A scrapbooking blog tour
Right this moment I am heading home to London, incredibly homesick for the big city and The Boy but also a little maudlin after realising that even with three whole weeks there were so many things I wanted to do in my hometown that I just couldn’t accomplish all of them. Such is life, I suppose.
But in these last few days stateside, I was nearly as maudlin over this announcement from Ella Publishing. Ella Publishing Co. has nominated me as one of the nine Most Influential Scrapbookers of 2010. I am still a bit gobsmacked that something like that can happen from something I enjoy so much, and I really think it is all of you lovely people here in the little shimelle.com community that have made all this grow from just a little experiment to such a big part of my life. Thank you all so much for joining me in this passion of writing things down, telling stories and dressing things up with pretty paper.
Please help me honor my fellow nominees by visiting their blogs throughout the week on the MISA blog tour. You could win one of 100 cool prizes! Each day this week, Ella will be featuring different nominees and I’m going to tell you a little bit about how each of them fit in my mind. In ways that are a little different than how much I love their use of glittery letter stickers.
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The first stop on the week-long blog tour of influential scrappers is superstar Cathy Zielske. You probably know Cathy for her amazing balance of sane design and not-quite-sane banter. And if you read her blog, you’ll know she has redefined herself as a fitness fanatic on her own personal quest to health and happiness. Of course, she has scrapbooked the entire journey. |
One of my favourite recurring themes in Cathy’s fitness monologues is her worry that she will be spotted and outed as Not A Real Runner. Oh, the humanity: isn’t that the strangest and most awkward of feelings when you think someone will call you out… and yet, the fear is entirely made up in our heads? I remember feeling that way for my first few crops! Like someone would stand up and point and say ‘Thou art not a scrapbooker!’ and cast me out into the cold car park with nothing but a pair of decorative scissors to keep me company. That never happened. And no one has shouted faux Elizabethan insults at Cathy either. But it did remind me of something…
In case you haven’t noticed yet, I have a true obsession with Greenwich Park, which is just a short walk from our home. I may have mentioned it once or twice. Or scrapbooked it or something. In good weather, the park is pretty much my favourite place, and although I am not a morning person, I love going there first thing in the morning. I am not a Cathy-style runner, as my style leaves much to be desired. At an early hour, I am just impressed that I am outdoors and moving, so my pattern resembles something more like power-walk for a song or two, sprint until I feel like I will fall down, and then repeat. It’s quite a hilarious little routine and it’s entirely at the mercy of the shuffle function on my iPod, but I digress. What I really wanted to explain was this strange sense of respect that exists with the early morning park crowd.
That crowd is made up of a few groups of people. People who manage that city + pet scenario with the early morning dog walk. People who cross the park as part of their morning commute, since there are different transport options on either entrance. Gardeners. Security. Astronomers finishing their overnight work at the observatory (seriously, could this park be more amazing?). And people wearing running shoes.
It’s the same people, more or less, every day. We’re all doing our own thing, so we don’t really stop and chat. But we recognise each other and do that mystical nod of acknowledgement that says Hey there – hope you’re well but also please don’t shout too much about how fabulous this place is in the morning, okay? or something similar. (And yet, here I am blogging about it. If I get in trouble, I’ll let you know.)
Because I don’t know the names of these people who kindly share the magical morning park life with me, I have come up with various nicknames to keep them straight in my mind. (Actually, this is something I do everywhere — alas, The Boy’s original moniker was Exceedingly Polite HMV Boy since he worked at HMV and was, well, exceedingly polite. Go figure.) On my morning rounds I often see Man with Happy Springer Spaniel and Lady with Supercute Haircut and my all-time favourite, Official Greenwich Park Ninja, a older gentleman who does an amazing ninja-ballet styled workout under the trees. But Cathy’s tales of fearing someone will point and shout remind me of one specific character at the park: Man with Sony Discman.
Like his name suggests, he runs not with an iPod but with a portable CD player. But if you ever tried to play one of those while driving down a bumpy road, you know they are ridiculously short tempered and skip at every slight movement. And yet he runs with one. How that works at all, I am not exactly sure. Intrigued, I have watched him run, holding the player out like a posh waiter would hold a tray and then running while keeping his arm perfectly level. It’s amazingly graceful, and I am quite afraid to break into my crazy bouncy sprint when he is near because surely he would point and laugh at my practically hari-kari pace in comparison. But of course he never has – instead we exchange unspoken park nods and go about our day.
So today’s tenuous link? When I see a Cathy Zielske scrapbook page, I think of people I recognise by labels rather than names and get a little grateful for how we can all happily co-exist in a big city in a bigger world with a bit of mutual respect. People are good. Cathy Zielske: zen and the art of scrapbooking.
Now don’t forget to go to her blog and enter for a chance to win a fabulous line-up of prizes! And more chances to win at the Ella Publishing blog too!
More tenuous links all this week, if you think you can handle this much insight into my crazy head!
xlovesx
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