#Hattastic Big Knit Challenge

Many years ago I worked with a young woman who had more life and energy for sport than anyone I have ever met. Fiona is much younger than me but was happy to play me at squash. She was a tough opponent, her strength was phenomenal.  We also played in the company five a-side football team together. Somehow I always ended up on the opposite side to Fiona and was terrified of her punishing tackles.  She persuaded the company owner to let me use his personal gym where Fiona and I would train together. She taught me how to use weights correctly and often we would meet at the gym at 6.00am and cycle miles through Fife countryside before work. I thought she was invincible.  We lost touch when I changed jobs and then picked up contact again through Facebook. 

The CR Smith Football Team 1996

On the surface she was fine. Then I discovered through a mutual friend that she had been battling a brain tumour for years. All the fight and energy she used on the sports arena was now being channelled to keep her alive. Despite her illness Fiona is still the same funny, bubbly person she was during the gym years. She has one of the most infectious laughs I've ever heard. 

Fiona ans I helped to raise £1000 for CHAS on behalf of CR Smith

During one recent communication with Fiona I became very frustrated. I wanted to do something - anything to help her. I remembered her posting about wearing a grey hat for Brain Tumour Research. That afternoon in November 2015 I started to knit hats. I haven’t stopped since.

WIP hats

I decided I would ask people to sponsor me to knit fifty hats before the end of June this year. I'll be posting regular updates of  #Hattastic Big Knit on this blog as well as pictures of the hats as they grow and details of how to purchase a hat.

https://www.justgiving.com/moira-mcpartlin1/

This Just Giving Page is for sponsorship only due to Gift Aid rules. I set it up because I realised that the challenge itself is worth sponsorship and not everyone suits a hat - I don't!

To date I've knitted thirteen hats, in six different styles. I've sold three. This amounts to a total 42482 stitches knitted using 1092 grams of wool.  And not a fur pompom in sight!

‘Brain tumours kill more children and adults under the age of 40 than any other cancer… yet just 1% of the national spend on cancer research is allocated to this devastating disease.’ BTR

On the 24^th March 2016 Brain Tumour Research hold their ‘Wear a hat for a Day’ event. Do you need a hat?

Willing hat models

Shelfie Skelfie Challange

It's look back at the year time again. Every New Year I set myself a challenge for the year ahead. Last year I set two challenges, one large, one small. One I achieved and one I failed.

I'll start with the one I failed on. It was to play chess at least once a week. On January 1st 2015 when I set it I thought it was small but would be good for me.   Because my husband worked away during the week I reckoned it would be a skoosh to play my phone. I enjoy playing chess and with my phone set to easy I could even be assured of a win. In the first couple of months I did play, but there is something quite demoralising about sitting alone on a wet, dark February night before a log fire, playing a Blackberry at chess. I gave up, there seemed no point to the challenge and I never regretted the decision to quit.

Shelfie 31st December 2014

The second challenge was greater and harder - I would not buy a book for myself in 2015. This might not seem hard for most folk but I am a confirmed biblioholic. I can't stop buying books!  At the beginning of 2015 I had a whole bookcase filled with books I had bought over many years and never read (I have more in another bookcase, but more of that later). Over the course of the year I would work my way through the bookcase and use the local library.

I am happy to say I did succeed in not buying any books (ebooks included) for myself, although I did buy a few gifts and download one free ebook to allow me to take part in a Global Reading Salon event.

So how big a challenge was this really?  It was huge!  So difficult. The first thing to happen was I attended two great lectures at my mountaineering club. The first was given by John Allen, about the Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team. His book Cairngorm John sounded brilliant but I couldn't buy it. Luckily one of the other club members owned a copy and loaned it to me.

The second lecture was given by hill runner Manny Gorman. This was a worse situation because Manny is a friend, I really wanted to buy his book. I had to apologise to him and explain the situation.  He came up with the solution. My novel Ways of the Doomed was due to be published in June 2015. We would swap books. Perfect.

This leads me onto the main problem I had. Many of my friends are writers who, like me, were launching books in 2015.  I wanted to support them as they supported me but couldn't buy their books. I leave this year with a list of books I must buy from these friends.

Shelfie July 2015 (books on top left are loans and gifts)

Everyone has been very understanding of my challenge. Many people bought me books as gifts, other loaned me books.  My local library has been a saviour providing me with much needed research books and new releases I couldn't live without.

I have to admit that I haven't finished all the books I took from the bookcase during the year. The larger tomes like Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and Alan Bennett's Untold Stories are at my bedside but are ongoing reads along with shorter works.  I consider this challenge to be a success.

Shelfie 31st December 2015 (still some to read!)

In 2016 my reading challenge will be to work my way through the rest of these books and my 'Want to Read' list in Goodreads, (including some of the books from other shelves) but for now I will be heading out when the bookshops open in January and I will buy myself a book.

The Marcothon in Thirty One Tweets

So what is The Marcothon? It all started in 2009, when a guy called Marco challenged himself to run every day in November. His wife then deciding to follow suit and run every day in December, dubbed it the Marcothon and before she it knew it there was a group of runners eager to embrace the winter conditions of December 2009. In 2010, the group was added to Facebook and attracted over 500 runners from across the globe.

The rules are simple you must run every day in DECEMBER. Minimum of three miles or 25 minutes – whichever comes first. The challenge starts on December 1 and finishes on December 31 including Christmas Day. It’s not a competition but a personal challenge.  If you have friends who are also doing the challenge the added support helps keep you going.

I Marcothoned for the first time in 2013 and loved it. I forced myself out the door in dark, cold, sometimes atrocious weather.  After the first week it became a habit – a good habit.

When I approached the start of December 2014 I decided I would record every run on Twitter and Facebook just to add another dimension. I ran in total over 1100 minutes which probably equates to over 100 miles in the month.  Here is my Marcothon in Thirty One Tweets

Poetry Challenge 2013

The poetry challenge

A year ago today I was planning my poetry challenge. As a reluctant poetry reader the challenge was to read at least one poem a day, every day and to choose a new poet every week. By the end of the year I should have read at least 365 poems and 52 new poets.  One year on I can claim success and more.  I managed to read on average about four poems a day. Some weeks I did cheat and would choose to read a poet’s collection I had previously started and failed to complete, but in the course of those weeks I invariably found other poets to read somewhere along the line.  Because here is the thing, once you embark on including poetry as part of your daily life you begin to see it everywhere; in newspapers and magazines; at the beginning of books; on the internet; in the underground; on the back of cereal packets. Poetry exists everywhere we just don't notice it.

So how did I choose my poets and where did I source their collections?  When I started I knew very little about poetry, but I did know loads of poets. The first thing I did was broadcast a plea on Facebook and Twitter. The response was staggering. I began with a list long enough to keep me going for the first couple of months.  Many of these poets continued to send me suggestions throughout the year if they came across something they thought I would like.  Even with this very unscientific approach I find that the poems span many centuries and continents. I am surprised by the many Scottish poets in my list but also by the diversity.

I admit to buying a few new poetry books, both hard copy and ebook.  I found many of the poetry ebooks under £2.00 and often free. I also used WWW.Poemhunter.com, a superb source that allows you to download free poetry ebooks.

Because I lived part of 2013 in France I had to organise my library books with care but I am sorry to say the libraries only held a limited online selection.

Most of my books were second hand.  Early on in the year I visited Callander where bookshop owner, the lovely poet and publisher Sally Evans, guided me on the best and most influential poets to read. She insisted I read John Donne and I am glad she did.  ABE Books, a marketplace of online second hand bookstore was my main source.

My greatest joy was trolling the shops of Paris. There I found the elusive Edwin Muir, an old version of French Poetry with translation, a bilingual version of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Yeats and Emily Dickinson. The search was as pleasurable as the reading.

So what did I learn from this challenge?  The aim was to improve my own writing. I am not sure if this is achieved, time will tell.

I have learned that reading poetry enriches your life in unimagined ways. New worlds have been opened up to me. I have discovered a love of art, I know more about Greek Mythology, politics, oppression, nature, life and love.

The challenge may have ended but I will continue to read poetry every day. This is a daily habit I intend to keep. 

Throughout the year I have managed to read full collections but often I could only dip in and out again.  I only managed a glance at Shakespeare’s sonnets and the French collection. Milton’s Paradise Lost and Seamus Heaney’s Translation of Beowulf have been neglected.  My new challenge is to work on finishing the unfinished and immersing myself in the epics. And I can't wait.

Below is my list of readings:

Week 1 – Thomas Hardy, Poems of the past and present, full collection

Week 2 – Kathleen Jamieson, The Overhaul, full collection

Week 3 – The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, complete poem

Week 4 – Billy Collins, selection of poems from Poemhunter.com

Week 5 – Two Billies – William Letford, Bevel, full collection and William McGonagall, A Selection, full collection.

Week 6 - Sharon Olds, Stag’s Leap, full collection

Week 7 – Robert Crawford, The Tip of my Tongue, full collection

Week 8 – Mark Doty, Atlantis, full collection

Week 9 – T S Elliot, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, full collection. And Sydney Goodsir Smith, Under the Eildon Tree, full collection

Week 10 – Moya Cannon, Carrying the Songs, full collection

Week 11 – Emily Dickinson, Everyman’s Poetry Collection, full collection

Week 12 – Bernardine Evaristo, Land of Abraham, full collection

Week 13 – Rhona Fitzgerald, Oidreacht/Inheritance, full collection

Week 14 – Christopher Reid, The Song of Lunch, full poem

Week 15 – Sheila Blackhall, The Toad on the Rock’s Opinion, full collection

Week 16 – Warsen Shire, Teaching my mother how to give birth, full collection

Week 17 – Dylan Thomas, Everyman’s Poetry Collection, various selection

Week 18 – Don Patterson, Landing Light, full collection

Week 19 – August Klienzahler, The Strange Hours Travellers Keep, full collection

Week 20 – Pablo Neruda, Love – Ten Poems, full collection

Week 21 – James Robertson, Hem and Heid – ballads, sangs, saws and poems, full collection

Week 22 – Elizabeth Burns, The Gift of Light, full collection

Week 23 – WB Yeats, Everyman’s Poetry Collection, various selection

Week 24 – Charles Baudelaire, The Poems and Prose Poems of, various selection

Week 25 – Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, various selection

Week 26 –Wong Phui Nam, Way of Exile, various selection

Week 27 – Ray Bradbury, On Creativity, complete book

Week 28 – Paul Muldoon, The Poetry of, various selection

Week 29 – Marina Tsvelaeva, Bride of Ice, various selection

Week 30 – WH Auden, Tell me the truth about love

Week 31 – Chris Salt, Home Front, Front Line, full collection

Week 32 – Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken and Other Selected Poems, full collection

Week 33 – Epic of Gilgamesh, part read

Week 34 - The Poems of Wilfred Owen, full collection

Week 35 – Yardza Garcia, A Shy Girl Screams Poetry, full collection

Week 36 – Wendy Cope, If I Don’t Know, full collection

Week 37 - Edwin Muir, Selected Poems, full collection

Week 38 – Alice Walker, Horses make the landscape look more beautiful, full collection

Week 39 - Poems of the Great War 1914-1918, various poets, full collection

Week 40 – George Mackay Brown, Northern Lights, Poems and Prose, full collection

Week 41 – Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise, full collection

Week 42 – Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters, various selection

Week 43 – Tennyson, various selection

Week 44 – Theodore Roethke, selection of poems from Poemhunter.com

Week 45 – Louise Gluck, selection of poems from Poemhunter.com

Week 46 – Sai Murray, Ad-liberation, full collection

Week 47 – Kevin Cadwallender, various selection

Week 48 – John Donne, Complete works, various selection

Week 49 – Robert Louis Stevenson, Everyman’s Poetry, various selection

Week 50 – The Poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi, various selection

Week 51 – Moon in The Pines, Haiku, full collection

Week 52 – Michael Ondaatje, The Cinnamon Peeler, various

Some were great, some were good and a few were truly awful but they were all worthwhile to read.