Friday 14 January 2011

Sheep Poo Paper, Make Something a Day & Tumbleweed Tiny Houses

Whew! Today was the hand in day for my dissertation first draft. Before today, I felt a little bit guilty every time I was doing something other than coursework. It was my 21st birthday on January 10th, and I actually spent the morning working on the dissertation! I did treat myself to a nice long day at the Camp Sossage [translation: the house my guy-friends live in] playing Rock Band and drinking cocktails the next day though, as a reward for being well behaved enough the previous night to catch the bus in the morning and make it in to my first ever lecture at the new Newport City Centre Campus.

Speaking of birthdays, it's my sister Abi's birthday today. I have told her already, but, Happy Birthday!

Now I've uploaded my draft and can relax a little while I let myself work on some other things...

What I got up to today...

I found out something I didn't know. There are people here in Wales collecting sheep poo to make paper out of the cellulose fibres they didn't manage to digest... It sounds gross, but the process sterilizes everything, creates good fertiliser as a by product, and actually creates decent looking paper. You'd never know it came out of a sheep's back end! Here is their website.


My browsing of the the Internet has also lead me to 365, a website all about making something, anything, everyday for a year.


I've been feeling so stuck in a rut lately - that is, until I complained about my lack of time to do what I want to my friend Dave. He told me, in true Dave "Mr Motivator" Ware fashion, that I had nothing but time. Strictly speaking, that's not true... but what I think I need to realise is that I can spare ten minutes every day to complete a little 2inch by 3inch page, in the art journal I made for myself today after watching some videos by Moxylyn. Such as this one:


365 has presented me with the challenge of actually doing it. My little art journal only has 120 pages including the cover pages, so I'm going to have to make a couple more of the same to have enough pages for a year. I have no pictures of it yet because I haven't actually sewn it together [I'm thinking a nice bit of Coptic Stitching]. I made it specifically to doodle in because I definitely don't spend enough time out of my own head these days, so using some paper once a day should be good for me!

Something quite unrelated to book making but a wonderful example of design [and also creating something that I now really want to own for myself] is the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Check it out, I actually love the look of these things.


The tinier ones can be built on trailers and can technically be considered RVs, even though they look like tiny houses! My favourite at the moment is the Weebee. I really really want one, but I don't think right now is quite the right time to get one, what with having my nice big standard Uni room for another few months and my dad busy building a nice extension to the side of our house. And don't even ask me where I'm planning to live next year when I've graduated... Current ideas involve moving to Cardiff with a few of the Sausages, one of which has already graduated. The others will be in their final years doing film degrees [ = free access to really good cameras].

I think I would like to live there with them. But I'll need to get some work done and start earning some income if I'm going to keep on top of rent without blowing my savings of the past few years!