thinking about what makes a good illustrator

why can't you just stay

Originally uploaded by .marmushka.

I just this minute accidentally landed on this photo in flickr and instantly wanted to cry, leading to me feeling very impressed and a little bit envious of this person's talent! I don't know why this picture works so well. Do you? Or is it actually just indefinable magic? I have written and illustrated two books (not published!) and it used to be my great ambition to be a children's author and illustrator. I don't think I quite have what it takes, like the ability to draw characters from any other angle than straight on, for a start! Oh well, maybe some day...

After struggling with my shopify for another two days, I have reverted back to how it was before and am just reconciling myself with the tiny (honestly, TINY) two things I can't seem to change. I can live with them. I think... Today I am adding the last few products and making one or two more teeny tweaks. I will be back later today with an announcement of a concrete opening! Yay!

Made in the Shade sent an email out this morning, not telling me that I was going to be getting a stall at their weekend long festive extravaganza, but telling everybody that the event has had to be cancelled. This time the Lighthouse really is shutting down, it seems. It is such a shame :( Not that I was guaranteed to even get a stall at it, but this event was my big Christmas plan. I don't really know what to do with myself now and am wondering if it is really worth my while making all the decorations, cards and stocking fillers I had been about to embark on... Boo. But in happier news, I am doing a market next weekend which I'm hoping will be great (more details soon) and I went along to the new Made in the Shade shop yesterday and saw my Dot and Pat notecards looking spiffing on their sideboard. Hooray! Even better than that, as I walked through the door, I heard someone saying how fab they were. Good timing, or what? After that, I got to experience the great feeling of turning down the offer of a job interview by saying, "I'm sorry but I have a job now and am no longer available." What can I say? I am in demand! And after that, I went to see a great film called Tales From The Golden Age. It's made up of five short films telling urban legends about things that supposedly happened in Romania in the 1980s. They were all really good stories and some of them were just so funny. There weren't many people in the cinema but the laughter was pretty uproarious at points. Some of the stories were also a bit sad. If you notice it showing near you, you should most definitely go and see it. So you could say it was a pretty good day, all in all, even though I was a grump for most of it.

When I came home from the cinema, I saw my mum had phoned so I phoned her back. Here is the conversation.

Me: How are you?

Mum: Well, I was fine when I phoned you earlier.

Me: But not anymore?

Mum: No. Eeeeeeeeuch! Something horrible happened. Have you had your tea yet?

Me: No...?

Mum: Then I'd better not tell you. What are you going to have?

Me: Risotto.

Mum: Oh! Then I had better tell you!

It turned out my mum had been having risotto too (we quite often cook the same meals on the same days, it is a bit spooky) and had taken an unopened bag of risotto rice from her cupboard. It had been in there for a few months. She opened the bag and poured out the rice to discover it was full of weevils! Many of them were dead and many were alive and crawling about. Eugh! I checked my rice very carefully. It was a weevil free zone :)

some blue pictures and a long story

1. A Wreath Of Synthetics, 2. Mini Indian Elephant 2, 3. hornsea museum, 4. Together Forever

Just a few blue-ish recent favourites from my flickr for you today since I don't seem to be managing to take many photos these days. I am poo-ooped tonight after a long day's charity shopping. I didn't get much, but then we did only do that route about ten days ago! I did get a pretty, stripy top for £1.49, a bag of embroidery thread and some very pretty blue aida for £1.20 and some secret vintage goodies to send to someone who might read this for a bargainous 60p all in! So I can't really complain! Tonight I had planned to go to the super exciting designers' preview of Made in the Shade's new Maisonette but didn't quite get back from charity shop town in time. I will go tomorrow instead, like a regular old member of the public... Ha! If you're in Glasgow, you should go too. They open at 10 (I think?) and rumour has it they are giving away free cakes to celebrate it being their opening day. I got a bit of a sneak peek at the Maisonette last week because I was dropping off some of my Dot and Pat notecards for them to sell (yippee!) and it looked super lovely, even in its unfinished state. I can't wait to see it. Incidentally, the leafy crown in the top left picture reminds me of their leafy logo. Do you see what I mean?

Since I have no other news (and am fond of wittering away here at the moment) I will share the long story of last week's charity shopping adventure, when I saw lots of things to photograph but had left my camera at home by mistake. Grrr. OK. We have a regular route of amazing charity shops that we follow. It involves getting up early and trying to be on the bus by 10am. We travel by bus for around an hour to our first destination, which has five sizable shops in one tiny stretch, so we stay there for quite a while. We then get back on the bus and travel to our next destination, making a very necessary toilet stop at the Tramway en route. (Today we saw such a fun exhibition while we were there, combining culture with peeing!) This is our only stop until 5.30 when the charity shops close and we go for pizza and a beer and rest our weary feet and bladders until we get the bus back home again. However, the Tramway is not open to the public on Mondays and it was Monday that we decided to go charity shopping last week. We had to form a plan B to pee! The last few times we've been charity shopping, we added a stop off in a really nice little coffee shop with the best chocolate cherry brownies ever, so I suggested a visit there so that we could use their toilets. However, Graham said he would rather use the toilets in the charity shop just beside the really nice coffee shop. (Are you following this?) Now, the thing is that to use the charity shop toilets, you have to use the charity shop tearoom. Yes, the charity shop has a tearoom in it. And it's not up the stairs or through the back. It is IN the charity shop. A strange concept, I know. Usually it is frequented mainly by the older ladies who volunteer in the shop but we have had tea there once or twice before, mainly for the privilege of using the toilet. I said I would really rather sit in the nice coffee shop and eat the best ever cherry chocolate brownies and pointed out that the cups in the charity shop tearoom always smell funny, making it hard to drink your tea. Graham counter argued, saying that the nice coffee shop had too many chairs. Eh? Obviously, I had the upper hand argument wise (tea from smelly cups in a charity shop vs. delicious cherry chocolate brownies in a place with plenty of seating) but somehow we ended up in... the charity shop. I thought maybe a scone would help the tea to go down so ordered a scone and jam for me, a cake for Graham and two cups of tea while he went to the toilet. The lady behind the counter took the cakes from under their plastic domes using tongs, put them on saucers with little napkins, spooned some jam into a side dish and prepared a pot of tea. Lovely, all going well so far. I decided to be polite and wait for Graham to get back from the toilet before starting. When he returned, I was still delaying the inevitable and hadn't quite summoned the courage to smell the cup yet when Graham said, "Enjoy your ashtray of jam." What? I looked closely at the plate before me. Napkin: check. Scone: check. Jam: check. Jam dish: ashtray! Yes, the jam had been served up in an ashtray! And it was a chipped ashtray at that! I was genuinely horrified at first and whispered that there was no way I could eat the scone or drink the tea now. Graham said he wished he hadn't mentioned it. I said I was glad he had. I looked very glum and thought about the cherry chocolate brownie I could have been eating... All of a sudden we made eye contact and started laughing uncontrollably. Graham had tears streaming down his cheeks and everything. The charity shop and the tearoom were practically silent so we bit our lips, buried our faces in napkins, tried to think of sad events, but to no avail. We couldn't stop giggling and I still couldn't bring myself to touch the tea or the scone and ashtray of jam but it would have been really obvious if I had left it all uneaten so... I went to the toilet and told Graham I hoped the evidence would be gone by the time I came back. Well, the brave little soldier ate his cake, my scone and the jam (trying to leave a protective jam barrier in the bottom of the ashtray!) and forced down the whole pot of tea. What a trooper! I did my duty too, though, by going up to the counter to pay. It was so hard not to laugh. I'm sure the poor woman working there thought I was a loony. We left as quickly as we could and I popped into the nice coffee shop and bought myself a cherry chocolate brownie to take away. Poor Graham was too full up to share it with me!

Still here? I hope you enjoyed that super long story of our strange experiences in the charity shops of Glasgow. It has been entertaining me all week. I'm still giggling away as I type. Ashtray of jam... What a hoot! Right, I'm off to play Trivial Pursuit again. Wish me luck :)

isn't chaise lovely?

I haven't been around much this week, have I? And I can honestly say it is because I have been tearing my hair out over working so hard on my shopify. And I promise it is so nearly finished! Please don't be getting your hopes up too much because it is not the swankiest looking website you will ever have seen and I'm sure nobody would believe me if I told them how many hours I had spent on it. I did have a breakthrough, though, as I had been wishing I would. Actually, I had about twenty breakthroughs but each one led me to something else that I could tweak and... It hasn't all gone smoothly but I am getting there and will look upon it as a work in progress once it's open :) Watch this space...

Being a pro-crafter (or a wannabe pro-crafter) doesn't seem to leave enough time for crafting, if you ask me. I just took a little break just now to actually make something. I have been doodling this girl (or one like her) for a wee while and tonight collaged her out of some paper, fabric, buttons and ribbon. Her golden corduroy hair is extra special because it is made from an old chaise longue that belonged to my granny. My granny had a terrible (or great depending on how you look at it) habit of taking in waifs and strays and getting involved in other people's problems. She bought the chaise longue, although she did not want it, from a furniture salesman to save him from losing his job. She kept it under a dust sheet in an unused room and it always seemed like the height of luxury to my sister and I. After my granny died, the chaise longue came to live in the flat I'm now in, though it was my sister who stayed here back then. After numerous years of hard graft, the chaise longue was not quite the glamorous artefact it once was... Then when we got the cats, they instantly took it as their playground. Two kittens with sharp claws turned out to be the death of the poor chaise longue... It took a long time for me to agree to get rid of it and, when I finally did, I cut off as much of the beautiful fabric as possible before we threw it out. I'm hoping to do something nice with some of the bigger pieces one day but for now a little scrap of it has gone into making this girl's hair.

In other (major) news... I got a job! I found out earlier this week that I am soon to be starting work as a full time subtitler. It's all pretty good timing, money wise, and the job sounds interesting and I will be working with Claire, my poor fairy godmother who just cannot escape me! I will miss my little unemployed lifestyle though... Still, once I'm earning I can hire a first rate web designer to sort out my shopify! Hooray!

on the versatility of a good pom pom

Imagine the scene: you return from a hard day at the office and your eye is instantly drawn towards colourful stripes of fuzzy pom pom goodness...

"What is this?

Oh! It's a parcel from my beloved, and it is so beautifully gift wrapped that I know I am loved.

I can even cuddle this parcel, thanks to the lovely fuzziness of the thoughtfully attached pom poms. I have a happy life."

Ha! I am bad at gift wrapping. Not just not very good at it but bad at it, to a surprising level of awfulness. But even I managed to make a parcel look appealing with the addition of two lovely fuzzy pom poms and a recycled playing card! I think this red, white and blue colour combo is my favourite pom pom look, a bit like an old school cycling top.

I was just taking some photos in the hope that I might add these pom poms to my shop soon, and the little photo story (that's stretching it a bit) sprang to mind so I thought I would share it. I am losing my blogging mojo again, I think, but you'll be pleased to know I am fighting it! In fact, I am losing my online mojo altogether - the internet does nothing for me this week. And I am STILL battling to get my shopify shop together. I think I am close (honest, guv'nor!) but feel truly pathetic for how long it is taking me. I need some sort of a breakthrough or... or... something (!) just to shake things up a bit. Maybe I should tidy up? Again.

I liked this shot of Lola in the mirror. Look how many cobwebs are outside my window! I have had to make a special batch of pom poms (a.k.a. the reject pom poms) for the cats to play with so that I can keep the good ones safe. As if our house wasn't covered in enough wool from the making of them, I now have to be hoovering up the aftermath of the cat attacks too. My niece, Kim, calls pom poms 'pom doms', which I find hilarious. Why is that funny? Is it because it sounds a bit like condoms, and I am immature? I don't know... I have an American friend, now living in Scotland, who finds the British pronunciation of condom hilarious. It does sound funny when she says it with a British accent. Frightfully proper, don't you know, chaps? Strangely, she physically cannot say 'twat'. It comes out as 'twot' every time! Hee hee!

I have had to ban myself from making pom poms. I'm not being anyhwhere near as productive as I would like right now and the pom poms were an artificial sort of productivity, if you know what I mean. It seems it is a week of giving things up, as I am also giving up drinking booze and eating crisps, both of which I do far too much of and now I can't fit in any of my clothes as a result :( Sharing this unusual hat trick of banned activities (alcohol, crisps and... pom poms) here will hopefully keep me on the straight and narrow. Oh, sinful pom poms! Always accompanied by the telltale whiff of the sulphur of hell fires!

WHO's the daddy!?

Yes, EastEnders is obviously a big part of my life - I spend hours embroidering its characters and spent at least ten minutes talking about it in a job interview this week - but I always feel it would be kind of sad to mention it much here on the old blog. But, oh lord, did anyone watch it this week? After being teased all through Thursday's episode, I couldn't wait to see it on Friday to find out who the father of Heather's baby (the seriously brilliantly named George Michael Trott) was. Four minutes before the end of Friday's episode, by which time Phil, Minty and Billy were all in the vicinity of the maternity ward, I got the holler that my dinner was on the table. Nooo! I tried to play it cool and declined the offer to eat in front of the telly, but all through dinner all I could talk about was who the father could be. There was one possibility that really freaked me out. (I won't say who incase anyone is waiting for the omnibus on Sunday.) At around 11pm, I realised there was no way I could possibly wait until Sunday to find out so cranked out the BBC iPlayer and watched the last few minutes. Well, by the time the doof doofs came round, I was looking much like Heather in the photo above, crossed with an X Factor contestant, going, "ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod" in a high pitched squeal. Even Graham, not an Easties viewer, was visibly shocked! If you didn't see it, you really must watch the last hour of the omnibus tomorrow. What better use could you make of the hour you gain when the clocks go back tonight?

(edit: And in all the baby excitement I forgot to even mention the sub-story of Peggy and Pat getting blind drunk in the back of an ice cream van! It has truly been a week of classic East End telly - I love it!)

peppermint pom poms

Last night and this morning, I made a whole fuzzy bundle of peppermint coloured (not flavoured) stripy pom poms. Don't you just want to snuggle with them? Or is that just me? I am loving them!

They are just so cute and seventies, and so much fun to make.

They have a handy loop so that you can hang them on your christmas tree (sorry! I know it's only October!) or anywhere else you fancy.

Or you could attach them to parcels to jazz up/seventies up/snuggle up your gift wrapping.

I think I will be selling these, certainly at markets and maybe online too, but not until it's a wee bit closer to the festive season!

I've had kind of a busy week, making lots of things, catching up with a few friends and doing a job interview. I'm still waiting to hear back from that. Thanks for all the responses to the gocco bulb appeal and to those of you who have been spreading the word. If you have emailed me already then thank you very much! I will be getting back to you very soon. I'm just trying to sort out an address for you to send the bulbs to, as the post to my home address is far from reliable. Grrr. I'll also be investigating the claim that the bulbs are highly toxic before proceeding - maybe landfill is the best place for them after all! :( Anyone know anything about their toxicity?

Right, back to the wool storm, also known as pom pom making!

A Blue Peter style appeal... I need your used gocco bulbs!

UPDATE: Sad news: the gocco bulb appeal is no more. After a couple of tip offs about the bulbs toxicity, I did some research and discovered the used bulbs are apparently pretty toxic. Some people mentioned pretty scary side effects, like causing birth defects in unborn children etc. I was planning to turn these into Christmas baubles, and I really can't think of anything more horrific than a toxic bauble - contamination is not the gift you hope for when you gather round the tree! I don't know how serious the toxic risk really is but I couldn't carry on with my plan in good conscience once I knew that those sort of side effects were a possibility. Sigh... This makes me feel even worse about sending them off to landfill... But thank you very much for the great response and support - makes me want to devise another (non-toxic) appeal!

used gocco bulbs

Originally uploaded by alison wonderlandQ

Are you a gocco user? Do you recognise the tragic beauty of these short lived orbs who, like the mayfly, perform their sole function on earth, only to become obsolete and die moments afterwards? Do you hoard your used bulbs, hoping that they could be destined for greater things than merely to become landfill? You do? Then this appeal is for you! I am looking for used gocco bulbs, to upcycle into objects to be treasured. I repeat: USED gocco bulbs, bulbs that have flashed their flash, bulbs that can no longer serve a useful purpose in the world of printing, bulbs that would otherwise be destined for the bin.

My plan is this: everybody who sends me some gocco bulbs will get a special gift in return. This gift will comprise of something I have printed on my own gocco (it may be a print, a card, a notebook or... something else!) as well as a selection of other little surprise items to make the parcel super fun to receive! And the more bulbs you send, the more super duper fun I will squeeze into your return package. If you take part, it means you will be helping me, helping the environment and getting a real treat for yourself in return! Everyone's a winner, right?

If you have any used gocco bulbs that you would like to donate to the cause, please email me (you can click on the little link in my profile) or leave me a comment with your email address here. I will get in touch, and give you all the necessary details.

p.s. If you have a blog/twitter/facebook/flickr/whatever, I would really appreciate it if you could help to spread the word about this bulb appeal - thanks! :)

p.p.s. Look out for a super duper Blue Peter style bulb-o-meter appearing to the right hand side over there! I shouldn't make it today as I have a job interview to prepare for and some important errands to run so... Who am I kidding? I will be working on it today for sure!

UPDATE: Sad news: the gocco bulb appeal is no more. After a couple of tip offs about the bulbs toxicity, I did some research and discovered the used bulbs are apparently pretty toxic. Some people mentioned pretty scary side effects, like causing birth defects in unborn children etc. I was planning to turn these into Christmas baubles, and I really can't think of anything more horrific than a toxic bauble - contamination is not the gift you hope for when you gather round the tree! I don't know how serious the toxic risk really is but I couldn't carry on with my plan in good conscience once I knew that those sort of side effects were a possibility. Sigh... This makes me feel even worse about sending them off to landfill... But thank you very much for the great response and support - makes me want to devise another (non-toxic) appeal!