Saturday

On Saturday I did zine stalls at Brix­ton Record Fair and Bloody Icecream. I brought a film camera with me, and the film is at the lab still, but I took some (not fant­ast­ic) phone pics too.

New zines coming soon

I’ve got two zines I’m work­ing on right now and want to get finished soon. They’re about 75%-80% finished. I wanted to have them done for the week­end, when I did a stall, but I didn’t have time, and didn’t want to rush them. I didn’t want to rush them, and then I ran out of toner anyway. The one made of maps is about Vienna, issue 14 of Fanzine Ynfytyn. I actu­ally star­ted it in 2010 and mislaid the pages. Better late than never. The other one is issue 20 of the zine, it has the usual sort of stuff- this time Jeff Mangum, foxes, and North Korea. They will each be the usual 24 1/​4 sized page b&w zines for 80p.

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Categorised as Zines

Hello

This is the time of year when you’re thor­oughly bored of Winter and want it to be Spring again. I’m currently stuck in Chath­am, wait­ing for vari­ous things to happen, and look­ing after my mum’s cats in the mean­time, who come to the front door and meow at me indig­nantly if I have the cheek to go out, because every­one has aban­doned them, and they are poor orphan kittens (aka very spoilt cats).

Songs based on books- a playl­ist.

Here’s a short playl­ist I made of songs based on (good, enjoy­able) books, with some short descrip­tions for people who haven’t read the books in ques­tion.

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Categorised as Books, Music

Record Fair

On Saturday I’m doing a zine stall with my friend Fliss Colli­er at the inaug­ur­al How Does it Feel to Be Loved Record Fair. As well as our own zines we’re bring­ing a selec­tion of music zines and stock from Vampire Sushi distro.There will be record stalls from Fortu­na POP!, Where It’s At Is Where You Are, Odd Box, Fika, How Does It Feel To Be Loved?, The Great Pop Supple­ment, Dirty Water Records, Enrap­tured, Cherry Red, and Lojinx and lots of second hand records. I will have to restrain myself from spend­ing any money, because I’m broke.

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Categorised as Music, Zines

70s interi­or design book

Here are some scans from a 1970s interi­or design book- House by Terrence Conran. Some of the stuff in it is really really 70s look­ing, and some is very clean and time­less-look­ing. The pictures I’ve scanned are a mix of the two categor­ies. I just scanned the pictures that appealed to me, as it’s a massive book. Some of them are a little grainy due to the print­ing tech­nique. I scanned anoth­er 70s interi­or book I have here.

Maid­stone

The other day I had to go to Maid­stone. I really can’t think of any other word to describe the place rather than dull. It has the usual chain shops if you want to buy some things, and a pretty town hall and museum, (and a pris­on with huge stone walls slap bang in the centre) but that’s about it. It’s the sort of place you go to run errands, no other reas­on. It’s not horrible, but not partic­u­larly inter­est­ing either.When I was at school I some­times went to gigs at the student bar there, but it was such a pain to get back in the even­ings I didn’t both­er too often unless I knew someone who was driv­ing. When I was really little I used to go to see the Sooty Show and panto­mimes at the theatre, and that was the high point of Maid­stone in my estim­a­tions.

Ugh. Disgust­ing.

Here’s a rough mock up of some­thing I’ve been work­ing on. It’s not quite how I want it yet. When I was young­er I had a book called Nature All Around (I scanned it in this post) and it had a picture of a big orange slug that used to disgust and fascin­ate me. A few years ago I lived across the road from a fish and chip shop with a poster in the window advert­ising the “new masala cod”. The photo was a lurid orange, and looked a lot like a less frilly version of what I’ve drawn. If you bought a masala cod late at night and forgot to eat it, I always imagined it would creep along the carpet in the night and smoth­er you like a terrible 70s horror film.

Separado! Gruff Rhys ac y gaucho cymraeg

I finally saw this film today. I’d wanted to see it since I’d heard of its exist­ence, but not got round to it, but it was defin­itely worth the wait. Gruff Rhys from the Super Furry Anim­als saw a sing­er on Welsh tv in the 70s who used to go onstage wear­ing a poncho and riding a horse, and then sing flamenco and samba songs in Welsh with an Argen­tini­an accent, and he was spell­bound. His grand­moth­er told him it was René Grif­fiths, a distant uncle of his from South Amer­ica. An ancest­or of his in the 1800s joined the Welsh colony in Patago­nia after acci­dent­ally killing his cous­in in a rigged horse race.

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Categorised as Films

Surreal­ist­ic Pillows

I opened a Society6 shop today to sell my designs. You can get cush­ions, greet­ings cards and iphone/​ipad/​laptop covers. I have the same designs on Spoon­flower, avail­able as meters of fabric, but I’m still wait­ing to get my print­ing samples to check before they go live. I’ve got lots more patterns I’m work­ing on, but here’s 6 to start with. Society6 have a special offer that ends at midnight Pacific Time (ie early in the morn­ing GMT). If you order today, you get free post­age. The link is here.

Books I read in Janu­ary

One of my new year’s resol­u­tions was to read an aver­age of 2 books a week, and see an aver­age of 1 new film a week. I’ve managed the books this month, but I haven’t seen any new films. I caught up on about 20 hours of Scand­inavi­an detect­ive shows and watched a lot of tv docu­ment­ar­ies though, so it’s not like I didn’t see anything. I just have to see one more film each of the rest of the months this year.

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Categorised as Books

Versailles in the summer of 2005

I’ve been sort­ing through my things, and found some old negat­ives. I’ve already scanned the one from Italy in the late 90s, and here’s some more. (There’s a lot more to come). In 2005 I went camp­ing with my mum in Yvelines, just outside Paris. You can get into the city in about 15 mins on the RER, so it’s a good combin­a­tion of camp­ing and sight­see­ing. Versailles is just down the road too. I took a lot of photos there, but I can’t find the others right now. These are taken with an Olym­pus XA2 and some cheap expired Kodak slide film, cross-processed.

Pop 9

I was given a Pop 9 camera for Christ­mas, and this is my test film (Ilford HP5 400asa). There’s the oblig­at­ory cat photos for any test roll, and some of the river/​waterways around Canada Water and Roth­er­hithe. The rest of the roll can be seen here.

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Categorised as Photography

And the winner of the golden envel­ope is . .

I have some golden envel­opes full of zines. You get three randomly picked issues of Fanzine Ynfytyn, prin­ted on white paper rather than coloured, for £1.50 + post­age. They’re avail­able in my shop.

Last week I had a little compet­i­tion to win one. I had a few more entries than I was expect­ing, which was nice. The winner is Jill­ian from Canada. Thank you to every­one else who took the time to enter as well.

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Categorised as Zines

Palma de Mallorca in mono­chrome

Here’s some black and white photos I took in Palma de Mallorca in the summer, and developed the other day. There’s no real reas­on for me to return there. I had one lovely trip there, and one horrible one, so that balances out. I can’t say much for the qual­ity of the company, but Mallorca is a beau­ti­ful place (minus Magaluf of course). I took these on Ilford HP5 with my Pentax ME Super (my favour­ite camera). I also had a roll of 50s style Efke film, but some­thing happened to it, either mois­ture or humid­ity. When I opened it in the dark bag and tried to load it onto the reel, the cart­ridge was all full of goo, and the emul­sion came off in a big clammy mess onto my hands. The film was unload­able, and unres­cu­able, so I’ll never know what was on it.

Golden envel­ope full of zines

I have some golden envel­opes full of zines. They’re not quite as good as a tick­et to Willy Wonka’s fact­ory, but what is? You get three randomly picked issues of Fanzine Ynfytyn, prin­ted on white paper rather than coloured, for £1.50 + post­age. They’re avail­able in my shop.  I’ve got one to give away. Just email me the answer to the ques­tion below. My favour­ite answer submit­ted by Monday the 28th of Janu­ary wins. Your inform­a­tion won’t be kept or sold, and I’ll only email the winner back. Ques­tion: What is your favour­ite Roald Dahl book, and why?

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Categorised as Zines

Lago di Garda in the late 90s

I was tidy­ing up recently and found these photos of Lake Garda. I’m not sure when I took them, because I’ve been there a few times, but it must have been between 1998 and 2001 when I was 13-16.

The world is not my oyster

Here are the other photos from Whistable. I took more of the boats, seashore etc with my wide-angle lens on film, and I haven’t had it developed yet. I much prefer my film SLR to my digit­al one (70s Pentax camer­as just feel so nice to use), but I’m too broke lately to use much film, and I still have 5 rolls sitting around that need devel­op­ing. I didn’t eat any oysters while I was there, because I’m veget­ari­an, but I did have a really great mascar­pone, truffle and rose­mary pizza.

Rooflines

These are from some photos I took in Whit­stable a few weeks ago, a pretty oyster fish­ing town in Kent (and some­times *too* popu­lar with the daahn from londons for the taste of the locals). The roofline of the school took my fancy.

Books of 2012

I star­ted using Goodreads this year to keep track of my read­ing. Here’s my list of books. It looks like a lot, but over a year it’s only just over 1 a week, which isn’t that good going, seeing as I’m a fast read­er (more visu­al than audit­ory).

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Categorised as Books

Sketch­ing

I’ve had the bug that’s been going around over Christ­mas, albeit not badly, but I haven’t really done as much work/​creative stuff as I’d like. Here’s some sketches I did this after­noon. I didn’t really plan what I was draw­ing, I just star­ted making some lines and went from there. Mostly I just wanted to try out the white mark­er.

Smooth down the aven­ue glit­ters the bicycle

I’ve always had a soft spot for 30s subur­bia. These two pictures are a place called Twydall, near where my mum lives. I went along there to buy some wool, and I wasn’t disap­poin­ted, the area is full of old ladies. Also, the fact that the wool shop is called World of Wool­craft and is run by what could be the broth­er of the Comic Book Store Guy made me laugh.

Geffrye Museum

Here are some pictures from the Geffrye Museum in Hoxton. It used to be an alms­house, and is now a museum of furniture and interi­ors. They have rooms set up show­ing typic­al London living rooms in vari­ous time peri­ods from the 1600s onwards for famil­ies with a medi­um income, with inform­a­tion about all the objects in the room. They also have a histor­ic­al garden and restored 18th century alms­house interi­or, but I didn’t get a chance to see them this time. In the run up to Christ­mas, they’d arranged each room to show how differ­ent winter fest­ivals were celeb­rated in each era (until the 1800s New Year and Twelfth Night were much bigger than Christ­mas).

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Categorised as History, UK

Death and the Penguin

I set myself a project recently of doing mock book covers. First up is Death and the Penguin, by Andrey Kurkov. I did both English and Russi­an versions of the cover. I’m not sure how success­ful it is, though. The map I used in the collage is of Kiev.

Fake fur collar

I recently made this fake fur collar from a free pattern on the Collet­ter­ie blog. It’s easy enough to draft some­thing like this your­self, but having a pdf to print is far more conveni­ent. I used some fake fur fabric and white satiny coat-lining. I cut out the pom-poms, but they looked scraggy with the wispy fur fabric, so I used a satin ribbon instead, and turned the ends in. When you sew with fake fur, it pays to snip all the hairs off the seams once you’ve sewn them, because it makes the fabric lie flat­ter than slash­ing the curves alone. With dens­er fur you can tease the ends out of the seams, but it made the edges look too messy with this fabric. The collar was very easy and quick to make. If you can’t sew, my friend Kaitlin Kostus often has some very nice ones simil­ar for sale.

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Categorised as Crafts

Coffee Pot Cafe

Loosely based on a picture I’d clipped out of this place. The photo I have is from a differ­ent angle though.

Fanzine Ynfytyn 19

I’ve got a new zine! It’s been a bit of a break since the last one, because I was so busy. I’ve got 2 more that aren’t quite finished, but should be out soon too.

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Categorised as Zines

How I Make my Zines

This is how I person­ally make my zines. There’s no right or wrong way (aside from doing things like acci­dent­ally making it unread­able once photo­copied or forget­ting about your margins and cutting off half the text). If you want a more in-depth guide to all things zine-related, I can recom­mend Stolen Sharpie Revolu­tion. You can see all the back issues of my zines on my website.

Et tu, pipio?

Last March, I drew these fat pigeons for Moogie Wonderland’s Ides of March event. I did a silhou­ette projec­tion about Juli­us Caesar, and made some fortune telling games based on the Roman prac­tices of divin­ing by watch­ing birds or inspect­ing livers. The birds read “turn me over for your fortune”, and were hung up with strings around the room (you can see that version here).

Airmail fabric

I designed some airmail/​penpal themed fabric using some of the same artwork as the patches, and it’s avail­able to buy on Spoon­flower. They have vari­ous differ­ent fabric options, but I recom­mend the Kona cotton for this design, a smooth, medi­um-weight cotton. This is a scan of the actu­al fabric.

Golden Hands Monthly

got this stack of 70s craft magazines in a junk shop in Devizes a few years ago. That place was amaz­ing, a multi-floored cavern of junk. It’s gone now, I think. Here’s some photos.There’s the usual ultra-cheesy raffia work projects and crocheted plant hold­ers and so on, but the clothes patterns are actu­ally mostly pretty nice, which is why I bought the magazines. What I’ve scanned is a mix of nice things and weird stuff though. I also couldn’t scan double page spreads very easily, because the bind­ing on the magazines is dodgy, and I didn’t want to pull them about too much in case they broke. These issues are from 1972 and 1973. I have anoth­er issue from 1976, but it’s prin­ted on much cheap­er paper (the paper qual­ity wasn’t ster­ling to begin with) and the contents are pretty dull.

Print­able Castle

I drew this castle that you can cut out and fold. There are two pdf versions for A4 paper and US Letter. By the way, it’s delib­er­ately trapeze shaped rather than rect­an­gu­lar, so if you make it, don’t worry about one side being longer. 

Endless card

This was some­thing I made as devel­op­ment work on my MA, and never finished. It’s an endless card. Basic­ally you cut four rect­angles of card, and fold and glue them in such a way that you create a card that opens to reveal anoth­er open­ing, which then opens to anoth­er, and so on. You get four differ­ent pictures that open up. There’s a tutori­al to make one here. I went to a work­shop where they showed you how to make them, and the woman running it had made a very nice card of the story of Dori­an Grey.

Visu­al Diary

As part of my MA, we were required to keep a creat­ive diary keep­ing track of the profes­sion­al prac­tice lectures, research, read­ing, exhib­i­tion visits and gener­al inspir­a­tion. I finally got around to scan­ning some of the one from my second year. In the first year I used blog posts for the same purpose, but I felt the need later on for a phys­ic­al record.

Write more letters

Today I screen-prin­ted some patches. When I’ve done screen-print­ing before it’s been with prop­er facil­it­ies, not on my dad’s news­pa­per-covered kitchen table, with a cheap kit I got in the clear­ance sale, so I was a bit nervous. Prepar­ing the screen and print­ing is a lot more fiddly when you don’t have a light table, spray wash­er or anything to rest the print on except a piece of card­board. I thought that I’d messed up my screen when I was rins­ing the emul­sion after expos­ing it, and the water suddenly turned hot.

Effect­ing my disguise

Last Saturday me & Tukru decided to go to a party on a boat at the last minute. I saw that a friend of mine, Rob Bidder, who I hadn’t seen in person for a looong time, was doing some music at the event, and it would be good to see him, and the party looked like fun anyway. Being on a boat, and near Hallowe’en, the dresscode was aquat­ic, so I had to come up with some­thing to wear in an after­noon (and Tukru in even less time). Good old Costumes for Plays and Play­ing came to the rescue. A fish hood/​cape with scales for me, and a button-on mermaid tail for Tukru.

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Categorised as Crafts

Costumes for Plays and Play­ing

When I was a kid I used to borrow this book again and again from the local library. The first thing I ever sewed myself was from it. A friend of mine at juni­or school’s older sister was in a school play of Toad of Toad Hall, and we went to watch. When you’re 7, 13 year olds seem incred­ibly impress­ive. What impressed me even more were the weasel costumes. I wanted one for myself. Armed with an offcut of brown fabric and a toy sewing machine I’d got at a boot­fair, I made a hood with ears like the ones in the book. It was wonky, and I was a bit ashamed of it though, and wished I knew how to sew straight (look­ing back, I’m not sure the toy sewing machine was actu­ally capable of a straight seam). My opin­ion of my sewing projects has improved slightly since.

Museum of Child­hood (again)

Last week I went to the Museum of Child­hood with Melanie and Becca. I’ve been to the place so many times (it’s one of my favour­ite places in London), and I have a lot of photos on this blog of the vari­ous differ­ent exhib­its (look at the Museum  tag), so here’s a few things I noticed for the first time. First up this amaz­ing ride-on lady­bird toy.

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Categorised as History

Amoe­bas

For the last two weeks, I’ve been doing work exper­i­ence at an anim­a­tion studio. I know I don’t want to be an anim­at­or (too much minute adjust­ing of other people’s artwork!), but it’s been good to do anyway. I’d much prefer to design things, and then hand them over to some anim­at­ing wonder, who would do a much better job than me. I made some minor contri­bu­tions to an advert for Cana­dian tv (I’ll prob­ably link it when it’s been on later in the year) and did cost­ing for getting some promo­tion­al gifts made, but the most valu­able thing has actu­ally been just talk­ing to people. Every­one is very friendly and help­ful, and has insight­ful things to say.

Aban­doned school science lab

I was doing some resid­en­tial teach­ing for the last 2 weeks. A group of year 9s from Chile came on a school trip, and I gave them lessons about English and Brit­ish History/​Culture and took them to vari­ous histor­ic­al places like Cambridge and Canter­bury. I was work­ing in the middle of nowhere, in this old manor house in the middle of a nation­al park. The house had been a board­ing school from the 1920s to 2005, and the company I worked for was only using part of the build­ing.  We were the last school tour to be there before it was going to be handed over to the new owners, who no-one knew much about, but didn’t seem to be using it as a school. There were lots of locked up rooms that had been used by the board­ing school, but weren’t used for the language holi­days, like the science lab, and they had piles of school stuff lying every­where. The atti­tude was pretty much feel free to explore, just make sure the kids don’t get into anywhere that could be danger­ous.

I could be happy (miss­ing images)

I was in London to go to a private view for my friend Mark Pembrey. He does fant­ast­ic things with typo­graphy and print­mak­ing, and he had an exhib­i­tion at Woolf­son and Tay, a book­shop in Bermond­sey. For some reas­on, I was expect­ing it to be in an old quaint build­ing on a market square, but Bermond­sey Square turns out to be super modern. In fact they were film­ing a real­ity show there, where vari­ous famous people had to run a restaurant/​hotel. There were quite a few bored look­ing locals stand­ing around outside the restaur­ant window to see if they could get a peek of anyone famous. The bookshop’s great anyway (although wonder­ful book­shops are always pain­ful when I’m broke) and I had a better time at the private view, chat­ting to Erika, Mark, Zoe and our teach­er Graham than I ever would have had stand­ing around outside a tv set.

Things I like

I decided to make a list of things I like. It’s not specif­ic things, like partic­u­lar bands or direct­ors or food, it’s more a list of gener­al prin­ciples of what I enjoy. My life recently has been controlled by people who have noth­ing to offer, and who have to create drama and pain in their and other people’s lives in order to not be bored.

The world and life aren’t boring. There are 10 million inter­est­ing things you can do that don’t hurt a fly. Anyone who is worth know­ing, knows this. Actions have consequences, and anything worth doing doesn’t have negat­ive consequences on other people. They say the best revenge is living well.

Radio silence over

Here’s the embroid­ery I’ve been work­ing on for my MA install­a­tion. The whole thing (islands and sea) took me about 70 hours. I am thor­oughly sick of embroid­ery at this point. In a week’s time I’ll be finished with univer­sity.

Long time no see

I haven’t posted much in the last few weeks, because I’ve been work­ing all hours to finish my MA project and disser­ta­tion (I handed in my disser­ta­tion last week). This is the kind of thing I’ve been doing. Yester­day I stuck on the Beatles Antho­logy, the longest docu­ment­ary I could think of, and sat and just sewed and sewed until about 70% was done. I was in Spain for two weeks before that. I’ve got lots of photos, but I haven’t had time to devel­op the film ones and organ­ise and post-process them. It will have to wait until later.  The first week was fine, but the second was far more stress­ful than a holi­day should be. There was a 40C heat­wave, and the air condi­tion­ing broke down, and there were ants, and we both had insom­nia and short tempers and it was too diffi­cult to concen­trate on the work we’d both been forced to bring with us. Stress. In two and a half weeks I should hope­fully be all finished with my MA, and free to find a full-time job, and actu­ally earn steady money again (I hope). I’m really broke right now, and I’m tired of being broke for so long.

Lucky dip

On Wednes­day we had a bake­sale fundraiser for our gradu­at­ing exhib­i­tion. For some reas­on univer­sity regu­la­tions only allowed us to sell home-made food in the foyer if it was pack­aged up, so we made good­ie bags and boxes. Some of the focus in these photos is a little odd, because my lens got jammed onto f.17 without me real­ising until later that after­noon (the aper­ture clutch thing is a little unre­li­able). That’s also why there aren’t any people in the pictures, because every­one ended up with things like an out of focus nose.

Anything and everything a chap can unload

I took these couple of pictures on a visit to Porto­bello Market a couple of weeks ago. The film was expired slide film anyway, and it went through the airport xray machine twice on my way to and back from Bulgaria, and it ended up with a large red section. Not an attract­ive red tinge, a muddy red effect that blew out high­lights and blurred details. I took more pictures at the market, but they ended up unus­able. That’s expired film for you.

How to run a zine event

For 3 years I was part of the group that ran the Brighton Zine­fest. We star­ted just with the idea it would be fun to have a zine event in Brighton and managed to build a success­ful and fun event. Sadly we don’t run it any more because some of the origin­al organ­isers live in Brighton any more, the others were too busy, and nobody new appeared to take over, and so it just wasn’t prac­tic­al to hold anoth­er.

Cake mistakes

These are a couple of photos from the end of a roll that I forgot to scan. Me & Marcos went down to Brighton for the day in March, and it rained torren­tially, so we basic­ally went from cafe to pub to restaur­ant. We went to meet up with my friend Vicky first at the Mock Turtle, a tea room down by the seafront that looks like a grandmother’s dining room. I’ve been there lots of times, and their food and drink is nice and reas­on­ably priced. Vicky was running late, so I decided to get a cake for her as a surprise. I saw they had added a rain­bow cake to the menu, and she loves that kind of thing, and I was curi­ous about what it looked like.

Pick Me Up 2012

Before I went to Bulgaria, I helped out at Pick Me Up, a yearly graph­ics art fair. My tutor was running a “Draw­ing Olympics” work­shop, and some of us students went along to help.

аз съм английска, от лондон

Last week I was in Bulgaria teach­ing. I didn’t have too great a time, because all of us teach­ers got food pois­on­ing, and there was one partic­u­lar class of kids who were a pain, and due to all round tired­ness and illness, I didn’t get to leave the dull suburb we were stay­ing in and venture too much into Sofia. I went twice, and here are some phone pics. I’ve got some 35mm ones too, which I need to scan, and some diana ones, which need devel­op­ing still. I think if I went again to Bulgaria I’d go some­where in the moun­tains or coast. Sofia isn’t their top tour­ist destin­a­tion, it’s really more some­where where people work, and the natur­al scenery of the coun­try is stun­ning. I’m in the process of writ­ing about the trip in more detail for my zine.

Siren song

I made a test anim­a­tion for one of the puppets from my uni project. The movement’s pretty rough, I’ll refine it later (I also need to clean up the mask­ing). I just wanted to see if it worked. I’ve been reread­ing James Joyce’s Ulysses, and in the sirens section the barmaids are constantly described as “bronze gold”, so I made my sirens bronze coloured. Might as well.

Little Venice in orange

These are some photos I took in Little Venice with my old Pentax film SLR a few weeks ago. They call it Little Venice, but it’s really just a canal basin out the back of Padding­ton Station with lots of house­boats, some nice pubs and a cafe and a puppet theatre on boats. I guess “Little Holland” or “Little East Anglia” don’t sound as excit­ing. The slide film was much more out of date than I real­ised, but I like the orange and purple impres­sion­ist look I ended up with, some of the photos look more like paint­ings than photos.

Fork­beard Fantasy

I went to see this exhib­i­tion at the Fest­iv­al Hall a little while ago. Fork­beard Fantasy are a group who create stage costumes and props, and make films and peep­show art install­a­tions. (I misspelled it as “Folk­beard Fantasy” when I was labelling the Flickr set, which kind of makes sense). There’s a strong theme of fantasy, humour and surreal­ism in all the work, and most of the things in the exhib­i­tion were for touch­ing and using rather than being locked away in glass cabin­ets.

Hast­ings Summer of 2006

I got some films developed a little while ago, and it turned out some of them are from quite a while ago, and had been lurk­ing around in draw­ers for a long time. This one is from 2006. I’m not sure what camera I took these with, some kind of box camera or Diana or some­thing.

Girls Get Birth­day

So on Tues­day, me & Tukru went to the Girls Get Busy birth­day party at the Alibi in Dalston. Dalston is a bit of a pain in the arse to get to from mine, you have to walk about 20 mins to West Hamp­stead and then get the Over­ground (and two night buses back). It’s also full of Nath­an Barleys. There was Riot Grrrl karaoke, and cake, and Tukru and some other people I know djed, and over­all I had a good time and met some nice people, although it would have been better if the prick­ish men hanging out round the bar hadn’t been there.

Dip dip dip

My friend Tukru came to stay with me in London. We went to the Girls Get Busy birth­day party, and she went to see Wild Flag (I couldn’t get a tick­et). While she was here, I dyed her hair, because it was boring her. We went for dip-dyed, as then you don’t have roots to deal with.

Fanzine Ynfytyn 18

I’ve got a new zine out. It’s got:

* 80s video machines
* Giant list of small pleas­ures
* Really deli­cious lasagne recipe

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Categorised as Zines

Muy deli­cioso

Marcos’ parents sent us a parcel of Span­ish good­ies. Mallor­can honey, cheese and hazlen­uts. Ferrero Rocher, savoury crack­ers and chocol­ate covered almonds (although you can get Ferrero Rocher here too) and Llum de Sal with assor­ted flavour­ings, which is Mallor­can fleur de sel. They also sent Marcos some vacu­um-packed ham, which has been named the space ham.

Day in My Life- 10th Janu­ary

10th of Janu­ary for the Docu­ment a Day project. I mostly waited at home for a parcel of birth­day presents sent by my dad and did some uni stuff and tidy­ing. Not the most excit­ing of days.

Oh Vienna

In Septem­ber I returned to Vienna to teach anoth­er English in Action programme. I’ve got photos of galler­ies and exhib­i­tions I need to sort out still. Here’s some odds and ends of photos of other stuff.

Nature All Around

These are some pictures I scanned from a 1970s kids book at my dad’s house called Nature All Around. My uncle used to work for a non-fiction publish­er and we always seemed to have strange free books from his work around the place. It has draw­ings and photo­graphs of things chil­dren can spot around the aver­age brit­ish garden/​field/​beach and inform­a­tion about the lives of the vari­ous creatures.

¿Donde esta?

When we were in Mallorca, every­one did their best to ensure that we were stuffed at all times. The big curly pastry is an ensaimada, a Mallor­can speci­al­ity.

Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me.

We went for a drink at this place. At 11.30 on Fridays they shower you with rose petals from a balcony. The whole place is decor­ated like some kind of baroque stage set from a Fellini film. In fact the whole place is like a Fellini film. They don’t allow camer­as inside, but I took some photos on Marcos’ phone. Instagram photos look amaz­ing on the screen of the iphone 3, but they don’t always look so wonder­ful on the computer.

These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.

At the end of the summer I went to an exhib­i­tion by stage set design students at the Nation­al Theatre. It’s strange, I’ve never had much interest in doll­s­houses, but I love toy theatres and set design models.

Enfold­ing sunny spots of green­ery

I haven’t posted here for a while because life has over­taken me a little, and I’ve been dash­ing from place to place. I’m in Palma de Mallorca right now visit­ing Marcos’ family, with a perman­ent move to London on the cards for the end of the month (it can’t come too soon). I’ve got a back­log of photos to work through.

Patterns in the trees

I snapped some pictures of the patterns in this tree bark a while back. I might do some­thing with them later.

Museum of 51

I went to see the Museum of 51 exhib­i­tion at the Royal Fest­iv­al Hall a while back, which is about the Fest­iv­al of Britain. Basic­ally it was a fest­iv­al in 1951 to celeb­rate 100 years since the Great Exhib­i­tion and cheer people up in grey, rationed post-war London. As well as films, shows, fairs and so on, there were shows of hous­ing and interi­ors, to show people what they could look forward to after rebuild­ing and the end of ration­ing (everything avail­able for sale in WWII was simple and util­it­ari­an and rationed). My dad went to pretty much all the events, seeing as they were mostly around the corner from him in Batter­sea.

Mari­po­sas

(This is my 200th entry here- do I get some kind of prize, or should I just get out more?)

When I was caught outside without an umbrella in torren­tial rain on my break when I work­ing at the museum over the summer, I took the time to snap some more butter­fly photos. My previ­ous efforts are here. I went back with my film SLR just before the exhib­i­tion closed too, but I haven’t got round to scan­ning those yet.

New zine time again

24-page b/​w quarter sized zine on pink paper made of marsh­mel­lows and happi­ness

What’s in this one:

* Why Mr Frosty sets are disap­point­ing as an adult
* Your Tears are Cheap: Special holi­day centre section of vitri­ol­ic negat­iv­ity
* Lists! Lots of lists.
* Extra J.Mascis and cats

Widder­shins

And a shot of Stone­henge look­ing like there’s no-one there. I took this when I worked as a tour guide for one week­end. I didn’t want to do it again after that. The day out at Stone­henge and Bath was fine. I wandered round Bath for a few hours after doing the brief tour of the town on the sched­ule, and the staff at Stone­henge made me a cup of tea and gave me biscuits and gave me a free audio guide to listen to. I think it’s funny that the path encour­ages you to walk round Stone­henge anti-clock­wise while listen­ing to a record­ing about super­sti­tions, magic and myths as it’s tradi­tion­ally supposed to be highly unlucky. I don’t think I’d pay to go to Stone­henge anyway. Maybe it’s differ­ent if you come from anoth­er coun­try where they don’t have anything simil­ar.

Mystery film- Friends and Places

This is anoth­er ancient film scanned. It’s defin­itely from 2008, but it skips about all over the place, there’s shots of Medway and ATP and Brighton, but I didn’t move to Brighton until the August of that year, and ATP was in May, and I have no idea when the Medway pics were taken, so it seems to have been hanging about in my camera for quite a while. I don’t even know what camera I used. I think it might be a Lomo LCA, the one I got in an Esto­ni­an junk shop for £20. It’s since half fallen apart, so I’m glad I didn’t pay those Austri­an rip-off merchants much money for it. Whatever camera I used, it’s some really grainy 400asa cheapo Ferra­nia marked film, prob from pound­land

Films

I went to see two films at the BFI the past few weeks, both well worth seeing at the cinema rather than on dvd.

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Categorised as Films

St Ives 2008

Here’s some photos of St Ives from 2008. They were on the same roll of x-pro’d Sensia as the Lille photos. I think it was the last of my freezer­full of expired slide film I got when I worked at Jessops as a student.

Lille 2008

Here’s some photos I took in Lille in 2008 on a day trip. I only just got them developed.

This & That

I haven’t updated in a while. There’s a back­log running. I’ve just been busy work­ing all hours and doing univer­sity work. I’ve seen quite a few films recently tho.

Explor­ing the World of Robots

I’ve had this book since forever. It was part of a set of educa­tion­al books that were a hand me down from my cous­in. The others in the set were pretty stand­ard, on topics like anim­al migra­tion or cars, but this one is a bit odd. The others in the set have long gone to the char­ity shop or anoth­er relat­ive, but I’ll always keep this book.

This & That

I haven’t updated here in about a month. Not a great deal has happened. I worked at the museum a fair bit. I got a nasty bout of sinus­it­is & tonsil­lit­is combined and was walk­ing round with a giant swollen hamster face for about 4 days (bigger on one side too-joy!). I still feel a bit bleur­gh, but hope­fully that should go away.

Being Edit­ors #1- Diana Wynne Jones

So I’ve got the first issue of my children’s liter­at­ure zine done. The first issue is devoted to Diana Wynne Jones. There was a lot more I wanted to say on the topic, but it just kept grow­ing and grow­ing, so I cut it short at 60 pages, and I’ll prob­ably do anoth­er DWJ zine in the winter. (The next issue of this zine is about Oliv­er Post­g­ate). Thank you to the contrib­ut­ors.

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Categorised as Books, Zines

Bath Mono­chromes

Here’s some b&w pictures I took in Bath a few winters ago. I finally got the film developed after find­ing it in a draw­er. Pentax ME Super + 28mm lens + Ilford HP5. I’ve been to Bath a lot, both as a Clas­sics student to look at stuff in the Baths, as a tour guide, and visit­ing my ex’s family, who were from a village not too far away. It’s stopped look­ing exot­ic to me.

All the cheese­cloth & macrame you can eat

I got this 70stastic book for £1 from a char­ity shop, mainly because of the pictures. The textu­al parts are worthy and Blue Peter-ish, with lots of making things out of tea chests and copy­dex (why doesn’t tea tend to come in chests these days?), guides to home tie-dying, and sentences like “and kitchen foil gives a touch of glam­our”.

Someone some­where some­how feels you should be here

I guest djed at Moogie Wonder­land with Tukru last week. It went pretty well, although the students were conspicu­ous in their absence because it’s exam/​assessment time. I didn’t plan what I was going to play, just went with intu­ition.

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Categorised as Music

Trip to, heave ho

I’ve got two new zines out, they’re up on my shop along with some riso­graph prints. (If you don’t use payp­al or you want to trade, that’s fine as well, contact me and we can sort it out)

Published
Categorised as Zines

That cat’s some­thing I can’t explain

Char­ity shop haul (+ “help­ful” cat)

Tartan fabric, grey wool skirt, purple dress, flor­al dress, knit­ting pattern book, pattern draft­ing books, Lux the Poet (excel­lent book btw), 70s girls comics annu­al for zine purposes, London Review of Books person­als collec­tion (“Anim­al in bed. Possibly a gnu.”)

Blood, oh the blood

I’ve done some riso­graph prints based on one of my univer­sity projects to try to raise some money. The life of a post-gradu­ate student is not a rich one.

Bird has flown

Here’s the rest of the pictures from where I took the panos at the River­side Coun­try Park. There’s a promon­tory which goes out to an island in the river, almost at the mouth where the Thames and Medway meet, with narrow beaches with reed­beds and aban­doned boats along the edge and woods and pools in the interi­or. I used to come here a lot. I partic­u­larly love it in the winter when there’s prac­tic­ally no-one there except me and some water birds.

Like the librar­i­an said … every­one respects the dead

Yester­day I got the dvd of Kids for £2, and I watched it with Vicky & Tukru. V had some­how never seen it, and the last time T had seen it was about 10 years ago when her down-with-the-kids history teach­er had played it at school (yeah, Finland …). When I was about 15 or so it was my all-time favour­ite film along with Heav­enly Creatures. I don’t know what that says about me. If I’d seen the film now as a 26 year old, it wouldn’t amaze me (maybe creep me out instead). I think what made the impact on me at the time was that in the age before cheap DVDs and easy down­load­ing, it was the first really raw film I’d seen, and I was obvi­ously long­ing for rawness at the time. Glossy Holly­wood high school films had abso­lutely no relev­ance to my life

The seas will reach and always seep

Today it was sunny and I had the day off, so I went to the River­side Coun­try Park. It’s where the Medway meets the Thames Estu­ary. It’s one of my places. I exper­i­mented with making some stitched panor­amic pictures. I also took some normal pictures. I’ll post them later. I’d love to have one of those turny Russi­an panor­amic film camer­as, but I’m too poor.

Butter­flies

At my work they’ve got a butter­fly garden in a heated tent over the East­er holi­days. I popped in to take some pictures in my tea break earli­er this week. I don’t know what any of the species are, I don’t know much about butter­flies. They had a refer­ence board to compare the live ones to, but I didn’t have time to look closely.

Often Inclined to Borrow Somebody’s Dream Til Tomor­row

I’m a big Syd Barrett fan, but I really can’t stand any of the stuff Pink Floyd did after he left (iron­ic, consid­er­ing that my MA project super­visor is the guy who designed the cover for Dark Side of the Moon). Recently I went to an exhib­i­tion of his paint­ings, photos and letters. The gallery wasn’t the most welcom­ing place, but I enjoyed the exhib­i­tion. I partic­u­larly liked the way he would just give his paint­ings to anyone who liked them. There were some pictures I really liked, but they didn’t allow photo­graphs, didn’t sell post­cards (only prints cost­ing sever­al hundred pounds) and the pictures on the website are covered in ugly water­marks. It’s the same as when I went to the Hunder­t­wasser museum in Vienna- an exhib­i­tion dedic­ated to an artist who when they were alive lived in an anti-commer­cial, diy way, is run after their death in the most snobby manner of the commer­cial art world avail­able. (I’m not a fan of the atmo­sphere a lot of commer­cial galler­ies create, art is for every­one)

Get Out of the Office and Into the Spring­time

At last, some sunshine. Today me & Tukru went out for some coffee and draw­ing. It’s the London Zine Symposi­um on Sunday, and we have stuff to do. We didn’t actu­ally get much cafe time, because we forgot how early stuff closes round here. I’ve got some new stuff up my sleeve, but I don’t want to show it until it’s done.

For the Loneli­ness You Foster, I Suggest Paul Auster

I’m not doing the book review thing anymore, I lost track. When I added it up, I real­ised that I read at least 3 books a week (fast read­er + a lot of time on trains), so that’s over 150 book reviews in a year. Writ­ing that many book reviews doesn’t really appeal, so I’ll just mention any books that piqued my interest. Recently I’ve been read­ing the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, the sort of thing I like a lot and wondered why I hadn’t got round to read­ing it before. I think it’s what they were going for in I Heart Hucka­bees and failed to do. I hate that film. (But I love people mess­ing around with the form of detect­ive stor­ies). I’ve also been re-read­ing all my Diana Wynne Jones books, for obvi­ous reas­ons.

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