My husband pulled up a bunch of bricks from the path and I set to work turning stones we found in the garden into a raised bed. Is it wonky? Very. Will it hold? Maybe. Will I fill it with plants that bring me joy every time I come home? Abso-bloody-lutely!

I also need the Internet to know how much gravel I shovelled and subsequently carried. Enough to make even the toughest back ache!

Hope you've all had delightfully weekends that have ended in joy and beauty and maybe less sore backs.

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Luckily, Pigeon Post exists and reminded me that it doesn't need to be so complicated, and a square a day was enough. Here's our staycation with friends in boxes, plus a few photos of a summer well spent.

“Well spent” is clearly synonymous with “outside” in my mind, but there was also a lot of time spent in ikea and carrying boxes and building flat pack furniture and generally moving, but the less time we spend talking about that, the better.

The sun is finally, hopefully, supposed to make way for rain in the next few days, but until then I hope you're having a lovely end of summer!

Side note: does anyone else remember Aussie shampoos slogan? There’s more to life than hair, but it’s a good place to start. I’m embarrassed to say this pops into my head almost daily, and yet my hair routine is exactly zero.

My wavy hair quest led me down some internet rabbit holes and into the realm of mousse, which consequently made me snort with laughter at a teenage memory and abandon all interest in hair to draw the memory for all to enjoy:

My teenage years were not easy, let me tell you.

I didn’t end up buying any mousse, chocolate or otherwise, but I did get some kind of curl cream from the supermarket and it did absolutely nothing so perhaps I need to just go back to eyeing up my kids skateboard?

Be honest, you clicked because of the subtitle, didn’t you?

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In case you’re curious, the accountability club (now named Studio Club) is organised by Ella Beech and is brilliant for getting a daily hour of very concentrated work in (unless you’ve forgotten you’re supposed to be cleaning your floors, of course).

The steam cleaner and I have become great friends. I have named him Steve and drawn a face on him and he has done an excellent job at restoring my grout to its former off-white colour.

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Buhbye!

Allow me to skip over the months and months of radio silence over here and get straight to the good part: my comic was selected as one of the winners of this years Fantasy Basel competition! Aaahhh! Queue the party poppers and fireworks and all other forms of celebration because this has NEVER happened to me before!

(Can you spot me in the group photo? This is a very cool bunch of people to be part of!)

Aside from the fact that winning an international comic prize is pretty damn cool, it was extra exciting that Fantasy is in my city, so I got to really revel in all of the activities that were organised for us, and see my flag every time I crossed the bridge into town. What flag, you ask?

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THIS FLAG!!!!!!! I make no attempts to pretend to be cool or casual about having a flag of my work flying in my city, sorry. All of the winning projects were put on a flag, and this bridge has never looked better. Our comics were also on display at Fantasy Basel, which was extremely cool and also majorly overwhelming because so many people go to the comiccon. It is HUGE, and I comepletely underestimated just how huge it would actually be (which would have been fine, except I promised my kids to take them to the Sylvanian Families stand I had seen on my way through to our comics, then we all had a minor meltdown because I couldn’t actually find the Sylvanian Families stand anymore, but then we eventually did find it and all was fine and oh my god it’s exhausting just to think about).

You can read my comic - which was on the theme of friendship - by zooming in and squinting slightly, or by scrolling down. You’re welcome!

Ok, that’s all for now! Thanks for celebrating with me (I’m assuming you got the party poppers out as requested).

PS - Thanks to the people from Basel Tourism and the Cartoon Museum in Basel for the photos.

As you all probably know, congenital heart defects matter a great deal to me because I have two wonderful kids with hearts that need a little extra care. The disparity in access to cardiac care is devastating to me - if we lived elsewhere, my youngest probably wouldn’t still be alive today. This is something that is on my mind a lot, and I think those of us who have easy medical access have a duty to those who don’t to raise awareness and support organisations working to improve medical care around the world when we can.

All of my stats came from the World Heart Federation website.

Phew! Another one of these done and dusted, and although it’s probably not the most exciting to look at, it’s definitely the most fun I’ve had doing Hourly Comics Day. Hooray for comics!

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I felt some kind of crazy pressure to catch up, and did it in the speediest way possible. Can you guess what I was listening to?

I also made the following journal which combines my very normal day with many thoughts that have been swirling around in my head (and in many of our heads, probably). I love herons, and I’ve been thinking about how nice it must be to have no idea about global politics or anything. I’m not sure if this comic makes sense, or whether it’s worth sharing with others, but feel free to let me know!

Even if the consensus is that no one understands what on earth I’m going on about here, I’ll still have had a delightful time drawing herons. I can highly recommend - their shape is so weird and fun to wrap your head around.

Hourly Comics Day

I almost forgot! It’s Hourly Comics Day on Sunday! The annual festival of masochistic cartoonists spending their day drawing until their arms wear down to little stubs. But it’s fun!

Jokes aside, I really love HCD and am so looking forward to joining again. We have my husband’s best friend visiting from Madrid for the weekend, so I probably won’t actually manage to draw the panels hourly. Luckily for me, Jane Porter gave me a good tip for dealing with such a situation: take notes! I mean, d’uh, right?! But it really did blow my mind when she pointed out that you can take notes and draw later. Why not?! It’s your HCD, make your own rules! I usually draw out panels - one per hour, but you can do more if you’re super keen - and scribble a tiny note into them about what I want to document. Then I catch up with the drawing whenever I get the chance. Usually this culminates in an hour or two of intense drawing on the sofa in the evening, but that’s fine!

Did I sell it? Are you joining? You totally should!

I, once again, fell off the bandwagon over the weekend (weekends are busy!), but as I’ve mentioned before, the aim for me is to keep making as many diary entries as I can, not to beat myself up about it when I forget. So without further ado, here’s where I’ve gotten to so far:

Hungry for more “Journuary” entries? Why not check out Hallie Bateman, Tor Freeman, or Candy Gourlay?

Also, just a head’s up before you go that it’s Hourly Comics Day on February 1st! Even though I find it utterly exhausting, it’s my absolute favourite comics day of the year. I’ll be back next time with some tips to keep you going for the whole day if you’re hoping to join in.

‘K, thanks, bye!

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PS - Kiwi’s ball has since been found. It was under the sofa, absolutely within her reach, and she is nothing short of silly for not having figured it out by herself.

How is your Journuary - or January - going?

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I think parents who help out at sporting events for sports they don’t play themselves (and therefore don’t fully follow) should be given indemnity against all hormone-fuelled rage. Just saying.

There’s a few things I want to share with you after another long hiatus, so hold on to your horses and get ready for a scatter-gun display of all the things:

I wrote a comic about new mothers for a competition at the end of last year. It’s not entirely autobiographical, but some of the themes mentioned may have come from personal experience. Possibly. I will neither confirm nor deny which. No news yet on whether or not I won the competition (ha), but who doesn’t love a story featuring burps, poop, and leaky tits?!

In November, I was part of an exhibition showcasing the work my group of comic pals did for our local newspaper. We took turns drawing comic strips for the bz newspaper which were all somehow related to or set in staircases. It was crazy and so much fun. If you missed it and are planning on being in Luzern for Fumetto, you can catch the exhibition again at the Bourbaki Kino!

It was my turn to make a comic strip for the newspaper that came out on the date of our opening night, so I drew my husband tumbling through a purple comic rabbit hole into our event as a sneaky little advertisement.

Tor Freeman recently shared this post by Hallie Bateman about making journal comics every day throughout January - or, “Journuary”, as Hallie’s calling it. Ever in need of a good kick up the bum, I’m going to try to join in as much as I can. Above is a little list comic I made on January 2nd to try to cheer myself up about coming back to normal life after a long Christmas break. This hints (in an entirely un-subtle way) to a Very Big Thing happening in my life this year (hopefully, if all goes well, fingers crossed, etc), which I’ll tell you about later, but which has nothing to do with drawing so don’t get too excited.

I didn’t read about Journuary until yesterday, so there’s a bit of a gap, and then this:

…which is how I spent my afternoon yesterday. Luckily I still have a couple of weeks to practice those underwater fish portraits before I have to be able to produce them live and on demand for EIGHT HOURS.

In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny: that’s all, folks! See you next time and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

*true story, thanks 2026.

This week was animal week with Jane Porter, which is always a particular favourite of mine. I did a little diary comic of myself and my husband as a goat and ostrich - you can guess who is who.

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Inktober also kicked off this week over on Instagram, and as promised I’m sharing weekly roundups over here. This one is already a day late because we've had a busy weekend visiting my parents, but I ’ll try not to be late every time…

Have a good week, guys! Enjoy this bonus photo of Switzerland being Switzerland!

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Here’s this week’s installment of comics I made in Jane Porter’s class, remembering a prom mishap. I always thought it was a genuine coincidence, but now that I’ve reflected while drawing it, I honestly think Chelsea might have had it out for me! I don’t blame her, to be fair, but I still do love those shoes! I also chose to add my hair in colour because it made me chuckle to remember how short and colourful my hair used to be as a teenager - a far cry from very boring naturally blonde hair nowadays.

In other comics news: it’s almost time for Inktober! I introduced the heroes of my comic, Pierce the ant and Si the fly, in my notes earlier this week, but here they are again in case you missed them. Pierce and Si are the very best of friends, but boy oh boy do they get themselves into trouble!

I’ll be sharing weekly roundups of the story on here, and might pop them into my notes daily as I have had a request to see them regularly on Substack. Otherwise, feel free to check them out on my Instagram every day in October.

I made a little reel yesterday talking about my process and planning for Inktober (spoiler alert: it is largely freestyled) and thought you guys might like to see it as well.

Have a great week, everyone!

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A Summer Update

In mid-August I went to Nice for a weekend with my cousin - my first child-free holiday in a very long time! Of course, the day before we left I fell over while running and spent the holiday hobbling around nursing cuts on my knee and elbow, but I digress. While in the region, we took a trip to the Picasso museum in Antibes, and had a thoroughly delightful time giggling at these incredible drawings:

The museum has a whole collection of pencil drawings that show areas that have been erased and drawn again, and lots of repetition of the same drawing aaltogether. It was so validating to see that even Picasso had moments of seeming uncertainty in his work!

The following weekend was absolute creative madness with Die Werkschau festival all weekend. I met so many local artists and enjoyed an animation workshop, but most importantly (for me), I exhibited The Heart Diary! You can see the whole thing on my website, but it’s currently only up in German, sorry!

Which reminds me, Jessie and Toast is also up on my website. In case anyone ever wanted to finish reading it, now you can!

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Back to festivals: I also joined the Comic Crew table at our local It’s Lit! Literary Festival in a genuine roman amphitheatre! It was a very cool event, and it was fun to see my work on the table with so many talented artists’ work. The Comic Crew will be hosting a big exhibition of our work with the local newspaper during the second half of November, so if you’re in Basel pencil it in! I’ll tell you more about it (and my family workshop at the exhibition) closer to the time. Until then, local friends can also find my work at the Postkarten Festival on November 1st and 2nd. Phew!

Comic Diary

As promised, here comes my diary comic from last night’s class. I’m so excited to be back in my little comics bubble and working in my diary again. It’s the most fun!

Ok, that's me done! See you soon, I hope!

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The temperatures dropped a casual 20C as we drove - it was glorious.

My parents met us at our hostel, which was already filling up with athletes (or, in my kids words, “crazy people”) getting ready for the various races happening that weekend. My dad, sister, and I were amongst those crazies - I mean, athletes - having planned this trip so that we could do the Swimrun: a race that literally involves running, then swimming, then running, then swimming…and on and on for a total of (in our case) 13km of mountain running and 2.2km of swimming in glacial lakes.

But first! A lovely relaxing evening stroll with my family.

The next day, the day before our race, we planned to make the most of our free mountain rail passes and do some exploring. And then, we woke up.

The morning was made even better by the revelation that my kids had respectively forgotten to pack any long trousers, or any socks. Luckily, my mum and sister are the kind of people who like shopping, so they ventured out into the rain with the girls and came back with the missing socks, trousers, and also new hiking boots that neither child needed but both decided were the best shoes ever.

The rain had given away to blue skies in the time that they were gone, so we still had time to race up a mountain and eat ginormous ice creams before registering for the race the next day.

One of our big worries in the lead up to the race had been the water temperatures. The lakes we would swim in are glacial lakes, which are typically VERY VERY COLD. We would have to do the whole race in wetsuits (obligatory because of the cold water), but the water was actually tolerable!

The Swimrun itself was incredible. We had a bad start, with my dad dropping out of the race very early on, but Stef and I had so much fun! We sang our way around the course, and Dad was able to catch us up on our particularly arduous climb to run the rest of the race with us / walk along the shore as we swam. And, miracle of miracle, we weren’t last! Almost, but not quite, which was very exciting indeed.

I’ve really enjoyed the last few months of training alongside my dad and sister, swapping training successes and difficulties and even training together when we could. We’ve all said we want to do the race again next year, and I already can’t wait.

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It’s been a busy week over here, but a sunny one, with lots of time spent in the garden and allotment. My mum and I cut down a monstrous rosemary bush in our garden, and I dragged the branches to the allotment to build a hedge of deadwood. We finally got our first vegetables out of the greenhouse and into the ground as well - here’s hoping they grow!

Hope you all have a lovely sunny weekend!

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This morning we came home from a few days in Bilbao in northern Spain. I have never been so full in my life, and I don’t mean that in any kind of emotional bucket way. I am FULL because the food was incredible, and entirely worth a visit in itself. Here’s a couple of photos from my highlights reel:

I promise that not ALL of our souvenirs came from that shop, but you can bet some did!

See you next week for another little update!

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It struck me that some of you would be getting emails every time I post on here, which really got my messaging related anxiety going, and I didn’t want that for you guys. I was debating whether to keep posting twice a week, as I do on insta, or bundling posts into a bumper once weekly update. But instead of asking your preference, I got decision panic and froze and did nothing. I’m sorry.

So, what would you prefer? Twice a week? Once a week? Never? (Please don’t say never)

For now, here’s everything you missed:

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Oh no! What’s going to happen next?! You’ll have to come back and see! And please don’t forget to drop me a comment to let me know how often you’d like to see these comic updates.

While you’re here, here’s an ink and watercolour drawing I made this week. I felt the itch to make something colourful, but not digital, and came up with this. It feels much more picturebook-esque than most things I’ve made lately. It was fun!

As ever, this post comes with the disclaimer that this story has a happy ending.

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I’ll be back with two final entries after this, covering the rest of the time in the hospital (there’s a lot to dig into for this one), and a note on life since we got back home.

I wasn’t sure at first what this “oh no” was referring to, but then it hit me and I AM DELIGHTED. Can’t wait for you guys to find out (in a while, not next time, but do keep coming back).

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This week, I was busy with #notinbologna, a hashtag that I started mostly as a joke and which snowballed in the loveliest way. I made a list of prompts to enjoy the week wherever you were while all of the fun pictures of Bologna Children’s Book Fair flooded social media. I met the nicest people and had a generally wonderful time, and the weather here was gorgeous so it honestly felt like a mini holiday sometimes. Here’s a few pictures of my pretend Italian getaway:

Hope you’ve all had a lovely week as well! Thanks, as ever, for being here!

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