Alien Spouse

Ngaio Marsh 34: Black Beech and Honeydew.

Here is the last book in our series.  This is Ngaio Marsh's autobiography and I have to say I think they did her proud with this cover.  I love that the white band in the middle, with the same typeface and layout has been used to integrate it with her novels; whilst the image in the oval is the only photograph in the range which I think subtly indicates that this is not a murder mystery.  I also think they chose a nice picture of her, and that it all works together really well.

I read the autobiography, which I like very much, after I read an incredibly boring biography.  I forget who wrote the biography now, all I remember is that it was a woman, but she was very scathing of "Black Beech and Honey Dew" as a source of hard facts whilst committing two unpardonable sins of her own which made me dispose of the book before I moved here.  First the biography is really boring (and that is definitly the fault of the author and not the subject) and long winded, secondly she gave away spoilers without any warning whatsoever!  By way of contrast the autobiography Miss Marsh writes about her own life is very interesting and has some great colourful stories, even though it's true she doesn't address all of the questions one would want answered.

Ngaio Marsh 33: Death on the Air.

"Death on the Air" is a collection of Ngaio Marsh's short stories, all of them are mysteries but not all feature Alleyn as detective. 

A particularly nice feature of this collection are that there are two profiles of Roderick Alleyn and Agatha Troy, in which Miss Marsh also describes how she came up with the characters.  I wish she'd also written one on the solid and reliable Inspector Fox.  I love Inspector Fox!

I like this cover a lot, the picture is great.  It sets the scene for the title mystery beautifully, with a great vintage radio and slicked back hair invoke the time period and the festive Radio Times cover subtly indicating that this is a Christmas mystery.  Love it!

Ngaio Marsh 32: Light Thickens.

Technically this is the last of the Inspector Alleyn mysteries, but we still have the covers of the short story collection and and the autobiography to look at.

This story is set in the Dolphin Theatre again, this time during a production of "Macbeth" which is where the title is taken from.  Isn't this a particularly intense cover image?  And delightfully dated too, I think it might be the haircut but the typeface is certainly doing it's part too.

On-Line Shopping Delivery Day! Woo-Hoo!

When we were paid on the 1st of the month I ordered a couple of things on-line, and it all arrived today!  When Doc drove over to my office to pick me up there were two interesting looking boxes on the passenger seat.  Hooray!

Of course I knew exactly what was in both of them: The first held MOP (Modern Organic Product) hair styling products, I love their range, but they don't sell the two products I used in the UK over here, so I am trying a couple of other things from them.

The second was from Amazon, from whom I'd ordered a couple of books and a DVD.  I almost hate to say this as a former bookseller, but I bought the books mainly for their cover art.  Even worse they are both TV tie-ins!  It's as though suddenly publishers have realised that these don't have to be absolutely hideous all of a sudden and these are both great images.

The DVD is a lovely little film that I saw a few years ago on one of my early dates with Doc C (Before he even was Doc C!).  It's a Dutch film that was originally called "Minoes", which has been translated to the rather less appealing "Undercover Kitty".  We saw it at the cinema with subtitles, but I think this is probably a dubbed version. 

It's a children's film about a cat who is magically transformed into a woman, albeit still able to talk to cats and with some feline character traits, and through her network of feline informants is able to help a young journalist break a story about corruption in local government.  You know put like that it sounds sort of insane and a bit boring, but is one of the sweetest films I have ever seen.  We still reference the cat names to each other, so at one point Edith and Nancy were a mere whisker away from being Minoes and Jakkepoes but we had an 11th hour change of heart.

Ngaio Marsh 31: Photo Finish.

Ahh!  We're back to a nice cheap and cheesy photo on the cover!  That is just the fakest pool of blood we've seen don't you think?  And what exactly is supposed to be bleeding?  The music manuscript? The photo?  Who can say?

I really hate the typeface and colour choices that the designer made here; in particular the yellow of the title is particularly yucky against the maroon curtains in my opinion.  Also the back cover totally clashes with the front cover now I look at it side by side like this.  Wow, that is making my eyes strobe, don't look at it for too long or you'll get those retinal ghost images.

As I've been writing these reviews of the covers I've also been trying to remember the plots that they represent; but it's been about a year since I read them all (in sequence!) and whilst some are very memorable, others are really hard to remember the details of.  This one is surprisingly easy to recall, maybe because it's one of the most unique settings and the central character is particularly divalicious, and it's so enjoyable to dislike her.  Although the murder doesn't take place until quite a way into the book the action does not drag, this is still a very fun mystery!

Ngaio Marsh 30: Grave Mistake.

Pretty much the only thing I like about this cover is the author's photo on the back, particularly because she seems to be pointing at the front cover and giggling.  I'm glad she has a sense of humour about these things; in her place I would have been horrified.

Ngaio Marsh 29: Last Ditch.

This one doesn't have anything on the back cover, it's just white.  Which I think is a bit odd.

The cover is also a bit odd, with quite a dull photo.  I mean that picture doesn't even have the kitschy cheap feel of, say, "False Scent" or "When in Rome".

Ngaio Marsh 28: Black as He's Painted.

Without any pre-planning or machinations from me our Ngaio Marsh cover for today is "Black as He's Painted" which features a beautiful black cat.  The mystery itself also involves a cat providing a vital piece of evidence, which sounds like it might be quite twee but Ngaio handles it all quite crisply so it isn't cloying.

Unsurprisingly, I quite like this cover.

Ngaio Marsh 27: Tied Up In Tinsel.

The thing that is sort of annoying about the image is that the wrapping paper is saturated with blood, but it looks to me to be that sort of plasticky foil stuff, so I don't understand how it would get soaked like that under normal circumstances.  I bet that took the art director of the shoot a really long time to set up, so I like that photographer, Graham Miller, gets a credit on the back cover.

I still don't like the cover much.

 

 

Ngaio Marsh 26: When in Rome.

I love the confidence of the statement "Her new bestseller", and you have got to hand it to the model, he is really throwing himself into the role of dead-body-lying-on-mosaic.

Ngaio Marsh 25: Clutch of Constables.

I think I'm right in saying that this is the only book in my collection that depicts a human being that is not the victim or the murderer, but is instead an upstanding group of Bobbies on the Beat.  Who are attending the dragging of a river in this image, and in case you would like to know exactly which one the book includes another helpful map of the setting for the mystery.

It's also a very yellow cover, with a very blue map.

Ngaio Marsh 24: Death at the Dolphin.

What a great trippy sixties cover!  It's very evocative of... something!  I don't remember clearly how much  this cover image has to do with the plot; but I don't think an awful lot really, apart from the dead body.

The Dolphin in the title by the way is the name of the fictional West End theatre that Ngaio Marsh set several of her show biz based mysteries.  It sounds like such a beautiful building, it's almost a pity it doesn't really exist.

I've included the photo of the fly leaf of the book, because I really love how the Crime Club's hooded gun man has this weird echo images around his face but not the gun.  I'm not sure what it's supposed to be indicating; has he made friends?  Is he tripping?  Is he in a hall of mirrors?  It doesn't really matter, it looks great!

 

Ngaio Marsh 23: Dead Water

I quite like this one; it's a great shade of blue with nice creamy yellow leattering and a very atmospheric bit of cover art.

My only minor quibble is that this design has been styled to look very thirties, where as this book was written in 1964.  As I've mentioned before where Ngaio Marsh succeeds brilliantly where, I would argue, Agatha Christie fails, is that Marsh is quite brilliant at keeping her plots up to date and full of contemporary detail.  This juxtaposition of cover and content could be very confusing to a new reader expecting a classic thirties drawing room whodunnit and getting a mid-sixties description of conflict in a small village.

Ngaio Marsh 22: Hand in Glove.

Lovely shade of yellow, two lovely shades of blue and then a beautifully painted photo of someone's sock.  Hmmm, interesting stylistic choice but as the general theme with all mystery covers is to show the dead body in situ at the crime scene I can see why they went with that.

May I draw you attention to the portrait of Inspector Alleyn, featuring "The Handsome Detective" in a rather fetching hat.

Ngaio Marsh 21: False Scent.

Sigh.

This book was originally published in 1960, and what I have is a re-print from 1970 when Fontana started going through a phase of staging the covers in what are clearly incredibly cheap photo shoots.  Just awful, but very much of that period of publishing.  

Personally I think that if you were to judge this particular title by this particular cover I don't think you would read it, which is a pity because it is a fun mystery.

Ngaio Marsh 20: Singing in the Shrouds.

So this is the cover that should have been on "Spinsters in Jeopardy", and the blurriness of the photo is nicely atmospheric I think.  It also has one of Miss Marsh's most enigmatic dedications; what looks to be a hand drawn triple X.

(Limited SPOILERS from this point - Killer not revealed.)

This book really encapsulates what I like about Ngaio Marsh mysteries (This particular plot is set in the ultimate in remote and secluded settings, a cruise ship), with one of the aspects of her writing that I find most difficult to read and almost impossible to defend:  blatant homophobia.  Several times in her books she has secondary characters who she specifically indicates are gay, and they are always described as having almost no redeeming features.  In this title a gay character is killed in a case of mistaken identity, and it's actually received as good news by the other characters when this plot twist is finally revealed.  I fully understand that an unpleasant side effect of reading vintage fiction is that it will necessarily feature vintage prejudices; however Miss Marsh was heavily involved in theatre and there is no way on earth that you are telling me that she didn't have contact with gay men and women in that sphere of her experience if in no other.  Of course another possibility is that she was gay herself, and is expressing her self-loathing through her work; but really homophobia is an ugly, ugly thing no matter what the reason for it.

So, I have issues with this one.

Ngaio Marsh 19: Off With His Head.

I don't especially love the image on this cover, but you know it does have a certain air of menace.  Maybe it's the machete in the angry looking man's hand, or maybe it's the bare branches on those trees in the background.

One thing I really don't like is the authors photo on the back, Miss Marsh looks terrible.  Actually she looks exactly like Alistair Sims as Miss Millicent Fritton in the original "St Trinians" films.  That's almost as frightening as the picture on the front cover.

Ngaio Marsh 18: Scales of Justice.

This is the book I bought to replace a less interesting cover.  I forget what the other cover looked like, but it can't have been anywhere near as cool as this one.  I adore this cover, and I am equally enamoured of the map inside; do click on the image or go over to flickr to see a larger picture because the map is really quite charming.

The fact that the woman has co-ordinated her earrings, nails and lipstick is particularly pleasing, but I also love that cat and how proud it is of the fish it's got in it's mouth (please note the cat is repeated in pink on the back.  Love it.).  The plot actually revolves around the fact that a fish scale is as individual as a finger print; which makes this title, "Scales of Justice", Ngaio's most outrageous pun.

Ngaio Marsh 17: Spinsters in Jeopardy.

This is quite a fun cover I think; it's very much of it's time and it's just creepy enough without going overboard.  There is just one problem:  This image has absolutely nothing to do with the plot of "Spinsters in Jeopardy", and neither does the blurb on the back. 

It's not until you read the inside cover description that what you are reading has any relation at all to the plot of "Spinsters..." I found this very confusing the first time I read it and it didn't become clear until I read "Singing in the Shrouds" which is three books later on in the series, and is what this cover art should have been on. 

Oddly enough I have the edition of "Singing..." which fits into the same Fontana re-print run as this book, and that's where the cover art ended up for this one.  It's most odd.  It's not just that they put the wrong jackets on, because the titles are actually correct on the covers so it is just a major mistake on someone's part.  This pair are for that reason one of the prizes of my collection and I am so glad that I have both of them.

Ngaio Marsh 16: Opening Night.

I wish I had an undamaged copy of this amazing dust jacket.  Even though the front is badly torn, the spine still has a great icon for The Crime Club.  The whole back cover is a fabulous portrait of Ngaio Marsh, but for some strange reason it's blue.

I've included both versions of The Crime Club icon from the dust jacket and hard cover spines, mainly because I like how the hard cover icon looks like the hooded gunman is brandishing a banana.

"Opening Night" is one of several mysteries with a strong theatrical setting, these are always very well done; which is unsurprising really because Marsh was made a Dame due to her work promoting Shakespeare in New Zealand.  She worked with some of the best known New Zealand and Australian actors, including a young Sam Neill. 

 

Ngaio Marsh 15: Swing Brother, Swing.

Ahh! Lovely! I find this fabulous image so soothing after yesterday's eyesore.  And I love the frock that the woman is wearing on this cover, it's so gorgeously fifties in shape and a beautiful colour too.

As I am sure you would immediately guess from the cover art this particular mystery is set in a jazz club, and it is a really fun plot.   

Ngaio Marsh 14: Final Curtain.

This is definitely my least favourite cover.  I am actively seeking a replacement for this title, because I like the story a lot, but I cannot bear that picture.

It looks as though it was designed by someone who hadn't read the book and based on the brief they were given simply asssumed it was a spoof.  It's just awful.

I don't want to talk about it any more.

 

Ngaio Marsh 13: Died in the Wool.

I like this one, because it's got the sixties feeling to the actual design with the light blue panel with circles in at the top; whilst the actual image immediately contextualises the plot as a WWII spy mystery, but it also indicates that it has a rural setting with the storm lantern, and the slightly menacing shadow of the brand against the wall.  This is one of the few design crossovers that I think works quite well.

 

Ngaio Marsh 12: Colour Scheme.

Is it not ironic that this cover has such a limited palette when it is for a book called "Colour Scheme"?  It also feels very nineties to me, in that it wants to have it's cake and eat it too by bunging a melodramatic cover illustration (which seems to have been nicked from a poster for a low budget zombie film) into a very stylised cover design.  Just pick one, and go with it!  Jeez!

This was written in 1943, and it's a great example of one of the things I find fascinating about the Queens of Crime; which is how they observed and recorded the period of history proceeding, during and following the Second World War.  Marsh set the majority of her mysteries in London, but clearly couldn't travel to the UK to do the necessary research during the war, her ingenious solution is to have Alleyn doing undercover secret service work in New Zealand.  It makes no sense that he would be doing that if you think about it for any period of time, but it is a very nifty fix to Marsh's real life problem. 

One other thing I would note is that this happened to be the first Ngaio Marsh mystery that I read when I was still at school, and I didn't like it at all.  Fortunately I completely forgot about it until I re-read it, having then read some other Alleyn mysteries.  Once you are familiar with Alleyn it is fascinating to see him out of context, but it's not the ideal book to kick off with.

Nagio Marsh 11: Death and the Dancing Footman.

I don't dislike this cover, but I don't understand the thinking behind it.  To my mind if you have a classic example of a thirties whodunnit with nice whimsical title like "Death and the Dancing Footman" why would you not take the opportunity to depict the titular Footman (who was in fact doing the charleston) on the cover?

Having read the book I understand what is going on in the picture and how it relates to the plot of the book, but really this could have been a lot more fun.

Ngaio Marsh 10: Surfeit of Lampreys

Well here it is, our first slightly gory cover.  Ok there is no blood pictured, but it is still a really unpleasant image.  Admittedly it's one of Miss Marsh's yuckier murders, which is weird because the story revolves around her most whimsical characters.  The Lampreys were actually based on a family that Ngaio Marsh knew very well and whom she visited in London, whereupon they would sneak in bits of nonsense to her manuscripts or read bits of her work out to each other whilst shrieking with laughter; they sound extremely annoying to me, but she clearly loved them and that comes through in her characterisation of them here.

A really interesting thing about the back cover here is that we get our first artist's impression of Inspector Alleyn, and a nice little biography of him as well.  Very handy.  One thing that I noticed when I read the wholse series is that Ngaio Marsh was very definite about Alleyn's age in the early books, and then she just stops mentioning it at all.  I think we are supposed to imagine that he, Troy and Fox remain the same age, whilst everyone else (including Alleyn and Troy's son, Ricky) age as normal.  That could be seen as a major problem with the series, but personally I think it's a very creative solution given that when she started writing about Alleyn in 1934 she could have no idea she still would be in 1982.

Again I have to say the cover art itself is fine (even if the subject matter makes me a little queasy), but that green with that orange?  Darling, I really don't think so.

Ngaio Marsh 9: Death at the Bar.

I think this is clearly a book that I would replace with another edition which had better cover art without any hesitation.  This is not my least favourite of my collection, but I think it is a reminder to us all what a dark time the early eighties were for style and design.

Ngaio Marsh 8: Overture to Death.

There really isn't much to say about this cover, except to note that we are back to the non-dancing penguin and the more friendly looking of the author's portraits. 

As to the book itself I must mention that this has to be one of my favourite of Miss Marsh's murder scenarios, because it involves the miss-use of a meccano set (although she doesn't use that brand name, it's clear that's what she's referencing) and a village hall piano.  Genius!

Ngaio Marsh 7: Death in a White Tie.

"Death in a White Tie" was written in 1938, and this particular edition is from 1988.

I quite like the art work, which is very evocative of the era and the plot without being cheesily obvious about the whole thing; however, the sea of aquamarine the picture is floating in really blands the whole thing up.  And I say that as someone who usual loves all shades of turquoise to duck egg blue, so it's not necessarily about the choice of colour.

Also for future reference if you have a quote from The Dashiell Hammett saying that this "...is the best detective story I have ever read..." that should trump the vague bit of fluff from Sun (There is no "The" on the cover, so I'm just guessing when I assume the mean the trashy British tabloid) and get the front cover.  I mean really, if Dashiell Hammett says this is the best detective story he has ever read that is worth mentioning upfront, because I think he might possibly have known what he was talking about.

It's not my least favourite cover by any means (there are some up-coming seventies horrors that take that particular title), but it does seem a shame to me that the artwork here is actually pretty good and has been made to appear blander by the rest of the cover.

Ngaio Marsh 6: Artists in Crime

Eh.

I'm not really a fan of bland TV tie-in covers for books. It's not that I don't like Simon Williams, or Belinda Lang and I thought they were very well cast actually; however I really don't see why we need exactly the same image of them on the front and back cover. It seems lazy.

This was actually the first title that the BBC filmed in the series, I assume mainly because they wanted to kick off with a story involving Troy (played by Miss Lang) and this is the first one in which that character plays a major role. The thing is though that Troy isn't in all of the novels, and by starting with this one they really made a rod for their own back in the later adaptations. I recently saw the adaptation of "A Man Lay Dead" which is the very first novel, and it had been shoe-horned in after this one very clumsily with Troy replacing a totally different character (Not to mention they had re-cast Alleyn with Patrick Mallahide of all people). Personally I hate that in a TV version of a novel I know well, and it loses my goodwill as a viewer.

Anyway, back to this cover. Umm, it's very blue isn't it?

Ngaio Marsh 5: Vintage Murder.

Another classic Penguin cover.  This one is a bit more bashed around, and marked but the design remains nice and crisp.  Interestingly the picture of Miss Marsh is different to the photo used on the previous cover, and in this one she looks a lot more stern. 

Also, is it just me, or is that penguin dancing?

Ngaio Marsh 4: Death in Ecstasy

 

This was a 1934 title, and this edition was published in 1968 resulting in a lovely psychedelic sixties cover for a book that's about a religious cult with some dodgy book-keeping.  I love that it's a wraparound image, but I have no idea what the red circle on the left has to do with anything.  The red and yellow bands at the top are eyecatching, but I'm not sure if the the different typeface for the author's name and the book title really works.

One thing that is interesting to note is that Fontana Books put the price up by a whole shilling in the 5 years from the publication of "The Nursing Home Murder" to "Death in Ecstasy".  Also, again, we have a very enigmatic dedication, this time to "The Family in Kent". 

Ngaio Marsh 3: The Nursing Home Murder

 

"The Nursing Home Murder" was the only book that Ngaio Marsh had a co-author for, and I think Henry Jellet would have been a medical advisor on the book.  I'm not sure who dedicated the book to "That One" and I do think that unnecesarily mysterious; also to me it smacks of sailor with a girl in every port who calls them all by the same nick name to avoid confusing the names.

This title was first published in 1935, and my copy was printed in 1963.  I love the creepy cover image, but I love even more the decision to put a ghostly blue version on the back cover.  This is exactly what I want in a late fifties slash early sixties detective novel cover design. 

Ngaio Marsh 2: Enter A Murderer

 

By way of contrast to the classic Penguin cover of the first book in our series, here we have the most recent sleeve design.  I think it's a nice clean design, and I can see the retro feel they are going for here.  The only thing I would say is that Miss Marsh wrote from 1934 to 1982, and over those 48 years she was actually really good at keeping up to date on the mise-en-scene of the stories, and I don't think that this standardised design would reflect that in the later books.  Here though, it works beautifully!

Ngaio Marsh 1: A Man Lay Dead

 

I'm glad that we are kicking off the proceedings with a classic Penguin book cover.  There might not be a lot of visual excitement, but I love how much information they give you; plus there is the added bonus of a nice picture of Miss Marsh to illustrate her biography.  I think she looks like an absolute sweetheart.

My copy of the book happens to have been published in 1954, but I like that this could easily have been a 1930's edition and there is no visual clue.  I would love to get something from the range of products that have a selection of Penguin classic titles on, but Ngaio Marsh is not one of the featured authors, the closest I could get would be Agatha Christie's "The Body in the Library".

The Ngaio Marsh Shelf.

1. A Man Lay Dead (1934)
2. Enter a Murderer (1935)
3. The Nursing Home Murder (1935)
4. Death in Ecstasy (1936)
5. Vintage Murder (1937)
6. Artists in Crime (1938)
7. Death in a White Tie (1938)
8. Overture to Death (1939)
9. Death at the Bar (1940)
10. Surfeit of Lampreys (1941), published in USA as Death of a Peer
11. Death and the Dancing Footman (1942)
12. Colour Scheme (1943)
13. Died in the Wool (1945)
14. Final Curtain (1947)
15. Swing Brother Swing (1949), published in USA as A Wreath for Rivera
16. Opening Night (1951), published in USA as Night at the Vulcan
17. Spinsters in Jeopardy (1954)
18. Scales of Justice (1955)
19. Off With His Head (1957), published in USA as Death of a Fool
20. Singing in the Shrouds (1959)
21. False Scent (1960)
22. Hand in Glove (1962)
23. Dead Water (1964)
24. Death at the Dolphin (1967), published in USA as Killer Dolphin
25. Clutch of Constables (1968)
26. When in Rome (1970)
27. Tied Up in Tinsel (1972)
28. Black As He's Painted (1974)
29. Last Ditch (1977)
30. Grave Mistake (1978)
31. Photo Finish (1980)
32. Light Thickens (1982)
33. Death on the Air (1989, Collected Short Stories)
34. Black Beech and Honeydew (1965, autobiography)

Detective Novel Cover Art.

Yay! It's Friday night and I just remembered that we had tonic in the fridge, so I could have a G&T.  Don't you just love it when that happens?

Also I am working my way through my stack of fascinating looking books, right now I'm reading "Girl Sleuth" which is about the writers behind Nancy Drew.  As it happens the only book I've read that featured Nancy Drew as character, even though she was re-named Nancy Clue, was a hilarious pastiche with a lesbian spin.  I'm pretty sure that's not the case with the original books, but maybe I'm entirely wrong in that assumption.  I mean, Hello?  George from Enid Blyton's Famous Five?

Because I'm finding the book on the women who wrote the Nancy Drew books fascinating so far, and because I love collecting vintage paperbacks (particularly from the forties and fifties for the gorgeous cover art), I may see if I can find some original Nancy Drew on e-bay. 

On a similar subject I've been planning a series of photo posts on the cover art from my collection of Inspector Alleyn novels by Ngaio Marsh.  I tried very hard to buy the books second-hand, so my collection is mostly vintage and some of the cover art is amazing.  In fact in some cases I bought a duplicate of a title I already owned, purely because I found a nicer cover illustration.  There were some titles that I could not find second-hand meaning I had to purchase new copies of them, so there is an interesting pictorial record of the varying fashions in detective novel cover art.

Stay C?????

You know what is really hard to take a good photo of?  Yellow chalk graffiti on a partially tree-shaded pavement on a sunny day.

Before snapping the digital shutter I was momentarily concerned that the yellow would be bleached out in the photos by the strong sun, and didn't appreciate that it was actually the pesky dappled shade that would make the motto illegible.

Anyway, it says "Stay Classy", it was scrawled on the pavement in front of the student union and I have no idea what it's in reference too, but I thought it was funny.

More Polka Dots.

I am definitely on my way to owning a black-and-white polka dot courier bag.  I'm going to order a bag from a company I really like called Courierware, they make great bags to customer specifications and Doc C has been using one of their bags for six years now.  I cannot imagine him not having that bag, fortunately they are virtually indestructible and have a lifetime warranty.

One small confession I already own a large red courier bag (perfect for carry-on luggage when flying), and a small hot-pink walking bag (perfect for carrying stuff whilst walking dogs) from Courierware, but what I need a medium size bag for work. 

Hi.  My name is Jen, and I am addicted to bags.

Anyway, Courierware do offer a great range of colours in cordura, and will work with other fabrics; but what I want is a bag made from the waterproof cordura, and cordura doesn't come in polka dots.  I did some internet research, and eventually found a bike courier's forum thread that was discussing how to stencil onto cordura bags.  This is exactly what I am intending to do, so I was pleased to find that other people reported good results using gesso.  Artists use gesso paint to prepare canvases, it comes in different colours, and it's quite cheap.  Perfect.  I don't really know hard wearing it will be, but I can easily touch up the bag when needed.

We went to an art shop today, and I bought a pint of black gesso, a pint of white gesso, a paint brush, a sheet of acetate, an exacto knife and a self-healing cutting board.  I also bought a ruler and some punch hole reinforcements from the supermarket on the way home.

I've pretty much given up on finding a cheap polka dot stencil, there is one on e-bay but I've already been outbid on it and I don't fancy getting into a bidding war for the thing.  Instead I used the hole reinforcer stickers to stencil a row of three practice dots on the inside of my small walking bag, which is also made of cordura.

I'm really pleased with how the dots came out, the hole re-inforcers are really simple to position and the dots were nice and crisp.  All I need to do now is order my bag from Courierware, and then spend a few hours ruling a grid on it with tailor's chalk and positioning the stickers.

In the meantime, I'm going to be stenciling the pink bag, and this time I'll be using the acetate to make a stencil.  The original design was going to be a stylised black cat, but now I'm thinking about doing something else.  Maybe an off-center black, white and hot-pink Union Jack, but I definitely need to practice that a few times first though.  Can't have a wonky looking Union Jack.

Three Dozen Mini Cookies and An Astounding Piece of Information.

This afternoon I was in the local bakery buying cookies for an event for work (I got to use my University