No, no, no, ummm, alright, yes.

Hmm, I think I'm not alone in being the person to ask if you need something done.  You know how it goes, ask the person who already has their hands full and you're guaranteed to get a yes. 

Don't even bother asking the person who has time on their hands.  They've got time on their hands because they've perfected the art of saying no.  No.  No.  No.  I really have to practice saying that out loud more often.

I've been paper macheing (is that a word?), baking, melting chocolate, painting posters, writing notes, searching for big circular things, making menus, grocery shopping and possibly a whole lot of other stuff that I've pushed out of my head cause there just isn't any more room in there for it right now.  My feet ache, my head aches, and my belly aches from licking too many chocolatey spoons.  I'll show you what I've been up to when I get some photos.  For now, I'll rewind a few days and show you something we discovered.

Andrew and I had a 'creative' date night the other night (Kati, stop sniggering).  We grabbed the cameras and a picnic and headed on the ferry to the NDSM wharf.  It's an old wharf that used to be shipping yards.  It's now a derelict place that artsy types have taken over.  There's old trams being lived in, a B&B boat (carbon neutral apparently), a funky cafe, the odd sculpture here and there (and I mean 'odd', there's a vegetable oil petrol pump), and a general air of desertion about it.  I went to a huge flea market with Rebecca there a few weekends ago and had thought it would be a cool place to hang out for awhile.  With cameras.  So that's what we did.

The coolest thing we found was the Kunstad (Art City).  It's a huge old factory that's been converted into a place for artists.  And skateboarders.  Inside the shell of the factory a whole city of 2-storey artist studios have been built.  We wandered up and down the 'lanes', loving the randomness and the creativity of it.  A washing line of copper clothes strung between two buildings.  A piano sitting out in the lane.  Dusty windows looking into woodworking shops.  A music studio with one wall covered in drum pedals.  Posters covering outside walls.  Trucks made into boats.  Even the dust was used for artistic expression.

And the other end of the factory?  High in the rafters a skate park had been built.  The sound of the skaters flying through the air could be heard down on the factory floor.

This is what I love about Amsterdam.  There's so much space (not real space, there's not much of that, I guess it's people's attitudes more) for stuff like this.  Valuing art and beauty and making use of space is something the Dutch do well.  Really well.  I wish there was more stuff like this in Newcastle.  Old industrial sites being taken over and turned into spaces for people to express themselves creatively, physically, randomly.  I think Newcastle is heading that way.  Things like Live Sites, the rusty metal sculpture of the old BHP metalworks, Honeysuckle.  I just hope that it continues, and keeps it's character, just like Amsterdam.