Blogs
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Follow the whole nine yards here (a 95 part series) :- Half Marathon Blog
Why I am running:- West Coast Eisteddfod Bryn Seion Church
For details of how to sponsor see this post
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Hi all....I will be leaving early in the morning for Bend, Oregon. Another working trip and this time I will be staying in a tent. I really don't know what the wifi situation will be so please don't expect miracles 
I will of course attempt to keep the daily running blog going ( and my training schedule ) but that will probably involve a trip to Starbucks each evening assuming that there is one nearby.
A number of people have inquired about this strange temporary job that I do for a few months a year which involves travelling and staying in tents, motels etc. For the benefit of our UK readers please let me attempt an explanation ( I will be mercifully brief ).
In 26 states of the US there is a system whereby people and interest groups who have the requisite funds can hire an army of petitioners to gather signatures for statutory or constitutional measures which ( given that they reach quota ) are placed on a ballot each year. If those measures are successful at the polls they become law. Basically it is a form of government by annual plebiscite. Of course State laws do not always supersede Federal laws and this leads to interesting legal and political conflicts.
These jolly little jaunts help to pay for the WCE. And so...expect more from me tomorrow ( but dont hold your breath ) and meanwhile enjoy this video about the real reason that runners run
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Reproduced with kind permission from David Western's Portland Lovespoon Blog
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Laura here, again... I think I mentioned already that I was a little excited at the prospect of making a cage of roots. As much as people always seem to enjoy moving parts, I thought this might warrant a little further discussion.
Hmm. So, when I started thinking about approaching the cage, I thought, what are the defining characteristics of the cage? Is it that there are 4 posts? Not necessarily, but there usually are 4, and they are usually all parallel, evenly spaced, relatively straight and usually the back posts are aligned behind the front posts when you cut the blank.
Yeah - I didn't want to do that.
Really, the main considerations for designing balls in a cage have to do with carving and finishing access, and containment of the balls. More specifically, having access for your tools (including your hand holding the tools, in the positions you need, with the leverage you need) to all parts of the inside and outside of the cage and the balls, not to mention being able to hold the work piece without breaking it while carving and finishing the cage, the balls, OR any other part of the spoon! AND, the other big consideration is that you need to make sure to keep the balls contained. No escaping! There's a balance to maintain.
Now, when Dave and I decided we'd have 4 caged balls in this spoon, I immediately started to think of how to make it different than the typical caged balls. I envisioned roots and vines, and even took a few pictures....
So here I was, having all these lovely visions of organic, climbing, meandering roots, and then I think of a typical cage. Here's a typical very simple cage with a couple egg-shaped balls, so you can see what I'm trying not to do, too:
This one only has two balls, and it's laying on its back, so they're spread out. If it had four, the cage would probably have been longer, and when it stands upright, as spoons usually do when they are displayed, they'd all just sit in the bottom, and you'd have a boring, empty cage. So I also figured I'd subdivide the cage a bit, either with branches, or by the irregularity of the posts themselves. And since I'd do that, I guess I didn't need to have all the balls the same size, either, which could allow me some more interest with the thickness of everything, too. That's another thing about cages - they to some extent need to be as deep as they are wide. So - with avoiding a plain cage in mind, here's the first thing I drew...
I was a little worried I might scare Dave too much with that one, though (it kind of abandons all the helpful tools like symmetry, parallel lines, reference to the front & back of the board, etc.) so I drew another, a bit more like the typical form...
Note - on this second one, I may have some of these tapering posts opening up a little too much, but I figure we'll probably build them out a little more with some more foliage or something. It's just a start.
Anyway, I really liked the first one. But the more I thought about it, those nagging questions kept coming back to me - like - What kind of wood are we going to use? Who is going to carve first? Anyway, I sent them off to Dave to make sure we were even still on the same page, and see what he thought about either of them.
He liked the drawings, and confirmed that direction-wise, we still seemed to be on the same page, which was great to hear. Of course he had the obligatory words of caution about the twisted cage, which I fully expected and absolutely fully agreed with - I just AM, perhaps, a little bit of a glutton for punishment. 
While he was reviewing them, I think another consideration started to bother me, though - and that was about strength. I am really counting on a pretty strong wood choice, I think - and even with a strong wood choice, all the weight we're talking about having in all the rest of this spoon may be too much. This only represents about the bottom half of the spoon - and by far, the lighter half. The twisted cage doesn't stay with the grain of the wood - so it loses a significant amount of strength that way. So - I decided I may just save this one for something smaller of my own, and try again for our root cage here. So I shared my thoughts with Dave, told him I thought I'd go for something in between the two drawings above, with a little more focus on strength, and by the way, what wood did he want to use?
So, this is what I drew next.
I've heard back from Dave, and we agree - we'll go from here with the cage. Still don't know what kind of wood he has in mind, though. I know he's working on all sorts of wonderful things up around the tree in the upper part of the spoon, though, so I'm looking forward to seeing what's next!!!
Don't forget to get your tickets to win this spoon! I really think something special is brewing here!
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Follow the whole nine yards here (a 95 part series) :- Half Marathon Blog
Why I am running:- West Coast Eisteddfod Bryn Seion Church
For details of how to sponsor see this post
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OK so I missed a few days due ( largely ) to circumstances beyond my control BUT we're back today and more determined than ever before to see this thing through
I have been working away for most of the last week and wasn't able to run as much as I would like. With 58 days to go I am beginning to realise both the enormity of the hill I still have to climb and how little time I have left. Suffice it to say that I can just about manage 3 miles at the moment so I've got plenty of work to do. Getting to half marathon readiness is still perfectly possible in the next two months but I'm going to have to devise a training schedule and stick to it daily. I hope to post something along those lines very shortly.
Also the long awaited sponsorship page will be posted by next Monday at the latest. Watch this space for more tomorrow.
Hope none of these guys ( see video below ) are me the day after
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Another day, another megalith. This one is Pentre Ifan in Pembrokeshire.
A view, with artistic license, of Devil's Bridge in Ceredigion in central Wales. From Wikipedia: "The bridge spans the Mynach a tributaryof the Rheidol. The bridge is unusual in that three separate bridges are coexistent, each one built upon the previous bridge. The most recently built is an iron bridge (1901), which was built over a stone bridge(1753), which was built when the original bridge was thought to be unstable. The builders of the 1753 bridge used the original bridge (built 10751200) to support scaffolding during construction."
Latest News
 | Celebrations are in order yet again for Patrick McGuinness as The Last Hundred Days is placed on another two prize lists. The book has been long-listed for the 2012 Desmond Elliott Prize along with nine other debut titles including a best seller, Before I go to Sleep by S.J. Watson. The shortlist will be announced next week, followed by a winner announcement on June 29th at Fortnum & Mason, London. The Desmond Elliott Prize, which was set up in memory of the celebrated publisher and literary agent Desmond Elliott, is in its fifth year and the winner will be awarded 10,000. The Last Hundred Days is also on the shortlist for the Authors Club Best First Novel 2012. The winner will be announced on the 6th June at the National Liberal Club. |
Hay Festival 2012 is upon us and there will be some of our fantastic authors reading, including Owen Sheers and Patrick McGuinness. For a listing of the all our author events click here
New Titles Out Now
 Clueless Dogs by Rhian Edwards An astounding Welsh poet with performances that get you in the emotional gut Ian McMillan on The Verb , Radio 3. Clueless Dogs is the first collection of poetry by Rhian Edwards, the winner of the 2011/12 John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry and Audience Prize . Already a noted performer of both her songs and poetry, this book, full of verve and humour, confirms a startling talent. ISBN: 9781854115737 Paperback: 8.99 |
 | After Brock by Paul Binding Paul Bindings After Brock , is a story of Pete, a talented and intelligent schoolboy, though an outsider in both home and school life. One December night he meets Sam, an attractive and flamboyant boy, but something of a misfit with whom his infatuation is instant. They begin a tempestuous friendship seeking a world removed from the difficulties of home life: Sams alcoholic mother and Petes frayed relationship with his unappreciative family. ISBN: 9781854115683 Paperback: 8.99 |
| | The Flying Trapeze by Duncan Bush One of the most significant voices of his generation, a new book by Duncan Bush is an eagerly awaited event. The Flying Trapeze , his sixth poetry collection, is characteristically unsentimental, tough-minded, and fiercely lyrical. With many of the poems inspired by places he has lived in or travelled to The Flying Trapeze is never less than subtle, smart and true. ISBN: 9781854115942 Paperback: 8.99 |
Forthcoming Titles
 Lightning Beneath the Sea by Grahame Davies The first collection of poems in English by Grahame Davies. Already well-known for his prize-winning Welsh-language poetry and fiction, and for his scholarly non-fiction, Davies brings an intimate, conversational tone, and a raised civic awareness to these poems. ISBN: 9781854115751 Paperback: 8.99 |
 | Poet to Poet: Edward Thomass letters to Walter de la Mare edited by Judy Kendall This book offers still more insight into the highly influential writer and poet Edward Thomas through his correspondence with Walter de la Mare: 318 letters from between 1906 and 1917, of which only three have been previously published. The letters provide new and crucial evidence about Thomass poetic processes, the start of his mature poetry and also show the mutual support the two poets enjoyed. ISBN: 9781854115805 Paperback: 14.99 |
 | Witch by Damian Walford Davies Witch by Damian Walford Davies is a striking portrait in verse of a small town in England struck by the Witchcraft panic of the 17th century. The poems in this collection are dark spells, compact and moving: seven sections, each of seven poems, each of seven couplets, are delivered by those most closely involved in the 'making' of a witch. ISBN: 9781854115799 Paperback: 8.99 |
Meet the Author
Poem of the Month
Parents Evening
We feel she may be cheating
at reading and spelling.
She has failed to grasp the planets
and the laws of science,
has proven violent in games
and fakes asthma for attention.
She is showing promise with the Odyssey,
has learned to darn starfish
and knitted a patch for the scarecrow.
She seems to enjoy measuring rain,
pretending her father is a Beatle
and insists upon your death
as the conclusion to all her stories.
Classic Xbox Original
This Weeks most sort after xbox game
This weeks most sort after xbox game has got to go to,Star wars Knights of the old republic 2 : The sith Lords.This week we have seen it shoot up in price to over 15.00,not bad for a preowned original xbox game.Why,well there not alot of them around and its a good game,why sell it.So if you have one you dont use now's the time to sell.
www.ktsgames.co.uk
While Super nintendo's are fetching a good price,If they have faded then this will lose a few .
But all preowned Games and consoles are worth ,So if you have one get it out and stay in one weekend and have a retro night in with friends.
. Commador 64
. Megadrives and master system's
. GameBoys
. Super Nintendo (SNES).
They could be worth .
Collectors all around the world are looking for certain preowned games and consoles.There are many rare games stored in attics,garages around the world,and there owners are blissfully unaware of there value.
Almost all retro games and consoles are worth somthing and there is collector out the just waiting to buy games.
Ceri's out of town until Sunday, working south of us in the fine town of Eugene, Oregon, hasn't been able to get wifi to do the blog and has become saturated with sufficient guilt to ask me to fill in. Poor, trusting foo -- oops, soul.
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| Eugene, Oregon |
Follow the whole nine yards here (a 95 part series) :- Half Marathon Blog
For details of how to sponsor Ceri, see this post
I'm proud to report that he's still at it, even on the road and he'll give us reports on exactly how much running he's done there. Eugene is a gorgeous place for a run and, of course, the "running capitol of the world," home of the invention of the waffle-soled running shoe and Nike, hometown of author Ken Keseyand the University of Oregon:
Cappuccino Girls featured on BBC Radio Cymru Stiwdio
18:03 Thursday, 3rd May gyda Kate Crockett
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ console/ b01h0w5h#freshSignin=true 
Reprinted with permission from David Western's Lovespoon Blog , 2012 David Western, all rights reserved.
Laura here - Dave let me have a whirl at the blog this week. After Jen's lovely "Tree of Life" design , Chris' inspiring "Celebrate Your Roots" theme, and David's beautiful integration of them both with the addition of some of his fantastic knotwork, it's about time I start contributing something, anyway, I think. I believe when Dave left us last week, he mentioned I'd be trying to come up with some kind of "magic" to lend to the overall form of the spoon. Hmm. No pressure, though... Ha.
I wish I could just come back with something as finished and beautiful as everyone's done so far, but, well.... I like to think I'm not completely insane. Realistically, I knew it was probably time for a step back. After the initial discussions with Dave, my task was to go away and work on a general framework that would include 4 balls in a cage made of roots, growing out of a bowl, then reaching up to form a handle that would include Jen's tree of life with some stuff Dave was going to build up around it, and possibly some other element topping it all off. In the midst of this discussion, Dave had also sent over a rough sketch showing me that we were on the same page with our thoughts of an underlying very organic root/vine framework - whatever shape it may be. We talked about this very modern, organic look, but also talked about "Celebrate your roots" hinting at tradition. Before I even had a chance to get to my drawing board, Dave came back with the lovely rosette we saw in last week's blog, so I had that to keep in mind, too. I asked him its size, which helped me start thinking scale, and right away, to be cautious about letting the size get away from us.
So, with all these thoughts in mind, I taped together two large pieces of tracing paper, some print-outs of the rosette at different sizes, and sat down at the drawing board. Hmmmm.
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Well, I had to start somewhere, so I started with the bowl. I think I drew about a dozen bowl shapes, but finally arrived at one I liked well enough at least to move on. Then, I started drawing some roots growing out of it, coming together to begin to form a cage. I had lots of thoughts about caged balls, definitely about how the cage will be organic and irregular, and NOT with straight bars, like a normal cage, and I thought about proportions of all the parts and all the mechanics of it.... then started to draw it, when I quickly realized that drawing something organic really can't be sketched - because nothing is left to the imagination like you can do with regular and geometric shapes. So I'll really just needed to draw an example, not necessarily a final drawing here. So I drew roots up from the bowl to the base of the cage, then erased them and drew them again, then erased and re-drew, ..... several times... And about now, I also became overwhelmed with questions, many coming from the compulsive planner in me, and suddenly I was stuck. So here's the beginnings of a root cage coming up from a bowl just to give Dave an idea for the direction I had in mind, but I really haven't even begun to draw in the complexity of the cage that I have in mind, though it may give you an idea of where I'm going with it:
It's probably less obvious here because I've erased about 20 versions, but I was lost in the details. I needed to get back to the overall framework, but how to get on with that? Hmm... then all the questions kept popping up in my head again, like - Who would be carving what parts, because that could affect proportions a lot, and did Dave have any great desire to carve the caged balls? - that could be REALLY fun, so if he wanted to do it, I didn't want to take it from him. And what dimensions could we work with, and how small did he think we could get this rosette, with it still big enough for him to be comfortable carving it, because I was mapping out some proportions and it could get really big? and did he have something in mind for the top of the spoon, because I couldn't really think of anything? And did he have some kind of wood in mind, because this will be a big one, and could we get a big enough board? And who would carve the bowl? And I shared an idea I had for keeping the design unified by having each of us take a couple passes building out the root/vine/foliage framework - so what did he think of that? And did he have thoughts for any other elements he'd want to include? And who would carve first this time? I think I even mused over a rough schedule.... I'm sure there was more... Dave patiently indulged my incessant questioning, and, after some discussion, here are the resulting framework sketches I sent him - keep in mind, the circle is the rosette you saw last week, the bowl is smooth and solid, the narrow part above it is a root cage with 4 balls, and everything else (for now) is an unspecified density of loose, organic roots/vines/foliage:
You may notice, these are all symmetrical. I did actually try some asymmetrical shapes, but didn't come up with any that were good. I don't know if that's because I just couldn't come up with any (sometimes you just don't have the muse for these things, when other times you do), or if perhaps I just still had that "roots" hinting at "tradition" idea that Dave mentioned still in my head. Regardless, I asked Dave if any of these appealed to him, and he liked the second one, so that's what we'll use. Progress! Yay!
So - Next, he was beginning to have a flurry of ideas for more elements to build around the rosette, and he'd need a cleaner, more refined version of the frame to work with, so I sent him one - and I thought it might be useful to also see the rosette in different sizes and positions. I'd printed it out, now, in sizes ranging from 4.5 to 7 inches, looking at it in relation to tools, etc., and decided it looked too small any smaller than 4.5 inches, and probably looked best between 4.5 and 5 inches, depending on what else he'd put around it. Anyway - So here's some of that thought process, in pictoral form.
That's a 6" ruler there, to give you some perspective... Then, to try out different sizes, in different places....
Oh, and I sent him a nice, clean blank one, too, so he can place the rosette exactly where he wants it.
I think the next step is to actually build out some detail here in the bottom half, while Dave plays a bit more with these ideas he's got to build more around the rosette, and then we'll hopefully have two parts we can start to figure out how to integrate soon. I can see us getting very carried away with this one... this is going to be fun!!! You'll definitely want to get lots of tickets for your chance to win this one!
