Alien Spouse

Kinetic Art.

Having moved from a one-bedroomed shoe box to a palatial two-bedroom-and-a-dining-room bread box we find ourselves suddenly feeling that the space is a touch spartan.  I mean we want it to be fairly minimalist, and we certainly don't want clutter - but Eva's room echoes because there are only three small pieces of furniture in there right now!

We are going to by a sofa/bed to go in there at some point in the next month, because otherwise where will Moth sleep when she comes to visit? (squeeee!) Before then though we have to do something to make the space feel a touch more inviting and fun for Eva; I especially thought she needed somethinbg entertaining to look at whilst lying in her crib.

So we bought her a mobile.  Not one of those sugary sweet nursery mobiles though, oh no, we went with a design classic that also happens to depict one of my favourite birds.

It's a Flensted Swallow mobile, and the minute I saw it I was like "Oh,  of course!  That!"

The shop we bought it from was the rather lovely Mod Sprog, and they had all of their Flensted mobiles on sale - So we also got this one for the living room.

 

This is the Flowing Rhythym mobile in red, which was originally designed in 1955 so, of course, it goes nicely with our current mid-century modern look AND our love of red home furnishings.

I knew exactly where this one was going to hang, because there was an ugly hook screwed into the ceiling in th ecorner of the living room, so I knew I had to put something there to at least excuse the damn thing.  The trick was going to be how to hang up the one in Eva's room, but the mobile is extremely light so I thought that I'd take the advice of the manufacturers and use a drawing pin (US Translation: Thumb Tack).  I got out the step ladder, grabbed a drawing pin and unpacked my new avian friends.

When I looked at the ceiling above Eva's crib I was surprised to find that there was already a drawing pin there in almost exactly the right position.  Dude, that's just spooky.  I mean it's not like there are drawing pins all over the ceiling here; there is just that one precisely where I wanted it to be.  Asheville just provides everything... (or, and this is just a crazy theory, that room has been a baby's room before and the crib is in the most logical place for it).

Bag Packed (Finally)

When we went to the baby safety class yesterday, as always with these type of things, the instructor went around the room asking everyone's name; she also asked whether people were expecting a boy or a girl and when they were due.  When she got to us and I said that the due date was 26th of August, she joked about us having left the class until the very last moment - so I didn't like to add that I didn't have a birth plan printed out and laminated (or, ok, actually written out), or even my hospital bag packed yet.

It's weird at this point of the pregnancy because people keep telling me it could happen ANY moment now, but if I say something like that then they, and often it is the very same person, will chuckle knowingly and tell me that first babies are usually about a week late.  And why if I do something now, like take a baby safety class or try to book a tour of the hospital (the only tour they have any space left on is two days before my due date - So either pin-point perfect timing, or utterly useless!), do people act like I've been lollygagging around doing nothing much for the past nine months and should have done this earlier?  Actually having moved house so recently is a great explanation for leaving all this so late, so I'm cutting off a lot of tedious conversation with that!  That sounds a bit mean doesn't it, but at this highly visible late stage of the pregnancy I am getting a lot of unsolicited advice, and some quite personal questions that I'm just not that inclined to answer fully, so saying "Well, we have only just moved here so we still have a lot to get organised!" really helps for some reason.  Anyway, if I'm not meant to be taking my pre-natal classes now (and ok it is a bit late in the day for some of those), then what exactly am I meant to be doing now?  Mostly, according to the books and the websites, it seems I'm meant to be resting and pampering myself, which sounds great in theory but gets old pretty quickly if you ask me.

Today, spurred on by the it could happen ANY moment thought over the more likely three weeks from now thought, I packed myself a hospital bag, and one for Eva as well.  Mine has clothes, snacks (which seems odd, but all the books & websites are most insistent on this point - I've got a box of cereal bars, some plain oatcakes and a handful of green tea bags), toiletries and various types of pad (again - Odd!) Eva's has clothes, a sun hat, one of those "My Birth Books" (which we are filling out only so we can cull the information from later and make a new one which doesn't have teddy bears and bloody duckies all over it) and two blankets.  One of the blankets is a thin swaddling blanket and the other is a slightly thicker cotton blanket which I'm bringing just in case there is a really sudden cold snap (unlikely), but mostly because the fabric is a Keith Haring design and the idea of wrapping my baby up in modern art pleases me.

Isn't that fabulous, with a nice twist of the 80's to it?  This side is clearly Haring's signature Radient Baby whilst the other side is black and white radient hearts with the occaisonal red heart.  Evalyn is going to be surrounded by good design and aesthetically pleasing objects from the moment she is born, and that's all there is to it!

A Portrait of the Queen.

We've been meaning to get a portrait of the Queen for a while, and this week we actually got it organised. 

First of all we found a portrait of the Queen that we liked on-line (It's a Dorothy Wilding photo, that was hand-tinted in those gorgeous fifties colours), downloaded it to a zip drive and took it to Staples to be printed on shiny card stock.  That cost a dollar.

Today we went in search of a frame, and we very specifically wanted something a bit tacky.  In one of the local antique markets, after some thorough searching of the aisles, we found a faux mother-of-pearl frame of exactly the right size for $6.50.

It's so fabulous, it goes with our red mid-century modern living room beautifully and it cost us under ten dollars.

 

Blossoming Paper.

It's snowing quite hard, and my office is practically empty (Doc says we should leave at lunchtime) - So, naturally, I'm sitting at my desk learning how to make origami cherry blossom.

Happy Pink Cloud.

As I mentioned at the time, we went to Asheville this weekend, and I took a photo of this rather cheering mural. Obviously it was the happy pink cloud that caught my attention initially, but I particularly like the black half-cloud at the top left; it's painted on a bit of masonry that's sticking out slightly so there is a pleasing 3D effect.

It's always been my aim to have a photo up every day, but that has definitely been dropping off recently. The main problem I have with downloading and editing my photos at the moment is purely that I have to use the desktop in the study to do that, and it's a temperamental beastie at the best of times.If you plug in a USB before switching it on, then it crashes and Doc C has to physically take it to bits and re-build it. This sort of thing makes me wary of using it.

Anyway, I had read about memory cards that had built in wi-fi and would just automatically upload all your photos when in range of your home network (or any of the 32 other networks you can give it permission to use). So I bought one, and it's all set up and raring to go. So far I've just taken some test shots of an empty cake stand, but once I've got something better than that I'll post them here.

Students: Compare and Contrast.

 

Doc C checked Facebook last night and found this video on a friend's wall. I have watched it a couple of times this morning, posted it to my own wall and even listened to students in the hallway outside my office apparently prepping together to have this conversation with their professor en masse.

sigh.

Then a student, whom I know slightly, came into my office carrying a paper sculpture that she had made for an English class project, and was now giving to her professor.

It's Alice talking to the Caterpillar in Wonderland, and it was made from a maths book (which is genius in itself). There are different types of flower, different sizes of toadstools and a butterfly covered in calculus.

This makes me very happy.

 

Bright Art. Cloudy Sky.

The University has quite a few sculptures on campus, and this is the most recent addition being erected. I particularly like the cozy rug that's been used to cushion the art from the crane's pulley.

Also, I had my camera on the "pin hole" setting when I took this picture yesterday afternoon, so the sky didn't look that dark at the time. It does now though.

The Crack in the Wall - Now With TARDIS!

This weekend I made art - Well, I cut up a t-shirt with a print I really liked, stapled bits of it to canvases of various different sizes, and then hung them on the wall. That's art, right? Sort of?

Eh, whatever! I now have a panel of the TARDamask Threadless t-shirt hanging up on our bedroom wall right underneath a largish crack in the plaster. It couldn't be much better really could it? (Don't worry Moth, I darkened the crack in this photo to make it a bit more prominent.)

As you can see I also made some mini panels with just one TARDIS on them, this portrait one is ok, but I really like the square minis better because the whole design will fit diagonally rather neatly. I put one of those up too, on the other side of the bathroom door, so we have TARDIS whizzing off all over the place. That seems much more appropriate than them being entirely confined to nice neat rows, don't you think?

I still have half of the t-shirt left, it was a front and back all-over print, so I could make a larger panel, or a cushion maybe.

 

Face Paint.

I've recently been updating my make-up collection, in particular I'm adding more colours to my eye-shadows and I have bought actual proper brushes with which to apply the cosmetics once I've got them. Today, as you can see, I've gone with a simple pink wash over the lids with an asphalt grey shadow as an eyeliner and black mascara.

My main problem with every day make-up is that I get raccoon eyes from my mascara, yes even water-proof, but the very nice lady at Sephora in Charlotte (Hi Cindy!) gave me a sample of Urban Decay's All Nighter setting spray and that plus a mascara primer seem to have sorted me out.

I ran out of the sample on Monday, so I ordered a full-size bottle but went with De-Slick in the hopes that will also keep my t-zone in check. When I mentioned that I'd just ordered some more stuff from Sephora, Doc C asked what I'd bought. I hesitated for a moment, then said that I didn't want to tell him because most (straight) men don't understand make-up and he wouldn't get why I needed it. He laughed and admitted that was probably true, and that his question had been prompted by thinking that surely I had enough make-up already.

Ha! Poor fool! Enough Make-Up? There is no such thing as enough!

 

Portrait of Queenie.

I bought the Queenie t-shirt that Vivienne Westwood designed for Red Nose Day with the specific intention of stretching it over a canvas to hang on the wall. Today I bought a canvas and a staple gun, and it took about 10 minutes to attach the t-shirt to the canvas. It worked out really well I think, and now we have Miranda Richardson over the fireplace. 

Disco Chicken.

This is Disco Chicken, and she's Doc C's favourite objet d'art for illustrating kitsch in lectures. She's extremely well travelled for an ugly bird statue. Disco Chicken's origins are misty but she came into Doc life when she was abandoned at the recording studio he worked at in Boston, then she came to London with him, and she went to stay with my Mum for an extended visit to the beautiful Norfolk countryside when we moved to North Carolina.

I managed to fit her in one of my suitcases, as a special surprise for the Doc, and I feel I should mention that she's about the same size as my Brown Betty teapot, so it was really quite the sacrifice on my part. Still, it will not be another three years before I go home for another visit so hopefully I won't regret this great generosity.

The Past in Boxes.

This afternoon Mum suggested that I look over the stuff that was put in storage in the attic when Doc C and I left for America. It's all those things I haven't seen for three years, some of which I've missed desperately (all of my earrings!), some of which I frankly had forgotten I owned but have fallen in love with again (a pair of trays decorated with girly playing cards!), then some stuff that could immediately be put in the charity shop pile (I love Calvin and Hobbes, but they are big books to pack and imminently replaceable) and still more stuff that I was bemused by (I found three odd socks carefully packed in a lovely gold box. What was I thinking there?)

It was definitely a good thing that I looked over what I already owned before I went shopping in earnest, because I already have more belongings than I can carry onto the plane, so adding to it seems like a fool's errand. Being an ex-bookseller it is hardly surprising that my biggest problem is my beloved collection of books, some of which I've read and re-read a hundred times since I was a kid, and I've done well to reduce it down to just one medium size box - but in all honesty I can't actually close the lid on that already, and there are more books that I still want to bring. Mum's point about the usefulness of a Kindle is well timed, because I can see the benefit of having everything reduced down to a compact tablet. That still wouldn't be entirely sufficient, because a lot of my books are second-hand copies with great covers, or books that have fallen out of publication, or they've been signed by the author and how can you get that type of thing on a Kindle?

Anyway I have some time to further curate the collection before I go back to North Carolina, so in the mean time I've arranged it around the bedroom; so I can look at it at my leisure and make some difficult decisions. I suspect the framed photo of the 38 bus might just have the edge over the framed photo of seagulls on the Palace Pier, but we shall see.

The Chief Suspects are Shawn and Gus.

There are several sculptures on campus, and some of them are just begging to be messed with. 

This group of statues is representative of the university's roots as a teacher training college.  Apparently there used to be a fountain in the center, but that proved to be far too tempting for the students so it was removed.  However the teacher still has an open outstretched hand that is just begging for things to be put in it, especially as the students are staring at that hand so very intently. Today was a fairly tame, just a pineapple carved with a happy face.  I rather liked that.

Book Tattoo.

This is my new tattoo, which is on my left wrist.  It's an open book, as you can see, and I wanted it to be blank so there wasn't just one correct orientation for it (This would have driven my high school art teacher crazy, the giant painting I once did of a compass was not supposed to have a right way up either and she kept telling me I had to choose, but I never did.)

I've also decided that I am going to design a coat of arms for myself and Doc C which incorporated my book and key tattoos, with his Koi Carp and suits of cards tattoos.  That way when anyone asks what the "significance" of the images is I will be able to honestly answer that it is part of my family crest.  Sneaky, huh?  Oh, plus we already have the perfect motto in Latin "Audio Video Disco", which translates to "I Hear, I See, I Learn".

Boxing Day in Boston.

I've always liked Boxing Day, because it's the day when you get to play with all your presents and eat any food that's been left over.  Of course that's a traditional Boxing Day in your own home, so it's slightly different when you are staying in a B&B in Boston; what you do then is get a tattoo and shop for cameras.  It's not a tradition as such, but I really think we ought to consider this as a staple of the holiday period.

I made an appointment with the same tattoo artist that did my key about a week before we came, and I'd already e-mailed him some images to give him an idea of the design I wanted.  It's an open book on my left wrist, and I am particularly tickled to think it was paid for by the Christmas money given to me by my colleagues in the English Department.  That is just dead appropriate, don't you think?

I also had enough money to get a new digital camera, so there has been much on-line researching which finally led me to go to Best Buy and purchase a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS5.  Naturally I couldn't remember any specific detail of the information I'd read once I was actually inside the shop (and Best Buy employees are notably lack lustre in the day after Christmas), but I did know what I wanted the camera to do and the sort of price range I was looking for.  In the end I got the shop floor model, so it was on sale and then further discounted which meant I could also afford to buy a 4GB memory card for it.  Nice.  There will be no photo left untaken!

Now it's snowing, with the forecast being for it to be a blizzard; in fact the amount of snow we are expecting is being discussed in feet rather than inches.  Sounds like the perfect time for me to hole up in our room and work my way through the operating manual for my new camera, whilst periodically washing and moisturising the fresh ink on my wrist.

Deadly Mermaid Cover.

I was really tempted to buy this book, purely because of the fabulously camp cover art.  A questionable red head, wearing an acid-yellow off-the-shoulder dress AND holding a freaking spear gun?  That is just the epitome of pulp fiction, isn't it?

In the end I settled for just snapping a couple of shots, because after I'd read the back cover blurb I knew I wouldn't actually read the book itself, and I didn't want to deprive someone who might appreciate that pleasure.

Bad Halloween Movie Festival.

In the spirit of Halloween we watched a couple of cheesy movies from my "Legends of Horror" box set.  The first was "Silent Night, Bloody Night" (1974) which is as terrible as the title suggests, but did star Mary Woronov and also featured Candy Darling as a party guest which is fascinating. 

How on earth did Warhol Superstars get involved with a low budget horror movie?  Ok, Mary was married to the director, so that's sort of understandable, but maybe it was intended to be art; in which case the incoherent script and really bad acting might have been a performance piece.  That makes it much more interesting!

Countdown to Halloween: Sixteen Days

Somehow I completely failed to go to the Coraline website until this week.  How did I allow this to happen?

As you can see I have given the Green Queen black button eyes, and I think she looks really quite sinister.  The Beldam must have an alien cousin, don't you think?

I've yet to make the buttons to go on my Coraline amigurumi, so what I might do is take a photo and then upload them to the Coraline website to try different buttons out before I get out the polymer clay.

Dream Art.

Last night I had really vivid dreams, one of them was about sleep over art exhibitions.  In my dream you would go to the art and sleep right underneath it, so there were beds set up in art galleries and museums, as well as in offices with great corporate art collections.

It was a very relaxing and beautiful dream.

Shiny Skull.

The Halloween decorations are in the shops now, and I am particularly taken with this shiny skull.

It looks like diamante from a distance, but it's really one molded piece.  That's slightly disappointing, but it is still very reminiscent of Damian Hirst's Diamond covered Skull.

This one's not quite as fabulous, but it's $12.99 instead of fifty million pounds.

Doc C still wouldn't let me buy it though.

Chalk on Bricks.

At the moment there are lots of chalk drawings and messages drawn on the pavements around campus. The ways of the British University Student Body are different to the American University Student Body; so I don't really know what's going on, but I'm assuming it has to do with fraternities and sororities or something because I am told it is Rush Week (whatever that is).

Anyway, no matter what the intended purpose, the colours are pretty.

Smart Women Desk Set.

The second day of classes was still pretty damn hectic, but I surfed the wave of questions and it was invigorating.

The best part of the day was a present from one of the professors!  It was to thank me for scanning the hard copies of her notes for the semester after her computer's hard drive became corrupted and ate them all.

I actually was really interested in her class, so I very much enjoyed doing the scanning, but a beautifully wrapped gift was the quite literal ribbon on top.

It was a Smart Women stationary desk set, with just the most fabulous retro artwork on it.  I love how it looks almost authentically fifties, until you notice little details like the blue anchor tattoo on the leg of the lady sitting at her writing desk.

I particularly love the eraser:

Look at the hair and the specs!  Both of those women could have walked right out of the Sterling Cooper Draper Price typing pool!  SO fabulous!

Cover Art: The Strangled Queen.

The book table in my office hallway, where people leave books they wish to release back into the wild, hasn't had anything new in a few of weeks.  However there was one particularly splendid piece of cover art that I spotted a while back which I finally remembered to take a photo of this morning.

As I say it's been there for a while, so I thought that I would be able to come back later and note down some of the plot points from the back cover blurb - But, when I did, the book had gone.

I could probably look up the synopsis on-line, but in the meantime, and purely based on the cover art, don't you think the title should have been "The Dead Mardy Queen"? She looks like a right madam, mind you Prince Valiant doesn't look like a ray of sunshine either; so they are probably perfect for each other, but refuse to admit that until around page 117.

Pencil Tip Sculpture.

Clearly it is art week here at Alien Spouse - And this hand carved pencil sculpture is particularly awe inspiring.  The patience involved!

Art in DC.

This is some art from the Hirshhorn Museum in DC, which was just around the corner from our hotel.  They have some gorgeous pieces, including this lovely hot pink Warhol and this square grey spiral.  Except... It's not actually a spiral, is it?  It looks like it should be, but it isn't actually.

That would drive me crazy.  Do not buy that for me, ok?  Thanks!

Blah.

I love that "blah" makes such great cartoon character hair.

The side curls are particularly pleasing.

The Art of Covers

Thursdays are gym days, so I should go to bed early on Wednesdays; but last night I stubbornly stayed up to watch "Work of Art" (Bravo - Why won't you repeat this at a decent hour? Repeats between 1 and 8 in the morning do not help me at all, and you're not streaming episodes on your website or Hulu.  What is the problem?). Don't worry, I won't spoil it for you if you intend to watch it (good luck with finding a repeat or a web-streaming version though. Grrh!), but I will say the judges on "Work of Art" do not seem to appreciate the contestants biting the hand that feeds them and being snarky in their pieces.

The challenge this week was to design a cover for one of six different classic novels "Alice in Wonderland", "Dracula", "Frankenstein", "Jekyll and Hyde", "The Time Machine" and "Pride and Prejudice".  As an ex-bookseller and a collector of books I have a lot of strong opinions on this matter, and I found the whole show fascinating as a result.  I was saddened that barely any of them had read the books, but, you know, not everyone enjoys reading and that's fair enough; however I do think almost all of the titles have a strong presence in contemporary media (the exception would be "The Time Machine" I think), so when one contestant mis-named a central character in her chat to camera, I was mildly annoyed.  Then she photographed herself, half-naked, with an anachronistic hat that ended up being the wholly inappropriate focal point of the whole cover AND she mis-spelled the author's name on her final piece.  There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in my house at this point.

The grand prize this week was that the winning design would be used on a Penguin edition of the book, which seems very appropriate as covers are really so central to the Penguin brand.  Before I watched "WoA" I had already photographed my most recent vintage book purchases, which I bought solely because they were crime novels in the classic green-and-cream thirds of Penguin Books and I don't see those very often over here.  Weirdly I had never heard of the author before, and he's popped up on Pop Sensations this week, although the featured Dell cover is really a lot more lurid, so now I'm quite intrigued to read these.

Three Vintage Ngaios.

This year I've bought three Ngaio Marsh mysteries that I already had purely because I wanted better cover art. 

"Artists in Crime" I bought for 25 cents in Asheville.  The other two were both bought from Pop Sensation's Rex Parker's collection.

You've got to admit the older books, the ones on the right in the photos, are just so much better.

An Excellent Question.

I like this flow chart of happiness! 

Via Swiss Miss and then traced back as far as Typcut.

Back to Asheville.

Last weekend we went to Asheville with Laura and Jasmine, and, after a lovely day, we drove by the cinema on our way out of the city.  As we passed I saw a poster with a Banksy rat on it and I realised that "Exit Through The Gift Shop", a title that I just hadn't recognised, was the documentary about street art that I'd been reading about a few weeks ago.

So Doc and I drove back today to see it, and it was a really amazing film well worth a two hour drive to get to (That's actually not much of a yard stick for me - When I lived in Brighton I was only round the corner from the local Odeon but it cost eight quid to see a film there; whereas if I hopped on a train to London and went to the NFT it was free, because I worked for the British Film Institute at the time.  Traveling for two hours just to see a film is completely fine to me). We also had a delicious noodle lunch, and I bought discounted yarn, a vintage Ngaio Marsh with some groovy cover art and the new Goldfrapp album.

Doc C didn't actually do any shopping himself, but he did get to see a film that will most likely be useful to show in one of his classes and he discovered that Dunkin' Donuts have perfected our donutty grail; I speak of the Chocolate Butternut.  It is glorious.

When we stopped for donuts we caught the eye of a gentleman sitting outside the shop, who noticed the Union Jack in our car and asked if we were British.  On the way out he spoke to us again, and we got a long rambling travelogue about his hitch-hiking through Europe as a teenager.  After that he had something else to tell the Doc, but it wasn't for my ears apparently so I got into the car.  Doc told me afterwards that he'd been told two dirty jokes, neither of which he heard the punch-line to, and the confession that the guy had been drinking since 6 in the morning.  It was around 4:30 in the afternoon by the time we ran into him.

Ahh Asheville!  You never, never, disappoint.

Vintage Radio and Faux-Vintage Posters.

In my quest to find some fun podcasts to listen to I found Strange Tales on Relic Radio, which I really liked.  It's vintage sci-fi American radio dramas from the 40s and 50s, and when I went to the Relic Radio website I found they have ten other programs to subscribe to.  I'm probably going to get hooked on the suspense, thrillers and horror shows, but I am particularly intrigued by the whole archive of Orson Welles' radio performances.

 Also, Meg at Quiddity linked to a rather fabulous vintage-style DC character posters:

After I'd saved Batman to my iPod to use as a wallpaper, I followed a link from that page to the twitter feed of the artist, Michael B. Myers, and from there I went to his website. I really like his series of illustrations of Lost characters as well, but I think I'd probably be more likely to put the DC posters up on my wall at home.

Post Script:  Late breaking squee of joy for this terrific Dexter poster. WANT!

  

Plus It's A Damn Good Band Name,

I took this photo on our trip to Asheville, so it's a few weeks old now.

The main reason I took the picture was because I really liked the flyer for Bunny Venom; what I didn't notice at the time was how well the flyer poster had positioned it, so that the Bunny Venom poster was framed by the yellow and black sunburst of the flyer behind it.

Brilliant!  That is urban scrapbooking at its best.

Death of a Chocolate Rabbit.

Oh Peter!  Don't look at me like that!  I didn't mean to kill you, really. 

I didn't mean for you to be in a hot car for over two hours.  When I left you there I thought Doc C would be back earlier than me, and you were supposed to be a nice surprise for him.

Instead there was an melty oozy creature that may have once been rabbit shaped, with the only recognisable thing being your hard won carrot.

I feel really guilty about the whole incident.

 

Last Night I Dreamt I Went to Manderley Again.

We went for a drive this afternoon to a town even smaller than the one we already live in, because we've heard that housing is very cheap there and we fancied a nosy around.

The town itself proved to be absolutely tiny; but still manages to have better shops than we do and a gorgeous 50's looking cinema that screens things in 3D.  We wondered into a really nicely stocked boutique which just had beautiful clothes and accessories, along with lovely bath things and other nice stuff.  It was intoxicating, I could have spent an absolute fortune without batting an eye.  Luckily for Doc C, I remained calm and merely stroked all the pretty things I could get my hands on.

 Even better across the road was... a second-hand bookshop!  I was thrilled. 

Once we got inside we discovered that a good 3/4 of the floor space was devoted to the Mills and Boon type of romance novel, but I gritted my teeth and plunged through until I tracked down the mystery section; where I found two Dorothy L. Sayers and a copy of "Rebecca".  I didn't even really look at the covers until I was at the till paying $8 for the lot of them, but the "Rebecca" is a particularly pleasing find for the artwork alone.

Personally I'd have liked to see Mrs Danvers lurking around somewhere, but that's probably a little bit greedy.

"Keep Calm and Carry On" - Black and Gold.

Last week I found a company on-line selling framed prints of "Keep Calm and Carry On" in a wide variety of colours for $20.

I'd already been thinking about getting a framed print  for my office, because it is a particularly great motto for highly-strung students to bear in mind in moments of stress.  Not to mention staff in an office that deal with highly-strung students in moments of high stress...

This particular colourway choose itself really; black-and-gold are the University's colors.

The print arrived this morning and I hung it up on a nail that happens to be protruding from the wall above my shelves.  It's not it's intended permanent position on the wall, It's going to be centered on the feature wall, but I just had to see how it looked against the stone!

I rather like it.

My First Mac.

When I got into work today there was a large cardboard box on the sofa in my office.  Inside it was a new Mac.

It's just gorgeous.  It's got a lovely big clear screen, a compact keyboard that is really nice to type with and a wireless mouse.  The mouse is a white glass lozenge, and the whole top of it is touch sensitive, it is SO cool.  AND the selection of pre-loaded wallpapers included Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks", which I love (Mum and I went to the Hopper exhibition at the Tate Modern a few years ago.  It was beautiful, and I bought one of those 3D cardboard viewers of Nighthawks in the gift shop).  How cool is that?  PCs always have pretty pictures of flowers or fields but Macs go straight to a classic of film noir influenced modern art.

I'm still making friends with my Mac and I'm sure there I've only scratched the surface, but already I feel very comfortable with it.

Tree Car - Month Three.

The tree car art installation is still evolving, it's now a tree car snow drift.

And here is the artistic process in gif form:

Make your own animation

Packaging.

I'm combing through my jpeg files to delete anything I don't need, and I found a picture I took on our trip home from Boston. 

We picked up some snacks when we stopped to refuel and I could not resist this artwork.  Isn't that great?  Mama Zuma looks like a fifties pin-up Zapatista, which may be anachronistic but is fabulous none the less.

The crisps were deceptively sweet at first, but there was definitely a kick to them.

Get Excited and Make Things.

Making stuff is one of my favourite things, so naturally I love this version of the "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster.

Even better, the designer Matt Jones is happy for this image to be used for non-commercial purposes under a creative commons licence. He's put several different downloadable formats up on his blog, and also has links to sites that are selling t-shirts and prints to raise money for some great causes.

Of Intellectual Property Rights and Things.

Today I've been thinking a lot about intellectual property, copyright and plagiarism.  It's fascinating stuff, but not very funny and, just perhaps, a touch dry.

So instead let me tell you that I think I'll be basing Doc's Brain Slug Wig/Hat on a pattern posted here several years ago, which illustrated the construction process of costumes for twin boys who had decided to be Dr Seuss' Thing One and Thing Two for Halloween.

I only wish Doc would even consider the Wig/Hat in blue, but it still amuses me to think he will be Thing Three: The Growed Up Version.

Chris Williams' Flyers and Posters

The most interesting thing I've seen this weekend was a exhibition of flyers and posters designed by Chris Williams. The only problem was that no photos were allowed in the gallery so I couldn't take any pictures. Hmmm...  Hello internet...

Yay! His press has a website and a

Flickr account! 

Ooh, and an Etsy Shop...

   

Decemberists
Originally uploaded by plasticflame

Vintage "Get Well Soon" Card

My office was recently given several boxes of second-hand books for the lobby library, and inside one of them was a vintage Get Well Soon card.  The printed sympathy verse is sentimental and seems very dated, but I do love the hand tinted graphic from the top of the card.

Isn't that gorgeous?  Those colours would make anyone feel better.

Another Brick in the Feature Wall.

Have I mentioned the incredibly retro feature wall in my office?

It's the only wall that doesn't have a window, and it was largely covered by my enormous desk until I reorganised the furniture. Now my desk faces this wall, and I'm thinking I need to put up some art because otherwise it's a bit oppressive in a Pink Floyd "Another Brick in the Wall" way, you know?

There already rawl plugs in some spots on the wall, so it wouldn't be too difficult.  Well, accept that all of the existing rawl plugs were seemingly put up at random, so none of them are central and all look to be at least a foot lower than I would want to display art at.  That sort of thing really bothers me.

Anyway, I'm thinking that I might get some new art from the University gallery, but what I would really like is to put up a "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster in a nice soothing colour-way.  Personally I'd like sea green with off white or, maybe, charcoal with duck egg blue.  Something soothing and reassuringly vague, in a nice British way.

Art Criticism in the Workplace.

On the office shredder I noticed three safety icons in a row. 

The ones at each side were fairly self explanatory, "Don't put more than eleven sheets of paper in at one time" (although that is such a fib, my extensive testing indicates that the shredder stalls if you try more than three pages at once) and "Don't put your hand in the shredder".

At first glance, I was somewhat confused by the central icon.

My thought process was something along the lines of "No Angel of the North"?  Eh?  I know not everyone likes Antony Gormley's work, but what has modern sculpture got to do with proper disposal of confidential documents?"

Of course, then I realised that I was looking at thing upside down, and it actually indicates "Do not shred your tie".

Which makes more sense I suppose.

The Birds.

Now that advising is complete and the last of our incoming freshman were correctly orientated this week (Note to self: Resist jokes about map reading, compasses and cagoules), so today was unusually quiet in the office. 

For the whole of today I could hear the birds singing in the trees outside my window, it was very restful and pleasant.  It was also quite appropriate because I had brought in the birds for my mobile to get an idea of how they looked hanging in the window.  I used the grey polymer clay I already had, mainly because I wanted to use it up, but it turns out to be a very close match to the concrete window frame (did I mention my building was designed and constructed in the late 50's?).  This means that as the birds twist and move in the breeze, the light hits them in different ways so they vanish and reappear as they move, which is a very happy accident.  I like the effect as it is, but I think that varnishing one side so it's glossy and leaving the other side mat would look good.  I'm also considering painting some of them black or white on one side, so that they really pop from different angles.

Hopefully I'll finish this over the weekend, so I can hang it up on Monday and get going on a couple of new crochet projects.  You know, I really like making stuff!

Agatha: Novel (1978), Film (1979).

When I was 9 I suddenly developed a taste for Agatha Christie novels.  I'm fairly certain the first one I owned was "At Bertram's Hotel", but I don't remember if I got that before or after seeing the BBC adaptations of the Miss Marple stories.  I could still hum you that theme tune, and for me Joan Hickson is the definitive Marple.

I must have been about 12 when the film "Agatha" (1979) was shown on TV, but I was thrilled to be allowed to stay up and watch it with my parents because I was fascinated by Agatha Christie's 11 day disappearance in 1926, which she never really gave a proper explanation for.  Dad teased me that there was bound to be a sex scene in the film because it starred Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman, and, as I was a very pure minded 12 year old, the mere suggestion was completely outrageous to me!  I don't actually remember much about the film now, except for the main plot twist, and it being the main reason I developed a distaste for Timothy Dalton that I've never quite got over.  He's probably very nice in real life, but as Archie Christie he was a cad and a bounder so I could never buy into him being a romantic lead after this.

Last week I spotted the book that the film was based on.  It was published two years after Agatha's death, so she didn't have a chance to respond to the solution posed by Kathleen Tynan.  I'm only on chapter three, so she's only just vanished mysteriously and there isn't any indication of where she might have gone.

The art work on this is particularly 70's film tie-in, isn't it?  Hideous, yet intriguing.  Those are great portraits of Redgrave and Hoffman, but it's a weirdly composed image and I have no idea why they are peering off in different directions through wet glass.  I'm pretty sure that doesn't end up being a plot point, but I could be wrong there.

Serendipitous Questionable Content.

During orientation schedule building one of our advisors used the phrase "...smiling from ear-to-ear", and the student he was talking to said, entirely dead pan, that she thought that if one did that "...it would be very painful, and possibly the top of your head would fall off".

So today's Questionable Content was too good a gift not to share with the group.  It made my entire office giggle, after I'd tweaked it a tiny little bit.  I do hope J. Jacques doesn't mind me changing the first speech bubble, and chopping off the last panel to alter his strip so it would fit the anecdote more closely.

If You Hold This Post Up To A Mirror, It Makes NO Sense.

I was reading a Mental Floss post about today being the forty second anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper, and they had a link to a website detailing all of the clues that are supposed to indicate that Paul died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike who was also, damn luckily, a soundalike. Rather impressive!  All the more so when when you read the list of 376 clues, and some of those clues actually pre-date the accident.  Were the Beatles clairvoyant, or is there a more... sinister... interpretation... that can be applied?

Actually the "Officially Pronounced Dead?" website, despite being pretty thorough in it's "Paul Is Dead" clue hunting, is maintained by a sensible man; who clearly states in the FAQ that he doesn't believe the conspiracy theory himself, but still enjoys cataloguing all the clues anyway.  It's fun!

However, if you prefer your crazy hot and fresh, check out the PID links page!  There you can find people who really are convinced that Faux Paul, or "Faul" as he is often known by PID conspiracy theorists, has been perpetrating a massive scam for over forty years now.  In fact some speculate that the same person was doubling for both Paul McCartney and Vivian Stanshall.  I heart that theory a lot, I think that one might be my very favourite mainly because how could that possibly have worked logistically?  Hmmm?

Anyway, I know none of this will be news to you, but it kept me hugely entertained through out my lunch hour and made me want to listen to more thing backwards whilst exhaustively examining cover art for those tricksy hidden messages. What I want to know is why there don't appear to have been any easter egg clues hidden on DVD releases, surely that's a missed opportunity right there!

Things Nobody Tells You About Tattoos.

My tattoo is a week old today!  Weird!

I'm still not used to having a permanent image on my skin, it's most odd.  I'll just catch sight of it and think "Oh!  That's right.  I have a TATTOO now. Huh."

You know what, Mum, I don't think you'll want to read the next two paragraphs after the photo, but do join us for the third.  That's when I stop talking about the actual process, and go into why I chose a key.  See you there!

I was expecting the sensation of tattooing to be more painful than it actually was.  It wasn't like a nice relaxing massage, but it really wasn't agony either.  It was more like when a cat starts licking you and won't stop; their tongues are so rough that it's not really a pleasant feeling and, if they get really obsessed, it can start to hurt.  So it was sort of like that, but with moments of stinging occasionally.

The annoying part that nobody tells you is that, because a tattoo is essentially scar tissue, it has to heal; so it scabs over and gets really itchy and you cannot scratch it for fear of damaging the image.  If you pick at the scab and it takes away too many layers of skin, that will leach out some of the ink too.  I'm pleased mine hasn't scabbed too much, so it's looked quite pretty from the moment I unbandaged it, but bloody hell it is itchy now.  Annoying!  Doc tells me that once the healing is complete the "...bad-ass factor kicks in" and you forget how aggravating it was for that first week or two.

The other thing that Doc C didn't mention until after I'd got my tattoo, was that when people notice a tattoo they tend to ask what the significance of the image is, and they generally want a nicely complex back story.  My tattoo is a key, which I chose because I wanted something that I wouldn't be embarrassed by in twenty years time, so I didn't want skulls, or kittens, or Doc's name, much though I love all those things, obviously.  So what did I want?  I don't really invest a lot of personal significance in symbols, but I did want something that would remind me that I can do things if I just apply myself, and it had to be something small that I could cover up if I really needed to with a large bangle.  The other reason for the small size is more practical; I have very pale skin and I have a lot of moles, so I couldn't cover a large area of skin up without one getting in the way (actually another thought was just putting numbers next to my moles, so that I looked like a large dot-to-dot drawing, but my moles aren't coherently grouped enough for that!) I also knew that I wanted something that was what it was unambiguously, so I wanted a clear image and I immediately thought of Victorian engraved illustrations.   

The more esoteric explanation is that my tattoo means that the right key will unlock anything, you just have to find that key, although really that's a little bit more new age than I like to get usually.  Still, when I tell people this version of the back story, I'm also adding in an unlocking gesture with my hand whilst making a clicky noise with my tongue. That seems to be going down well.

Of course after we'd left the tattoo artist, I thought it would be great to have blank key fob tattooed onto the key, so I can write whatever it is that I want to unlock with a felt tip pen.  The only difficulty with this ingenious embellishment to the design, is that I can't write with my left hand.  The devil really is in the details.

Boston Cupcake.

Ooh!  We haven't had a cupcake photo in a while, have we?

 This is a lovely example of an elegantly iced cupcake in a classic chocolate and vanilla colour scheme.  Delicious with a nice cup of tea.

I took this picture in Boston; in fact this is what I had for lunch on Friday, shortly before getting my tattoo.