The turning of the year

September 22nd. It's officially Autumn. Or Fall if that's your part of the world. The time of reaping what we sowed if you want to get a bit poetic. I wonder what events this year's goings on will harvest. But right now I'm looking out at my perfect kind of autumnal day - almost cloudless blue sky, still (amazingly) warm sun, masses of greenery remains on the trees and gardens are bursting with flowers and produce. When I went out for my run yesterday evening (14 days back at it now) there was a slight hint of the colder weather to come.

I did WWOOFING with organic farms on Vancouver Island when I was at uni which beat spending a dull summer in a drab northern 'city' (it only got that designation because of the uni). The best part was the Fall Fair in Courtenay. The grounds where we went every Saturday to sell what we'd picked the day or two before at the fabulous Farmers Market, were now expanded to add in stage areas for music, chainsaw carving, animal related competitions for kids, art and craft and food of every kind.

The weather was perfect every year I was there and the atmosphere was relaxed and happy. I miss the times spent on the island and feel sad when I think about what's happening in Canada and other countries. Maybe the island has escaped the crazy going on elsewhere...hope so.

Back at the create stuff desk

On the other side of the pond, my work area has reverted to the usual jumble of scrawled notes on too many bits of paper, notebooks, tools, random tubes of paint and part finished sculptures. It never stays ordered and tidy for long. I've been sorting my writing notes to figure out the connecting thread which I can apply to my proposed Substack page. It's getting there but leaving aside the school of thought that says to just get it out and fix the details later, I want to have a number of pieces and a stock of ideas to get through a couple of months of writing. When you have that thread, your readers will know whether they want to keep coming back.

My street dancer girl has now been clothed in three types of hand made paper. It was a bit tricky to do but she looks okay. You can see her below - some bits to fix up and probably maybe will give her a punkier hair colour. Will probably do some kind of texture thing on the base to make pavement (UK pavement, that is. Where people walk not where N Americans drive. That was a confusing exchange before I learned it had a different meaning in Canada).

I haven't yet decided what my autumn elemental will be. Kind of have an idea but it's not clear in my mind yet and the diamond maker needs his hands fixing and I still haven't gone through my boxes to find where my crystals are so he's waiting patiently. But when you make diamonds for a living, well, time isn't such a big deal is it?

Resisting the hype train

So, plenty of things to be cracking on with. I've been neglecting my arty social media. It's not just the constant need to post and uurgh, promote, but more the platforms endlessly shoving in my face stuff like promotions, ads or things I might want to follow. I resent being harassed to be a 'user' of their preferred content and being yanked around by their algorithms so they can make billions from sucking in all our data.

My low opinion of it all hasn't changed since I did business studies in college yonks back. Interestingly, the marketing part (very slick course book tho') was universally loathed and held in contempt by all my classmates. It was pretty funny to see all the tactics and psychology being slammed by a bunch of twenty somethings who despised the very notion of manipulating people into buying stuff. Now we're all being manipulated and by so many entities. Hmm, perhaps that old marketing course is what makes me view promoted narratives with suspicion. In a world of endless advertising it pays to look deeper into what you're really being sold because it's rarely what you think.