Mr Blue, can you come down?

Our time at 826 Valencia was filled with many awesome jobs, but my favourite by far was the daily writing workshop, where a class of primary school kids would write a book in two hours, with some help from a typist, an illustrator, a leader, and Mr Blue, the cranky publisher who lived and worked in the attic. Mr Blue, who never ventured out from his office, spent the two hours ranting about children wasting his time, and insisting on ridiculous amounts of writing to be done within ridiculously tight deadlines. It seemed the more Mr Blue insisted that "children simply cannot write stories" the more the kids loved him.

Here is my artistic depiction of an interaction between Mr Blue and a bunch of school children.

Why I need perfect circles

Jen and I are in the final throes of preparation for the literacy program we are running. Pigeons, as it is called, is a collaborative writing project linking authors with primary school kids through a letter exchange. It has been the focus of our lives for a year, and starts next week.

Among other things, we have had a rubber stamp made for the students to use, making their correspondence official Pigeons mail. We were going to use an old door knob for the stamp handle, but then a small brass pigeon made its way mysteriously to our freezer, of all places. What could be better?

So I have been trying to cut out MDF circles to use as the base. And continue to try.

I'm almost there.

The Perfect Circle

I have discovered, to my relief, that I am not insane, as I have been unable to cut a perfect circle out of MDF using a jigsaw. According to Mollusk, only people who are clinically insane can do such a thing.

Two things I would like to recreate

- Boite-en-valise
- Fluxkit

Mix Book

On the theme of Squidmonkeys, about a year ago I made this MixBook for my girlfriend. It's like a mix tape, although instead of songs, it has excerpts from a bunch of different novels and short stories. It took me ages, both to retype each story, and to bind the book (imposition messes with my mind). I also did a bit of a rush job on it, so it's not very well put together. I would love to redo it, but Jen refuses to let me touch it.

I know this sort of thing must break all sorts of copyright laws. However, if you take into account the number of spelling mistakes that are probably in there, you may find that my versions could possibly be considered entirely new works of writing.

Beware, the terror...

of the SQUIDMONKEY!