Will having a busy day make blogging easier?

Saturday got off to a great start.  For once the postman had exciting mail for me - the first four issues of Mixtape that I won in a competition on Whip Up.  

Woo hoo!  I haven't had the chance to read them properly yet but they look fantastic and I'm really looking forward to reading them over the coming weeks.

Before heading out for the day I had to make an emergency anniversary card for a friend.  I used one of my vintage cookery cards (one of my best charity shop finds ever!) which are always handy for making cards at high speed.

As usual when I'm taking a photo of something I've just made, Lola had to investigate.  Lola and her sister Poppy are a pretty tough quality control team...

After a quick sprint to the letterbox to make the last weekend collection (oh how I miss the Sunday mail collection!) and a slow slog to the charity shop (laden with much of my junk which I still find hard to part with even though I can describe it as junk) Graham and I headed to the art school's degree show.  As usual, I only made it to the exhibition on the very last day and, as usual, many of the students had already removed their work.  Most annoying!  I'll try not to say too much about the show (after all, what do I know about art?) and promise not to mention the various "rooms of shame" we identified in the fine arts department...  Hee hee!  Honestly, I saw lots of amazing stuff and was generally really impressed.  Here follows a few of my personal highlights.  Drum roll...

First some amazing and beautiful and clever jewellery from a talented lady called Iona McCuaig.  She had based her work on quotes (which sounded like they had been taken from old soldier's letters home?) and it was all gorgeous.  She made brooches based on the objects mentioned (like a playing card in a pocket) but I especially loved these:

They were brooches made of metal (to look like typewriter ribbon).  Lovely!

I always enjoy the textiles exhibition and, as usual, there was loads of gorgeous work for me to covet but this display by Emma Messer...

... made me smile the most.  So cute!

As I suggested above, lots of the fine art wasn't really up my street but I loved this image:

by Yukako Sakakura

And there is me in the reflection!

Also in the fine arts department, we found a man called The Incredible Blondin in a darkened room behind a curtain.  He was playing a glass harmonica of his own making while showing shadow puppets and was thoroughly delighted in his own little universe.  Graham and I both loved it and it was nice to see something so unexpected and someone so enthusiastic about their work.

I had been really looking forward to seeing the visual communication exhibition but when we got there nearly all of it had been taken down already.  This was doubly disappointing because what I did get to see was amazing.  I can hardly tell you how much I loved all the work by Duncan Ibbett, especially this drumkit:

Ah, it makes me so happy and excited!  He had lots of fabulous film posters.  You can see the Blue Velvet one peeking out of the folio there.

Talking of films, once we got home we had a fun evening in front of the telly courtesy of BBC4's B-Movie evening.  We started the night off with coffee and delicious cake (almond cake and orange and chilli cake from a very nice deli place down the road) and a film called The Last Journey.  This was a film about a train driver who went off the rails (har har!) and, on the day he was due to retire with a perfect working record, took a train full of crazy British caricatures (and one French man in need of a toilet) hostage and drove at breakneck speed in an attempt to crash and kill them all.  It was great.  After a quick bowl of soup and some bread we watched a pretty good documentary about the history of B-Movies in Britain.  This was followed by Psychomania, zombie teenage motorcyclists a go-go!  It wasn't that long since we had seen this film but I was definitely ready to see it again.  Until watching the afore mentioned documentary, I had no idea the main character was played by Honey's dad in Eastenders!  So you see I really did learn something.

I really did not intend to be so wordy.  I will try to be more concise next time!