The Touchwood Project
Mar 09 2010
Today Power Off Weekend got national coverage, thanks to a mention on BBC Radio Scotland’s Tom Morton Show.
Here’s the brief clip and some challenges Tom has posed to us:
Power Off Weekend BBC Scotland Tom Morton
Tom, here’s answer #1:
Simply crank the handle and you've got electricity-free radio!
Mar 07 2010
It is time for us to celebrate the coming of Spring, this year coinciding with the latest Power Off weekend. Everyone is welcome to join us with this because it happens in your own home, or a neighbours, or friend’s or tent!
The Power Off weekend is 48 hours, from 11pm on the Friday night to 11pm on the Sunday (19-21 March 2010), without electricity.
Playing board games by candle light, surprisingly wonderful fun!
Power Off is all about having time to have fun, play games, talk to people, have friends and neighbours round, spend time with your children – and all the other things that suffer as a result of 24/7 computers, emails, TV, games, chores, noise, 24 hour bright light and one endless season inside your artificial world, called home.
Mar 02 2010
Overbearing corporate-ness is a problem with StrengthsFinder, its assumption that you must be manager at a Fortune 500 company if you’re reading it. That assumption turns off a lot of people, but there’s good stuff here if you can get past that.
That’s why today I want to have a little creative fun while looking at the 4 categories of strengths in StrengthsFinder and how to use your type of strength to help you be an effective leader and be part of a successful team.
Understanding your strengths is relevant not just for your working life whatever its shape, but for volunteer activities, organisations and even relationships.
My family did Strengthsfinder and it’s helped me understand and appreciate them and how we function together. It’s one of the core ways Malcolm and I run Touchwood, so I’ll continue to write about it for others out there looking to take more of a strengths-based approach to life.
I’m assuming you’re already familiar with the basics of StrengthsFinder, which is a tool that helps you identify your top 5 strengths from a list of 34. Now it’s about developing your strengths further and learning how to play your totally unique role as well as look for others to complement you.
To be an effective leader or part of a team, you need to 1) focus on your area of greatest ability then 2) build a team with complementary, very different strengths to yours.
Let’s start with you first.
Chances are, your strengths will fall into one of these categories: 
(These are my colourful intrepretations of the 4 types, complete with little icons and colour coding. I love designing this kind of stuff.)
OK, go find your strengths report and look up your strengths again if you’ve forgotten them. Ready? Now, let’s start with the first set: Strategic Thinking. Continue Reading »
Mar 01 2010
“Spinning makes you think of little old ladies.”
Malcolm and I are sitting in the conservatory waiting for the sun to dip below the clouds and treat us to a rare sunset over the water. For the past several months, the sun had hidden behind the peaks of our neighbouring island, Hoy, and only for the next few weeks would it set right on the horizon before wending its way north to hide again, this time behind the slope of Stromness.
I took the moment to explain to Malcolm my conundrum: how do I write about how fantastically fun spinning can be, how surprising and imaginative and even countercultural, when most people find it boring?
Hence Malcolm’s comment about little old ladies. Commiserating.
I cast about for a way to describe the kind of spinning I’m doing and what I’ve encountered in the research I’ve been doing on the subject and voila! Punk spinning was born.
I couldn’t find a photo to illustrate this idea, so played around in Photoshop to design this little logo. I should screen print a bag with this on it to hold my spinning stuff (feel free to grab the logo and use as you wish).
Punk spinning is about spinning for the sheer joy of it.
Feb 26 2010
I love when I try something new, think I’ve failed, and then it turns out great. Such was the case with my first attempt and dyeing, carding and spinning my own yarn, the first of which I’m calling “The Coming Storm”. But it’s also brought up some questions about why getting paid for something seems to equal appreciation.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to create a yarn that captured both the colours and feel of this photo:
The lone house waits for the storm to come
I decided to divide the colours into two: grass and sky. My idea is knit it up as a tapestry that will hang from the homemade knitting needles I’ve started doing. This is what the grass looks like so far:
The Coming Storm yarn knitted up, on the bobbin and in fleece form
Feb 20 2010
As my Dad told me recently, I’m well on my way to the 14th century at the rate I’m going. Well nothing says medieval like spinning yarn, so today’s post is for the crafty types and wool lovers out there with whom I’d like to share my newest project: Orkney tweed yarns.
My wedding dress looked like this. All I need now is the hat.
When we moved to this house, our landlandy generously left behind her spinning wheel to use and it’s been beckoning to me since then. Problem was, it didn’t seem to be entirely in working order and I didn’t know enough about wheels to know how to fix it.
Feb 18 2010
Have you taken Strengthsfinder and had “Ideation” as one of your top 5? Know someone who has?
Today I’m writing about something pretty specific: how to develop Ideation as a strength. If you don’t know about Strengthsfinder, it’s a fantastic personal development tool I’ve written about before.
Strengthsfinder has fundamentally changed how I live and work, helping me see what’s unique and wonderful about what I can do. In the past, I dismissed the very things the test identifies as my biggest gifts, and I see a lot of other people do that too, which means we work with a fraction of the enjoyment we could have if we do what we love doing — and are best at — every day.
My top 5 strengths
But just taking the test isn’t enough. It’s about figuring out how to continue develop your abilities day after day, and understanding how to work with other people’s talents.
So, today I’m talking about Ideation and how to develop it.
Feb 15 2010
This morning shone brightly, bringing the feeling of spring and all its energy and enthusiasm with it. The problem was, so many things weighed on my mind I couldn’t seem to start on a single one.
I felt restless, cranky, worried in that intangible way that happens when I have too many things in my head and doubts that I’ll ever manage to get them all done.
When I get like this, Malcolm and I sit down for a cup of tea and I tell him all the things troubling me. As we learned from our Strengthsfinder results, one of Malcolm’s biggest strength is strategic thinking — in his case, he’s particularly good at looking at all the details of a situation, all the compicating factors, and determining a path ahead.
I think it’s his training as a mountain guide and navigator, where, when setting out for a hike in the outdoors with a group, he takes into account a million factors ranging from impending clouds and wind direction to the fitness levels and health conditions of the people he’s leading. He has to decide the direction he’s going to take and reassure all the people that everything’s fine.
Feb 02 2010
“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.” That’s the phrase circling around my head this morning as I watch another thrilling gust of snow sweep past the kitchen window.
I’m thinking about the often delightful responsibility of being a dreamer, a storyteller, and how you tell a story that’s both honest and worth telling.
I think you start with attempting the impossible, which is why the quote above, which I discovered courtesy of Willy Wonka, keeps going through my mind. Here, take a look:
Isn’t it glorious?
The line is actually taken from a poem called “Ode” in a collection called Music and Moonlight — two of my favourite things and apropos since two nights ago we took advantage of a dusting of snow and bright full moon to go outside and waltz.
Jan 16 2010
Today’s fun and games involved Malcolm dishing up tasty slices of 6 different brands of butter atop oatcakes to answer that timeless question: Is it worth paying more for a better butter?
Since we’re such butter junkies — I’d guess we go through something like a pack a week — we thought finding this out would be be both fun and illuminating. In our case, is it worth dishing out the extra money for Lurpak and President over the cheaper ones? A blind taste test is the only way to find out.
Handily, it’s also a good excuse to eat lots of butter.
Butter taste test ready to go
