Still missing miss_jen

3 years ago today my good good friend Miss_Jen died. I miss her so much still, especially when there's cake around. I started this blog just over three years ago too- I can't believe it's been that long, it all seems like yesterday.

London calling

I'm heading off to London for a couple of days- no idea really what i'm going to do while i'm there, other than meet up with Ally to take a look at the National Portrait Gallery, wander aimlessly while waiting to meet my other birthday twin* Ellie Pea, hopefully meet up with Vikki to talk about our forthcoming top secret project, and maybe just maybe get to look at some inspirational art. At least two of the shows I wanted to see aren't going to be open- but if you hurry you might get a chance to see The Craft at Transition Gallery or Clare Rojas at Modern Art.

* Miss_Jen was of course a birthday twin too

Tea Party number 1

Happy Birthday Miss_Jen wherever you are.

We ate lots of cake on your behalf.

Air

Today's element from Shari's week of elements is Air. Like others I found this hard to visualise, but I think i've come up with a few images that say air to me.

The top picture shows the balloons we released to commemorate Chris, who had committed suicide the year before. We each wrote wishes for ourselves, for Chris and for his family, onto little pieces of paper that were placed into the silver box. We then tied our balloons to the box and sent the wishes off into the sky- it was such a beautiful evening and the bright red balloons looked amazing against the blue sky, it made a wonderful end to a weekend that at times had been hard going (especially climbing up Kinder Scout which was near our campsite)

The middle picture shows the beach at Bognor Regis, we had been walking along in the dusk, breathing in the sea air and trying to decide where to get chips from. Later that evening Miss_Jen flirted a little with the man in the chip shop, a year later Jen died and men in chip shops don't hold the same appeal anymore.

I didn't mean for this to be a sombre post- so the third photo is one of the taxidermied animals at the museum, sealed into an airtight bag before going into the freezer, in an attempt to kill of all the bugs that are living in his feathers. So three photos, all somewhat related to death, which is strange when you consider today's topic is air.

I'm having a techonological breakdown

I wanted to write about what a lovely time i've had over the weekend, visiting friends and family of dear Miss_Jen in Chichester. But instead I am wound up and stressed about the fact I haven't been able to get into my flickr account, or my yahoo mail account since Friday morning. I've got so much that I need to access in that yahoo account it's making me super stressed out, especially as it seems to be impossible to find a human being to answer some questions for me.

edit: turns out my account has been hacked, it's not just me being ditzy. My ebay account is now registered to someone in Texas and all my info has been changed on my email accounts, meaning I can't retrieve my password etc. So if you've had strange email from me then it's probably a safe bet that it wasn't from me at all. Drop me a comment and i'll add you to my new list of email addresses over at hotmail.

Little things

Tomorrow i'm hosting a 'crafternoon' in celebration of my birthday, and in commemoration of dear Miss_Jen, who shared a birthday with me and who died last year. There shall be cake eating, tea drinking and much cutting and sticking taking place. I'm hoping that it will even include some 'fun' group tidying of my studio space...now that would be crafty of me!

Another year without my birthday twin

It's been too long since I was able to share a birthday with my special birthday twin Miss_Jen. She died very soon after I started blogging here and each year around our birthday and her death day I find myself looking back and reading what I wrote at the time. Once again I realise that I was trying so hard to keep my personal and professional life separate, whilst this catastrophic event had happened in my life I barely mentioned it in this blog. Elsewhere on the internet I shared more, but here I felt like I had to keep things moving along nicely. I'd set this blog up to represent Made by Milla, the artsy crafty business i'd been running (?) and I used livejournal as a place to rant and spill my guts out. Now i'm using a million and one places on the internet to share a billion different sides to me, but I think if you add them all together you pretty much get the whole picture.

I have another special birthday twin. She is a roller girl. She is super tough and super sweet and lives with a million cats, she's pretty much my oldest friend- we met each other on our birthday when I was turning 18 and she was turning 19. Or was it 19 and 20? Either way we've known each other for 20 years give or take a year. Us September 11th girls have to stick together.

miss jen, me and teacake

miss jen, me and teacake
Originally uploaded by crunchcandy.

My friend Miss_Jen died yesterday. I feel so broken I don't know what to do. She ruled more than anyone.