Making stuff

Some badges made out of sequins, foil sweet wrap­pers and a torn copy of a Tale of Two Cities. I need to draw his eyes back on, he went through the wash­ing machine by acci­dent a while ago, that’s what happens when you’re an elderly toy elephanto­saur­us. (Made by my nan by adapt­ing an elephant pattern).

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Categorised as Crafts

So’ton Zine & Craft Fair

Yester­day I went to the Southamp­ton Zine & Craft Fair. It’s a 2 day event, and I was supposed to be there for two days, but I came home last night in the end. The event was very small anyway, and the weath­er in Southamp­ton was atro­cious with torren­tial rain­storms and gale force winds, so there weren’t many people there. I felt pretty awful from being under the weath­er anyway, and stay­ing up too late the night before cutting zines and baking panda cakes with Vicky, so the thought of sleep­ing on the organiser’s floor after battling through rain didn’t appeal at all.

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Categorised as Zines

New zine issue

Fanzine Ynfytyn 9
A 24 page B&W zine meas­ur­ing 15cm x 11cm /​ 6″ x 4″, filled with assor­ted inter­est­ing rubbish

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Categorised as Zines

Lady into fox

I’m off work with a stom­ach bug today, I’ve been under the weath­er all this week. This morn­ing I read Lady into Fox by David Garnett. He’s one of the Blooms­bury set who isn’t really famous (apart from the indig­nity of having a less popu­lar Andrew Lloyd Webber music­al based on one of his books). The book was bril­liant, about a bour­geois 1880s coun­try couple and their life after the wife suddenly turns into a fox.

Right now I’m doing lots of laun­dry, writ­ing about Roman emper­ors, and work­ing out what bland food I can have for lunch.

Margate Shell Grotto

Earli­er in the summer I went to the Margate Shell Grotto with my mum. I thought it was a piece of victori­an tour­ist kitsch from memory, but it wasn’t like that at all.

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Categorised as Travel

In the Flowers

Two self-portraits from June test­ing out my £2.50 remote. I’ve got a big back­log of photos to organ­ise.

Custom­er Service

My cous­in is work­ing tempor­ar­ily in Craw­ley, a town which exists solely for servi­cing Gatwick Airport, and every day he is confron­ted with a new bizarre sight outside the train station. The best one this week was two dwarves slap­ping each other. He popped into Sainsbury’s and bought a jack­et potato and pack of Garibaldis (those biscuits with rais­ins in which look like squashed flies) for lunch. The man at the counter asked him “Are you going to have a BBQ today then, sir” perfectly seri­ously. He thinks Craw­ley might be direc­ted by David Lynch. I like the idea of a biscuit bbq.

Lash­ings of ginger beer

I’ve been in Medway this week­end, I’m stay­ing at my mum’s, but she’s not there. My auntie went into hospit­al to have her coch­lear implant done, and her daugh­ter is away on her long pre-booked holi­day, so my mum’s gone to pick her up from hospit­al and look after her for a few days until her sense of balance returns.

Hello from Corn­wall

Today we went to the beach, but I didn’t bring my digit­al camera because I was (rightly it turns out after I nearly fell in a rock­pool) concerned about break­ing it. I did bring my lomo fisheye though.

Zine Night I

On Tues­day night we had our first ZIne Night at the Cowley Club. Hope­fully it’s going to be a monthly event. The first one was small and quiet, because we didn’t have time to organ­ise much, but it’s better to build ourselves up, than try to prom­ise the world from the outset. We had a table with zines from attendees for swap­ping or selling, a cake, and a bar, and read­ings.

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Categorised as Zines

London Zine Symposi­um 2009

Sunday was the London Zine Symposi­um, and I had a stall with the other Brighton Zine­fest people. We went up togeth­er on the train, and that seemed to coun­ter­act the jinx that plagues me any time I try to go to a zine event in London which cancels/​seriously delays any known form of trans­port. I did forget to bring the “up for trades” badges though, and we had to make do with German ones (not that useful in an English-speak­ing event!). There were two rooms this year, about 2 million people I knew and it got very hot. I did a work­shop with Alex about Etsy, we basic­ally made it up as we went along.

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Categorised as Zines

Müll­heim Swag

My friend/​BZF compadre Ed went to the Müll­heim Zine­fest, and I gave him some of my zines to either sell or trade for inter­est­ing stuff. He didn’t manage to sell anything, but brought me back a bag with a creepy clown on it full of all kinds of great stuff in German and English.

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Sue Rydering

So on Saturday I went to the Sue Ryder hospice sale in Oxford­shire whilst Chris was at work, a treas­ure trove as always.

Last Week­end

Last week­end I was in Read­ing to see Chris. On friday we ate at Wagamama, and then went to a gig at the Rising Sun. It was Ben, Jay, and the guy from the Inspir­al Carpets who isn’t Clint Boon. I can’t say I’m an Inspir­al Carpets fan, but the guy was bril­liant. He also had a great anec­dote about being beaten up by a Kiss trib­ute band.

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Categorised as Music

Bramber & Steyn­ing

Bramber’s a small village inland of Shore­ham, it’s got one street with a couple of pubs and houses, a ruined Norman castle, and an intact Norman church (ie they’re about 1000 years old)

Shore­ham

On Saturday I went out with my dad to have lunch out and a wander. We went to Shore­ham, a small coastal town near Brighton, and Bramber, a village with a ruined castle. Here’s Shore­ham.

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Categorised as Travel

Brighton Aquar­i­um

When Chris was down the other week we went to the aquar­i­um because I had a half price vouch­er. I love aquar­i­ums, and I’m going again on Monday even­ing for a work thing.

Char­ity Shop­ping with Tukru

On Sat I went down Rochester with Tukru to do some char­ity shop­ping. She got Ike & Tina Turn­er and Human League records, a unicorn colour­ing book for zine purposes (she’s a big unicorn fan) and I convinced her to get some Agatha Christie books.

Week­end in Medway

Last week­end I went back to Medway, and I went up the Great Lines with Tukru, and we messed about taking photos.

Altern­at­ive Press Fair – London

I shared a stall at the Altern­at­ive Press Fair at the start of Feb with my friends Scott and Chris, and their friend Pete who I hadn’t met before. Thanks to Jimi and Peter for organ­ising such a great event.

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Categorised as Zines

New Hair

I added some black streaks to my hair, because I thought that the solid pink ( a base of atom­ic pink, made a bit redder with a mix of la riche rubine + flamingo pink) was making me look peaky. It also hand­ily disguised my rapidly grow­ing roots. I’m pleased with it.

Pancakes!

The 24th was Pancake Day here in the UK. You tradi­tion­ally make pancakes to use up all your indul­gent bits before Lent. I’m not at all reli­gious, and I don’t give anything up for Lent, but I always make pancakes.

Women’s Zine­fest

At the end of Janu­ary I had a stall at the Zine Fest at the women’s library at London Met Uni in East London. I was horribly late, as it seemed almost every form of trans­port I could possibly use was closed for engin­eer­ing works that week­end, so I ended up having to walk from Monu­ment to Brick Lane to get there. I had a ridicu­lously huge table to myself in this cosy little library, and I made quite a good bit of money and did some shame­less promo­tion of the Brighton Zine­fest.

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Categorised as Zines

Panda Eyes

Hot Silk Pock­ets are my friend’s band, and they’re ace. I often get phases where there’s only one song I want to listen to. Their song Panda Eyes was the only song I could listen to last week. (This week it’s been replaced in my affec­tions by Summer­time Clothes by Anim­al Collect­ive and Noth­ing Ever Happened by Deer­hunter, but it’s still a great song)

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Categorised as Music

Book Cover Archive

This website is ace. It’s just loads of scanned book covers, but really beau­ti­fully designed ones.

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Categorised as Books

Hazy Sea

I went for a walk along the beach whilst wait­ing to meet up with my cous­in, who’s just moved to Brighton. There was a haze on the sea that day, and the pier looked like it was float­ing on noth­ing. I never get tired of photo­graph­ing the seafront.

A wander along the beach

One of my New Year’s Resol­u­tions was to trawl back through forgot­ten photos on my hard drive/​negatives folder and post-process them. This was one of the first untouched folders I found. Back in Septem­ber, I went for a walk along the beach along Hove Lawns, right up to Portslade. It was a beau­ti­ful day, and there was hardly anyone about, because it was the middle of the week, and the tour­ist season had pretty much finished.

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Categorised as Travel, UK

Knit­ting Ahoy

When I was back home visit­ing my family in Kent, my friend Tukru came round and she fixed my issues with circu­lar knit­ting, and we learnt some lace knit­ting patterns out a book my nan gave me. My mum laughed at us, and said we were very rock and roll. I won’t show my lace sampler I made, because it looks really weird, but here’s a stitch I learnt out of the book after my friend went home, it’s very simple, and looks very 70s when knit­ted in chunky wool.

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Categorised as Crafts
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