Noodle's Noggin

Ploomin' Marvelous

2012-02-06T12:34:00.004Z

I got a Peg Loom for Christmas. And then I made the rather controversial decision to actually use it. I realise that the accepted procedure upon acquisition of a new crafty gadget is to get intimidated by all the possibilities and put the toy somewhere you can gaze upon it whilst never actually using it, so filled with wonderment at what you could do that you never actually decide where to start.

But I didn't do that... I didn't give myself the chance - I just marched off to John Lewis wool sale, purchased 30 balls of super chunky, and got going.

Peg-Looming (Plooming, in my lexicon of made up abbreviated forms of words, because my it takes too long to think both words individually) is easy - really easy - but it takes time. It takes longer than epic poetry. It takes longer than a very long tape measure. This rug is the product of 3 whole series of Jonathan Creek*, plus one of Dawson's Creek (I was watching only inlet and stream themed 90's TV this month). But it was worth it, because this rug makes cats very happy. Curdle loved it, she sat on it the whole time it was being made (this did not hep with tensioning) and apparently my parent's cat Harvey now also loves it, as demonstrated by the fact that he is rapidly destroying it

Oh well
Noods

*I'll save you the trouble; that fourth season is quite spectacularly not good. Why did they carry on after Caroline Quentin left? Now, I like Julia Sawalha as much as the next Austen-fan, but she ain't no Maddie Magellan.

Game Brain

2012-01-21T19:10:00.001Z

Doing A Level English Lit, I was really jealous of the Eng Lang class because they got to study Frankenstein, one of my favourite books at the time. I was stuck listening to my teacher explain every single line of Keats, clearly under the impression that we could not read and comprehend for ourselves. Once I realised that the entire contents of the course could be found between the covers of Sparksnotes, and that I was the only student who read Shakespeare without needing someone to tell them what the plot was, I stopped turning up to class (I never could cope with boredom...). I think my attendance of 12%, coupled with my receipt of the highest mark in the school, is a testament to the quality of the teaching in the shitty comprehensive I attended.

Anyway, where was I... oh yes, Frankenstein is awesome, Keats tends to waffle and the I made the boy a themed DS cover for Christmas. Hurrah! I've never actually seen any of the film versions of Frankenstein*, but my Adam is loosely based on the Karloff-type pop culture image. See, you have to open Adam's head to get the console, cute huh?

(Well, cute for a zombiefied head, anyway)

Naaaaahhhaaaa**

Noodle

*Though NT filmed their stage version, which I thoroughly recommend if you get a chance to see it.

**read as slack-jawed monster groaning

Irrational Unfuntionality

2012-01-09T03:30:00.000Z

So, I am now writing for geekcrafts. It's cool coz now I get to help spread the love of nerdtastic crafting. Actually, it's the opposite if cool... but you catch my drift.

In other news, I do remember when I promised to be less shit at updating this here blogette. Vaguely. That was in a time before I tried to do A-Level Maths, Further Maths and Pure Maths in 5 weeks... I'll be less rubbish once I've worked out how to apply the graphs of trigonomic functions to this set-square. Or something.

0100111001101111011011110110010001110011

Here's One I Made Earlier...

2011-12-18T20:23:00.003Z

I loved Blue Peter as a kid, back in the Tim Vincent and Katy Hill days. I even got a badge once - a real one, not the rubbish ones you got for entering a competition - for sending in a piece of embroidery with all the presenters names. I also had a habit, when alone, of narrating what I was doing 'to camera' and used to get exceptionally frustrated by the lack of pre-baked biscuits and already-dried craft projects available for demonstrative purposes. Maybe that's why I decided to go into Stage Management...

Anyway, this is just pre-amble; below are a selection of crafty-nibbles that I've not had time to post up over the last few weeks due to a preoccupation with Christmas crafting/maths revision/going on holiday/life in general. Enjoy...

< Hogwarts mug hug, made from a broken book, felt and ribbon. The side panels are bits of Potter text, taken from passages set in Mme Puddifoot's, even though it sounds like a horrible place. I want to move to Hogsmeade, set up a decent teashop with sofas, bookshelf and a curse that would turn Cho-wetter-than-a-haddock's-bathing-costume-Chang into a tomato if she ever tried to enter.

> More Potter-product; an Alohomora / Colloportus Keyring, as they are the spells for opening and closing doors. And because everyone loves a bit of Pig Latin.

Embroidered on glitter aida, which is a bitch to work on - scratches your hands, a bit like tying to sew onto a cheese-grater that's hungry for finger-flesh. The metallic floss is also notoriously arsey to work with - it frays and knots simultaneously, as though undecided whether it hates itself and must suicidally pull itself apart, or is so egotistical it must wrap itself into an ever closer ball of self-love. Moral of this story? If you want to make it shiny, cover it it glitter spray after your done sewing.

< Embroidered Aziraphale Notebook Cover.

I can't draw for toffee so I stole the image from this dudette on deviant art. I will warn you now, there is a lot of 'Zira/Crowley slash art out there... most of which is unspeakably trite.

This notebook is about 4 inches tall, the cover is made from cotton with backstitch picture and blanket stitch edging. The Blanket stitch is in gold metallic thread, because I wasn't quite despairing enough at the world after doing plain backstitch in that god-forsaken stuff, so I decided to create a new way to make disconnecting my finger joints one by one seem a viable alternative hobby to sewing.

> Pair of Mug Hugs & Mug Rugs

the great thing about mug accessories is that they are just the right size to try out new techniques - big enough to have fair shot, but small enough that it's not daunting, and if you hate it it doesn't seem to go on forever. Here, I practised a bit of machine quilting, made my own bias binding for the first time and practised some edging techniques (have you noticed how a lot of my stuff has shabby-chic frayed edges? That's because I suck at finishings.) These are all made printed cotton, which I backed in felt and decorated with felt, buttons and assorted hand/machine stitching. The pockets are for putting biscuits in :)

< Souped Up Notebook

Here, I took a plain hardback notebook and jazzed it old skool. I added relief to the front cover and spine using cardboard (specifically, old pizza boxes. Excellent excuse for take-away), and covered the lot in tissue paper & PVA a la Art Attack (I am a veritable encyclopedia of 90s kids TV today, right? An encyclopedia with only two entries, to be fair, but an encyclopedia nonetheless). Once dry, I attacked with a soft leaded silver pencil, smudging it in to give an aged effect. I lined the interior with start spangled craft paper to hide the edges of the tissue, and added a ribbon and a tea-stained title plate.

There you go... I promise I shall try to be less tardy in future

Noodle x

Excuse Me While I Squee A Little

2011-11-30T19:19:00.001Z

I've been made a featured project on Craftster!

Well, not me, but a thing I made. I'm hugely excited, there are so many uber-talented folk at Craftster so to be picked out is a real honour.

My project is the Hands Around Your Heart cushion, a kind of family portrait I made for lil' sister's 18th last month. I'm not really convinced that it's worthy to be considered next to some of the other featured projects (Check out the Wizard of Oz yarn, and the Gizmo hoop. And the Beetlejuice costumes. And the Snow White Dress...), but I'm thrilled to be there anyway.

Today; featured project, next week; the world...

The project was a gift for Charlotte's 18th; I was really struggling to think what to make her as she only really appreciates gifts purchased from Tiffany's or bearing an Abercrombie & Fitch label, but I knew I wanted to craft something... And let's face it, crafted presents are much more about the desire to craft that the recipients desire to receive another set of embroidered lavender bags. Anyway, I was thrilled when I came across the concept of embroidering handprints, I mooched over the idea, did some sketches and decided to make this cushion, with all of our families' hands around a heart.

I wanted to include all the immediate family, and there are a lot of us - 4 generations (Nan, Dad, Mum, 2 brothers, 2 sister-in-laws, me & my partner, niece and nephew) plus a cat (who ended up on the back), and trying to fit everyone on without it looking squished is basically where the design came from. I live far away from all the rest (at a carefully calculated 'not to far in an emergency, way too far for unexpected visits' distance), so I got them to draw around their hands on paper and post them to me for me to use as templates. Of course I couldn't ask my sister without giving the game away, so that is where the 'around your heart' idea came from

There's 6 weeks worth of chain, back, and running stitch, plus my first ever hand-sewn buttonholes, a smidge of reverse appliqué and a sprinkling of french knots on that thing (apparently, I sew slooooow, but I was being really picky about even stitch length and tiny turning, which isn't easy when you're not working on even weave! I think I used my unpicker more than my needle)

The inscription on the inside is a bastardised lyric from the musical Wicked, in a desperate attempt to demonstrate how deep and meaningful I am, and what fantastic taste in music I have.

I'm gonna go listen to some Alice In Chains while I pretend that I'm cool, ok?

Noods x

Night Sky

2011-11-12T01:32:00.001Z

Sitting, again on a night train, reflection as always - fringe insisting on parting in the middle and curling up at one edge. Too pensive to read, thoughts bringing an inexplicable lump to my throat. I try not to think - of pink elephants or anything else, but the space must be filled. Not sure why I want to cry.
Tonight someone I have avoided eye contact with for months (after a drunken argument we are both to proud to resolve sober) tried to hug me - I tensed and said 'Sure, it's fine,' and she disappeared back into the crowd. I want to hug her back, said 'Sure, it's fine' and mean it. I want to yell at her for somehow making me feel to blame when I'm no worse than her. I want to look in her eye and laugh, have her laugh with me and know we are both so stupid. But I can't - she will shrug, forget it - we were not close friends, really nothing more than fag-break buddies, and it is my own guilt that leaves me feeling unresolved, not some residual pining for what used to be. Her guilt is absolved by a one sided hug - attempting absolves her.
I won't forget; why do I remember the worst of myself so readily?
I am a good person - not easy, I know, but worthwhile.
Tonight, as the train pulls into my stop, I cannot quite seem to grasp that, but it is still true.
Tomorrow will be full of hellos, errands and cups of tea, tarnishing the blues that bother me now. I know that, too.

Walking now, surrounded by dirty empty streets, I fill my ears then my head with music. I clean my thoughts, step down the middle of the road - parked cars either side hold me and direct my gaze forward to the dark sky. I unfold my arms and smile sheepishly, not quite brave enough to sing along except inside my head, while my feet free-wheel me to bed.

No Kidding

2011-11-06T00:11:00.001Z

I don't want kids.

Those of you who know me well will not be surprised about this, as I have been saying the same thing since I was about 9 years old (at which point little sister was 1, and I'd come to realise how utterly disinterested in babies I am).

In return for your lack of surprise at my non-maternal revelation, I will not be surprised when you say 'Oh, you'll see, you'll change your mind when your older' or 'I said that at your age too! But my darling(s) are the light of my life' or somesuch twaddle. I've also been hearing that since I was about 9, so I'm not jolted by it. But I am annoyed. It's pretty rude for you to assume that you have a better understanding of my life and what I value in it than I do. It's pretty short-sighted of you to assume that everyone wants the same things you do and will make the same choices.

There are a number of reasons I don't want kids - firstly because I don't like kids very much. They are okay for a couple of hours but the best bit is giving them back to their owners. Secondly, I don't want the responsibility - I am a very selfish person, and I like living my life for me. Thirdly, this planet is fast running out of space, food, and clean air, and contributing to the spiralling population rise is not something I feel comfortable doing.

Admittedly, I may well become hostage to hormones on my 35th Birthday and suddenly decide to become a baby machine. But I know myself well enough to place bets against it, since the idea of pregnancy is revolting - like having a parasitic growth in you for 9 months.

So please, next time someone tells you they don't want to breed, assume that it's a life choice that they have given some thought, and do not dismiss their ideas about their future out of hand.

All that being said, I am lead to believe that some people want babies very much, and are willing to go to great lengths to obtain them. I am therefore very pleased for them when this process is successful and they are left with a stupid grin plastered on their faces holding a bawling bundle of red. When these people are friends, they let me express my pleasure on their behalf by making stuff for the new arrival (and they do not expect me to gush. They know that if they make me gush, I will be lying). And thusly, I congratulate Luan on the arrival of two tiny male versions of her. I'm sure they are lovely but please don't bring them too close

Auntie Noods
xxx

Cat-Naps

2011-10-26T02:15:00.000+01:00

Curdle is distinctly unimpressed at being used as a card stand. Curdle does not give a rats ass if Boy's mum has a happy birthday or not, she just wants to nap undisturbed.

Curdle is a selfish madam. Boy's mum constantly bestows cat treats upon her, the least she could do is put a paw print signature on a greetings card. But nnnnnnno, Curdle is to tired after her busy day's repose and so must not be disturbed.

They say that pets take after their owners, and, well....

Nzzz

N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL

2011-10-26T00:38:00.000+01:00

Do I believe in Aliens?

I know my answer should be that there's not enough evidence to make any kind of informed answer.

But fuck that.

Yes, yes I do. I believe that there is life somewhere else out there - given the number of planets around the number of stars in all the galaxies of our universe (I won't start thinking about other universes just yet. I need a good supply of Hobnobs (Milk Chocolate) to hand when I think multi-universal, and the shop is closed), odds are on that we are not alone. I even reckon some of that life is intelligent - given what an evolutionary advantage intelligence is, it's likely to have cropped up elsewhere.

What I don't believe is that the aliens look like the ones in X-Files. Or that they enjoy broadening the sexual horizons of red-necks. Or that they are/have been broadcasting on the tiny handful of wavelengths we've been watching for the fraction of a second (relatively - in terms of age of universe) we have been listening.

So... contribute to Seti@home - just a couple of hours a week while you're not using your computer. If we find the aliens, maybe we can help this little one get home. Her (Her? Dunno, just a vibe I got) ship crash landed in a tree. I couldn't work out how to communicate... English failed me - even when I spoke really loudly and slowly with big gestures (shock!!). I could hear Rammstein coming from the tape deck in the ship, but my German is negligible at best - she didn't respond to 'sprechen sie Englisch?' or 'ziehe meine kanone!*'. So I'm kinda stuck. But she looks lost, and I'm sure she'd love it if we could tune into her local radio station for her...

Go on, you know you want to find the ETs just as much as I do, so join in looking for them, 'cause, dude, how awesome would it be to hear the music they make in MuArae?

Noods

* 50% of my knowledge of the German language is lines from WarGoose... this did not go down well when I was in Berlin.

Lions and Tigers and Vampire-Wolves, Oh My!

2011-10-12T13:02:00.000+01:00

I'm a good skeptic, and am highly suspicious about claims of cryptozoology (Nessie, Bigfoot and the like.) Believers - I'm not saying your wrong, but I am saying that photo of blurry splodges is unlikely to be a cold-blooded dinosaur living in a Scottish pond. And that other photo is a dog with mange, not Chupacabra. Stop being so stupid.

All that being said, as of today, I believe in unicorns. Why? Well, because I saw one. A baby one (you can tell because it still has it's black markings, which (as everyone knows) fade to silvery white when maturity is reached).
There was, unfortunately, no evidence of an ability to fart rainbows.

Noods x

a lot o' duffers...

2011-10-08T14:24:00.002+01:00

Every Pottermanic knows what Hogwarts House they would be in. I'm a Ravenclaw girl myself - with hints of Slytherin. I never understood the popularity of Gryffindor.... 'Loyalty and bravery'; ie idiots, jocks and members of the BNP. No thanks. As for Hufflepuff - well, I suspect I wouldn't fit in very well there - they are all too nice. Surrounded by all that squishy lovely-ness, I'd constantly feel guilty about my mile-wide bitchy streak.

I reckon it'd be hard to be a Hufflepuff in a world were even Hagrid thinks you're a bit shit.. they are terminally undervalued. So this funky grown-up take on the House Scarf (knitted from black ribbon yarn) trend included a little badgers paw to remind the 'puff wearer that she can have claws too when needs be ;)

Whatever your house, remember - Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus...

Noods

Segregtion of the Gingers

2011-10-07T18:18:00.000+01:00

Every girl thinks that their Daddy is the best daddy in the world. The difference between me and them is I'm right.

The only mistake my daddy has ever made (admittedly it is a grave mistake indeed) is putting ginger nuts with the other biscuits in the biscuit jar. Now, I have nothing against Ginger nuts in their place - they are particularly good for eating whilst thinking about hard maths problems (something about the extreme crunchiness), but they make all other biscuits they come into contact with taste of ginger. I like ginger nuts, but I also like arrowroot and cow biscuits* and all sorts of things and so I do not want them contaminated.

So, a few years ago I implemented a 2 biscuit tin system - one ginger, one not. Unfortunately the rules for this were not properly followed, so I had to move out of home and get a biscuit tin of my own that I can maintain full control over.

The advantage of this is that I can now bake ginger and white chocolate cookies for my Daddy and not have to worry about improper storage. So, Happy Birthday Daddy, you can put your biscuits any where you want :)

Love

Noodle

*I first put Hobnobs, but thinking about it a gingery hob-nob would work quite well. Mr McVitie, I happily forfeit all copyright to this idea if you promise to make some. And bring back the chocolate-orange hobnob while you're at it.

Letter To A Flemish Nation

2011-10-07T17:44:00.001+01:00

Dear Belgium,
I love you. I take back all the mocking, all the jibes and all the laughing at your Eurovision entries.
I love you for inventing spreadable biscuits.
I love you Belgium, and I love biscuit on toast.

Thank you is an insignificant word, but it is all I have
Dank u wel
Noodle

PS. (also recommended are biscuit sandwiches (as good as sandwich biscuits, and you can claim them as a main course then have non-spreadable biscuits for pudding) and using biscuit in the place of jam in a Vicky Sponge)

Noodle-ham Adventures

2011-09-26T19:33:00.002+01:00

We are awaiting a phonecall from the Turner Prize Commitee

After the surreal experience of Swindon last year, I have to report a disappointingly un-weird Unconvention. The extreme end of the Bookcrosser oddity spectrum was almost* non-existent, so weirdo-dodging was minimal and it was therefore safe to settle down to the main business of the weekend: rum. A lot of rum.

Friday night kicked off with what turned out to be a 4 hour literary pub-quiz. In a well meaning attempt at forcing social interactions amongst our little group of misfits, teams were allocated blindly. I shall take this opportunity to publicly apologise to my team for the rapid dwindling of my interest in question answering. After about round 4 of 10, having realised that we were definitely not going to win and so competitive streak dead (and a considerable about of rum consumed) I rather gave up attempting to remember the genealogy of Dostoyevsky characters, taking instead to making paper fortune tellers and giving them to friends on other teams. Sorry guys. Though, even if I'd been sober, I'd have been of little use.

Having lost spectacularly, we returned to the bar so I could continue the destruction of my liver undistracted. The Irish contingency were on fine form as always, along with a couple of Kiwi's and the not-too-weird Belgian (who does not like jazz. I checked). I am reliably informed that, finding my smuggled in booze supply depleted, I was very eloquent on the subject of 'Why Is All The Rum Gone?' (my flask must have had a leak in it) before retiring to bed.

Saturday Morning started with an exceptionally thoughtful coffee delivery to my hotel room (Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you) - between which and several pints of water I managed to re-hydrate my brain. Not being particularly interested in any of the author talks (not having read any of their books), I opted instead to go to Nottingham Castle, having not visited since childhood. It seems that on all previous trips I managed to miss the fact that Nottingham Castle is NOT a Castle. It's an art gallery on a site where a castle used to be, and a gatehouse. Disappointed at a lack of opportunity to play English K-niggits, I decided to do I tour of the underlying caves, which proved well worth it if just for learning one juvenile but genius fact: Nottingham used to be called Snottingham, named after Viking Lord Snot.

Bloody brilliant.

Back to the hotel to engage in some standard fare raffle-and-announmenting, but more importantly to work out how much walking would be involved in getting to the restaurant for dinner and thus make an informed shoe decision.

I made the mistake of joining the largest group for dinner, which meant that service was a bit slow, though the wait staff were friendly enough (in a slightly manic way) and happy to hand out kiddie colouring in sheets with crayons to bored children (Kiwi & I). We continued my paper folding theme by making origami cats. Then an origami garden for them to play in, complete with origami birds to eat and origami flowers to play with... and then we made the staff put our picture in the children's gallery (I snuck back later and moved all the children's pictures away from ours, they were very inferior). The other mistake I made at dinner was sitting with the whole of Team Wolf (from the game of BC Mnopoly I'm hosting at the mo), giving them ample time to crack 'jokes' about biased bonus pointing and to attempt to bribe me**. After dinner (and a quick photo call in the art gallery) we headed back to the hotel bar, where we completely failed to play any board games, so just continued drinking instead... opps.

Sunday morning dawned a little brighter and a lot earlier than I am used to, but I managed to make it to the release walk in a timely and vertical manner. However my cognitive skills were clearly somewhat lacking given that we came joint-second in the treasure hunt by one point - that point being lost due to my inability to count to eight. Oh dear.

The walk ended in a pub, which apparently did nice local ales, though I was rather distracted by the Sunday Dinner offered with UNLIMITED Roast potatoes.

I am still there now, poor fools had no idea what would happen when tehy offered a Hurst an uncapped supplies of roasties...

NomNomNom

Noodle xxx

*Almost, but not entirely. We still had the lady who, when her joke-slash-factoid fails to receive rapturous applause (due to being unfunny/irrelevant/not even vaguely interesting) repeats said joke-slash-factoid again, louder. And again, louder... (please note, it was not quiet on it's first airing). The advantage of this habit is that she is easy to spot and avoid.

**All attempts were successful - I am completely open to bribery - preferred forms are alcohol and gratuitous compliments

Skinning the Cat

2011-09-22T01:23:00.001+01:00

I'm a bad vegetarian.

I have to confess it - I wear leather. Sorry, but plastic shoes are horrible for your feet (plus usually unspeakably ugly), and I am weak willed in the face of a well-turned louis heel with pretty little silver buckles.

I decided a couple of years ago that if I was going to wear leather I should at least try to wear free range leather, so the moo cows can run around and eat daisys prior to being skinned by Kurt Geiger. Yet still the options in shoe gorgeousness are limited. So I took a short workshop in leather-craft, brought myself a big old hide* and fully intended to set off making my own.

Instead of actually doing anything though, I rolled up the hide, stored it and forgot it existed

I came back to it recently and found that at some point Curdle Cat had hidden inside, and (probably confused by the shiny smooth lack of grip) dug in her claws. Bugger.

So, these bookmarks serve two purpose - they get me back on the wagon with some practice of basic edging and rivet setting skills, and they provide employment for the damaged bits of skin which would otherwise be useless.

I took inspiration from Paul Seville (whose work makes me drool. Utterly utterly delicious. He should make some shoes...) and just made holes where the scratches had been. So there is no rhyme or reason to the patterns, just the whim of a small tabby with sharp claws.

I'm off to eat some lentils as veggie penance (maybe I could force the same punishment on the cat?)

Noods x

(or Vekiki, if your a visiting bookcrosser)

*Those who know me well will observe that this leather is unsuitable for shoe making due to it's unfortunate colouration problem. It was intended for making a hat for boy - and still is, someday. But first I have to hit him round the head a few times in an attempt to make his skull less weird shaped.

Broken-Book Marks

2011-09-22T00:53:00.000+01:00

The books used in the making of these bookmarks were already dead - many thanks to bookcrossers worldwide for donating ripped, waterlogged, partially burned and generally unreadable literature* for my crafting endeavours

Now for a confession - I don't use bookmarks, I fold down pages. Bad Noodle.

Actually, I don't feel guilty about it - if a book is particularly beautiful, or not mine, I will use an old receipt or somesuch to mark my place, but mostly, sod it. I don't put in such a crease that the page rips, and books these days are not the sacred priceless hand written objects they once were - my folding the corner the latest Dawkins diatribe does not threaten the continued existence of the text. The invention of the Gutenberg Press alleviates my requirement to use book marks.

Plus, I like worn books - I always prefer second hand and only buy new when I can't source old - dogears make a book that bit more homely, broken spines make your shelves look like somewhere to stay and ponder, and even the occasional mug-ring on the cover is a mark of happy memories..

Think of me what you will... but it means there are more of these broken-book marks to share because there's not point me keeping them for myself :)

Noodle

(aka Vekiki - to any interloping bookcrossers)

*I am not referring to chick-lit; I mean physically unreadable, not mentally.

Fire Door

2011-09-20T01:16:00.000+01:00

I opened the fire door
To four lips
(None of which were mine)
Kissing
Tightened my belt around my hips
Where your hands were missing

And stepped out into the cold

Collar high
Under the slate grey sky
The air was smoking and the streets were dry
And I wasn't joking when I said
Good Bye

Magazine quality men talking on the corner
French, no less

Much less of them then us
So why do I feel like something's been rearranged?

You know, taken out of context I must seem so strange

Killed a cockroach so big
It left a puddle of pus on the wall.

When you and I are lying in bed
You don't seem so tall.

I'm singing now

Because my tear ducts are too tired
And my brain is disconnected

But my heart is wired

I make such a good statistic
Someone should study me now

Somebody's got to be interested in how I feel
Just 'cause I'm here
And I'm real

Oh, how I miss
Substituting the conclusion to confrontation with a kiss
And oh how I miss
Walking up to the edge and jumping in
Like I could feel the future on your skin

I opened the fire door
To four lips
(None of which were mine)
Kissing

I opened the fire door

---

I couldn't resist stealing this Ani DiFranco lyric to be taken out of context on a tote bag ;)

It's made from recycled wool fabric, left over present-wrapping ribbon and -hem - 'vintage' buttons, so I reckon my favourite folksicle would approve.

This is for Rachel - one of just three Ani fans I know (including me.) The other two are both Canadian. Coincidence? I think not - I suspect (hope) they are all over there getting fired up on angry lefty lyrics, ready to charge south and drown the Tea Party in maple syrup. Vive La Revolution!.

I'm off to bake pancakes for moping up afterwards

Noods x

PS. Why are you still reading? You should have buggered off to Youtube the song by now. Never mind - here. Enjoy :)

Panda Attack

2011-08-27T18:53:00.000+01:00

As PvP fans will be aware, a Panda Attack can be a dangeous thing - mostly not due to the lethal-ness of pandas, but purely down to the unexpectyed nature of the onslaught. That's where Jack here has the advantage - he'a cute and looks ever so cuddly - then BAMM! - he smacks you up with the pool ball he keeps in his head.

It may take up all the space where his brain should be, and it may mean he is so top heavy he can't sit up, but on the plus side he will kick your ass.

''There is no charge for awesomeness... or attractiveness''

Nxx

Showered in Elephant Snot

2011-08-27T17:19:00.001+01:00

Elephants are totally the best animal. fact.

I got covered by water from inside one whilst in Goa last year, and so commemorated that with a spot of reverse applique on the front of the photo album I made.

Actually, most of the photos are of the elephants as well. Boy and I both hate having pictures taken. I don't know what his objection is, if I were that attractive I'd be more than happy to show it off. Unfortunately when I smile I look like a chipmunk - all fat cheeks and english teeth. I'm pretty certain (or falsely optimistic) that I don;t look like that in everyday life, but there's something about a camera lens that really brings out the rodent in me.

Oh well. Photos of elephants it is then.

The album is made from two layers of sari fabric and one of gold silk, with gold embroidery thread and parchment paper. It was a pretty simple make really, my first attempt at book binding, and I'm quite pleased with the results.

Noods x

That's Amore

2011-08-17T14:33:00.002+01:00

Moray eels are not known for being friendly. They have 2 jaws, 2 sets of teeth, and a very strong bite that cannot be released even in death. Yet still tourist think it would be lovely to go and hand feed them - the word 'hand' here having a double meaning - you feed them by hand, and if you're very lucky you'll get to feed them your hand too. The fingers of idiots are their favourite snack. Brighton Sealife centre (pretty awesome - Nautilus themed decor, lesbian sea turtles) encourages this by selling cuddly Moray eel toys in their gift shop, much to the amusement of The Boy on a recent visit.

So, I took a leaf out of Wayne Lo's book and went on a quick killing spree before settling down to embroider some photographs. Having recently fallen back in love with chain stitch (we have one of those on-again-off-again relationships) I mostly used that, then mounted the lot onto backing card. Voila, Birthday Greeting transportation device complete.

Nxx

PS. Wayne's needlecraft site is worth checking out. I'm actually kinda jealous - if I had all that prison-time to sit around sewing in, I might actually get around to finishing my big cross stitch project...
Seriously though, he is doing something positive and seems to be genuinely trying to find a way to make amends. There's a really interesting piece/interview with him here. Fair play to the guy, I hope he is allowed to continue.

Lump the Sugar

2011-08-15T13:58:00.001+01:00

Being Diabetic sucks, in a fairly major way. I hadn't realised how much until I met The Boy. He's really good at looking after himself, but jabbing yourself with needles a few times a day is never gonna be fun. So, with this in mind I decided to make him a sugar-free birthday cake. I could have just made a normal one, and he could have done a bit more insulin to cover the extra intake, but I felt that a birthday present that requires him to inject himself with poison is somewhat a double edged sword, and I should at least have a bash at a more pancreas friendly version.

Turns out, when making Victoria Sponge (Boy's favourite), sugar is a pretty important ingredient. Who'd thunk? Replacing it with sweetener makes the cake much heavier and dryer. So, I had a few practice runs and made my colleagues eat some frankly brick-cakes, before I came up with this, which makes a reasonable Diabetic Sponge Cake;

Put oven on gas mark 4 to pre-heat. Check cat is not sleeping in oven.

Grease cake tins - I used two little 5'' ones. Prevent cat from licking the grease out of cake tins.

Cream together 225g butter, 22.5g Splenda (that's about 16 level tablespoons), 100g skimmed milk powder and 2 teaspoons of vanilla essence.

Separate 4 eggs, stir in the yolks. Add 225g self raising flour and 3 level teaspoons bicarbonate of soda. Whisk egg whites til stiff, then add to cake mixture. Add milk until mixture is a good dropping consistency (ie, gloops off a spoon after about 2 seconds). Mix thoroughly - seriously thoroughly, loads more than for a normal cake. Avoid stepping on cat through out, despite the fact that she is trying to sit on your feet.

Put into cake tins, bake for about 20 mins. A couple of minutes before they are done, glaze with milk 'cause the lack of sugar means they won't go brown. Whilst baking, play with cat.

Once cooked and cool, remove from cake tins. Decide with one is the least malformed, put to one side. Slice the top off of the ugly one to give a flat surface for the filling. Spread on extra thick cream, don't be skimpy. Slice some strawberries (yes, they contain sugar, but much less than jam - even the no added sugar stuff. Cherries are also good - low sugar content - if you can be arsed de-stoning them) and arrange a layer. on the cream. Put the top cake on top and decorate with another slice of strawberry. Try to stop cat from eating left over cream.

Pirate Birthday!

Arrange amidst presents, add candles. Do not sing, because we like the boy and do not want to hurt his ears.

My sponge was still a little dry for my taste (more milk next time), but boy and boy's mum seemed to enjoy it. Thank you all WarGoose Level Seven-ers for being my test crash dummies and providing constructive feedback :)

Nxxx

Unchained Melody

2011-08-04T01:22:00.001+01:00

This hound-dog is Elvis. Making Elvis, I discovered something about myself; the only Elvis (Presley) music I own is one track on a mix-CD a friend made for me. How's that for profound introspection?

I have to admit, I have atrocious taste in music. Or rather, I don't really have taste in music because I don't really listen to much - I craft to audio books*, and my iPod is mostly full of podcasts**. But what little I do listen to is heinously embarrassing.

I like musicals (Sondheim, modern Broadway, 90s Disney) so I can sing along, loudly and as out of tune as possible. Inside my head, I always sound beautifully in tune and filled with a good amount of whatever appropriate over-emotion the song calls for, but I am assured by everyone around me that, whilst I occasionally fluke a correct note, it is not too frequent an occurrence. Still, doesn't tend to stop me because I fucking love to sing. I also like people being angry in witty way (Ani Di Franco, The Smiths) because I can vent my teenage-stylee righteous indignation. Anything with good lyrics gets my vote, I'm all about the narrative, and if you could persuade those people in the background to play their instruments somewhere else I'd appreciate it.

I have a few stock 'non-shit' bands I used to name when asked (no one ever believes you if you say have eclectic taste, they keep asking until you pin yourself down to one genre - kinda like when you were 9 and were only allowed one best friend) - some of whom (Alter Bridge) I genuinely like, and some of whom (The Stranglers) I just know are generally considered 'good' - cool enough to be ok, not cool enough that people want to go any further into discussing. Though, to be honest, these days I'm most likely to say Tim Minchin and use that as a segway into talking about comedy...

So, did you hear the one about the drummer, the mexican and the girl who should have been asleep an hour ago?

Nxx

*Anything read by Flo Gibson is a winner; Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter can be curled up into like a duvet; and Bob Inglis can be relied upon to do all the voices, sing all the songs, and not mispronounce the Sindarin too badly.

**Check out Little Atoms, The Skeptics Guide To The Universe & The Pod Delusion, All superb.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

2011-07-27T12:52:00.002+01:00

<---- This is Alan.

As you can see, Alan has long hair.

What you cannot see is that Alan also has a small but growing bald patch.

Oh dear.

Clearly an intervention is needed.

This is Alan. ---->

as you can see, Alan has short hair.

Alan did not want to just throw his hair away, so he put it in a zip-lock bag and gave it to me. Of course.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

I made a pile of these little trinket thingummies - essentially a lock of hair, tied up with ribbon, bottled and labelled. The long corked vials are from etsy, but I ran out of those pretty quickly and was so turned to the little jars instead (Which I was forced, practically at gun point, to procure by eating lots of cream teas in cafes and stealing the jars the jam comes in).

These have proved quite popular, they seem to make people laugh, so I've been selling them to raise money for The Little Princess Trust - a charity which provides wigs for children undergoing chemotherapy. I'm still waiting on one payment, but I'm hoping to hit £100. That will make the grossness of dealing with a bag of hair just about worth while

Crafting with Cat

2011-07-22T02:06:00.001+01:00

Crafting with a cat in the room is not advisable. Worse still, leaving the cat in the room while you go to make a cup of tea, or to pre-heat the iron or somesuch. You will return to find that said cat is eating your wadding, or sitting on your sketchbook, or - and this is the worse option - sat very quietly swishing a tail whilst looking at you with big innocent eyes (so that you spend the next hour trying to work out what they did...).

You have been warned

Noodle

Holly & Ivy Refuse to Grow Up

2011-07-22T01:50:00.002+01:00

Front

I've never really done machined patchwork before, but decided to give it a whirl for this garden trellis design, made using a jelly roll of fabric (another first for me).

I was... a little doubtful - I thought the pre-cut nature of the strips would be constraining, but actually for this pattern it was really useful; saved hours of faffing around with a rotar cutter. And the fabrics themselves were lovely quality, soft and begging to be handled (once I worked up the nerve to undo the bow and unroll them; kinda like approaching the first page of a fresh sketchbook - a beginning laden with potential best approached with due consideration). I received the 'Hope' collection* for Chrimbo from my Aunt & Uncle, who shortly after announced that they were going to be grandparents.

Back

Now, this scares the shit outta me, because my cousin is basically my age, and all the people my age seem to be having babies or getting married or generally being very grown up. Whereas I was thrilled when Boy brought me a colouring book recently, so I took it to work along with my crayons and spent the evening happily deciding what colour to do the triceratops (blue). The fact that I have a job where I can spend my time colouring in just about sums up the level of responsibility I am capable of holding. I am most certainly not in a position to be considered a grown-up, and am terrified that one day soon someone will mistake me for a real adult and expect me to start behaving like one.

Anyway, I decided to hide from my impending age by hitting the sewing machine (my sewing machine is old - inherited from my great-aunt - and loud, so this is the aural equivalent of sticking my fingers in my ears and going 'la la la'). Blue and brown is one of my favourite colour combos, and really lends itself to traditional patterns like this, so away I went. The original concept was to quilt on Ivy design over the top of the finished patchwork, to make an Ivy Growing Up Garden Trellis blanket in remembrance of my Grandma Ivy, who passed away in December. Unfortunately my long-arm skills were not up to the task, and when I started doing it by hand I quickly realised that it did not look good, so I unpicked and left just one ivy leaf in the corner by my tag.

WarGoose Crèche

Oh well - Grandma always hated her name anyway (a Christmas birth like me, I have her to thank for dissuading my parents away from 'Holly'. Uck, Holly Hurst. Sounds like a sugary cocktail vomited up outside the office party)

So, with lots of love and plenty of hope and a promise to share my crayons when he's old enough, this goes off to baby Gene

Noodle x
*The fabrics from this collection were reproduced from a Lemoyne star quilt from upstate New York, circa 1830-40. A note attached to the quilt stated that fabrics were from the dress the maker wore the day she met her future husband. Ain't that sweet as cherry pie?

Doorbells and sleigh-bells and schnitzel with...

2011-07-13T00:36:00.000+01:00

This post combines two of my favourite things; tea and Joe.* I cannot honestly say which is more awesome.

This is, clearly, a mug hug, with the chemical symbol for caffeine on it. Joe and I share a special tea based relationship because we mug-share at work - dual ownership limits the possibility of the mug being stolen away to a dressing room. But what about days when Joe is not WarGoosing? Or on the long commute in? Well, he will need a mug hug - environmentalists cannot be going along constantly using the cardboard ones - and now he has one.**

So, lovely Joe - Happy Birthday. I raise my tea-cup in salute to you, and am very proud to call you a friend.

Love,

Noodle

*I tried to write a song about my favourite things, but I gave up because nothing rhymes with Feynman.

**I realise that in the picture it's on a Thermos, and a Thermos has no need for hugs, as it has inbuilt insulation. But it was the best I could do for illustrative purposes and I though the Thermos might want a hug anyway - just because a hug is not needed does not mean it goes unappreciated.

The Night Train

2011-07-08T18:25:00.006+01:00

When - not drunk but maybe slightly tipsy - I sit on the train alone, looking at my own self reflected against the darkness of night London outside, all the myriad voices in my head aline, and my thoughts speak like the narrative of a book. I am suddenly looking me in the eye.

I am not a pretty girl, cheeks too broad and skin too pale (like death, rather than like cream), but maybe I am handsome in my own way.

I lack the social skills needed to recommend myself to strangers, it takes a long time to turn an acquaintance into a friend - longer even than that process usually takes. Yet once I become confident in someones company, or interested enough in what they may have to say to breech my own reticence, I am intelligent enough to be vaguely interesting - or at least I am quick enough to feign it and thus avoid being branded dull.

So I cannot be entirely incompetent; I just cannot do small talk - that currency of companionship is beyond me. I never know what to ask, or how to form a reply in such a way that conversation may ensue. I am a dead end, except in those occasional circumstances when an easy entry for discussion makes itself apparent early on. Worse still, my shyness often manifests itself as loud, brash and sarcastic - a symptom unlike the disease hiding behind it, but even more off-putting to those around me.

Thinking, thinking in time to the movements of the train, thoughts unfurling between stops going homeward.

A jack of all trades - to flighty to decide even on which aspect of my own personality to lie my head for more than a moment, so how is it that I have found another - an entirely separate human being, whom I am so sure of, whom I want to spend all of my slice of eternity with?

I have though - I have found him - the most marvellous man, who will talk when all I do is get stuck by the words which never escape the confines of my own head. A man who charms everyone he meets, when I cannot even meet anyone at all. It's brilliant, watching him, knowing that someone so like me yet so unlike me exists - it gives me hope for myself.

I have no idea what he sees in me, or why he likes me, but I trust that he does because he says that he does. It is the most wonderful, indescribable thing - even with this sudden clarity of mind from a little alcohol and the darkness of the world I cannot find words to explain the ballooning feeling in my chest brought on my his presence in my life. It makes the everything else of life worth enduring, knowing that in the quiet I can spend a few occasional seconds wrapped in the knowledge of him.

Sunshine On A Rainy Day

2011-07-07T13:05:00.001+01:00

I am incredibly lazy when it comes to basic repairs and alterations - for example, it has taken me over 2 years to bother sewing back on a missing button from my favourite sweater. This problem is not assisted by my insistence on buying clothes that don't fit properly (ie. all high street clothes - always either too small on the boobs or too big on the waist. Which irks me because I have a pretty averagely proportioned figure - hips and a bum like most girls. Just nothing like most fashion models) with the intention of altering them. I should just admit that I will never get around to fixing them.

Going through the stack of ill-fitted purchases, I came across a dress in an awesome print that I've been meaning to deal with for ohh... about 5 years. I brought it while I was still at university, for fucks sake. But, well, I will never have the patience to deal with all the pin tucks on the bodice and I finally admitted that. So I've bastardised it into a new sunglasses case - a quick 5 minute make; 2 seams, a hem, a bit of ribbon for the drawstring and a button to finish the whole thing off. Satisfaction (and loads of left over fabirc to make other cool shiz with) . Another plus side is that now my new sunnies won't get as scratched as all my old ones when I leave them in my handbag. Hurrah.

Largely irrelevant as, this being England and it being July, it's pissing it down with rain. But Heigh-Ho, if the sun ever does come out I'll be fully prepared. In the meantime, I really need to get my arse in gear and repair my umbrella, 'cause right now I'm very wet.

Soggily yours,

I Felt My Heart Skip

2011-06-28T01:41:00.001+01:00

I had fun making my kiddie art book, and it inspired me to use the same techniques on a slightly more adult project. I'd been putting off making felt bookcovers since my favourite supplier of printed felts* went bust (sob!), but decided this way I could decorate the fabric myself rather than relying on pre-decorated material to do the hard work for me. This 'Craft Ideas' book is the result (not for me - I've moved on from a craft ideas notebook and now just have a wall covered in post-its and pictures - I sit in front of it to sew and so it serves as inspiration towards current projects as well as idea store for future ones). It's all felt with a couple of buttons and a ribbon closing. I decided to keep the needlework decoration to all simple backstitch, as I thought with such an eclectic colour range and a pretty organic, unformed image, if I added another element of 'random' by using too many different stitches it would be rather overwhelming. There's a tiny patch of longstitch, but otherwise I kept the actual embroidery techniques simple, allowing the patterns and colours to yell out loud.

The cover is removable, I've put it onto a kraft notebook because the thickness of the book allowed me to add spine buttons, and the rounded corners mean the corners of the cover won't wear out too quickly

Toodles

Bookcovers made with printed felt

Noodle x

*If anyone happens to know of a good stockist for printed felt - not just spots and stripes but all kinds of prints in a good colour array, I'd really love to hear about them. I really enjoy working with felt - because I'm lazy and hate hemming, mostly, so am very much missing my beloved printers

Jazz Hands

2011-06-28T01:05:00.000+01:00

Front cover

I love buttons (oh, you'd noticed?), so when I came across these awesome button hands I had to get them, and came up with this monster drawing book as an excuse to use them. Happy Days.

It's a really basic book-cover, over a paperchase kraft book (one of the cool ones with both white and brown paper pages) in standard A5 size so when the kids use up all the paper they can just put the cover on a different book, or on a lined exercise book once they get old enough to be learning to write.

The whole thing is felt, so it was really easy to make - just cuttin + stickin really. I started off using uhu textile glue, but quickly ran out and had to switch to uhu extra gel (Uhu are my favourite glue brand atm, for good variety of reliably high-quality product and ease of availability. Plus it's a cool word to say.), which did a better job anyway as it was easier to spread accurately and gave a firmer grip. Hurrah for serendipitous discovery.

Back Cover

Once I'd stuck n glued to my hearts content I got mad with a needle to decorate with a smidge of embroidery, sewing on the buttons to give my monsters jazz hands, and adding a ribbon closing. I kept the stitchwork purposefully a bit swonky (or that's what I'll tell myself), to give a sort of off-beat look to go with my palette of brights on grey.

I used more felt to make slots on the front to hold some mini felt pens - this caused the base fabric to ruck up a bit and so the cover is a bit short over that section, which is really annoying. I think that's because I was using a really big eye'd needle (to get enough strands of embroidery thread through it) and so had to really pull to sew, and I think that process, repeated over for each stitch, ruched up the fabric a little and got it out of line.

Oh well, live n learn eh?

ad·dic·tion

2011-06-28T00:18:00.001+01:00

uh-dik-shunNounDefinition: the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.

Origin: Traced to Roman law, under which addiction was a ''formal giving over by sentence of court; hence, a dedication of a person to a master.'' This notion of relinquishment of control by the addicted person is the central feature of many lay and professional definitions.

Alternate Post Title; Beware The Wonder Knitter.
It'll take over your life, and eat your button stash. You have been warned.
Noods x

Little Fall of Rexes

2011-05-31T01:09:00.001+01:00

You know what always confused me? What the fuck did Marius ever see in Cosette? Seriously. Cosette is basically wet and annoying; she does nothing, makes no attempt to do anything (to the point of being completely disinterested in finding out about her own past) and spends the whole show moping about singing some of the shittest love songs in theatre-land (to be fair, Marius himself has a hand in those).

Whereas Eponine is, comparatively at least, spunky and entertaining. She shows bravery, determination, integrity and enough realism to admit to herself the whole Marius situation, which is something given the number of self deluded women out there.

On a similar theme, what does Christine see in Raoul? Now, Phantom is clearly a wack-job, but better a twisted genius who worships you than a rich dullard who you are (at best) fond of. I mean, she can't even trust Raoul enough to explain the situation to him fully. Would you marry a man who you cannot tell the first thing about your life?

So. This is 'Ponine - my tribute to kick-ass charecters overlooked in love. She's a T-Rex (seen here climbing the barricades) - not exactly one to win hearts, but complete awesome, all on her own.

Heads and Tails

2011-05-30T00:06:00.003+01:00

Hurst family nuptials are, with any luck, done with for the near future - next in line being Little Sister, and, whilst I don't know how she feels bout marriage, I hope she is not thinking of anything in the immediate future. However, Eldest Brother's wedding this weekend was made worth while by the craft opportunity it represented; giving me an excuse to have a crack at making a hat (well... hat/fascinator thing).
My first thoughts were to do something steampunky with clockwork pieces, but that seemed a bit predictable, or some sort of cascade of playing cards, but the only designs I could come up with on those lines were too loud to wear with the intended dress - so when I came across these resin bird skulls on Etsy, I was delighted.

The skulls are beautifully made - very realistic, great detailing and texture, so I didn't think there was need to dress it too much. I made a bow (well, not a true bow; a folded square drawn in around the middle with a scrap of the same material) with some pretty cool string material, and added a veil of silk netting (fabrics from Borovick, of course - my favourite haberdashery, though not the cheapest). That was all backed onto a basic raffeta base, which I reshaped a little by folding and glueing, and a comb sewn onto the back of the lot to hold the thing on my head.
A nice long veil - just the thing to hide behind in all those bloody wedding photographs!
Toodles,
Noodle
PS. I feel it must be mentioned that my hat-thing was not the only bird at the wedding - there was a falcon, intended to fly down the aisle to deliver the rings - but no such joy; it got bored half way down and decided instead to roost in the rafters, doing a nice big poo down the church wall before the handler got him back, which was the most entirely hilarious thing I've seen in ages. Maybe these wedding things aren't so awful after all...

Proclamation of the Plants

2011-05-11T00:13:00.000+01:00

Do you know how many carrots your average vegetarian eats per day? How many poor innocent potatoes are murdered by those greedy herbivore bastards? Is it fair that so many cauliflower must die at the hands of these plant-eaters?

It is not broccoli's fault that he is not as cute as the ickle lamb. It is not cabbage's fault that she is not as anthropomorphic as a piglet. Why should we believe the vegetarian's cry that they 'love all living things' when they so clearly reserve there love only for the animal kingdom, forsaking the root, the grass and the fruit for the mere 'needs' of there diet. Hitler was a vegetarian.

Carrie is a solider in this war against the blatant prejudice against autotrophs, this botanic butchery, this massacring (not to mention mashing) of plants. She specialises in nocturnal manoeuvres, using the cover of darkness and her excellent night vision to raid kitchens the length and breath of Britain; blunting knives, denting graters and drilling holes in saucepans to protect her vegetable comrades from the tortures they can inflict.

In her time off from cook-house carnage, Carrie enjoys lace making and bee-keeping.

Knitted Knecklaces

2011-04-26T01:27:00.002+01:00

It turns out that my ''Wonder Knitter'' is pretty addictive and I've made a couple more button-necklaces. The only major difference between these and the first one is that these use stash buttons*, which means there's much more variation and the resultant necklace is a bit more interesting. It also makes the preparation stage into a mathematical puzzle: FUN! Essentially you need to create the effect of the buttons just being randomly distributed, whist simultaneously ensuring that the various colours and sizes are evenly spread along the length: you don't want a clump of bluey-greens in one patch and none anywhere else, and you don't want all the biggest buttons clustered together. So, you need to vary carefully and deliberately arrange the buttons into order in way that ensures a good spread, but is not a predictable pattern.

Creating a random looking pattern is never best achieved by actual randomness, if done that way things never appear random; for example the shuffle function on MP3 players always used to seem to have a preference for songs from Sondheim musicals** - Apple had to write loads of parameters into how the function chooses it's next song, to make it seem more disordered because humans find patterns where there are none, and because probability doesn't always work the way that intuition tells us it should. If I'd used a random button selecting machine, clusters of shape, shade and size would have occurred naturally, a complete disaster, right?

So, I had lots of fun designing my own 'random' button selecting parameters.

The other major difference between these and the first necklace is that I came up with a method of hiding the join (between the woven section and the ribbon fastening) with an oversized button - I was pretty pleased with the results of this, and I think chunkier ribbon works better to, it makes a slightly bolder statement than the thin stuff.

I've had to put away the ''Wonder Knitter''*** to get on with a bit of physics, as I'm appraoching the end of year coursework and exam, so should really be getting on with that. Though, I must admit the temptation to sit in a park playing with buttons is pretty overwhelming...

I'm far too easily distracted

Tara

Noo.... oh - look - an ant...

* Everyone else in the craft-iverse refers to that as 'vintage' and it does my head in. Something cut off an old Primark jumper and then stored in a jar next to your sewing machine for 2 years before you select it for inclusion in a project is not vintage - overuse and incorrect application of a 'buzz' word is infuriating, Stop it all of you.

** Ok, maybe that's just me.

*** I'm never gonna get bored of that name. I can so vividly picture a group of executives in suits sat around with pie charts of exciting words discussing the most customer-grabbing title for there newest gizmo. What was I saying about Buzz words? Though here they have come out as hilariously naff, rather than rage-inducing, so I suppose that's a win.

Doodle Dolly

2011-04-21T00:40:00.001+01:00

So, I brought a knitting dolly. Or rather, a super shiny gizmo that is basically a knitting dolly at twice the price, because I like new shiny crafty tools even when I suspect they are a rip off. Actually, the 'Wonder Knitter'* is easier to use than an old fashioned one; the thread guide & rotating plate helps keep even tensioning, the interchangeable size plates mean it's a bit more versatile, and the large size bore hole means I could use it to make this woven button-y necklace - on a normal dolly the buttons would have been to big to fit easily through.

I was quite pleased with the results, after playing around with a couple of different materials and techniques to work out a good button n bead distribution system and see how different fibres weave.

I've then turned the woollen doodle section into a necklace, with a ribbon fixing so it can be worn any length - or with a big bow on one side lending an asymmetrical air and breaking up the line of the ribbon a tad. This is for my friend Luan, who, by the way, is a wonderful stamper and makes gorgeous glassware - check out her stuff**

Unfortunatly, ''wonder knitting''*** is somewhat addictive, and requires both hands****, so inhibts typing and so I must leave you now to go knot more glory

Toodles,

Noodle*****

*This link takes you to Sew & So, who are great UK suppliers - good prices and fast postage, with a pretty comprehensive stock of embroidery type stuffs plus a few assorted other bits of craft-jazzle. They aren't paying me to say any of this (but should feel free to do so if they wish...)

** You can't. Her site is broken. I'll link you up once it's fixed

*** I love the name so much I feel it deserves quotation marks.

**** ''Wonder knitter'' does however have a handy feature which allows you to put it down whilst mid knit (unlike regular dollies), so allowing tea consumption. Hurrah!

***** I didn't think I'd included enough footnotes, so here's one more.

Geek Crafts

2011-04-20T17:02:00.001+01:00

I am filled with wonderment at awe at being featured, alongside Boy wearing his Nerd-Scarf, on my newest favourite website; geekcrafts.com

The hours I spend Wiki-surfing and Google-hopping all become worthwhile when I stumble across somewhere so Noodleated, and am thrilled that the love is mutual enough for them to be mentioning a bit of my handywork too.

The site is packed with brilliant ideas, many of which I'm intent on stealing - here's a few personal favourites from there recent archives: Binary Scarf, Pi bowls, Periodic table quilt, and discworld amigurumi

which you can expect to see interpreted in a Noodle-icious way ust as soon as I get finished on this pile of current projects (hmm... yhea....)

Noods xxx

Wolf Worship 3

2011-03-22T00:53:00.004Z

More shiny silver things for my pile of pirate treasure, crafted for me by the ridiculous talents of Boy.

Tis a bracelet, with two rings, the skull n cross bones hangs freely from them. That gives the piece a great sense of movement, added to by the hinged jaw (slightly open here) - highly addictive to play with, but not wearable when knitting.

I don't need to tell you how smitten I am right now, do I? Oh, fuck it, let's be honest, the presents are irrelevant, I'm the smittenest kitten in all of kitty-ville anyway, with my purrfect* man. I'm going to leave now before I get gooey.

smoosh

Noodle

*I'm so sorry.

Getting On The Naughty List

2011-03-14T01:25:00.007Z

I quite enjoyed making up codes for the boy's birthday last summer, and decided to have another crack at it for Christmas

I picked out my bit of text to code up - a quote from Alice In Wonderland (spot the theme, anyone?) about how the bonkers people are the best people, because, well... it seemed appropriate at the time, can't think why.
I ummed and arred over various coding methods, but kept getting unstuck by the fact that it has to be breakable without the key - and that it needs to be fairly obvious to Boy at each layer that he's heading down the right lines so he knows to keep going. In the end I decided to keep the actual code itself fairly simple, but to throw in a general knowledge element that might make it a little trickier.

I used the phonetic alphabet to attribute each letter a theme; T is for tango, and the theme is therefore soft drinks, whereas F is for foxtrot and the theme is types of dance. I tried to use a range of high / low brow and fuckin obscure themes: O for Oscar became sesame street characters, whereas R for Romeo is Shakespearean. And Y for Yankee is, obviously, types of submarine. then it was just a case of using my extensive knowledge of Strictly Ballroom, plus Wikipedia, to provide enough words in each theme to attribute one word per time that theme's letter appears in the quote I was coding.
I tried to make enough of them easily guessable so that Boy would be able to work out what I was doing, but I threw a fair handful of wildcards in there too - stuff that wouldn't be immediately obvious, or where a bit of an insight into how my head works would be useful. E for echo becomes names of nymphs, so most of those will be easy to spot with a basic knowledge of Greek / Roman mythology. But [Nymphadora] Tonks got thrown into that category too, meaning Boy has to spot the Harry Potter reference before he could work out which category it fits and thereby what letter it represents.
He also need to remember that Ce'nedra, from David Eddings' Belgariad, is a nymph, and that Humbart constantly refers to the object of his affections as one in Lolita... so, no leap of imagination required to draw those parallels at all.
Fortunately for boy, each word is only one letter of the decoded message, so as he cracks parts, others fall into place and provide clues as to what direction I'm thinking in...

I'd generated a page of seemingly disconnected words, but which are still recognisable as English - crucial if Boy is to know that he has successfully broken the initial character substitution layer. For this stage I stole a pre-existing cipher - that which Mary Queen of Scots used to communicate during The Babington Plot, chosen primarily because it's pretty, but also because I knew that Boy actually already had the key to it (it's included in Simon Singh's Code Book). So, if he managed to spot it he wouldn't have to bother with frequency analysis and all that gaff.

As previously, once I'd coded up my message, I write it out on a tea-stained page from Alice In Wonderland. This time I was clever enough to come up with a message that fitted inside the bottle (which fatally meant I had to drink the contents of the bottle. Oh No! Old Hopkin's - chosen for me by Mummy-Noodle - was very scrummy; sweet in a dark way.). I used a bit of ribbon to suspend the rolled up message inside the bottle, and wrapped it up to send to Santa.

Who was very upset that I hadn't saved him any rum

bad bad selfish Noodle

No Inuendo Intended

2011-03-01T15:15:00.000Z

This blog post will contain no beaver jokes at all. None. Honest.

I have nothing else to say on the matter

Lizard Queen*

2011-02-21T05:53:00.006Z

Roxie, like many T-rexs, has thalidomide** (t-rex mummies suffer terribly from morning sickness, and the drug legislation in dinoland is not so hot on withdrawing stuff from the market), so do not mock her puny arms for fear of being accused of non-pc-ness. Or possibly having your head bitten off.

It does make it rather difficult for her to play Bananagrams, unfortunately. Her life-partner Alan appreciates that, because it's the only way he's in with half a chance of winning***.

Roxie is a girl dinosaur, and wants to be an actress, but struggles to find work that she likes, because most T-Rex performing opportunities require qualities such as 'scary' or that the actor eat people off the toilet - which isn't really Roxie's thing. She's more into the kitchen sink drama, and mourns the lack of dinosaurs in Delaney's work. If you happen to require any Theropoda to appear in your production of Look Back In Anger, please do contact Roxie - either via her agent, or just pop down to the Royal Court (she likes to hang around Sloane Square on the off chance that she'll get 'spotted') - you'll recognise her easily by the desperate look in her eye, and because she's a giant purple lizard.

The socks I used to make Roxie... well.. what can I say? I was thrilled to find them, expensive though they were; the material is nice and silky, and they come packaged in a matching bow (I'm a total sucker for nice packaging). but... oh, they are awful, really, for crafting purposes. The thin silkiness makes them a nightmare to work with - they unravel at the speed of light, so poor Roxie is covered in darned patches, and because they're so thin the seams are really prominent, and they've gone all translucent so you can see the white stuffing (which i expect with cheap socks - but I want more when I pay a tenner for a pair!). Plus, the toe and heel formation is horrible, very long and narrow - they're be really uncomfortable to wear, and caused structural issues for me. I don't like using knee-highs anyway (except where I'm making a feature of the height) because I like to feature the ankle band if I can, but these were such a good match for the colours I wanted, I couldn't resist.

well, I learned my lesson, and Joules will be selling me no more outrageously expensive socks!

that'll show 'em

Noods

* I have more to say on the concept of the Royal Family as lizards - but I am saving it for a later post. Get me and my cliffhangers, eh?

I would suggest that you waste a bit of time looking around this site. It's genius.

**what did you think the T stood for?

***Alan maintains that he is good at Bananagrams, but this is all lies. You will notice, if you play against him, that if it looks like he's going to lose, he will sabotage that game by 'accidentally' collapsing the table, or somesuch. He's a total cheat, too, and does not always peel when instructed. Keep an eye on him.

Un-dead Valentines

2011-02-13T21:01:00.001Z

Eating Each Others' Hearts Out

I don't normally buy craft books. I normally flick through, nick any good ideas and save myself £15. I've got a couple of manuals, picked up second hand mostly, to refer to for new techniques. But, let's face it, craft books are mostly ideas for how to use those techniques and skills. so, yeah, look at the pictures, make a metal note of good ideas and save the staff in Foyles from having to do too much re-shelving by putting it back in the right place.

However, on one of our mooches around Forbidden Planet, the boy spotted something. A craft book, with a pattern to make a pirate zombie.

Well, now, I could hardly refuse his request that I sew him one, given that he is constantly making beautiful things for me, and so I brought the book.

It's not a bad book, actually. There's no real skill needed, but the patterns for every design are included full size, so you can just photocopy them out, pin em to your fabric and go. There are some nice touches on Pirate zombie, and I didn't make too many changes to the pattern (I completely ignored the how to assemble bit though, so I guess different methodology may have created different results). The suggested use of a hook-and-eye hook for a hand doesn't work as well as I'd hoped - even after attacking with pliers, the shape isn't quite right, I think a jewellery finding may work better. And I'm not a fan of the bead-as an eye - I reckon a sequin would work better by pure dint of sitting flatter.

I've sewn a pin on pirates back so he can be worn as a badge - and with that in mind I only half-stuffed him.

The only other thing of note is the coffin I made him to live in. Again, photocopied the template from the book. It's a shit template (the lid is the exact same size as the base, so they don't fit together, and the tabs are too small to be of any use) . Don't bother. You'd be better off drawing your own. I ended up having to sandpaper the edges of mine to distress it and thus disguise some of the shitness as intentional.

anyway, it makes an incredibly romantic not-valentine's day present for your beloved. on the assumption that your beloved it a pirate who likes that kind of utter nonsense.

Arr!

Noods

Polymerisation / Procrastination

2011-01-21T19:31:00.005Z

So, I had a few boring little online chores to do this afternoon - setting up bill payments, checking postal addresses... boring boring boring

Therefore, obviously, as soon as I sat down with my laptop I was filled with a sudden urge to know about the white residue from superglue that I mentioned in my last post. Having managed to not think about this for three weeks, suddenly the research could be put off no longer for I would die if I did not find out.

Never let it be said I don't procrastinate properly

Turns out it's quite simple really: Superglue gives off vapours as it sets, these vapours react in the presence of moisture to make white crystals. These white crystals are the residue.

But, well, it's me. I want to know the real science*. Come along for the ride:

Superglue is basically ethyl cyanoacrylate (ECA). Cyanacrylate glues work because they polymerise in the presence of very small amounts of water (the water is a catalyst. It doesn't join in, but it encourages the esters to go play) - such as water vapour in the atmosphere. When they polymerise, they solidify, and form long strongly bonded chains, binding your surfaces together.

However, this polymerisation is an exothermic reaction - it gives off heat into the surrounding atmosphere. Being heated causes small amounts of the cyanoacrylate to vaporise. In the open air, that's fine, because the vaporised molecules just disperse and your craft projects will be safe. But if you pack away your project to soon after gluing it together, the molecules are effectively trapped. As they cool they too will react if there is any moisture around (such as in fingerprints on your project), polymerise and solidify into white crystals - seen as the white residue ruining your project.

According to CSI this method can also be used to pick up fingerprints at a crime scene, though personally I can't help but think there must be easier ways... like with talcum powder...

Anywho - with regards to craft projects, clearly prevention is better than cure, and you're best to leave your project out for a few hours / overnight before you tidy it away to make sure the glue has fully gone off (cyanoacrylates set solid in a few seconds, but the reaction takes a few hours to fully complete).

You can remove the residue with acetone (nail varnish remover) but obviously that may well bugger up the finish on your project too. If you're careful you can scrape off the residue with a blunt object - like a fingernail or lollipop stick - but it's an imprecise art

Still, you can take solace in knowing exactly what the stuff is. Hurrah.

Nerdy Noodle xxx

*For purposes of clarification - I have had to guess at a bit of the science. It seems the craft nerds out there don't care why the residue happens, and the science nerds don't care about superglue in this level of detail. From what I can glean, with my limited science knowledge, this is what happens. It may all be completely wrong.

Handmade Horses

2011-01-04T14:10:00.001Z

I am the sort of slightly boring fuddy-duddy aunt who buys books for Christmas. For this I can only apologise to my niece & nephew, and assure them that I'm not being dull on purpose - I actually buy them because I really like them, but cannot be seen having hundreds of kiddies picture books around the house lest people think I'm going mad / getting broody / living in some kind of alternate London where I can afford a house with storage space.

A couple of years ago I brought Who Are You, Stripy Horse? - a philosophical piece about the nature of identity (The stripy horse wants to know what his name is, a perfectly respectable question and one I have pondered on many a post-rum morning. So he journeys around the shop trying to find out, and on the way he learns that you cannot be defined by what others tell you you are, but that your experiences and friends will help you see your strengths and skills so that you can define yourself. That, and writing your name (and maybe a return address) on some kind of label to find in the morning is a useful trick) for Boo's birthday, which she was distinctly unimpressed about.

Fortunately I'm not an entirely crap aunt and had anticipated this, so had made her a sockie stripy horse to go with the book (this was before the book got turned into a series and all sorts of character toys became available for purchase) which she was interested in for nearly a whole 2 minutes - pretty good going for a toddler unwrapping birthday presents, eh?

Given this outstanding success, i decided to return to the stripy horse theme this Christmas, crafting a gift for the daughter of the woman who manages mine n' Boy's favourite restaurant for dinner hour catch-ups - Sapori, where the lovely manager always plies us with free drinkies. We end up there about once a week, simply because the food is tasty (I recommend the Penne Gorgonzola for any veggies), service friendly, value good and atmosphere lovely. Can't really fault that, can you? especially in tourist central.

Anyway, i decided that a little thankyou was on the cards, so made a red n white version of stripy horse for her little one. No word yet on whether the successful of original horse was repeated though... hmm...
oh well, win some lose some

Noodle x

All Buttoned Up

2010-12-30T16:08:00.001Z

Secret Santa games rock. You get to do detective work finding out about someone you may not know that well, and you get to give presents (Noodle likes to give presents) but don’t have to face the embarrassment of actually handing it over to the recipient. Hurrah.
I’ve had a pretty successful sly gift giving season this year, with a very well received workplace Secret Santa. I was particularly pleased with that since the recipient is one of my favourite colleagues, a really lovely bloke. I’ll say no more as (so far at least) he hasn’t worked out the pressie was from me. Score.
On top of that, for another (non-work) secret santa I managed to find an excuse to indulge my other fetish…

Buttons
I don’t know what it is about buttons, but I just love them. I have jars of them on display, they’re shiny and colourful, every one different, such pleasing shapes and shades. Wooden, leather. Plastic, metal, - all so tactile and … well, just... nice, really.
Plus I get to indulge my inner OCD freak when I sort them. Hmm…. complex organisational systems.... tasty.

Anyway, the results of said fetish are evident in the Christmas pressies I made this year.
I wasn’t sure if the concept would work, but I’m actually really pleased with how these came out - they are just base frames, spray painted and covered in buttons. I actually used leather paint to colour the bases, purely on the basis that I had some left over from repainting shoes. As with any spray paint the key here is many thin layers and plenty of drying time - if you do more than a little at a time it will run. The buttons I used were just picked out from my jars, allowing me hours of fun choosing nice ones in a variety of sizes and complementary hues.
My sister-in-law and Secret Santa recipients both seemed pleased with these, and, more importantly, there’s now a bit of room in my button jars for me to go haberdashery shopping…

The other frames I decorated are basically simplified versions of the above, made using Paperchase wooden frames, chosen for the interesting angles in the joins, which I accentuated with some wooden buttons I had picked up in Goa.

I started off using trusty superglue, but that started leaving white powdery residue over the polished areas around where it was (I dunno what that is, actually, will go off & research once I've written this), so created a lot of unnecessary clean up work. I swapped to UHUPower, which was a bit more time consuming as I had to hold or vice stuff whilst drying, but otherwise did a good job. To be fair, UHU goes tacky in a reasonable speed so I shouldn't complain, and it was actually quite useful to have a bit of time to tweak positioning. As always it's worth preparing the surfaces before you glue - a bit of light localised sanding means you get better grip and need far less glue, so less dry time and less risk of splodgy bits.

You can see in the photo at the top that i also decorated a two-sided lucite frame (again from paperchase) with some left over rupees. Though of course taking rupees out of India is illegal, and I would never break such a vital law, so you will have to imagine them on there.

While you're doing that, can you imagine me a beautiful curvy figure (rather than this dumpy post Christmas one I appear to have gotten instead) and a winning lottery ticket? ta muchly

Nxx

Snow!

2010-12-05T22:57:00.001Z

I feel weird about celebrating Christmas - hypercritical and slightly guilty. If I could get away with not - just ignoring it, or going away and missing the whole thing - I probably would. But I know that'd upset my family, so I try to make the best of it, and indulge in the good stuff that comes along with the religious dogma; making gifts, eating vast amounts of brandy custard and watching saccharine films.

Thus I settled down on a Sunday evening with Little Women (the June Allyson / Margaret O'Brien version), a bottle of red and a big pile of paper to make cards. This year's design is really simple - I just don't have the free time to do something elaborate (like the iris folded pieces I made last year - below) - but I like it for it's clarity, and given the 8 inches of white cold stuff outside my front door, it's appropriate!

I've never really done stamping, but it's easy and the 'shabby chic' thing is very in at the mo - not something I give a rat's ass about, but mummy & the sisters in law like to have fashionable paperware to display, so it does have to be taken into account. The card I used was handmade stuff, with some blue petals, which worked with my colour scheme, as well as giving a nice texture to stamp onto. I'm using matching stamps on the evelopes

I'd recommend, if you want to take photos of your cards in the snow, making extra. They get wet and ruined, or lost... though that does afford a good excuse for another evening ignoring the algebra you should be doing and crafting instead.

I'm heading off to Nine Carols & Lessons For Godless People in a couple of weeks, which should help alleviate the seasonal guilt - along with The Atheist's Guide to Christmas of course. in the mean time... happy Winterval*, or whatever...

Noodle

*you can't even tell that I have eyebrows, they are raised so far into my hairline.

Kitkat....

2010-11-13T18:24:00.001Z

sigh.

It seems my blogging has been rather slack recently. I have to admit that my coursework (I started a foundation year Science course) is cutting into my typing time, as well as my crafting time. Exacerbated by the fact that in the run up to christmas most of what I'm making is stuff intended as pressies so I can't post it til aftter it's been upwrapped anyway.

Plus, you know, jobs and boyfrineds and stalking Minchin all take there toll on my spare time.

But, hey, while I have a bit of a blog break, here's an interesting linkie for entertainment purposes. Maybe it will help any non-geeks to appreciate why I love my sciencey shiz ie, because of... well... Just..... This.

(amazing slidey graphics thingummy* comparing sizes from tiny Planck to ... well, the universe. Done with excellent graphics, interesting science and dry humour. go play)

Toodles (I'm off to stick my head in a text book)

Nxx

*sorry if you don't understand my technical terminology here. Dating a Graphic Designer, I am now down with the lingo.

Magic Moments

2010-10-05T20:39:00.003+01:00

Bookcrossers take photos of road signs. We're that cool

Isn't it great when you have a nice weekend of geekery planned, then, out of the blue, Brian Cox announces he's gonna be doing a book signing. Boo yhea! So, on Friday afternoon I toddled off to Waterstone's with a copy of the new Wonders book tucked under my arm (I felt mildly guilty pre-ordering from Amazon rather than buying in the shop, but it was half price. And I really don't like Waterstone's much at all... too much of a corporate atmosphere). I'd intended on hooking up with Emma, but our travel plans went a bit skew-whiff so we ended up queueing separately - and oh my what a queue it was. Britishness at it's very best - no one talking to each each other but exactly the right amount of head nodding and polite smiles to acknowledge mutual interests. Plus, as a bonus, it was so long that the shop staff commented on it! Which was great for Coxy (I can call him Coxy now, I've met him - I've *gulp* touched his hand - we're basically best friends) but forced Emma & I to cancel our post-perving coffee plans - a shame.
Absolutely worth it though - Coxy was charming and polite (if a little bewildered looking); happily signing books, not laughing at my request that he use the silver pen I'd brought (it's prettier than black Sharpie, OK? I'm allowed to be girlie sometimes) and even letting me get a picture with him (for which neither of us were ready, so we both look like mongs. Hurrah).

Given the queue length (not a complaint. I love a good queue, and this one was in a bookshop. That's two of my favourite things. I read half of Shappi Khorsandi's biography - am planning on finishing it in WHSmith's this week while waiting for the train) I had to totter straight off to meet Martha for our trip to Swindon, dragging a quintillion books (approximately) because it was Uncon time. Oh yes.

Moment #1: a school playground, kicking out time, huge bags of books in tow, peering around to locate Martha. About a billion knee high things running around when I realise one of them is taking books out of my bag. When it's mum noticed, she explained that the girl had assumed that the stuff in my bag - a stranger's bag (and lets face it they don't come much stranger than me) - was a present for her. This clearly defies all reasoning, and confused the bobbin-pin out of me

Moment #2: after 2 hours on the south circular on a Friday evening, hitting the M4 Martha cheered about how we were 'nearly there.' Clearly my friend had been driven (boom boom. I'm on fire tonight...) mental by a combination of traffic, diversions and my incessant Wolf-is-God chatter.

Moment #3: Swindon. The Magic Roundabout. What the fuck is that all about then?

Martha & I had been nonplussed at all the pre-Swindon magic roundabout banter, assuming it to be some sort of decorated roundabout. Little did we know. It's so much more than that. Best part is, the town planners down at Swindon HQ, in their infinite wisdom, decided to give unsuspecting tourists about 100 yards notice that the thing is approaching, and even then the sign manages to simultaneously confuse, terrify, explain nothing and over-simplify everything. Congrats. Our recommendation, should you find yourself in the middle of this hell-vortex (and it will be the middle. You'll be in the middle before you know it's there. You can't back away and hope it won't suck you in) is to point the car in approximately the right direction, close your eyes and put your foot down.Good Luck.

Once we actually made it to the hotel, we headed off to the pub as arranged, for an 'Icebreaker Event'. A combination of words which strikes fear into my very heart, and it seemed rightly so, for immediately upon arrival at the pub we were attacked by one of the more deranged Bookcrossers wanting us to help her complete her 'Getting to Know You Quiz'...

*A Short break from the advertised programming*

Bookcrossers are all a little bit odd. It's a good thing, because who the hell wants normal? But some of us are a little further along the spectrum than others. the Uncon is basically a weekend long game: try to find as many of the relativity normal people, whilst avoiding the total nut-jobs (further complicated by two facts: the freaks sometimes go in disguise, so you don't know that's what you're dealing with til too late - you need to keep an 'oh no, my allergies are playing up, I'd better leave' excuse to hand at all times, and also the oodest ones are like the ghosts in Pacman - they will seek you out.) and all the while resisting the lure of the book buffet.

*we now return to our scheduled viewing*

... which we thought sounded about as much fun as ice fishing in our underwear, so we quite simply ran away. Back in the hotel bar we hooked up with a few fellow escapees who were already known to us, so we could safely sit down for a spot of rum. As events at the pub petered out and everyone returned our allergies started playing up, so we invited Becky up to our room for a couple of bottles, a catch-up and to smoke out of the window. We're such rebels.

Despite out best attempts, none of us were hung over the next morning, so we headed off to breakfast.

Moment #4: Becky, eating sausage and bacon, without benefit of either cutlery or crockery...

I'd have liked to hear Joseph D'Lacey speak, but, as it was at 9.15 in the morning that was just a non-starter. By all accounts he was very nice despite the ungodly hour.

So my first official activity of the day was The Ffordian Bus Tour around The Seven Wonders of Swindon - expertly guided by Geoff and utterly hilarious. Why is there a statue of Diana Doors outside the shopping centre? Who the hell is Diana Doors?

Moment #5: kneeling, in a kind of Muslim-at-prayer position alongside a B road in a provincial town, taking a photo of a dodo reading a book in front of a road sign

Moment #6: realising, having been reminded by car hoots, that stockings and a miniskirt is not an ideal outfit for this activity

Off the tour bus and on to lunch...

Moment #7: Being expected to believe that a toasted baguette is a panini. I'm never leaving London again.

Jasper was an excellent speaker, very funny, quick witted and informative. He built a good rapport with the audience and created a nice informal atmosphere (despite the woman who got so excited she nearly jumped up on her chair in attempts to answer a rhetorical question). After the speech, he kindly signed my spoons (red handled, Shades of Grey fans should notice).

We pottered off to the raffle draw, and predictably failed to win anything, and were then treated to a surprise poetry reading

Moment #8: a slightly overweight lady grabbing her own boobs in front of a room full of strangers

Our little posse of bookcrossing renegades had to whip off for an early dinner at this point as Rachel was driving home after we ate, and didn't want to be too late - so off to the local Indian we tripped (literally in my case - when wearing my beautiful-but-impractical Kurt Geiger's, tripping is the only method of foot-based transportation available). The food was tasty and the décor nice, but the waiter's were a bit rude

Shhh!

Moment #9: getting Bitchy looks for talking from a woman sat near us. It is not permissible to engage in conversation with your friends within the town borders of Swindon, apparently.

After our nosh we returned to the hotel bar where Ali taught us Shithead, a very silly but entertaining card game

Moment #10: Card games as a spectator sport. More people watching than playing. All the spectators maintaining complete silence (obviously they knew the rule about talking in Swindon).

The card game eventually fell apart and various elements headed off to bed, but not me, nocturnal badger that I am. I headed over to join a contingency of Irish BCers, who, aided by a Belgium and an Ex-Aussie, kept me entertained until the early hours of the morning. I'm definitely heading over to Dublin 2012 :D
Moment #11: Meeting a Belgian who was not weird. Well, not too weird. I didn't ask if he likes jazz...
Sunday morning got off to a good start as I thoroughly confused everyone by going to breakfast in my pyjamas. I really didn't think it was odd, but according to the various bamboozled faces it must be. ho hum.
Given the bleedin' English weather and my general intolerance to mornings, I opted out of the release walk, but buggered off back to the room to have a long hot bath and sink into one of my newly acquired books, before heading to lunch with my favourite South-West England based Kiwi
Moment #12: Swindon does not serve food on Sundays after 1pm. What did I say about never leaving London again?
I suspect that narrating the rest of our evening would mean giving away details of Alan's private life that he'd rather I didn't tell (bet that's piqued your curiosity) - needless to say I I used a combination of alcohol and physical torment to wheedle a few tasty titbits out of him.... about which my lips are sealed ;)
Noisy, Nosey Noodle xx

Clone Your Own...

2010-10-01T02:13:00.007+01:00

Snagsby has issues reaching the last of the Reese's

Brought to you by The Goliath Corporation

(kind of a follow up to my dodo-for-Jasper-Fforde story)

Cloning your dodo should be fairly easy - there's a bit of sewing, but it's all quite simple. Each one takes me about 4 hours to make, but that will depend on how fast you sew. It's a good idea to read through the whole instructional before you start to sew to ensure you know what the end idea is, and understand the concept of how each bit fits together to prevent mistakes. Of course feel free to adapt at will - if you want a dodo with 18 wings and 5 feet, who am I to stop you? You can also leave comments or chuck me emails if you have questions

You will need:

* Socks - one pair of grey (or body colour of your choice), one pair yellow/orange (or whatever beak & feet colour you want). If you picked up one of my 'Clone Your Own Dodo' packs you'll have one yellow knee sock instead of a pair - they're bigger, so you only need one. A few notes on socks if you're buying your own: think about the texture - you can get all sorts of interesting knits but the woollier your sock the quicker the weave will unravel once you cut into it so the faster you'll need to sew; size matters too, baby socks will give you a cute baby dodo, but be fiddly to work with. I would recommend not buying really cheap socks, as the material tends to be thin (meaning once you stuff it, the stuffing shows through, particularly important here where you're using dark coloured grey socks), and quite often the toe structure will be wonky, which will mess up dodo's body shape.

* Stuffing. You can buy Toy stuffing in bags from most haberdashery stores (or here at Sew & So - the best price v's quality trade off I've found so far), or buy pillows/cushions and gut them. Don't use old pillows coz the stuffing will be lumpy.

* A Trick marker pen or Dress-makers chalk

* Scissors.

* Pins - optional - for if you find it easier to pin before you sew, though I never bother.

* Buttons or googly eyes. A pair of 'em. Again a matter of taste as to size, colour etc...

* Needles (or a sewing machine) & thread. I sew my sockies by hand, as I like my craft projects to be portable, but there's no reason you couldn't use a machine if you prefer.

* Thick paper (or thin card. whatever) to make templates from - I use bits of magazine cover. if you've got a 'Clone Your own' pack, you may find it easier to back the templates with thicker paper. If you don't have a pack, simply make your own templates, following the shapes on the templates image below.

Right... set and ready to go? good

Body & Tail
One of the best things about making a dodo is that you do the body & tail first, meaning you really quickly feel like you're making good progress - hurrah for morale boosting easy starts!

Lay one of your grey socks out on it's side, and cut through both layers along the red line shown in Fig 1. You're basically removing the ankle and cuff section from the heel, foot & toe. Then take your orange sock; cut off & discard the cuff section. Cut 4 or 5 strips about a centimetre thick (as shown by the blue lines in Fig 1. you're really appreciating my skills in Paint now, aren't you?), and put them to one side for a minute. The grey toe and foot section is going to form the body of your bird (the heel will be the tail, along with your orange strips) - and you're already good to stuff it. See what I mean about quick progress? You may want to experiment a little with density & shaping, the finished effect is basically dependant on what you do here here so play around until your happy.
Once you're good to go, sew running stitch (fairly large) where the green line is in fig 1 (imagine that line going all the way around your sock) - don't tie it off yet, pull the thread tight to ruche up the fabric until you've NEARLY closed the tail section off - pop in the ends of the orange strips you cut earlier, so that most of the length sits outside as the tail, with a kind of grey hood formed from the heel of your body piece. Tighten the running stitch and tie it off, then further secure your tail feathers with ladder stitch. Cut the grey heel-hood into strips (be careful not to cut to far, stop just before the line of running stitch). Don't worry if the lengths look a bit odd right now, that's one of the details it's best to leave to finalise at the tail end (Boom boom) of the project.

Beak

Turn what remains of your orange sock inside out, lay it out neatly on a flat surface and draw around your beak template with trick-marker or chalk (use the rest of the ankle section if there's space, otherwise use the foot section). Sew through both layers of sock using backstitch - leaving the dotted line section unsewn for stuffing. Cut out your beak, leaving 3-4mm seam allowance all the way around, and turn right way out. Personally, I prefer to stuff the beak quite lightly, but that's a matter of taste, and the important thing is to create a distinct shape with a bobble at the end. once stuffed you should find that one lip has a slight overhang at the seam- that's the upper beak.

Head

Take the grey ankle piece you cut off earlier, remove & discard the cuff. Cut about 2/3rd (that should be around 2 inches, maybe a little more. If in doubt, take more than you think you need as you can always trim down later) off, and turn that section inside out. Sew a line of running stitch around one end (leaving about 3mm seam allowance) and pull tight, in the same way as you did for the tail (but pull all the way closed this time) and tie off.

Turn the whole thing right way in again, so that the seam allowance on the joint you just made is on the inside. Roll some of your stuffing into a head-sized ball (sorry. I can't think of anything the right size to compare it to... I have a cold and my head is full of fog so I'm not too hot on the ol' writing skills today. to be honest, I never am really. Why are you reading this? Bigger than a ping pong ball, smaller than a tennis ball. I don't know of any sport that entails appropriate sized equipment - I can think of a couple of other activities that might, though). Follow the same process again, sewing a line of running stitch around the open end of the head, but, like on the tail, don't pull all the way tight. Insert the open end of the beak into the opening and close up the gap as much as possible, then secure with an extra row of running stitch, this time going through both the grey & orange sock. The seam allowance of the grey sock should be allowed to sit outside the head, creating a kind of feathery, broken line effect where the joint to the beak sits. Your Dodo's head is finished, aside from attaching eyes, which I always leave til the end as it's so important for giving your sockie expression I prefer to do it once all the other pieces are in place, that way I can play with positioning and decide how they look best in full context.

Neck

Take your remaining grey sock, and cut from the ankle section a rectangle about 1 1/2 inch by 2 1/4 inch. Fold in half along it's length, keeping the right side in. Sew the short edges to each other using over stitch, to create a short narrow cylinder of sock. Turn the right way out, and sit one of the open ends onto your dodo body (turning in a small seam allowance). You may want to pin or tack the neck on first to ensure an even circular shape, once your happy secure with ladder stitch. It's a good idea to stuff the neck quite firmly to ensure it doesn't bend under the weight of the head. Then simply repeat the process of pinning & ladder stitch to attach the neck to the head (consider what angle you want the head to sit at, and keep the head the orientated so the beak sits the right way up & faces forward).

Feet

Right. Grab your remaining orange sock (or sock bit) and turn inside out. Take your foot template and draw around it in (trick-marker or chalk) twice. Sew around them in backstitch (leaving the instep open as indicated by the dotted line, for turning out & stuffing), and cut out leaving 3-4 mm seam allowance (you may need to leave slightly less between the toes).

Then simply turn right way out (here's where your pokey thing comes into play, getting into the toes), stuff (play with how densely you want to stuff it - different amounts may alter the shape of your feet) and sew up the instep with slip stitch. Position them as required on the base of your dodo and attach with ladder stitch

Wings

Take what remain of your second grey sock, and cut off the heel/ankle section and the toe, basically leaving yourself a grey tube of foot section. Chop that in half to make two shorter tubes, and lay one half out flat, at an angle, on the dodo body, like in the picture (I'm struggling to describe this in words. Damn head cold!). Sew a line of backstitch through both layers of wing and onto the body, about 2/5ths of the way down the wing.

Fold the top 2/5ths over the top of the bottom section, thus hiding your stitches and creating a two layer wing effect. Slice up into the wing to create 4 or 5 slices (don't go all the way to the top). This should leave you with a number of loops, which, if you tug on slightly (go easy here at first - you can always pull a little harder if you choose), will stand out from the body more.

Final Touches

You are basically done now - just a couple of details to attend to. First off, and entirely optional, you may want to trim the tail a little to shape it (if you leave them long & tug on each strand, they will curl. Purtty!). Then position & sew on the eyes (for people used to sewing buttons on clothes, it's best NOT to use the shank method here, as the eyes will flop around if you do, so just use normal button stitch).

Et voila! You're done!

I suggest you now move to Swindon & join SpecOps (division of your choice. personally I've opted for 24. I'm all about the art crime since someone stole WarHorse & sold it to Spielberg. Bastards.)

Nxx
PS. totally not official or in anyway endorsed by Mr.Fforde. Though he did name check me in his blog (did I mention that already? oh)
PPS. Now totally endorsed by Fforde (see comments below) rock on mo-fo

Plonk Plonk

2010-09-29T19:21:00.004+01:00

Every geek needs a hideout - somewhere to go when they feel like they are the only person in the world who‘s bored of the indeterminable wait until L.J.Smith brings out the final instalment of her Nightworld series (cummon woman… it’s been 12 years), or when none of your friends are excited about this week's developments at CERN. In those moments you need a retreat, somewhere filled with Sci-fi books, Star Wars toys and tee-shirts with mathematical “comedy” printed on ‘em. For me, that place is Forbidden Planet on Shaftesbury Avenue - it’s conveniently close to work and I always get chatted up by some geek boy based purely on the fact that they didn’t previously realise that there are girls in the world, or that some of those girls read David Gemmell. So you can imagine my excitement when, this January, I discovered Jasper Fforde was doing a book signing there. I was like a kid who’d just been told Mickey Mouse was coming to visit their tree house.

It was my first book signing, and I was a little nervous about etiquette, but, hell, if you can’t be socially inept in Nerd-Mecca, where can you be? So I thought, bugger it, I’m going, and I’m going with bells on. Or in my case, socks. Not on my feet, oh no, how boring would that be? - socks in my arms - socks refashioned into Dodo form (It’s a Ffordian thing. You won’t get it unless you’ve read The Eyre Affair… and if you haven’t, why not?)

So I made Peggotty, to give to Jasper (Mr. Fforde? His Ffordy-ness? Lord Fforde? What’s the decorum when meeting one of your favourite authors?). Peggotty is a version 1.24 Dodo, as sanctioned by the Goliath Corporation, and Peggotty, like most Dodos, loves marshmallows.

I toddled off to swap a flightless sock bird for an autograph, and even managed to drum up a couple of friends (they’d been trying to hide their inner geek, but I found them out) - arriving, in standard Noodle-fashion, ridiculously early, so having to wander around pretending to be interested in Trudi Canavan’s latest release - normally I can happily kill whole weeks browsing in Forbidden Planet, but I was kinda on edge, so thought I’d heighten that by going to consume caffeine.

Upon my return I found I was still very near the front of the queue, but without having to face the embarrassing concept of actually being first, so I could observe the behaviour of other fans and tailor my own to match. Now, I have nothing to compare to, but Jasper seemed very charming (although it must be said a bit older than he is in publicity photos - I suppose vanity (or Photoshop) gets to even the best of us) and polite despite my rather awkward and star-struck attempts at interaction. He kindly signing my beloved copy of the Eyre Affair, as well as my shiny new hardback Shades of Grey (which I very highly recommend - it’s his best work to date by far). He admired Peggotty briefly before handing her over to his little girl Tabby (who was there alongside a lady I presumed to be her mummy). Tabby correctly identified Pegotty as ’Dodo,’ so I guessed I wasn’t the first to offer similar gifts -a fact Jasper confirmed, siting one particular life sized Dodo which they had difficulty transporting home. Oh, and (she says, nonchalanty) he then mentioned me - by name - in his blog, with a photo of Peggotty (Check out the 18th Jan entry).

Anyway… why am I posting about this now, when it happened 9 months ago? Well, because this weekend is the Bookcrossing UK Unconvention, and since it’s in Swindon (the real world setting of the Thursday Next novels) we’ve managed to persuade Mr Fforde to come along and do a signing for us - I think he’s just about the biggest ‘name’ author we’ve ever managed to get, and excitement amongst bookcrossers is pretty high so it has been suggested that I make up some instructions for making your own Dodo - I’ll be giving out packs of socks to craft with at the Uncon, but in the mean time a tutorial is going up here in the next couple of days. Oh, and (she says, nonchalanty) jasper mentioned me - by name - in his blog, with a Photo of Peggotty: Check out the 18th Jan entry.

Until then, I better get registering coz I’ve got a lot of books to set free…

Noodle x

how to make your own dodo instructions here

Old, New, Borrowed n' Blue...

2010-09-21T15:02:00.000+01:00

All my friends seem to be getting married, or having children, or buying houses. This is terrifying, given my complete refusal to grow up enough to even think about these things. Currently I have the excuse of working in theatre and being paid peanuts, so I can't afford to grow up... but someday I'm gonna have to face the fact that I'm a proper adult now. I mean, I turn 25 this year - that's officially mid-twenties, which is officially not early-twenties which officially means I can't pretend to be a teenager any more. I'm old. Old people do stuff, they make important life choices and plan for the future.

To be fair, Boy & I did just book a holiday together (Goa, in the beginning of November, if you're interested) - my first proper holiday with a partner... so I am getting there, albeit in teeny tiny baby steps.

Anyway... I'm waffling

All this talk of scary grown-up-ness stems from the fact that one of my buddies from the USA is getting hitched in a couple of weeks - unfortunately the Atlantic Ocean prevents me from attending, but I have sent a couple of sock rabbits as representatives. I'm quite pleased with how they came out, although the pictures don't do them justice. A little touch (suggested by Shiv, my cross-stitchin' partner in craft) I added was to include something borrowed, something blue, something old & something new on the bride doll (The Swarovski beads were 'borrowed' from the props store, her flowers are blue, the lace of her veil is from a vintage dress and the socks used to make her were new). I hope the beautiful bride is pleased with both her bunnies and her new Husband

I'm off to plaster myself in anti-aging cream - but in the mean time I will leave you with these - lyrics from The Last Five Years, one of my favourite musicals, and absolutely my kind of (slightly commitment-phobic) love poem:

Will you share your life with me for the next ten minutes?
For the next ten minutes, we can handle that
We could watch the waves, we could watch the sky
Or just sit and wait as the time ticks by
And if we make it till then
Can I ask you again for another ten?

And if you in turn agree to the next ten minutes
And the next ten minutes till the morning comes
Then just holding you
Might compel me to
Ask you for more

Awww...
Nxx

Down With This Sort of Thing!

2010-09-21T00:48:00.004+01:00

I was one of the 20000-odd (some very odd) people who turned up to protest against the Pope on Saturday - a fact which I'm quite proud of because, hey, it's good to stand up for what you believe is right. Or rather, to stand up against what you believe is wrong - and I think Pope Benedict is very, very wrong.

My reasons for this are multiple, but basically it's that I feel he kills hope; to children abused by priests he kills any hope for justice by covering up the actions of paedophiles, to the people of Africa he destroys any hope for sexual health by falsely claiming that condoms perpetuate aids, to homosexuals & women he kills any hope of equality by opposing their human rights at every turn, to families worldwide he kills hope for a truly integrated society by encouraging segregated schooling. Plus, as far as I can tell, his election to the primacy killed the hope of many practicing catholics for a pontiff who actually represents and reflects their belief in a modern catholic church. This has all been expressed far more eloquently (and in far greater detail) on numerous websites & blogs, but I'd recommend starting here if you're interested in some of the reason's why this particular Pope is so controversial. I just don't think it's appropriate for our country, with it's poor battered economy, to be spending 20 million pounds for him to visit. I appreciate that taxpayers are paying because it is a state visit - he was invited by the queen, rather than by members of a church. But, well, when I invite my friends to come to my house, I don't expect my housemates to pay for their expenses. It's the same thing.

Oh, and he called me a Nazi, which is clearly a ridiculous thing for anyone to accuse me of - but particularly someone with a background as shady as Ratzinger's. It's a lazy and nonsensical thing to say, in accordance with Godwin's Law. *blows raspberry*

Anyway, I got together with fellow Feet-ers Amy and Sarah, plus a few of their friends to go for a pre-protest lunch a Beetroot, which was a tasty way to fuel ourselves for the march. Then we pulled on our DM's and headed off to Hyde Park.

We were a little concerned upon emerging from the tube to see so many people carrying little yellow pilgrim packs, but things were friendly enough between the various groups of catholics & protesters, and we made our way to the rallying point in high spirits. Waiting around for the march to begin could of been rather tedious, as the unexpectedly high turn-out meant we were running a little behind schedule - but we were jollied along by a particularly comedic man-with-megaphone, a few of Amy's yummy vegan brownies and a chatter with some delightful fellow-protesters whilst blowing up condom balloons (even giving one away to a small child - with it's Mother's permission of course. It felt quite appropriate to be arming the kid against any roaming priests, but equally odd to be handing a toddler a cock-sock. FYI - the lube makes it nigh on impossible to make condom-balloon-animals, which is clearly a real shame).

Sarah, Adrian, Josh, Amy & I

Once we got underway we had opportunity to appreciate some truly excellent banners and placards (Personal favourites being 'Absitence Makes The Church Grow Fondlers' and 'Kiss my Ring.' Which I fear indicates that i have a highly juvenile sense of humour.) as we strolled down Piccadilly waving at the stander-bys - who were all very supportive and frequently congratulated us. Our little group got a few compliments on the 'pope rosary beads' I'd knocked up, which made me smile - they were very simple as I just used this PDF, printed out + backed onto red card then stuck together with double sided tape to make the paper popes in the photo above, before being hung onto embroidery thread & decorated with beads from a kids art set to make the necklaces you can see us wearing. I was a little disappointed in the lack of en masse chanting (despite a lady near us who was determined to kick-start 'Get your rosaries off my ovaries,' at every opportunity, plus an LGBT group behind us trying to cram 6 extra syllables into 'one two three four... '). I wished I were better with words so I could come up with some thing good n' quippy, but alas, it seems I am not destined for a career writing jingles.

Unfortunately, I had to abandon the rally half-way through because we had over-ran and I wanted to take the opportunity of a rare Saturday night off work and go on an actual date with my delicious boy - but I fully recommend to watch the videos of speakers, they really are all excellent.

Onwards and upwards - next weekend I'm facing the holy trinity in a Bananagrams Challenge - I reckon I'm a shoe-in to win, given that I'm the only non-fictional participant. Hurrah for me

Nxx

Alphabet Bunnies & Bamboo Horses

2010-09-10T20:32:00.001+01:00

Albert and Billy, the two Alphabet Bunnies, are named in honour of the two human leads in ~~WarCrow~~ WarHorse* - and because that rather handily matches the names of their two little twin boy owners: Aidan and Bryce.

If only all children were so conveniently named, eh?

[blowingowntrumpet] I must say I'm rather pleased with my new Bunny making technique, it retains much more of a 'Sock' feel because it uses (well, appears to use) the ankle collar... all lies of course, they actually have to be transplanted on artificially, but it looks kinda nifty [/blowingowntrumpet]

Serendipity,

Noodle

*For those who don't know, that's the show I work on at the mo. I say 'human leads' because the real stars are our bamboo horses - here's a trailer, which explains much better than I could

Hot Fudge

2010-09-10T00:25:00.001+01:00

One of the many joys of my teenage jaunts to the Edinburgh Fringe (and a more innocent joy than either Gaffa bras or amateur musical theatre) was the Fudge Kitchen. Ah, Fudge Kitchen...

They made (and still do make) the most delicious, delectable, creamy and beautiful fudge. The Edinburgh branch of their fine shop was just a couple of minutes from my theatre... on the route I had to take whilst doing show promotion. And they gave out free samples, making street theatre a much tastier experience (and making the fliers we were handing out much stickier)

I am very late in discovering this, but they now sell their fudge online. This find is going to make me very fat, but very happy. I blame the Internet for my impending obesity.

While I wait for my first delivery of Strawberry n Cream, I crafted this little Missy - Fondant.

nom nom nom...

nom nom noodle

Wolf Worship Two...

2010-08-21T02:23:00.010+01:00

(A follow up to this post...)

So, I wrapped my book of crypic nonsense around a bottle of Green Island Spiced Gold (recommended by the delightful boys in Gerry's on Old Compton Street as being the nearest thing to original recipe Sailor Jerry. T'was pretty tasty, maybe a little bit sweet for me, but better than the 'improved' Jerry, and around the same price, so a temporary win while the search continues) and gave it to Wolf on Saturday night with his proper presents - and he seemed pretty intrigued with it - spotted it as Elian straight off, which I expected. I wouldn't let him decode it on Sunday, because I would've got all itchy watching him do it

He did it in his dinner hour, while eating his sandwiches - He's so ridiculously smart, I knew it wouldn't take him long. Apparently translating the Elian into text was the hardest bit, and he briefly thought I might of done something clever (I wish) referring back to words in the text of Alice in Wonderland, but quickly saw it was a Ceaser with shifts, and, well, that was that.
He said he liked that I'd used different ways to describe things as it made patterns harder to spot, and that my using lots of repetition was clever because it throws off the basic attacks (these two comments seem to be contradictory, but I didn't point that out. Let him think I'm smart)

I think he enjoyed it, and I know he appreciated the effort - I explained that it was such a simple code because my entire knowledge of cryptology comes from the little bits he's shown me, so he gave me a copy of Simon Singh's Code Book (which I've been wanting to read since finishing this project) - saying '"God help me at Christmas now I've armed you with this." He clearly knows that the best way to my heart is via my bookshelf (Popco was bloody marvellous, btw, highly recommended)

He's bloody marvelous, my boy
*Soppy grin*

Noods xx

The Nerd Scarf

2010-08-16T20:14:00.014+01:00

In the approach to The Boy's birthday, he dropped a couple of hints* that he'd like a Dr Who scarf, so despite my complete inability to knit** I decided to have a crack at it.

Problem is, Boy doesn't exactly wear alot of colours... basically just black, grey, white and red - so a proper 'traditional' prismatic jobby wasn't really going to do the trick. I decided to keep it to just black & red - his favourite colour combo... which left me with a different problem, namely that a two colour stripe is seriously boring.

But fear not... Math-Nerd to the rescue! I'd been reading a spot of Ian Stewart, which set me to thinking it might be cool*** to base a scarf on the Fibonacci sequence - to take the numbers which create all the spirals and curves around us, and use them to make a object that is essentially a long straight line, which will then be made useful by forming it into loops and circles around a person.

So, my basic pattern was formed - increasing Fibonacci numbers in one colour, alternated with decreasing Fibonacci numbers in the other colour (1 red, 233 black, 1 red, 144 black, 2 red, 89 black, 3 red, 55 black...), which also creates quite a nice pixelated sort of fade from one colour to the other.

I used garter stitch, that being the extent of my knitting ability, and was quite pleaded with how tidy it came out looking - fairly even tensioning. Although the wool I used - from the Big Softie range by Sidar - was disappointingly knotty, so annoyingly messed up some bits (though I suppose at about £3.00 a ball it is one of the cheaper super-chunky wools available, so I shouldn't really complain - you get what you pay for...). I would also comment that it recommends 10mm needles for this wool - but I felt this gave too open a weave and, after a little experimentation settled on 7 1/2 needles to give a nice firm, dense structure. Using smaller needles meant I went through more wool than I expected - 12 balls in total (at 45meters a ball, there's 540 meters of wool in that there scarf!). The wool was nice and light too - important given the size of the bloody thing (4 meters 30 in lenght, not including the tassles!), and - bar the knots - very easy to knit with.

I was pretty pleased with the finished product and, more importantly, Wolf seemed pleased with it too (he cottoned onto my idea about natural spirals becoming a straight line, then looped artificially, without me even having to begin to explain it - which made me grin like a loon, and I think tells you alot about why he's so perfect).

Off to buy him a bag of Jelly Babies**** to complete the Tom Baker look...

Noodle

*Well... ish. I was rather grasping at straws by this point

**Not entirely true... I can, strictly speaking, knit. But I can't purl, increase, decrease, or remember how to cast off.

***I may of redefined 'cool' for the purposes of this sentence...
****Random fact-oid: Jelly Babies were first created to mark the end of the First World War, and were called 'Peace Babies.' There's nothing like eating children to spread love and harmony around the globe.

Cryptic Crush

2010-08-04T14:37:00.009+01:00

T'other half is really into cryptography, so for his birthday I'm doing him a message in a bottle that I've coded for him to break. At least that was the plan - in which I have rather failed by making it into something that doesn't actually fit into a bottle. I'm going to wrap it around a bottle instead - this method of presentation having the advantage that then the bottle can still contain rum (Which in itself has the advantage that it will necessitate a rum-tasting trip, since Sailor Jerry have 'improved' their recipe and now we don't have a favourite rum anymore.)

Coded Up

Right - the word I've coded is 'Mush' (it's one of those heinous relationship jokes that no one but the two of us gets. sorry.) chosen as it's short and simple (to begin with. It got longer, because of the way I treated it - in fact, it turned out it got alot longer - which is why my message no longer fits into a bottle!)

First stage is simple - put it into binary, which I then translate into written numbers. Then I put it through an alphabet substitution cypher (A Caesar cipher), which shifts between each letter of the original word. Which is translated into Morse code.

M = 01001101
o ten o eleven o one
t yjs t jqjajs t tsj (shifts by 5)
- / -.-- .--- ... / - / .--- --.- .--- .- .--- ... / - / - ... .---

U = 01010101
four bracket zero one bracket
pyeb lbkmuod joby yxo lbkmuod (shifts by 10)
.--. -.-- . -... / .-.. -... -.- -- ..- --- -.. / .--- --- -... -.-- / -.-- -..- --- / .-.. -... -.- -- ..- --- -..

S = 01010011

zero one zero one double zero double one
otgd dct otgd dct sdjqat otgd sdjqat dct (shifts by 15)
--- - --. -.. / -.. -.-. - / --- - --. -.. / -.. -.-. - / ... -.. .--- --.- .- - / --- - --. -.. / ... -.. .--- --.- .- - / -.. -.-. -

H = 01001000
nought one hundred one thousand
hioabn ihy bohxlyx ihy nbiomuhx (shifts by 20)
.... .. --- .- -... -. / .. .... -.-- / -... --- .... -..- .-.. -.-- -..- / .. .... -.-- / -. -... .. --- -- ..- .... -..-

So, to progress from here, the Morse code gets translated into text (dash dot long dash dit short dah dot....), and from there into Elian Script (which is basically a prettified pigpen cipher)

At which point I had to work out how to present this so that Wolf will know where each new letter begins, and each new word... so I threw in a colour element. Basically, each letter of the Morse Code is written in a different colour, and each word will be written in distinctly separate blocks.

And that is, essentially, the finished code! Hurrah.

At this point I have to give a massive shout-out thank you to Aimee & Dot for carefully checking over my work for mistakes - I really appreciate the time you took to help me out.

I confess I'm a little concerned that each step is very simple, and Wolf will break the back of it almost instantly. The only difficulty he may encounter being the large amounts of repetition throwing off alot of standard key-finding methods (eg, frequency attacks are unlikely to be very useful). Had I come up with this idea a little further in advance of his Birthday, I may of been able to do some research and create something a little more interesting - but I'm hoping he will appreciate that cryptography is his bag, not mine, and it's the gesture that counts and all that happy clappy what-not...

And it's just ironic that the day I completed the neat write up of the code I started reading Popco by Scarlett Thomas, (excellent read so far, fyi) which has inspired lots of much more interesting and challenging ideas inside my head... but I guess they'll have to wait for next year...

And the Pretty girlie stuff

So, now all that was left to do was write the bugger up.

I managed to stumble upon a 'Complete Illustrated Works of Lewis Carroll' in a charity shop, which seemed an appropriate starting point given that Carroll was also a math nerd and liked a bit of cryptanalysis himslf, plus Wolf has been known to call me 'his Alice' (More rom-com awful in-jokes. So sorry) . I brought the book and immediatly proceeded to rip apart. Being somewhat of a book-lover (slight understatement possibly?) this caused me actual physical pain, on the level that I felt each little tear like it was going into my own skin...

To cure this, I decided that I should apply the restorative benefits of tea, not only to myself (in the form of mug), but also to the torn out pages (in the form of bath) - having the added effect of nicely aging the horrible cheap white paper that the book had been printed on. Because if there's one thing a degree in Stage Management teaches you, it's how to tea-stain stuff really nicely. Thanks Guildhall.

Having tea-stained enough pages, I ironed them (so they sit nicer together, And wrote up the code 'in neat.' I used ABT pens by Tombow, because they are available in a good colour range, but I found the brush end (They are duel ended, with a brush end and a thin-tip end) got knackered pretty quickly, even though I wasn't exactly hard-wearing on them - a bit disappointing given the fairly high individual cost of the pens.

Once it was written up and I'd checked over my work (again. Just to be sure...) it was time to bind the pages together. Now, i know exactly zero about bookbinding, and I basically made it up as i went along, but it seemed to come out pretty well. I used a ladder stitch to sew them pages together, then just glued (Brushable superglue again. I'm still in love with this stuff) a length of wide satin ribbon over the stitches. Then, purely for decorative effect and added Wolf-ness, I finished it off by popping a Skull-head rivet (the kind meant for leather working) through the spine. I decided to 'soften' the edges, the easiest way to do which being to carry it around in my handbag for a couple of days - just to slightly batter the pages and give the book as a whole more of a naturally aged look. And.... done.
I shall report back on boy's reaction (and the total number of minutes it takes him to decipher) post birthday celebrations
Post-birthday write up here

Penguin Pride

2010-07-22T15:29:00.006+01:00

I have been feeling a little guilty recently, as I have been accused of making sock-based stuffed toys with underlying homophobic qualities. It has been pointed out that the only openly queer Sockie I've made is Mike, and he is hardly a brilliant ambassador for the gay community (apparently the more straight-laced sockies have trouble identifying with an ex-BNP drag queen. Can't think why).

Now, clearly I'm not homophobic (I know some gay people hate their sexuality, but I'm not one of them. I'm too egotistical) - and I can no more control the sexuality of my sockies than a parent can control the sexuality of their child. But maybe I've been putting out psychological signals to them inadvertently? Maybe my Socks don't feel free to express there true nature? That's a pretty horrifying thought.

In an attempt to rectify this situation, I have created Rolo. Now, I don't know if Rolo is gay - he's only just a baby yet and doesn't know himself - but he is purple. And a penguin. And I've named him after Roy & Silo (Ro-lo... geddit?), the poofter penguins at Central Park Zoo who adopted and hatched an egg*.

I'm hoping that Rolo will help counter-balance the penguin family of Burt, Patina and Mundy I made at the beginning of the year

*Yes-yes, I know Silo ended up having a fling with a girlie-penguin, but I like him all the more for his being Bi (again, I'm egotistical. What can i say?). And the whole thing is set off beautifully with Roy & Silo's little baby girl growing up all lezzer. Lovely.

Cake or Death?

2010-07-16T21:32:00.003+01:00

Marmalade Tealoaf

I've made this one a few times, and it tends to be pretty well received.

This one was taken into work for consumption by us greedy sparkies - who didn't mind at all that it was really crumbly (you can't slice it thinly? I guess I'll have to have a massive slab of it then... terrible) which was, I think, because the nuts weren't chopped finely enough.

Top tip - use chunky cut marmalade (or in this case homemade, which is even better)

Anywho... Mix 2/3rds of a jar (normal size 454g jar) of marmalade, 175g butter, 175g brown sugar (a dark sticky one is best, like Muscovado), 3 eggs, 225g self raising flour, teaspoon baking powder, 2+1/2 teaspoon ground ginger. Once that lot's all folded in together, whack in a handful each of chopped walnuts & pecans.

Resist the temptation to eat the cake mix.

Stick the lot in a loaf tin and bake on gas mark 4 for 50mins, then cover with foil and continue to bake for another half hour or so, til it looks rite tasty.

Once it's cooled a little, melt the remaining 1/3rd of your jar of marmalade (in a bowl in the microwave is easiest, but do it on the hob if people are watching as it looks more impressive) and use that to glaze the top.

Eat sliced with a bit of butter, and a cup of tea.

Anzac Biccies

Made (Following this recipe) as a thankyou present for The Boy's mum (from Curdle - she keeps giving us cat food). A bit risky as I'd never made them before. I choose them because they were originally created for the Aussie/Kiwi Army, so I figured they're pretty hardwearing... and Mrs.Wolf doesn't eat alot so she needs a biscuit with staying power.

I think they came out OK - though I would chuck in a smidgen more coconut (or maybe a drop of vanilla extract?) and I'd use something tastier that Golden syrup - maybe a nice dark, rich honey instead. Oh, and chunkier oats. Again, eat with a cup of tea.

I'm off to brew up, got some serious munching to do... Toodle

Noodle xx

A Cat Called Curdle

2010-07-16T19:41:00.000+01:00

Meet the latest addition to my household: Curdle the cat. She's a stray who has, over the last few weeks, adopted me as her own. Clearly she has excellent taste and refined sensibilities.

I've named her after the milk-carton that attaches its self to Deebra in Un Lun Dun, given that she has attached herself to me in much the same way.

She's a remarkably placid thing, who seems to have sleeping-in abilities which surpass even my own - and the last few days she has even displayed an interest in tea, so we're clearly a well suited pair. Although I do kind of resent the fact that it's my tea she's interested in...

Nxx

Wolf Worship One

2010-07-15T19:29:00.002+01:00

I apologise in advance for gratuitous slushiness

My boy really is a miracle in a myriad of ways. He is the most beautiful creature ever to walk the face of this earth, he is insanely clever, funny and much lovelier than he would ever want anyone to believe.

And on top of that, he makes me presents.

He made - that's right, MADE - me this beautiful silver teapot necklace. Told you he was clever. I don't know enough about jewellery crafting to show-off thoroughly on his behalf - but I do know he cast the pot & lid, designed and formed the hinge... then added his own little touch inside...

'Tis Teabringer - The Vorpal Pot - to be used wisely, for with great tea comes fantastic biscuits...

Celebrating Diversity

2010-07-10T14:07:00.005+01:00

By Letting the Pigs Drink Tea

Even to a veggie like me, it seems pretty obvious that pigs are the tastiest animal. They are made of bacon. They contain cracking, go very nicely with apple sauce, and even their icky bits provide us with sausage rolls. Yum yum yum.

Yet, in his eternal mystery, God decided to tell both the Jewish and Muslim people not to eat pig. There is war in Palestine, yet the pigs are safe.

Penny is very pleased about this, because it means that, in Israel at least, she can enjoy a cup of tea and chocolate biscuit without having to worry about being made into a sandwich.

Acceptable in the 80s?

2010-06-30T19:32:00.003+01:00

As anyone who has met my Mother at any point in the last 18 months is no doubt aware, she's planning a wedding blessing service for her 25th anniversary with my Dad (I take full credit, they never would of got married it I hadn't come along). This blessing is going to be epic. Seriously, it's in a castle in Scotland and everything.

That was very nearly not the only Madonna-element to the event. I shall explain:

I've been jazzing up the bridesmaid's (errr... Lil Sis & I) shoes. The original intention was big black velvet bows on the back of a quite simple pair of silver courts - nice, right? In fact from close up, very lovely. But from a few steps back - 80's tastic. In an awful way* - all they needed was a polyester dress (preferably one pretending to be satin) and they could of been in a Littlewoods catalogue. Luckily, I quite enjoy this kind of challenge, removed the offending article and made a grab for my ribbon box.

First things first - I was having a bit of an adhesive disaster as my normally trusty cool-melt glue gun had let me down on this (glue didnt adhere to whatever shiny coating was on the shoes) until I discovered a I new product (or new to me at least... I do love a good wander around a stationary store, you can discover the most amazing stuff you never knew you needed) - brushable superglue. Genius. This allows for incredibly accurate application, and really thin layers/teeny tiny dots of glue, so it's the Mary Poppins of the Superglue world.

At this junction, I must point out the differences in taste between Lil Sis & I - she follows fashion in a pretty dedicated way, whereas I flee from it**. Therefore it seemed sensible to create something a bit more 'bling' for her... silver to black fade wired ribbon on top of some plain black satin created the articles you see above. Given that LS's shoes are a bit chunkier than mine (they have a platform, whereas I opted for a pair identical but without the step) they can carry something a bit flashier than mine. I must admit, not at all to my taste - and it's really hard to fairly evaluate your work if you don't in fact like it - But I'm fairly confident she'll be pleased

Here's hoping anyway!
Nxx

PS. Not sure yet, but I think I'm going to opt for just plain old black satin for mine - also not really me, but needs must and at least they won't draw attention to themselves!

*I quite like a bit of 80s stylee myself, in fact the other day I was told I could be in Strawberry Switchblades, quite the compliment. It just has to be the right bit of the 80's - Not Bananarama.

**The fashion industry actually makes me very very angry, and I am struggling not to rant here***

***That's a lie - I just ranted in full, then deleted it all, as it was a bit dull - all correct (obv - all my opinions are correct), but a tad off topic and exceptionally boring. The only bit I'm leaving in is this: My friend Ruth runs a fantastic project called Body Gossip which you should definitely check out.

Couldn't find a plastic chair

2010-06-05T14:21:00.004+01:00

Bears are surprisingly disinterested in dancing.

If you go into the woods today,
You'd better go in disguise.
If you go into the woods today,
Prepare for a big surprise.
Cos every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain because
Today's the day the bears are having a rave.

All around are grumpy bears
Sitting there on plastic chairs
Hanging out in sullen pairs
They just don't dig on dancin'

Bears just cannot keep the beat
Most of them have two left feet
They like fighting and eating meat,
And hibernating, lazy fuckers
They just don't dig on dancing

You can hire the best DJ

They won't boogie anyway
Bears all reckon dancing's gay.
Homophobic hairy fuckers
Just don't dig on dancin'.

Bears don't dig on dancin'
They just don't dig it.
Bears don't dig on dancin'

---

Yes, I continue to use His Minchiness as a source of inspiration and lyrics. His version is far better.
This particular bear has been christened Socrates - not 'Sockrates' as it's an aural pun, not a written one. It's all about correct orthography.
Noods x

Hay Fever

2010-06-03T16:27:00.002+01:00

It takes alot to get me out of bed at 5.30 in the morning, particularly on a Bank Holiday Monday. But the promise of a day being geeky at Hay followed by an evening worshiping at the alter of Minchin was persuasion enough.

Before we (2 of my girlies and I) piled into Heather's car we came to the unexpected decision not to listen to our vast collection of Minchin on the journey (surprise surprise, we each have his entire back catalogue on our Ipods, plus an array of ripped bits and bobs) in order to keep it fresh, so we pooteled off down the motorway (which motorway I have no idea. It's a good job I don't drive really as I never know where I am even on foot, so multiplying that by 4 wheels and an engine would only lead to vast amounts of trouble) listening to Juliet Turner and Duke Special, both of who were pretty new to me but perfectly set the tone for the day.

Hay-on-Wye is like a picture postcard of a little welsh village. They even had bunting up. The only other place I see bunting is on stage at work, were we are pretending it's 1914 (And even then it's Cunting Bunting, not the nice pretty stuff). The greyness over London had parted to provide a beautiful sunny day on the welsh border, a couple of little clouds wandering along the sky like lost sheep, so we dumped our rucksacks off at the tent and wandered into town to get the shuttle bus to the festival (£1 a day. Man, you can't even make one bus journey for a pound anywhere else, let alone buy a day pass...)

Upon arrival at Festival HQ, we had the unfortunate duty of joining the que at the box office (conveniently located next to a stall selling souvenirs. Funny coincidence that) as we had to return one of our tickets, a member of our jolly party had taken ill and couldn't come (We missed you Jooles! Hope you're feeling better soon), but that done, we wandered off around the site seeing what was to be seen...

The Hay Festival is... well, not what I expected. I will graciously step aside and let this article by Decca Aitkenhead say it for me, as she sums up both my pre-conceptions and my impression of the atmosphere pretty nicely. To add to that I will give a few special mentions:

- What the hell is a 'Literary Sculptor'? apparently it's someone who makes hats, although I thought that was a milliner. Well, maybe it's a milliner who's changed her job title to try to draw the crowds at a Book Festival.

- Poshest festival loos ever. Fact.

- Hard work, but defiantly worth it, to catch the eye of the poor people dressed as giant bumblebees (to be fair if I were dressed as a giant bumblebee, I'd avoid eye-contact too) giving out free samples of beer. Yum

- It seems the previous year there was some kind of knitting element to the festival, which had been combined into a giant crazy patchwork blanket being auctioned off for charity, with each patch labeled with the name of the person who had knitted it. A shame they didn't do it this year, such a lovely idea.

- It seems the local community had a real presence at the festival - lots of local shops had stalls selling there wares and I heard a fair few welsh accents wandering around the site.

- The perfect weather meant the deckchairs, benches and grass were seeing good use, everyone sat around reading and just being very nice. So different to local parks where there's always one tosser with a gettoblaster and endless streams of R&B to ruin your day.

- Felt somewhat ridiculous buying a platter of Neal's Yard Cheese, given that I work next to Neal's Yard so shouldn't really travel to Wales to eat it. Allayed guilt by reminding self that I never actually go there, so it's still a holiday treat.

- complimented on my outfit (red brogues, seamed stocking, tartan skirt and white tee, Lolita sunnies & massive amounts of electric blue eyeliner) by a man old enough to be my Grandad, very surreal

- Very disappointed by both Emma & Heather's refusal to do a wiggly worm dance whilst walking down the wiggly worm path. Scaredy-cats the both of them.

Unsurprisingly, I spent the day moulting books everywhere I went... I set about 30 free around the festival site and they all seemed to get picked up pretty quickly. Of course there are about a squillion (no exaggeration) bookshops, so I avoided leaving any in close proximity to them. Emma and I found much amusement in watching people's reactions to them - suspicious, assuming there's a catch or a gottcha film-crew somewhere, then looking very shifty as they take one away, like a thief creeping off! A couple of weeks later I got a fantastic Journal Entry from a guy (or gal?) who picked up a Seamus Heaney collection - they very appropratly wrote a bookcrossing poem, made me grin.

After we had settled ourselves, Emma & I went off to hear Ian Stewart talk about Maths (yes yes, we're nerds) - leaving Heather to enjoy a spot more queuing, visit a rainforest and fail to watch any opera. We did a bit of celeb spotting (as long as you count Simon Singh as a celeb. We do. Quite proud that we resisted all temptation to give him a rendition of the Sing-along A Simon Singh Song. We thought about tweeting him to sit next to us as we had much better seats than him, and one spare. Til some weird geeky guy nabbed it - oh well) as the rest of the audience filed in, and I moaned about the badly aligned projection (Tut. But then, I do like a good pedantic moan, so it's not all bad). Prof. Stewart treated us to a hour of shapes, lines, bad puns and geometry, which was all very interesting - although it took him a while to warm-up and get comfortable speaking to the crowd, and I personally felt that alot of the projection was unnecessary (it was certainly distracting me at times, and seemed to distract Prof. Stewart too). The talks content was an extended version of the stuff in his books, silly 'comedy' and clever number play - so I was pleased that he signed my copy of 'Cows in a Maze' (less impressed with the generic comment about it being nice to see young ladies interested in maths, but forgave him as I'm equally rubbish at small talk).

Then the excitement began - that's right, it was time to start queuing! My que-fetish got full indulgence as we were entitled to join the 'Friends of Hay' line and gloat at the plebs in the normal line. TIP - if you ever go to Hay, get one of your party to sign up as a friend. It's not expensive, and you get priority queuing (for the whole group of you, not just the 'Friend'), plus access to the 'Friends Cafe' where lots of the talks & shows are streamed live to big screens, so you can watch stuff that's sold out. So, back on track, we sat in the que listening to Tim sound check in the tent, which was amazing and really helped build the excitement (prior to that I had been feeling very lackluster about the whole thing. Honest) By about 15 minutes til doors, we were all on our feet and discussed seating strategy (As near to front as possible, keyboard side. Preferred central seats over front row. No holds bared, no being polite.) so we were fully prepared once the rush began, and landed ourselves 3rd row (front row & most of second were reserved for press) keyboard side of the central block - perfect (kudos Heather. that girl knows how to bag seats.)

And Tim... oh Tim... Ohhhhhhh Tim. I will avoid giving a massively long review as I doubt it would be more than excessive fan-girl gushing, but if you want a full breakdown go here. I was particularly pleased that he did The Pope Song, twice (once, then once more at double speed as someone had complained about one of the speakers not working), which was clearly amazing, and although I had seen all the other songs / talky bits before, it was great to be so close and able to see every nuance - and of course I enjoyed the bits of improv, audience banter and the couple of mistakes... I even nearly managed to convince myself that he winked at me (after 'or Spanking' in If I Didn't Have You) but I must admit that is wishful thinking in the most extreme manner, in actuality he was looking at the fat old lady on the front row (must be a very important producer he wants to charm...). Gotta say though, I did get a bit narked off with one heckler - throwing out lines and random noises during really inappropriate moments (ie after 'Just this' in Storm, and during Grew On Me), Tim handled him as well as could be, but some people are knobs. I expect better of Tim fans. Huff.

Mind you, the (Feet)ers raised themselves back into my good books by being very lovely and polite when queuing to meet Tim afterwards... there was no pushing or screaming or any of that nonsense. Even though Tim was clearly rushed to get along the que, he was nice & friendly, smiling for photos & signing anything put into his hands. The girl directly in front of me took the piss a bit, wanting about 8 different things signed, but I graciously forgave her inconsideration because she was only about 14 (Really, sometimes I think I should be sainted, I'm so patient). I was far too full of adrenaline and girly hormones to remember any of my Tim-Time properly... but needless to say it'll be a while before the joy wears off!

We celebrated with pink champers and Pimms, then gossiped joyfully about His Minchiness all the way back to the campsite. Must say a word here for Tangerine Fields, who provided our tent - a Geo-dome - pre-pitched and with airbeds, very spacious, plus the facilities on site were nice & clean, even hairdryers & straightener available!

The following morning we awoke to more traditional Bank Holiday weather - rain. Still, we wandered into Hays for a spot of WI-craft-stall-raiding (the whole village appears to be populated with only booksellers and little old ladies knitting & jam-making) before tooteling off home. Unsurprisingly we blasted the Minch out all the way back to London, and I was mostly unsuccessful in my attempts not to sing along - sorry about that girlies.

Here's hoping my tone-deafness didn't shatter too many eardrums

Toodles

Noodle x

Lilac Towels

2010-05-26T18:55:00.002+01:00

First and foremost - I hope you all had a very happy Towel Day! I spotted a fair few towels around town, but didn't see any other girls carrying one... I can't be the only female Hitchhiker in London, can I?

I particularly appreciated the comedy moment watching a few boys who were clearly less than comfortable with their inner geek as they were trying to hide their towels in bags as they left the Sci-fi haven that is Forbidden Planet. Personally, I do not fear the mocking of the ignorant (because I can flick them away with my towel), and besides, I had carefully chosen my towel to match my new handbag and carried it with pride.

Fans of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (and specifically Night Watch) will be aware that it is also the anniversary of The Glorious Revolution of the twenty-fifth of May (Truth! Justice! Freedom! Reasonably Priced Love! and A Hard Boiled Egg!). I wonder if this is a coincidence, or did Pratchett choose this date to commemorate his friend? Night Watch was published in 2002, not long after Adam's death & the first Towel Day in 2001... I don't know enough about publishing schedules to guess at when he would of had to submit his final draft of the novel. Any one know?

Anywho, I carried a towel... I wore some Lilac in my hair (which clashed horribly with my towel... next year, a lilac towel). And I released a shed load of Terry Pratchett books around London. They all had bookmarks and leaflets with info about The Alzheimers Research Trust in them - Pratchett has been a patron of this wonderful charity since his diagnosis in 2007 - and it's a cause close to my heart as both my Grandma & Nan suffer from this horrible disease. I had a lovely day wandering around sunny London... it's so rare that I actually appreciate this city of mine... stopped off for lunch with the boy (his towel was black, because he thinks he's a rebel) and generally de-stressing

Very needful as today I have to attend a ~~Bullshit~~ Equality & Diversity workshop, which will no doubt return me to my usual cynical and sarcastic state...

Yours in anticipation...

Noodle

The Flood

2010-05-13T14:17:00.004+01:00

God said (in a James Mason voice), "No, no, everything is bad.I will send a flood, kill everything and start again."
It was the Etch A Sketch end of the world, basically: ''No, no. Don't know what that is, don't recognise that any more." (Remember with Etch A Sketch when you'd done a house and a sun at the top, you'd try to do a dog down here and you had to leave vapour trails all the way along. ''Oh, bugger it.'' And you shake it up, destroy the whole thing.)
So God said, "I will sent a flood. 40 days, 40 nights and lots of umbrellas. But I will save two of everything because it looks good on a seesaw photo.Noah, stop what you're doing and build me an ark."
And Noah (played here by Sean Connery): "I'm working on a speedboat at the moment. It's much more exciting - bigger engine and it can
shoot across the water."
"No, I want an ark with a big room for poo."
"Look, a speedboat, it'll kick ass.''
"No, you'll build me an ark. You can put a big engine in that if you want."
"OK, I suppose. It's a compromise."

So, he built an ark and that was great. Then he collected two of every animal from all around the world,
"What have we got here? Two dogs, OK. Two sheep? Well done. On you get, sit along the side there. Two cats, Inside the boat. Two ducks?"
The ducks are going, "We're not coming."
"There's going to be an enormous fuck-off flood."
"So? What's the big problem?"

There's a huge hole in the whole flood drama, because anything that could float or swim got away scot-free, and it was the idea to kill everything. God didn't say, "I will kill everything except the floating ones and the swimming ones, who will get out due to a loophole." Anything that could float - your bad ducks, your bad geese, your bad swans - got away with it. Even bad pilot fish with those little lights on the top.
It's a big hole in the whole thing.

--- --- ---

That's one of the flaws in the Bible, as explained by Eddie Izzard. And it serves perfectly to demonstrate the inadequacies in my thought process, which went like this:

I have two pictures of Cat Sockies, and I have two pictures of Monkey Sockies. I could build an ark and sing that song about the animals going in two by two... but if I sing, people will run screaming and they will cry, and any electrical equipment around me will break... hmm, anyway it wasn't two of each on the ark, I learned from QI it was 5 or 7 or something,* but I suppose it's all irrelevant anyway because it's all a fairy story... that story by Julian Barnes about the animal on the ark is very good**... I should go re-read it, except I lent my copy to someone. Oh wait, what's the bit Eddie Izzard does about the ark?

Anyway, that's how we got where we are. Sorry. Moving on: that above is Cat. Cat used to be called Lucy, but was re-named by her owner (a two year old girl who was very pleased with her own cleverness as identifying Cat's species). To the right is Marvel, who lives in Norway and likes to do magic tricks. He hopes one day to own a top hat to sleep in, but until then he uses a wedding hat from Marks & Spencers.

So there you go, 2 cats. If you were Noah, you'd be feeling pretty pleased with your progress right about now.

This is Dwain. Dwain is a monkey, even though you can't see his tail in this photo, and his ears are squashed by his pencil. He needs his pencil because he's a building contractor from Newcastle. Even though Dwain lives in London now, he is very proud of his accent - a fact not diminished by how often he has heard 'Why-eii man' said in terrible imitation of Geordie. Most people are no where near as original as they think they are.

I must confess something I feel terribly guilty about here. Last time I was telling you about my monkeys I completely forgot one. This has left Toby (full name Toby After-Olie, because it was noted while I was making him that he apparently looks like my friend Toby Olie. I take no responsibility for this comparison, it was in no way intentional and I make no comment about any supposed similarity***.) with some mental scaring and abandonment issues, but he doesn't let that get in his way. Toby fights the forces of darkness, and can be seen here with his business partner $uave Jr - $uave is using Toby to fend off vampires.

For purposes of comparison, I include here a photo of the original Toby Olie***. This Toby does not fight the forces of darkness, instead he prats about in a wicker basket pretending to be a Horse. I leave you to draw your own conclusion.

Noodle

* I can't remember exactly what Stephen Fry said, but here is an interesting hypothetical conversation about the number of animals on the ark.

** Here is Julian Barnes reading The Stowaway

*** Sorry Toby.

Making Tony: evolve your fish

2010-05-12T18:35:00.004+01:00

Ok... No nonsense, straight up and on 'em

This is the second part of a how-to; the first bit is here

Making The Feet

You can use the ankle that's left over from making your fish body, or if like me you prefer contrasting colour feet, use a different bit of sock.

There are two ways to mark out your feet - using a template, or freehand. I tend to make fish in big batches, so I use a template (cut from magazine covers or whatever thin card / thick paper you happen to have) - the advantage of this is that you guarantee your feet will be the same size & shape. But, hey, if you wanna go for it freehand, go for it. Or you could purposefully give Tony radically different sized feet...

Either way, the basic shape your aiming for is something like in this photo below on the left. The size is up to you, and it may be worth playing about the the exact shape to get one you like - Making Tony #1, I did soooooo many prototype feet before I was happy with them.

Once your happy with the shape, mark around your template / draw out in trick marker/dressmaker's chalk twice (or three times. Or six times. Who am i to tell you how many feet Tony should have. This whole things about celebrating mutants, ain't it?) . Then back stitch around them (I don't need to tell you to go through both thicknesses of sock, right?). Try to keep the stitches fairly small, but don't fret to much about how neat they are, no one's gonna see 'em. Leave a little gap on the instep for...

Turning Out & Stuffing

Cut out your feet - try to keep the seam allowance to a minimum except by the gap on your instep, where you should make sure there's a reasonable amount left.

Turn the socks right way in. Stuff 'em, pretty solidly - if your feet are too squishy Tony wont be able to balance on them. Once your happy, close up the gap on your instep with slip-stitch. Hurrah!

This Little Piggy...

Time to do our toes - yhea! This is my favourite bit, probably because by now the end is in sight. Choose what colour you want to 'draw' your toes in - I guess you could do it in the same colour as your sock fabric, you'll still see the definition, but personally I like a slightly stronger look created by using contrasting colours. I like to mark on the toes so i can work out even placement before I start to sew. Make them slightly longer than you'd think, because as you tighten them they'll get slightly shorter. Thread your needle & toe your thread on, then, at the base of the toe, plunge your needle right through both layers of sock & the stuffing. Then take your thread round, over the top of the toes & back to the side you started. Push the needle through & pull tight. There you go... basic toe (well, it almost rhymes). I like to go over each toe 2-3 times to really straighten the line, but again that's up to you. Repeat four times on each foot and your done.

Final Touches

Grab your Tony's body & flip him upside down, decide on your feet placement and simply sew them on with ladder stitch.

Then flip him again so he's right way up (hold him at a distance in case he voms from all the flipping...) and sew on the eyes. A little note for people used to sewing buttons on clothes, it's best NOT to use the shank method here, as the eyes will flop around if you do, so just use normal button stitch.

And your done. Now you just need to educate him... I recommend starting off with Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin

Nxx

Making Tony: fish sticks

2010-05-04T21:00:00.008+01:00

A couple of people wanted patterns for making Fuckin' Tonys, and, as I don't really use patterns (I just make it up as I go along) I thought the easiest thing was to write an instructional. Therefore... here you go. I've never done anything like this before, so let me know if it makes sense. Or, as is more likely, is a pile of gibberish.

Making your Tony should be fairly easy - there's a bit of sewing, but it's all quite simple. Each one takes me about 2-3 hours to make, but that will depend on how fast you sew.

Supplies & Tools

* One pair of socks. The most important thing is choosing your socks. And it's all a matter of taste. Solid colour or pattern? Or contrast colour toe? And think about the texture, you can get all kinds of chunky knit or cabled socks, or just stick to regular ones - but remember the woolier your sock the quicker the weave will unravel once you cut into it, so the faster you'll need to sew. And size matters too - baby socks will give you baby fish, but be fiddly to work with. I would recommend not buying really cheap socks, as the material tends to be thin (meaning once you stuff it, the stuffing shows through - especially if it's a dark colour sock), and quite often the toe structure will be wonky, which will mess up Tony's expression. If you go for patterned socks, think about the pattern you use - on Tony, a design that has a clear top & bottom (like little cartoon pictures of cupcakes/hearts/etc, or text) won't sit the right way up.

If you want your Tony to have feet a different colour from it's body, you'll need a third (different coloured) sock (or if you have a box full of sock bits you can use a scrap... oh wait... that's just me, right?)

* Stuffing. You can buy Toy stuffing in bags from most haberdashery stores, or buy pillows/cushions and gut them. Don't use old pillows coz the stuffing will be lumpy, and you don't want lumpy fish.

* A Trick marker pen or Dress-makers chalk

* Scissors.

* Pins - optional - for if you find it easier to pin before you sew, though I never bother.

* Buttons or googly eyes. A pair of 'em. Again a matter of taste as to size, colour etc...

* Needles (or a sewing machine) & thread. I sew my sockies by hand, as I like my craft projects to be portable, but there's no reason you couldn't use a machine if you prefer.
* Thick paper (or thin card. whatever) to make a foot template from - again optional, but particularly useful if you're making multiple Tonys like I do. I use bits of magazine cover (preferably the censored out boobs from nasty lads mags, but that is entirely a question of taste. Ok, ok... a very big question.) any similar scrap you have handy will work.

Step One - Making the Face

Take one of your socks, turned inside out, and lay them out on their side & upside down - (like in fig. one). Make sure it's all lined up & neat, then draw out (in trick marker) the curve for the front of your fish.

The toe line (the seam that would sit on top of your toes were you to wear the socks) will form your fish's grin, so play with how the curve sits over this line to give him a bigger/smaller/lopsided smile.

Once your happy, sew along the line in back stitch- picking up both thicknesses of sock. Don't worry about how even your stitches are, though try to keep them reasonably small if you can.

Step Two - The Tail (part one)

Mark out the tail - again in trick marker. You should avoid including the heel, because that'll give your fish a weird bum. Work out how much of the foot of your sock you want to use - ie. how long your fishes body will be. Sketch in a line along the height of the sock at the point where you want to cut off your fish. Then mark out this line into three even(ish) sections - at this stage you'll leave the middle third open so you can stuff the fish through the hole there later. On the other two thirds, draw a curved line to the outer edge of the sock - the depth & lenght of the curve will determine the shape of Tony's back, and should roughly reflect the depth & lenght of his face. Once happy, sew along these two curves, again in back stitch.

You can now cut off the excess sock from the toe (not too close to your stitching), as well as the whole ankle & heel from the back. Put the body piece (which should look like the image below once you turn it right side out) to one side whilst we get one with the next couple of bits

Step 3 - The Tail Fin

Cut the cuffs off both your socks - leaving about 2cm of ankle attached to give yourself a bit of lenght to play with & provide for seam allowances. Take one of these cuff pieces and sew around the ankle edge in big-ish running stitch - DON'T TIE THE THREAD OFF ONCE YOUR DONE - instead, pull it tight to ruche up your stitches and pull the tail into shape. Put a few stitches through to hold it, then tie off. You can put the tail piece to one side while we make...

Step 4 - The Pectoral Fins

Each breast fin is basically half a tail, so grab the other cuff (the one you cut off earlier) and cut in into two equal halves. Sew running stitch up the ankle of one half and pull tight, then put in a couple more holding stitches. Repeat on the other half a cuff - two fins! (If you want to make a Dorsal fin too, just cut your cuff into 3 and use the same method on each piece)

Grab up your body piece again to attach the fins. You may want to turn it right side out to decide on your fin positioning, but remember to turn it inside-out again before you start to work. Make a small slit about 2/3rds the lenght of the short edge of your fin and stretch it a little to poke the edge through. Fig 2 should demonstrate (through my skillful use of Image in Word. hell yes) what I mean. The Red line is your slit, and the purple dotted line indicates where the fin lies INSIDE the body, with just the edge poking through. It is also sensible to make sure that you have the right side of your fin facing outwards. If your not sure, pin it up and turn it right side out to check. Once happy, use back stitch to attach - making sure you secure both sides of the stitch through the whole thickness of your fin. Repeat on t'other side.

Step 5 - Stuffing

Turn your sock right way out & stuff. How full you want him is up to you, but if he is too floppy he wont sit nicely on his feet. Work out any lumps and generally play around until you think your Tony is Bootiful.

Step 6 - The Tail (part two)

Right - this bit could be tricky so pay attention. Sew a line of running stitch around the hole in your tail, and pull mostly tight. You should still be able to get a finger in the hole (I know, ewww...) because that's where your tail piece is gonna sit. Pop your tail in, making sure all the sewing you did to form the tail piece is hidden inside the sock, then tuck in the seam allowance from the body piece as well. Once you have it all nice & neat, simply use a ladder stitch to hold it all in... Et Volia! One fish*.

* No, he doesn't have eyes yet. Yes, that is mean of me - leaving him blind. But I prefer to leave the eyes until the very last thing on all my sockies, as they are so important to creating the facial expression, so I think I am better to wait until I have the full context of the otherwise-complete Sockie to enable me to position them for best advantage. Plus, once they have eyes they can watch me - and I don't want my Sockies watching me sew them up - too weird.

The miracle of evolution (or making and attaching the feet) will be in a separate post, as I'm off for a cuppa now, and I may even treat myself to a couple of Chocolate Hobnobs (whatever happened to Chocolate Orange Hobnobs? They were bloody brilliant) .Please let me know if any of that doesn't make sense - post questions here and I'll answer to the best of my ability

TTFN

Noodle

second part of this how-to here

A Tale of Tails

2010-04-28T18:57:00.000+01:00

Sockie bunnies are always popular, and here's two more to prove it.

Pickle (the pink & red one) belongs to a little girl called Lily (Get it? Pickle...Lily... truly, I am a comedic genius) and is my first attempt at a jointed sockie. By which I mean her legs are buttoned on so move freely on the hip. To be honest, they move somewhat too freely, they wont hold a position, which is a shame. I'm looking into the possibility of doing 'properly' jointed limbs, like you get on really nice teddy bears - I'm not sure if it'll work with Sockies, as the sock fabric is (obviously) stretchy, but it's on my list of stuff to try out. That's not to say it'll happen soon, as I am one of human kinds finest procrastinators, but it's on the list.

Pickle has a new kind of tail too... not something that all socks will lend themselves too but this pair had funky wave-topped cuffs that just begged me to play with them. As much as I loved the effect, I think mostly I'm gonna have to stick with old skool sock-string pom pom, or button tails (as seen on Rowan & Betty) as they are much less sock dependant

It all seems to be about the tails at the minute, doesn't it?

This is Rowan, showing off his retro stylee pom pom tail. Although it must be admitted it was not so retro when Rowan stylee-ed it, as he was the first Rabbit to pomp his tail. Rowan belongs to a guy called Richard who builds robots, and is therefore officially one of the coolest people I know. Rowan is a Pirate-Scientist in training, and therefore officially one of the coolest Sockies I know. So, between them, their apartment is like a freezer (full of Mars Icecream).

And this is Betty, displaying her button tail. The button tail is a personal favourite of mine. But then, I have a massive button fetish, I love the things, so that's not surprising really. Betty lives on a Army base in Texas, where she out strips me on the job front because the Tanks she plays with aren't made of plastic.

Anyway, back onto my new bunnies - I'll leave you to work out through process of elimination which Rabbit is Cheese (again with the uber-comedy. My wit astounds me sometimes). Cheese belongs to Lily's sister Flo. She (Cheese, not Flo) looked a bit Donnie Darko - opps - which hopefully I rectified by changing the shape of the ears and neck, and making her grin a bit dopey lookin'

Anyway, I've talked enough rubbish at you for now, off to bug my colleagues instead

Ta ra

Noodle

TEERRIIFFIICCC!

2010-04-26T13:56:00.002+01:00

This is Katie-Coral, (she is mostly called just Katie by her friends). She is a very creative little pig, who loves colouring-in, or sticking n glueing - she likes to make pictures of her favourite TV characters (Charlie & Lola, or Miss Piggy. Not Piglet, he is far too wet.). The glueing isn't so easy with her tiny little trotters, but Katie is a determined little thing, she uses her snout to push things into place.

Oh... and Katie is very proud of her tail. Its allll curly

Lamb: How about "Pig Supreme"?
Charlotte: It sounds like a rich dessert.
Goose: How about terrific, terrific, terrific?
Charlotte: Cut that down to one terrific and it will do nicely.
Wilbur: But Charlotte, I'm not terrific.
Charlotte: You're terrific as far as I am concerned.

Noodsxx

Here's one I made earlier...

2010-04-20T18:51:00.004+01:00

Tomorrow is my Bookcrossing Birthday - it'll be two years since the madness began and my life was taken over by Ballycumber stickers. I've been saving up a little treat to celebrate: I have two little Sockies who have, through no fault of their own, found themselves homeless. Now, given how popular Sockies have proved amongst the BC community, I thought I'd raffle them off to other BC-ers as a kind of Birthday-present-in-reverse.

So, if your a bookcrosser and you want a to enter the raffle, go to this forum thread & post your choice of Sockie. If your not a BC member, go here to join (and, hey, why not put me - Vekiki - as your referring member?).

Iggle

This is Iggle. Iggle is really good with children, he loves to babysit and indulges kids in imaginary games, chasing around and being very silly. In fact, he can be rather hyper-active and a bit of a handful - blame the ADHD - but really goodhearted. His lively nature and penchant for games will tire out even the most stubborn toddler (or insomniac for that matter). Iggle never sits still, except to watch 'In the Night Garden' - which is his favourite show because the hero has the same name as him. Do you think you could cope with this high-octane little foot-ful (see what I did there? He's made of socks, so instead of being a handful... oh. sorry.)

Mike

This is Mike. Mike used to be a member of the BNP, but a couple of years ago he got done for GHB and made to go to Anger Management. Through these sessions, Mike found himself and came out of the closet. He is now quite commonly found out & about around Soho where he runs a popular drag-show. As you can see from his sparkly nipple tassels (it was a compromise - he wanted a sequined man-thong, but I refused to make him one), he is now beginning to break the burlesque scene too.

Given Mike's quite startling change of direction, it's unsurprising that his old friends from the BNP no loner speak to him (except the threats, of course!) - Do you want to give him a new home and help him in his new life?

Edit to add: Well, I had far more BCers enter for this than I expected, but my boss picked 2 names out of the hat: Bagmaker and Yorkshire-lass! Congratulations guys, and thank you every one for the lovely Bookiversary wishes. Particular thanks to Releanna for the gift of a months Members Plus privileges on the BC site - very much appreciated
Here's to another year setting bally free
Noods xx

mon·key [mŭng'kē] noun.

2010-04-15T14:56:00.002+01:00

I just couldn't resist these socks... I mean, they have pictures of sock monkeys* on them: Superb.

This is Simon. He now lives in Delhi with Prachi - she is my Bookcrossing Birthday Buddy and so I shipped him over to her along with a couple of books and a few other birthday treats. I wasn't sure if I could trust Simon not to eat the candy I put in the box with him, but it seems he was well behaved (for once). A top tip if you ever bump into Simon: he is very cheeky, with a penchant for practical jokes and general naughtiness - but he can be bribed into good behaviour with his favourite food: jam sandwiches. Raspberry jam is best because it keeps him busy and out of harms way: he spends the next few hours picking the seeds out of his teeth.

This is the only other monkey I've made (so far, anyway) - Miss Ooky.

I'm sure you can work out from the photo which one is made of socks - the other one is Charlotte Joan- they live together in Texas. I met Princess CJs mum through Bookcrossing too - she was trying to make a sock monkey while she was pregnant but not having any luck (she is a champion knitter though, so we do craft swaps as my knitting blows). Anyway, I made Miss Ooky for her and she knitted me what I assumed was a mobile phone caddy. Turns out it was meant for hanging in the shower to put your soap in. Apparently my mistake was blamed on my being a 'wacky Londoner.' Yup.

Anyway, Princess CJ is nearly two now and I'm told still plays with Miss Ooky. It's soppy (not soapy), I know, but that really makes me smile :)

* Apparently you pluralise monkey without doing all that drop the y add i e business. English is so bloody irregular.

TTFN

Noodle

Fuckin' Tony

2010-04-12T19:10:00.004+01:00

Imagine being the first dude ever to have feet. That'd be really tough. Where I went to school you got teased for wearing the wrong clothes - imagine turning up with a new appendage.

How did those individual mutant freaks figure out how to use their new bits? There's no precedent, did they just stumble upon their purpose by accident?

Did Tony - that first fish dude with feet - just hop onto land and stand up:

''Fuck me. Those are gonna come in handy.''

And imagine what Tony would think - standing there on his new feet at the brink of the beginnings of mankind as we know it - if he could look forward just a few short millions of years and see one of his descendants, a Palestinian Jew by the name of Jesus, having a nail hammered through his feet (those very same feet that Tony provided him with) as a punishment for having a schizophrenic discourse with a God who was created by man to explain the existence of feet in the absence of the knowledge of the existence of Tony...

---

Ok, so the Story of Tony the fish is quite blatantly stolen from Tim Minchin. This little tale was the inspiration for my latest Sockie design, so I gave my first Tony (the blue one) to Tim (had a massive fan-girl moment actually, all bright red and shaky. oh dear) when I met him at the Australian Film Festival a couple of weeks ago. Tim said he liked the idea of a fish with feet made from socks - at which point I basically melted into a pile of insensible goo, coz I really know how to make a good impression.

FYI - Tim was un-speakably lovely: I literally just waved at him across the foyer (in a slightly brain-fail way: I managed to forget in that moment of time that I don't actually know him) and he came over to say hello. I was with a couple of other fans, and he very politely greeted us all, then made excuses to leave (he was going to be introducing the film: Two Fist One Heart), at which point I sort of attacked him with a small stuffed fish. Unsurprisingly he ran away as speedily as possible (in a nice-but-slightly-scared way). He even came over again after the film and chatted (with the others, I was still too mushy to make intelligent conversation. But I listened. And maybe drooled a little) about his involvement in it, and was generally a delightful and charming as I expected (And, let's face it, my expectations were pretty high on that front).

Anyway, my little Darwin fish have been fairly popular in such a short time... I try to make each one have its own individual personality (coz evolution is all about celebrating the individual mutant freak who moves a species on a teeny tiny bit)

Here's to the freaks

Noodle

Theemutsen wrap it up

2010-04-12T15:26:00.005+01:00

Well... the final scores from our big online game of Bookcrossing Monopoly are in... My team 'Theemutsen' has come in second place. So near, and yet so far...

Still, we had a great time, and got more 'bonus ballys' (extra points awarded for originality) than any other team, so we were clearly doing something right!

A few highlights...

- Leaving a copy of Harry Potter on platform 9 3/4 (which got picked up and taken to Texas)

- Being told off for taking photos in Asda (it's apparently illegal. Wha?)

- One of my team-mates books being caught, re-released and caught again, all in one day

- Watching 3 (3!!) members of security trying to asses how dangerous the 'Free book' I left at The Transport Museum was (I'm clearly quite the bookcrossing trouble-maker...)

- Hearing back from a book which I left in London that somehow swam to New Zealand in a month!

- Being completely out-done by a dutch bookcrosser in the fashion stakes: I wore thematic shoes for my release, she wore thematic lingerie for hers

- One of my team-mates leaving a book on top of a GIANT sculpture, with a sign hanging off saying to Pull (then duck) for a free book

And of course getting to know my teammates, Talamasca & LenaLena... two great Dutch bookcrossers almost as obsessed with tea as I am. It sucks that I can't make it to the Amsterdam convention to raise a teapot with them (bloody work).

And I'm not at all bitter about coming 2nd.

Absolutely not.

Toodles,

Noodle

Noodle's Noggin

Ploomin' Marvelous

Game Brain

Irrational Unfuntionality

Here's One I Made Earlier...

Excuse Me While I Squee A Little

Night Sky

No Kidding

Cat-Naps

N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL

English - detected to German translation

Lions and Tigers and Vampire-Wolves, Oh My!

a lot o' duffers...

Segregtion of the Gingers

Letter To A Flemish Nation

Noodle-ham Adventures

Skinning the Cat

Broken-Book Marks

Fire Door

Panda Attack

Showered in Elephant Snot

That's Amore

Lump the Sugar

Unchained Melody

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Crafting with Cat

Holly & Ivy Refuse to Grow Up

Doorbells and sleigh-bells and schnitzel with...

The Night Train

Sunshine On A Rainy Day

I Felt My Heart Skip

Jazz Hands

ad·dic·tion

Little Fall of Rexes

Heads and Tails

Proclamation of the Plants

Knitted Knecklaces

Doodle Dolly

Geek Crafts

Wolf Worship 3

Getting On The Naughty List

No Inuendo Intended

Lizard Queen*

Un-dead Valentines

Polymerisation / Procrastination

Handmade Horses

All Buttoned Up

Snow!

Kitkat....

Magic Moments

Clone Your Own...

Plonk Plonk

Old, New, Borrowed n' Blue...

Down With This Sort of Thing!

Alphabet Bunnies & Bamboo Horses

Hot Fudge

Wolf Worship Two...

The Nerd Scarf

Cryptic Crush

Penguin Pride

Cake or Death?

A Cat Called Curdle

Wolf Worship One

Celebrating Diversity

Acceptable in the 80s?

Couldn't find a plastic chair

Hay Fever

Lilac Towels

The Flood

Making Tony: evolve your fish

Making Tony: fish sticks

A Tale of Tails

TEERRIIFFIICCC!

Here's one I made earlier...

mon·key [mŭng'kē] noun.

Fuckin' Tony

Theemutsen wrap it up