- far too soft,
- as hard as a brick,
- really comfortable,
- and you can feel every spring.
Thursday, 19 December 2024
Fairytale mattresses
Tuesday, 17 December 2024
Adult colouring book for blind people
I keep forgetting to post about my work here!
Warmish off the press...
This is a project I've been working on for a looong time.
An adult colouring book for blind and visually impaired people. You can find it here: www.kirstymca.co.uk/blind
The pictures are printed in raised ink by the very helpful West London Print, and are specifically designed to be as understandable as possible by blind people.
Also, I have scented crayons with tactile symbols on them, so people know which colour is which.
Saturday, 7 December 2024
Cleaning tip
If you feel your hoover isn't sooking as well as it should, it's worth checking that the hose is not blocked by such things as odd bits of plastic, straws, or the handle of a violin case.
At least I think that's what this is. |
Faces
Saturday, 23 November 2024
Swallowed a dictionary
Friday, 8 November 2024
How to get to Narnia
Just realised that of the five times people from this world accidentally go to Narnia, two involve spare rooms, and two involve railway stations.
Does this have any significance? Who knows?
So, along with hands and books, AI can't draw doors. |
Sunday, 3 November 2024
Learning to tell jokes
Wednesday, 30 October 2024
Saturday, 26 October 2024
Toner
Having problems with the photocopier - toner not sticking to the paper reliably.
So I google it.
A few answers down, I come across this:
"Is it essential to use a toner? Toner isn’t an absolute.,"Huh? How can you print without toner?
"but toner will benefit your skin in many different ways, therefore it’s a plus to have toner in your beauty routine."Ah! the other sort of toner.
Thursday, 24 October 2024
Paradise?
I've been rewatching Death in Paradise. It's a fun detective series set on a fictional Caribbean island.
Officer Dwayne Myers, Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey, and Sergeant Fidel Best |
Olaudah Equiano |
"every part of the world I had hitherto been in seemed to me a paradise in comparison of the West Indies."I guess you don't look at the Caribbean as paradise when the sun, sea, and sand is combined with slavery, brutality, and injustice.
Tuesday, 15 October 2024
Fiction and non-fiction
('Bible Fiction' means historical fiction and time-travel stories about Bible events.) |
Fairy tales are more than true – not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.
Wednesday, 9 October 2024
Monday, 7 October 2024
Leading a team
Read this in an article in an art magazine. But if you substitute 'artist' with 'team member' it could apply to pretty much any team, doing pretty much anything.
Tuesday, 24 September 2024
Who decides?
Technology is not the enemy, unless we allow it to substitute its judgement for our own.(Season 6 episode 3: Killer Robots)
Sunday, 18 August 2024
Advice for Sunday School teachers
As a new school year begins, I thought I’d post some stuff I wrote for the leaders of my old Sunday School class, on the off-chance it was relevant for someone reading the blog.
There are infinite amounts of advice that could be given, but I think these are the most important, and hold true whatever format or style your teaching takes.
✝️ Preach the gospel
Children easily learn to parrot 'Jesus died to save us from our sins'. But they often really believe it's about being good, going to church, or having a Christian family.
Tell them it's not - tell them often.
Don't assume they are believers (Saying ‘IF you love/follow/believe in Jesus…’ is a good way to do that simply.)
Use different words or ways of explaining the gospel, that fit with the story e.g. Yes, Jesus died to take the punishment for our sins - but also, Jesus died to make us God's friends, so we can be in his family, to set us free, to beat the devil, to give us new life etc. etc. etc…
π Teach the truth
They're young - you need to simplify things. But make sure everything you say is true. (Not watered down, but distilled, as I heard someone say once).
Make sure you're teaching what the Bible actually says, not what tradition has added!
Trite 'Sunday School answers' are often unhelpful. Be honest about the bits you find hard to understand.
If it comes up, be honest about things that Christians genuinely disagree about. This could be 'in some churches they believe X but we believe Y.'
Or, for things that we ourselves have differing opinions on (e.g. creation, predestination, eschatology, Hallowe’en), simply 'Some Christians believe X and some believe Y - but we all believe Z, which is the most important (maybe add ‘ask your parents what they think’.)
Be honest about the sins and failures of Bible heroes. Be honest about your own sins and failures (both at a PG level of course π)
π₯° Look out for outsiders
Every child needs to feel they belong.
Pay particular attention to those who don't fit in in some way - those who attend irregularly, are particularly shy, are always in trouble, struggle academically, hate doing crafts, are from a different race or culture, are less well off, have a disability, are neurodivergent, come from a non-christian family, have a difficult family situation… or just that child you really don't like for whatever reason π¬
If they don't know that we welcome them, they won't understand that Jesus welcomes them.
π Pray
The one I'm least good at!
The best planned lesson in the world is no good without prayer. Pray for yourself as you prepare, pray for yourself as you teach, pray that the children will understand, pray that the Holy Spirit will speak to them.
Pray for their families, pray for their schools, pray that they will not believe the lies the world tells them, pray that they will believe, pray that they will keep on going.
Sunday, 4 August 2024
Thursday, 27 June 2024
Stargate?
I pass this house frequently, and I can't help feeling that if you walked up the path you might end up on another planet.
Monday, 17 June 2024
A long lasting paper trail
I'm a great believer in putting things in writing. It means that, if there's any disagreement in the future, you can look back.
Obviously this ancient Babylonian thought so too:
“I am not getting water for my sesame field. The sesame will die. Don’t tell me later, ‘You did not write to me.’ The sesame is visibly dying. Ibbi-Ilabrat saw it. That sesame will die, and I have warned you.”Since the Babylonians wrote on clay tablets, his letter has survived for over 3000 years.
~from a letter by a guy called Sin-gamil
I wonder if he got the water for his field.
Tuesday, 28 May 2024
The eye of the beholder
I was in the train, and a bunch of kids came on, on a school trip.
Obviously the four wee girls in front of me had never been into town on the train before. I caught snatches of their conversation as they exclaimed about everything:
"It's beautiful - look at it. Look at the design. It's like someone's drawn on the bricks."
This was what she was seeing. |
"Ohhhhhh.... Guys, look!"
"Ohhhh... Woaahhh...."
"Look! It's like such nice sights!"
"Ohhhh... Look at this place!"
I know I notice things other people don't see, but they were really taking it to the next level, and getting so much joy out of it.
Made me think of this song by Yvonne Lyon.
Tuesday, 21 May 2024
Solitary sheep
Saturday, 11 May 2024
Numberblocks woz 'ere
I once read this quote by an author:
when you write your fantasy epic, stumble upon some attractive plotline and pursue it you almost inevitably find a little engraved stone. ‘J. R. R. Tolkien was here first’
~Chris Walley
As an illustrator of children's maths books, I can sympathize with this sentiment, though my plaque would read 'Numberblocks was here first'.
We could give 1 a single eye? Numberblocks did that first.
We could give 2 glasses? Numberblocks did that first.
4 could involve square shapes? They did that first. 5's motif could be a star? They did that. 7 could reflect a rainbow in some way? They did that too. 8 could be based on either an octopus or a spider? They did BOTH (that's just greedy!)
I can't possibly avoid everything they've done!
Thursday, 9 May 2024
A.I. Psalm
I'm terrible at remembering to post art-related stuff here - I tend to do it on Facebook but I should do both.
Monday, 6 May 2024
Bad tidying advice
Tuesday, 30 April 2024
Atlantis bureaucracy
Two scenes from Stargate Atlantis. Nothing profound, just funny. Spoilers for Stargate Atlantis Season 5 Episode 14: The Prodigal
(This clip switches from the first scene of the episode to the second last scene of the episode around the halfway mark, but it's not immediately clear - the change is when he says 'anyway I just wanted to stop by...')
Monday, 29 April 2024
None of the above
All questionnaire questions should have a 'none of the above' option (preferably with a space to explain why).
'Don't know' is not the same.
Wednesday, 24 April 2024
What a good idea!
I've often thought it odd, that when you get flowers they come with a sachet of food, but then when you change the water - which you're supposed to do - you're throwing away the flower food and now just have plain water.
Obviously someone else thought this was odd, too.
Saturday, 30 March 2024
Chicken & bacon recipe
- Chicken breast (I used frozen chunks)
- Bacon
- Corn
- Flour
- Butter
- Milk
- Honey
- Mixed herbs
- Black pepper
- Folded flatbreads, wraps or similar.
- Chop up the chicken and bacon and cook in a frying pan with a very little oil, until nice and brown and cooked through. (I tend to add a little water occasionally to stop it from sticking).
- Meanwhile, make white sauce with the milk, butter & flour.
- Add honey to sauce (I used a couple of teaspoons for 3 people). Add pepper & herbs.
- Add corn to frying pan and heat through.
- Add chicken/bacon/corn to sauce and stir.
- Warm flatbreads.
- Fill with mixture.
- Eat.
Friday, 29 March 2024
Last Words
Wednesday, 27 March 2024
π§Drip
Tuesday, 12 March 2024
Old broken stuff
A fun conversation from the radio sitcom Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully.
An alien commander is complaining that earth is 'a dump':
Zone Commander Ravella: There's old, broken stuff everywhere.
Lucy: You mean like that shopping trolley in the canal.
Zone Commander Ravella: Yes - but also all those old castles. Can you really not be bothered to demolish them?
Katrina: They're our history.
Zone Commander Ravella: I see. We write history down, instead of clogging up the landscape with ugly heaps of useless stone.
Thursday, 7 March 2024
Tips for hymn writers
Monday, 4 March 2024
Lorem Ipsum is a Good Thing
When laying out a page design, if you don't yet have the final text it's common to use a dummy text in garbled Latin, which starts "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..." (hence the name).
I've just been watching a very useful tutorial video on how to do some page layout stuff in InDesign. Very useful, but the narrator had a slightly monotonous voice, and the text on the page was - for no apparent reason - Alice in Wonderland. Guess which I was paying more attention to...
Saturday, 17 February 2024
Recyclable embellishments
I found this abandoned kid's craft in church - and realised that the flower embellishments are made entirely of paper, so it can go in the recycle bin. π
It would be nice if more kids' craft materials were recyclable - foam and gems and plastic stickers are nice, but for throwaway crafts this kind of thing is far more environmentally friendly.
Thursday, 15 February 2024
Saturday, 3 February 2024
Atmosphere matters
"here comes the standoff: the odd little standoff in the odd little town in the odd little square"
Again and again, in defending works of romance, Lewis argues that it is the quality or tone of the whole story that is its main attraction. The invented world of romance is conceived with this kind of qualitative richness because romancers feel the real world itself to be 'cryptic, significant, full of voices and 'the mystery of life.'' Lovers of romances go back and back to such stories in the same way that we go back to a fruit for its taste; to an air for... what? for itself; to a region for its whole atmosphere—to Donegal for its Donegality and London for its Londonness. It is notoriously difficult to put these tastes into words.'
Monday, 29 January 2024
The Caves of Steel
Monday, 1 January 2024
Happy New Year!
I always like to post a song for the New Year - but this year I've got two.
They're both about how, as Christians, God uses the ups and downs of life to make us who he wants us to be.
First a sad one:
And then a cheerier one!