces were knew to me but i already felt familiar with them from regular twitter conversations. i commented that fritha (who i'd only met a fortnight before) felt like an old friend. weird but true! the lido was a lovely backdrop for the event - (i have already blogged about the lido here, here and here. can you tell i'm a fan?) the only drawback was that they had arranged the tables (for 20 guests) in a horseshoe shape so it looked like we were at a wedding. a bit odd.

anyway, there were 11 of us there (all on twitter) including four knitters, a few foodies, a writer, an illustrator and a baby! jo had brought her sweet (still very new) baby, mersina, along and so we were all thrilled to get to meet her (and her mum!) for the first time. the only picture of the night shows fritha holding M. i borrowed this image off fritha's blog and you can read her write up of the night here.

(photo taken by martin, M's dad).

i am about to become a hermit in order to get my thesis written on time but, having met people from twitter over the past few weeks and many of us having exchanged mobile numbers, i know i'll see lots of them again (soon) - fritha and hels for drinks this week. also, lucy (a 'real-life' friend who is now a fully-fledged twitter knitter) and i are booked to eat at the montpelier basement supper club in april hosted by elly and dan. to read more about the supper club, you can see dan's blog entries here.

exciting!