Hello and welcome to Sofa Snippets, a weekly roundup of bits and bobs from my life and work.
If you’re reading this in your email inbox, it might be too long and you might be prompted to read it on the website. Sorry!
1. Morning Ink
This section is mostly about what my Morning Ink practice has shown me this week, and sometimes other general sketchbook insights.
This week’s Morning Ink has included quite a lot of trees, two grid days, a castle, a lion and some triangles. I think it’s been a lot about mark making and using the pen to create texture and pattern. I did a lot of complaining about the ink not flowing properly (and not metaphorically). There has also been a fair bit of introspection about what I want to be doing with this Substack going forward.
It’s possible that I will go back to only daily sharing Morning Ink on Notes and then sharing them in a weekly post instead. I am still pondering this, so don’t be surprised if you start seeing a different frequency of emails.
(Morning Ink is a section of my publication that goes out daily. You can toggle these daily posts on or off, via Manage Subscription.)
2. Illustration Business
This section is what I’ve been doing illustration business wise - drawing, outreach, and so on.
Oh. I have really done almost nothing. I was thinking I would spend time this weekend digging into some new pieces, but I have just been having a proper weekend instead. I have been reading through the next lot of agency briefs (that are due for the end of the month) and having ideas. But I have not even done any sketches. To be fair, I have done enough already, but I would really love to make a two or three more pieces.
I looked at my iCloud photos folder and this is the only thing I did, which was totally a go with the flow, play with colour type thing, and the only bearing it had on the business is that it used some of Patternbank’s 2026 colours.
And the only non-Morning-Ink sketchbook time I seem to have had was a quick double-page in the mini sketchbook on Wednesday.
If I can get to making two or three new pieces or mini collections a month (when not doing illustration client work) then I would feel good, I think.
I was really wanting to fully join in with Folk Tale Week this year, but that’s only a week away so feels unlikely. When I flick through old sketchbooks and notebooks I often find sketches and thumbnails for Folk Tale Week but I don’t think I have ever fully taken part.
3. Freelancing Work
This section is about freelancing life, including what I’ve been working on with my educational publishing hat on and just general bits about working from home in a self-employed capacity.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty busy, getting two deadlines out the door. All very enjoyable work and work where I feel I have made a positive contribution to the books in question. That is usually the case, and my imposter syndrome doesn’t come out to play that much these days, but I think I have been leaning into taking on work, this year, where the value I am bringing is more obvious to me.
Thursday and Friday were days off and I have had a whole weekend off from publishing work. Which feels special and shouldn’t be. But also I need to recognise that working all weekend really isn’t the norm and there are just phases or moments in the year when it’s necessary, or useful.
I have some work that should come in on Monday and that I will be trying to get done by mid-afternoon on Friday, so that I can also have a work-free holiday.
4. Culture
This is the culture section - mostly what I’ve been reading, but might also include TV and film and wider culture, too.
I am really glad that I booked tickets for some of the Stroud Book Festival events. Having something like that on my doorstep and not going definitely seems wasteful. (Note to self, absolutely make sure to go to some of Cheltenham Book Festival next year! And maybe Bath, as well.) Last night I went to see an interview with Abi Daré, author of The Girl with the Louding Voice and And So I Roar and it was brilliant and so inspiring. Of course, that means my fickle head is wanting to pivot (back) to novel writing. My intention has always been to thread that back in once I have got illustration to be my main income stream, so that novel writing can be my early morning or evening pursuit. But I have stories and characters who are calling rather than whispering and I might need to listen to them a little bit. Or let them sit and chat among themselves for another year.
Books: Continuing to read Mon Mari by Maud Ventura. Bought And So I Roar by Abi Daré at the book festival last night and planning to take it and The Girl with the Louding Voice away with me (to re-read the latter and read the former) next week (next week being week commencing 17 November, not tomorrow).
Audio books, podcasts and radio: Caught up with The Archers finally, continued listening to both Storia del Nuovo Cognome and Normal Women and also enjoyed listening to a couple of podcasts this morning.
This one got me thinking a bit more about how the Morning Ink practice has become a bit too repetitive and how I want to be showing up in a way that will let’s new stuff come out. One of the things I’m wondering about, for the new year, is changing the media from pen. But I also wonder if I need a different kind of morning creative framework to spark different ideas and to flex different muscles.
This mostly just made want to go back to Bologna, but also to maybe aim to enter more competitions next year.
TV and film: Only Murders in the Building, Down Cemetery Road, Pachinko
Music: Listening to Lorde a lot because we get to see her in concert on Saturday. Extra excited for this one. I do love getting to take my daughters to these big concerts (first one was BTS at Wembley, pre-pandemic) and I also love that we seem to frequently go to concerts in Manchester these days, because I really like Manchester. But going to see Lorde is a whole other experience, because she is someone I have been listening to (and dancing about in the kitchen to) for quite a while.
5. Substack
This is the Substack section - Substack posts or publications that I’ve particularly enjoyed over the past week.
This was fascinating.
This is full of just wonderful animations and, of course, made me want to experiment with animating my illustrations again. I have done little bits and bobs but not masses.
This one was interesting, but also just very sad. I feel like, when I visited Valencia in 2023, it still felt like the barrios were separate entities, but perhaps not as much as it had done when I lived there in the 80s. It also made me feel bad about considering moving to Europe and that I would then be part of the problem.
I enjoyed following along Sue Reed’s trip to Venice and this piece had more about that, as well as the writing part to the trip, which was very interesting.
And some Notes that caught my eye:
6. Food
This is the food section - meals I cooked, new food I tried, places I ate out, and other food-related bits and pieces.
I feel like I am definitely flexing my creative cooking muscles again. A very nice mushroom and sausage pasta last Sunday. And a couple of other staples - Spicy Tomato and Tofu Noodles and Spicy Sausage Pasta. But also a Butternut Squash and Spinach Lasagne on Friday and I’ll be making a Sunday Nut Roast today, having not made a nut roast in a very long time. Also, many of the meals have been vegan. And I am enjoying getting back to that balance of having probably a bit more than half of my main meals be vegan, but not feeling the need to stick to it quite so determinedly.
7. Kitchen Table Chat
This last section is for general other stuff - things you might talk about over a cuppa at the kitchen table.
I will almost certainly be taking at least two weeks off from Sofa Snippets (while I go gallivanting about Europe) and then deciding whether to carry on with it, to change to a different kind of weekly roundup (for example, if I switch to daily sharing the Morning Ink only on Notes, I would probably want to do a weekly Morning Ink post), or to not do any kind of weekly roundup but just stick to individual single-topic posts - maybe just monthly. I have not written any of those while I have been doing these Sofa Snippets. I haven’t written a single-topic post since this one in May. That was six months ago! I feel like it might be time to get back to those and leave these formulaic posts behind for now.
But wherever I land, I am probably not going to make a full-on decision or start afresh until after I’m back from Florence at the end of the month.
I hope you enjoy this weekly roundup format. I will still be writing some ‘proper’ posts on individual topics, but I enjoy reading these and it will keep me regularly showing up in your inbox (it has a section of its own, though, so you can untoggle it if you prefer, by going to Manage subscription).
Thank you so much for including my Venetian solo travel piece, Tasha. Hugely appreciated 🙏❤️