Clocks from my earlier years

I used to go down to Covent Garden with my grandmother to see the water clock and I had forgotten it was there. I looked upwards and it's still there, but alas not working. This picture of it was taken with my phone and treated to a "Lolo" effect using an app called Camera Bag. Why is it not working? One of the metal characters used to randomly water passers-by. Surely it's a public work of art and therefore worth maintaining? It looks sad, still and quiet, even in the sunshine.

From my mobile ;)

Spring! The grass is riz.

Wow the sunshine is really cheering me up today. Tree blossom and warmth- East London seems unusually inviting. I have even got a new whizzy blog thing for my (ahem) iPhone. I have lost 10lb of blubber and I am looking forward to summer without a wedding to plan! In other blog news I really ought to update Grilla Styling. Thing is, I got so fat I didn't like my pictures, oops! Perhaps summer will lend all my projects a new lease of life. Ah, that must mean I need a new notebook ....


-- Post From My iPhone

telephonic joy and sadness in rice

Last week I returned a phone that I had found on the ground to its grateful owner. She is from Taiwan and she gave me these gorgeous little biscuits with my name in Kanji on them. She told me I was a wonderful person. I always think that any person would try to return a 'phone that they found, but obviously the real world doesn't work like that. It was a charming little ivory and gold Sony Ericsson phone and I searched her texts to find numbers of friends who may know her, tracked down her lecturer and found out her email address. I felt very nosey! Yesterday I put my (purple) mobile through the washing machine by mistake. Its sad little wet oblong face is blank and black. Placing it in a bowl of raw rice (thanks Google) for 12 hours at first appeared to partially revive it but it is now once more defunct. I'm lucky to have isync and a memory card so I've lost no data but it feels, in a small way, as if I've lost a friend, and found one. To have been able to give the gift of someone's phone back with all its precious pictures, numbers and messages from family is of far more value than losing my own phone which is just a lump of purple plastic/metal without its data. The biscuits are probably made of rice, too. Isn't it strange how the funniest things are linked. As luck would have it I'm due an upgrade so It'll be hello HTC Hero. I wonder if I can write applications for it in Python? hmmmmm

New year (again)

Well here is another year, and more importantly another decade. I feel like I've left the last ten years behind...officially! I find all the conversations about when the date "actually" is, whether there is a Year Zero, etc, tedious. I find this particular date handy to hang a feeling of closure on, and it feels good to me. The picture is from Udevalla in Sweden where I finally went to visit Paul.... at minus 15! Snow boots minimised the#uksnow disruption for me and worked perfectly in Sweden too. Thank goodness.

The best thing that has happened to me lately is getting a brilliant new job. 2009 was a whirlwind- moving house (of course- I do it every year don't I? did I? hmm can't remember) purple wedding, my job at BAC ending, and I'm now working and training at the same time in Flash animation and various bits of code. This is probably the first job I've ever had thats a perfect fit for my capabilities- I'd always thought I'd left it too late when I stopped programming in Basic in 1980-whatever at primary school to catch up- it appears not. I've always somehow regretted not going down the Computer Studies route... thought as my friend Paul pointed out, he likes to think of me as his friend the jeweller...not his friend the computer programmer! I suppose I'll always be a metalworking girl and aspiring gemmologist at heart, but the pure detail and predictability of code, plus of course its visual manifestation in Flash, is right up my street and I've never been happier...in fact I actually look forward to Mondays! I bet there are not many people who can say that.

The art of washing

Look at this. Isn't it beautiful? that's the art of hanging out the washing, that is. The art of placing damp clothing, expertly flicked and shaken to remove creases to dispense with tedious ironing, onto hangers. The art of placing clothes pegs where their little bite-marks won't show. The art of re-shaping bras for a smooth breast line in the sun, a bit sexual. The art of placing much loved clothes straight into the wardrobe once dry and warm and slightly crisp is satisfyingly stress-free. Chore-like effort is reduced by choosing to take pleasure and by giving a little thought. Clothing thus treated glows when worn. One of the many things my mother taught me is how to do the washing and I am most grateful every time I step out of the house in my lovely clothes. I do so love clothes. And I DO hate ironing.....!

being married

So.... this is what its like being married. Oddly, the dynamic has changed. There is now an "Us" and a "We" in a more official way. I have my own family that I chose. The wedding was widely commented on as the most relaxed, best food, best music wedding ever. I thought so! Such a fabulous day, followed by a week of total shock and Jazz. AAAAAAAA I AM MARRIED! OMFG MY HUSBAND IS PLAYING RONNIE SCOTTS WITH THE LJC!!!Back to work tomorrow......under a different name...and paperwork paperwork paperwork. Today- houmous on toast and relative normality.

Shopping trolleys and Hoovers

Another vaguely lonely photo. Wouldn't it be fun to do a 1950s style photo shoot with an old Hoover? Hoovering the grass in a headscarf and bright red lipstick. I'm in the wrong job. I want to somehow combine my people skills and creativity. I want to help people using art! Hmmm. Also I need to get.... kicked up the bum regularly to actually DO SOME ART. I wonder if the portfolio course at CSM is the right thing to do? I did get in there once. Onto their Jewellery BA. Or how about the creativity courses at IATE. Or how about this course about work? Surely if artists like Paul Alexander Thornton, who doodle like that, and object-maker Bwana Spoons! exist then so can I? Exist? I mean, as myself- messy, colourful, creative- can I?

Wow!!! cute things!!!!

Not this photo. This photo is sad. Sad as in melancholy. look at it. I don't need to explain it. THIS is cute.

My family and other Edward Hopper portraits

I took this photo (when I upload it- have lost the wirething and the boxthing isn't playing) at a family reunion barbeque. Subjects- my Mother and Brother. I don't think ether of them in actual fact were having that dreadful a time- I just think they both look completely isolated from the scene and from each other. Thats what gives the picture such an Edward Hopper look.

Starting a new blog on a different tack

Like my friend crazymum with her Charlotisms, I do sometimes feel like no one understands the way I think. I have created a new game to stimuate me creatively- not sure where I got the idea from- though I believe it was after a double espresso and a grappa which shows that alcohol has had at least one positive effect on me for all the negative ones......anyway its all about rushing round clothes shops with a friend and 2 cameras, picking out stuff I would NEVER wear, screeching to a halt in the changing roms and pretending to be models- taking crazy pictures Austin Powers style then retiring to a dark arty coffee bar to giggle over the results. And then blog the pictures.

see Grilla Styling for more..... its VERY blank at the moment but watch that space!

Later

Extremely battered after an emotional week....  I don't want to talk about my week.

I think this blog needs more and better pictures. Of sleepy bumblebees perhaps- I took this one on macro using my new camera, a remarkably cheap £50 Canon with 7 mega ding-dongs. Fun! more pictures to follow. Crazymum has just got the same camera for her photo blog- her pics are awesome. go see. 

Also I think I want a laminator just so I can laminate things. Feathers and things. Dragonfly wings. later.... 

Perhaps I ought to try to refresh my life with another Wild Book Week. Would make a change from Wild Beer Week which is pretty much what I've achieved this week!! yurgl. (my new word for exactly how I feel today) perhaps I'll feel better later.....

 I hope I will feel better after I've gone through the masses of boxes of STUFF that I seem to accumulate. A lot of it is due to my idea of what tidying up is- shove everything thats on the floor into the nearest box/bag and sort it later. Except now I have dozens of such mixed-up boxes and bags, two holidays only half-unpacked. Everything which I have been thinking "oh I must do that later..." well, today IS later. Much later.

Glitter Limes

Well. Today I have mainly be feeling rubbishly achey oversleeping and working, skipping class, eating chocolate brownies (2) and now- reading galadarling's blog and zoetica's tweets (rainbow girls who are just like I used to be, about...ooh ten years ago) and have found the following:

Glitter limes.

http://www.glitterlimes.com/

WHY!!!! I mean, why? Whilst I like concept sites- and of course I make jewellery- this one takes it a bit far. Meaning, clearly, that it is one of my favourite websites of all time second only to www.purple.com and of course the Toast King's home, weebls-stuff.co.uk.

Too tired to put proper links in.

Stuff I've always wanted to do.

....... stuff I've always wanted to DO as opposed to stuff I've always wanted to HAVE, which is what I seem spend my life thinking about. However many purple sparkly things I have it does not appear to add up to happiness- and by that I mean the satisfaction of a job well done, somewhere, even in a small way. So here it is, a list of things I have "always" wanted to do, some more recent than others of course;

Design my own font

Paint a room with stars and clouds on the ceiling and trees on the walls

Design and make my own range of soft cuddly clothes

Knit a whole jumper 

Have an art exhibition

Be on the fourth plinth (yay footache)

Make a scarf out of socks

Make a usb powered funky light (yay physical-world hacking)

Climb a mountain

Inspire people with colour

Run a successful website that inspires people

Skydive (I'd be frightened but still want to do it)

Run my own business (again)

Live abroad (Milan)

Learn another language

help others (always)

die knowing my life meant something (well by then I won't care but hey)

Isn't it strange how the list goes from geek to chic to freak...!!!! And the tasks get bigger and bigger...and it doesn't include "have children" because I assume that will happen anyway...how socialised am I!?!?!????

Insomnia

Now that I have a shiny shiny macbook I can surf in bed without cursing and swearing and wanting to smash something. Which is just as well because I can't sleep. Today I have avoided doing any work on impending essays at all by having a cafe breakfast, dozing in a patch of sun, cleaning the bathroom, investigating 5 graphic t-shirt sites, nearly blowing lots of money on t-shirts I don't need, making DIY fairy wings, eating cheap imitation After Eights, making  chili, drinking hot chocolate and buying ribbon and diamante on ebay. Which sounds like I've had a busy day but to me its felt unbelievably lazy. I have also been adding photos to my computa with iphoto. Here is a lomo fish-eye photo of a sock monster I made who is called Tintagel, sitting in Tintagel castle. Oh yes.

Tshirt habit

Bony and Cloud By
FrigoBanjo

Love it. Want it. CUUUUTE! Have opened up my own tshirt shop for fun while I try to get my head round vector graphics ;) Via Inkscape. How DOES one make a design appear on a transparent background?? *scratches chin*
http://fionafiona.spreadshirt.net/en/GB/Shop

Red Shoes

I am a busy person. Too busy to blog, it would seem. Well here I am again to foist my meaningless gibberish upon the wide open empty unlistening internet. I have an odd affection for this blog. I love to read other's blogs but not my own- I find myself stuck for words often, stumbling over things- I have done so much in the past few months, yet so so little. I sometimes think my best ideas come when I'm drunk but they probably don't....(I'm not drunk BTW!!!) so here I am taking my lunch break at 11 o'clock because I still haven't learnt not to eat too sugary a breakfast... and paying off debt like a maniac becasue I still haven't learnt that shiny shoes do not make me happy. Well, not THAT happy. Actually, they make me quite happy. I have one pair of shoes imparticular which I shall put on now.... I keep them in my desk drawer at work for Those Days, of which Today is one, I can feel it despite my wakefulness. They are bright red with pointy but not too thin heels which are also red- a little strap across- and not too pointy toes. Bright shiny vermilion red court shoes. They click on pavements and embue me with an efficiency unheard of on a Monday....

The end of Wild Book Week and the start of painting frenzy! With chocolate cake!

Well. I've kind of finished my wild book. I will be finishing it on the train on the way home tomorrow, which is where I started it a week ago. Feels a bit like the last minute makings of a school project late in! Its got pictures, glitter, buttons, ribbons and doodles. I expected that. What it unexpectedly has, is a smell of its own, too. Of glue and newsprint and paint. Quite an art-shop smell, if you will. I will contnue to add small things to it, but, like the nanowrimo draft novel, the bones of it are there. Its been interesting all week drawing and sticking and painting even when I don't feel like it, even when tired. I have even done two canvases for my art exhibition!

Last nights party, despite its various "moments" has left me surprisingly cheerful due to the fact that I went to bed at 10ish, not 4ish. I went to bed to look after Mr E, who was feeling somewhat invaded by dozens of people in the house and all of them needing the toilet at the same time and talking about it loudly. Who can blame him, I felt a little disturbed by the massive invasion myself. But parties end, and the exodus has now occured and we are all back to normal. Luckily, there is some Lime Meringue Pie left. Mr E's baking skills when it comes to pie are second to none. YUM.

I also made my now notorious chocolate cake recipe, of which there is none left I can proudly say. It is so indulgent that it was once christened "filth cake" by Mr Sir D a long while ago. For all those who ask, here is the recipe:

“Dark Chocolate Mousse Cake with gold dust*.”

(From “Unwrapped” the Green and Blacks choc cookbook. With edits!)

Use a 20cm or 23cm, that is, 8 or 9 inch cake tin with removable base.

300g dark cooking chocolate. That’s two massive 150g bars of Green n Blacks cooking chocolate or 3 bars of Green n Blacks usual chocolate, Lindt 70 percent also works, as will any quality dark chocolate. Any sweeter than these ones though, and you will need to adjust sugar quantity.
275g caster sugar
165g butter. (I use Stork)
5 large eggs

preheat the oven to 180C 350F Gas mk 4. Grease tin very well.

Melt chocolate, sugar and butter in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water then remove from heat.

Whisk the eggs together and stir into the chocolate mixture. The mixture will thicken and go all glossy in a couple of minutes and it will be pouring consistency.

Pour into the cake tin and bake for 35 to 40 minutes.

Remove the sides of the tin after it’s a bit cooler (entertaining) and leave the cake on its base to cool, then wait impatiently to eat it while picking the cooked bits off the edge.

It won’t rise much by the way….. but who cares ;)

*Yeah, you can dust it with gold dust. I just tend to eat it.

Wild Book Week

I tag you all to take up my challenge: Wild Book Week. Its like Nanowrimo, where you write a book in a month, but more solid and more visual. Its like Nanowrimo crossed with SARK crossed with Graham Rawle sprinkled with Dave McKean and edited by Steven Moffat, if you like that type of description.

Here it is: buy a blank paged book (or lined pages, hey whats the diff) and fill it up over a week. Any size, any shape. Fill it with anything. Fill it with your life, in colour, in doodles, in fuzzy pictures, in writing, in coffee cup stains. In my case; glitter, buttons ribbons and nail varnish. Set yourself a deadline. Tear stuff out and paste it in. Ramble. Write honest rubbish. Fill it with goth poetry and lolly sticks. Sew, stick, staple and tape. Make it crunchy, make it hard to shut. My deadline is next Monday because I started mine today. My book is A4 and it came from Paperchase. Each page is a different colour. Its yummy. Yours can be large or small, fat or thin, from WHsmith or from Horrid's. Just get one. To coin an over-used phrase, just do it.

Why? This came about because I'm plain useless at keeping a sketchbook: only real artists do that: I tend to collect magazine cuttings and newspaper cartoons and odd photos taken with my mobile phone. I read SARK and oneredpaperclip and all kinds of "inspirational" fluff then lie in bed watching crap telly all weekend. I like crap telly, don't get me wrong. But it is turning my brain to mush, like the corners of toast that started off as frozen bread. Unexpectedly soggy. I'd be honoured to see the results if you join me. Each book will be a peculiar snapshot of life and all the books together will make an odd library of life.

I promise to add a picture soon: I've done two pages already ;)

The £99 shop

Yesterday I went to a gig with the Red Stripe Band. The gig was jolly. There was an art exhibition upstairs in the Troubadour cafe in Earls Court, where bottled beer is £3.75 and a plate of houmous and pitta is £7. The art exhibition was in its opening night and it was a pay bar- thats how expensive Earl's Court is. I'm ashamed to say that I looked at the artwork that ten artists had spent a lifetime learning about and creating, and for the first time I genuinely thought "I can do this better". I actually doubt that I could make better art, of course, but a prettier exhibition, certainly. More colours. More glitter! Less grey. I have always wanted to hold an exhibition but lacked time, and paintings, and inspiration, and...well, paint. Enough excuses. I'm going to take the oneredpaperclip route and just DO IT.
The exhibition will be made up of jewel-like one off paintings, bright, swirly, patterned decorative pieces covered in diamante. Jewellery for walls, if you will. All the pieces will be £99, thus the title. And a little recession joke! They will take me an appreciable amount of time to make, cost me in paint and sparklies and I don't want them to be over priced. Nor do I want them to be mistaken for art.
Off to paint now :)

Banking hell Part 1

At least there is chocolate. Thats what I say in weeks like these. Right now I'm sat in a darker and darker room looking at rain and trying to understand linux on my eeepc with a view to installing Gnome PPP to activate my new 3 modem so I can surf it up on the train and use the cute eee everywhere. Bargain. (The learning curve is a bit on the steep side though. I'm not as much of a tech as I look!) It was hard to come by though-

so there I was, last Wednesday, surprisingly awake for 6.30am. Little did I know what was in store. Initially all I planned was to call the bank and then to pop into my local post office to collect the exciting new dingle dangle that will enable me and my eee-pc surf anywhere for very small money each month. Special offer is through quidco on moneysavingexpert, if you are interested. So I called the bank. Hold on they said, call demand is high. So hold I did. Hi, I said, I was calling to sort out a loan repyment date, which needs changing. I've been tryng to sort this out for the best part of this year and every time I call you say "oh yes we'll do that can't think why we didn't before" and then nothing happens, resulting in charges of £70+ being aplied to the account every single month.

This is not my account, so I have to keep handing the phone to the account owner for ID. This is Nat Pest by the way, readers, NEVER EVER bank with them. They will sooner tear out your soul than make any basic change to your account.

Oh dear, she says, and I got put on hold for some minutes until she comes back to me to state that their "systems are down". I thought privately that in many ways, their systems are ALWAYS down, what with never being able to sort even the simplest thing out and I asked that she put my concerns in "the notes". Notes are a mystical thing which theoretically mean other call centre operators can read what I've been on about when their systems are "up". In practice, this does not work. Not even a little bit.

She said Well, I'll put that you called and you are not happy. I said ok and please put what its about and that I have a complaint going through and its with the ombudsman and I've asked for all 6 years of statements to claim back charges and nothing has happened. She said Well I'll put that you called and you are not happy. I said,, very slowly, NO.... PUT EVERYTHING DOWN..... I AM THE CUSTOMER! Disgruntled, she said she would though I'm not really sure she grasped basic communication protocols such as typing so I arranged another call and hung up, resigned,once more, to having to sort it out another day.

Bowed but not defeated, I toddled to the Post Office for the exciting parcel. I hand over "sorry you were out" card covered in hieroglyphs and my passport. A letter covered in labels appears. ARE YOU EASTMOND shouts the man from behind glass. Well, no I say- and where is my parcel? Dongle surely, was never so thin as this letter. YOU ARE NOT EASTMOND. DO YOU HAVE ID OF EASTMOND. more shouting. No, I say, look, obviously the post man filled out one card for two items. YOU NEED EASTMOND ID is the simple but effective response. I said I'm going to ask you a very simple question. I happen to know that this parcel I'm awaiting is mine and addressed to me because 3mobile sent me the tracking number. Is the tracking number in my hand, on this card, the same as the one on the letter WHAT. WHAT NUMBER This number here. The one on the sorry we couldn't be arsed to knock on the door card. Careful checking of the number. NO. NO THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. YOU WILL NEED TO COME BACK WITH ID OF EASTMOND. Yes, I say. But where is my parcel. RING NUMBER ON CARD. Oh, I will. So I called the number on the card. Hold on, it said. We have high call demand at the moment.
>AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGHH!!!