Hello June & goodbye 35

It was my birthday at the end of May. I’m 36 now which feels kinda weird. I still feel like I am in my 20’s most of the time (and it turns out most people don’t really know what a 30-something looks like and underestimate my ages by a good few years)

I managed to stretch my birthday celebrations to over a week thanks to all the lovely people I know and them offering various plans for me and them to celebrate.

First of all I went to see Slow Club play at the Warwick Art Centre. On the day of my birthday I had to work but my colleagues gave me a lovely bunch of tulips, a bag full of vegan chocolate and sweets and some lush bath bombs. The following day I went with J over to Birmingham to do a book binding workshop at the Birmingham Printmakers space in Digbeth followed by food at café soya.

Here’s a couple of pics I took of the beautiful graffiti around Digbeth.

The workshop took us through the whole process of making an A5 codex bound book including sewing the headbands which was so fiddly but something I think I would have really struggled to pick up from a video or written instructions.

Here’s a rough and ready picture of my half assembled book half way through sewing my headbands.

It’s the busiest time of year at work and I’m feeling a little like I’m avoiding being online too much as a result. It’s been pretty draining being on social media lately with all the talk about the upcoming European Union vote, the awful event that happened in Orlando and coverage of the Stanford rape case all taking up a lot of space on my feeds. It’s so important to talk about these things and I feel really strongly about all of these things but it’s also useful for me to be able to step away when it all feels too much.

I’ve been hanging out on Pinterest a little more lately. Pinning ideas for organising myself/my space/my time, craft and yarn projects and other bits that catch my fancy. I have also been burying myself in books and at the end of May zipped by my goal number of reads for the year that I’d set.

Sometimes I wonder if I should push this blog a little more, write more regularly and structure my content. It can feel a bit lonely writing into the void (although I know a few of my friends do regularly read this – hi!)

I’m pretty excited about how the rest of this year is looking – two trips abroad (Luxembourg in September and Tokyo in October) a few gigs and new albums coming out, the opportunity to do something a little different from my day to day stuff at work and…

…well, I’ll figure out the other stuff when exams are over (& I have had more sleep)

To finish this post off, here’s a picture of my 36 year old face complete with the new dress that I just brought and kitten necklace.