Flibbertygibbet

The Making Space

Making at the Making Space.

What’ll we do this weekend, we pondered.  Shopping? Bit of X-Factor?  Mooch to the pub for lunch?  Oh come, hardly.

 

No, let’s paint dental alginate on our faces in an east London workshop and then not think about losing all of our fingers. Ok just to be completely clear, Simon Aronson who runs The Making Space would never let anything like that happen – this is a professional workshop and it’s run as such.  We went there to make custom masks - you know, for Halloween, for parties, for trips to Tesco's on rainy Tuesday mornings. 

After mixing up alginate power 1:1 with water, you paint it over your model’s face, on top of Vaselined eyelashes and brows. I jumped up and said I’d go first as I’d suddenly and rather inconveniently remembered that frankly, I hate stuff like this.  

Probably the least comfortable part for me when my eyes were covered and the world goes very dark indeed, before wetted strips of plaster-impregnated bandage are laid over the top. Just a little nostril space left open and me looking like I'm melting, mellllllllting.  Apart from that, the worst part is not being able to contribute to the discussions around you when you’re trapped behind the layers (it was lucky that Emma made her Status Quo revelation before Lucy was actually plastered up, because it made us laugh so much that I think Lucy might have ended up with a rather wobbly mask) and it’s a fairly quick process.

 

The alginate provides a copy of all the lumps, bumps and contours of your face, the plaster strips form a shell for it to sit in. You nestle this mould in a container and then fill it with plaster of Paris to make an exact replica of your face.  It sets relatively quickly though it does continue to generate heat for some time afterwards.  Once it’s dry or almost dry, you peel off the mould and you’re left looking at a disturbingly pasty, chalky replica of yourself.

Ready shredded paper is the basis of the papier mache that you use to fashion your mask.   I initially thought that I’d do something quite flat and then build up design using milliput afterwards.  Then I couldn’t stop thinking about the masks in V for Vendetta and suddenly my mask bore the cheekbones I’ve always wanted. Lucy and Emma made fabulous nature-inspired creations – I think Emma’s reminds me of Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy!  Day two of the workshop is solely taken up by cutting, sanding, filling and then surface decorating, then varnishing at the end. I wanted a cracked patina to mine so Simon suggested painting it red first (yay – my favourite colour; and also the traditional base for gold) and then rubbing it lightly with a gold wax. Finally I used a matte varnish all over, and blocked out everything but the cheekbones which were glossed to a candy-apple shine. 

Because it’s fitted precisely to your face, the mask sits close and is comfortable to wear plus presumably will stay on better. Simon is amazingly patient and obviously gets a kick out of helping people to realise whatever twisted  or soaring vision is tumbling out of their heads. There are lots of other courses on offer.  I didn’t think I had much interest in making chainmail initially – then I thought ‘silver jump rings’...

It’s Bunker Time

Caroline mooted the idea of the Blitz party a couple of weekends ago, and in the spirit of saying yes to everything, I jumped at the chance because it’s one of those things we always miss and then grumble about.  Fortune smiled on me and I even managed to win a pair of tickets for us, hah!

After a girly supper for us and another friend, Caroline put her coiffeuse skills to work and created a cute 40s do for me (cue use of a scissored donut and approximately four dozen hair clips for my slippery fine hair) and I’d managed to find an appropriate 40s style dress lurking in the wardrobe, you know, as you do.  

By the time we reached Shoreditch High Street, there were girls sporting Victory Roll hair and men in uniform popping up everywhere. The Blitz Party takes place in railway arches which are kitted out in bomb-shelter fashion, complete with sandbagged bar.  Probably so there’s something padded for you to fall against when you finally slump there after beating the queue to the bar, then pass out at the prices. ‘Refreshments’ included cheese and pickle sandwiches, assembled before your eyes.  ‘Didn’t manage to catch the names of the bands – one studiously styled in WWII outfits, with two very glamorous singers; and then a slightly left choice, a crazy gypsy kletzmer ensemble who kept the crowds entertained.

One of the genius things about the Blitz Party is that dressing-up is rather more than encouraged, it’s practically mandatory. We saw about three people who were in civvies (non-period) who all looked decidedly uncomfortable.  I’m not surprised, the rest of us looked fabulous, darling.  Even more impressive is the fact that all the guys really live up to the occasion – and it’s not as if they can grab the first tea dress they find and throw that on like the girls do, ahem, and then put the effort into hair and make-up – but it turns out that eBay and military surplus websites do a cracking trade in authentic or completely passable uniforms with prices starting around the imminently reasonable £20 mark.

The crowd is mainly 20- and 30-somethings, and therefore decidedly short on actual dancers (people busting sway-step-sway, step-sway-step moves don’t count here) apart from the odd couple making valiant efforts in the thick of the crowds.  I grabbed a flyer for lessons because I really really do want to learn, but it didn’t make it home with us. We found some new friends though, and they’re already researching swing dance holidays for next year, telling us that there will be cute boys there for us (and them) to dance with.  We may well join them. Abi, are you coming? 

How to tell your mother you got a new tattoo

Cooking up schemes

I still can't quite believe that it's now only one more week at work. One more week before I jettison myself into the world of freelancing. Other people call it unemployment. However there are many things that will be keeping me busy. 

Not just eating. I love to cook - and this is something I've really rediscovered lately - and as soon as Amazon's bloody useless courier service surrenders my two new cook books to me, I will be experimenting more with Italian and French cuisine.  Above: soda bread (as my friend Robyn calls it, 'ethnic food')  and its twin is Vanilla Honey Pound Cake from Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa. 

My latest favourite i.e. craved food is Nigella's Moonblush tomatoes, seen here with Parma ham and fresh basil (can't believe I've kept something green alive - on purpose, as opposed to something green I've cultured by accident, in a penicillin-type way) on a wholemeal muffin. She's right - they are fabulous as a pasta sauce, particularly with some chilli flakes and bacon thrown in.  Still don't like raw tomatoes though.

Finally something I've been craving for a long time - again from Nigella's Feast, her Red Prawn and Mango Curry which is utterly delish.  One of the problems about cooking for one is that you end up eating the same thing for more than one meal - invariably having to downsize recipes and when it gets to that splitting one egg thing, it makes you a bit crazy and cranky so you make enough for two and eat it again the following day. In the case of this recipe, one of the great things about cooking for one is that you end up eating the same thing for more that one meal. Flib doesn't share food, it seems.

It also remind me chilli = flavour :: flavour = satiety far earlier than with bland food. This is important in the wake of a big diet and rediscovering fabulous food. 

Went to see Julie & Julia tonight, along with a friend who desperately wants a relationship, marriage and children and to be a full-time painter, who just split up with a man who is desperately in love with her, and desperately wants to marry her, have children with her and can afford to provide very well for her and family and was encouraging to leave her corporate life. But - and oh this is really the biggest but there can possibly be - she doesn't love him.  Despite having tried hard to convince herself, she knows that she never will. It doesn't matter a damn if all your boxes are ticked off if you're ever going to wake up one morning and think "Well it's fine. Just fine. I can make the best of it". Even worse if this becomes clear to you, vividly, during what is supposed to be the honeymoon period of the relationship.  So, I took her to see a movie which is essentially about two very happy couples and pursuing your dreams. Go me! Luckily it did cheer her up rather than send her off the deep end. Ah, I think. Might just text her now...

I love feel-good movies. Mainly because, you know, they make me feel good. That there's a world of possibilities out there, that you can find your niche, that everything can work out well for everyone. I have my rose coloured glasses on, but I rarely take them off.  I admire the fact that both Julie and Julia as portrayed in the movie took risks and found their true north. Would that we all good do that. It did raise interesting questions in my mind about 'Why blog? Is this incredibly narcissistic? Does anyone care - or do I have to care about it very much in order for it to resonate with people? " and then I put all those things aside and started mentally composing this post.

This isn't going to turn into a cookery blog. Primarily because I'm not willing to work on my presentation skills enough. Oh by the way, Mum, I'm not going to just be cooking. Don't worry. There'll be some knitting too. 

It's about time

That I came back. I'm sorry, I have actually been off having adventures but I either don't bring a camera, so feel like it will bore you all to tears without photos or you know, it was just so long *and* without a photo that I just didn't bother. Bad blogger, I know.  And I missed this.

How have you been doing? Please, drop a comment and say hello and remind me to pop by your blog etc.

Things I forgot to take photos of include the I Knit Day. Hell, I even forgot to bring a camera. But I met Diane who works with my auntie in Dublin, who's lovely, as well as the usual suspects - it was so lovely to see everyone, even briefly. Pauline had brought me to her gym that morning which is superswanky and lovely. I decided to join. Because shortly I may have loads of spare time. I have eight more (work) days to go at my current job. Then I go freelance. I may have already mentioned this here, or alluded to it, but I'm going freelance as a writer, editor, proofreader. I miss the world of words and books terribly - I want to return to my own writing, as well as helping others and getting deeply involved back in that atmosphere.

Nearly finished the Artist's Way. It's been a revelation, that's all I'll say as you'll either agree or think I'm crazy and either way that's fine. Its culmination will come around the time of me leaving the job, and attending a wedding I've been looking forward to for a very long time. It's going to be an enormous celebration!

Since I last talked to you:

I've been getting back to proper food - sometimes that's as simple as buying super sweet strawberries for my breakfast. Seen underneath: one of the napkins from the overlocker course at Make Lounge. Not scared of it any more.

 

Saw this amazing documentary at the V&A. You should really go to see it if you have the opportunity. It made me horribly jealous of all the space that US crafters seem to have - and this coming from the woman with a whole spare room for her endeavours.

Loved these cats. Emma though they were spooky in the extreme. I wanted to steal. Had to sit on my hands.

 

Oh yeah. I took a trip. A reclaim the city trip.  Just loved it.  Found myself in places that were familar after an absence of probably seven years.

 

Did keep seeing things that reminded me of other people:

Ok so it's true, lots of things were closed because I went in August. Next trip will be in November, I think. This poster made me laugh.

There is some knitting on the go - this is a super ginormo cake of Wollmeise. It's for Muir. I am struggling. It's a project that has a sentimental dimension, from this most unsentimental girl. It if all works out, I'll tell you all about it.

Today's post is brought to you by the letter...

B. BBBBBBB.  I got a new keybbbbboard. It's beeyoutiful, bouncy and best of of all, not broken. I accept full responsibility for drinking coffee in the proximity of the old one while not quite awake one morning... I killed just one key, the B. I mean, it could have been worse - a vowel, for example - and I expanded my vocabulary while avoiding words using that letter, it's been a long couple of months using the cut and paste function while trying to decide whether to spring for a new machine (this mac is a little old in the tooth though that's not necessarily a reason to retire it) or find another solution. The answer came in the form of the Bookyard, who sell Apple spares and I got a new keyboard for about £50 and fitted it myself, rather than paying the £150 I was quoted by two different repair shops in town.  I used to think "Why do I have complete crap like watchmakers screwdrivers cluttering up my house?" The answer is (a) to make jewellery like this and (b) to enable me to remove the metal plate beneath the mac's keyboard, unplug the old one and put in a new one in three minutes.  The service from the Bookyard was excellent after an initial snafu where they shipped the wrong model, but they responded to my email within 30 mins - at 11:00pm at night and it was all sorted out the next day. I may yet send them my titanium powerbook to see if they can do anything with it...

Lots of little adventures this week.  I was lucky enough to win a dozen cupcakes from Ella's Bakehouse, a chi-chi new bakery at 20a Covent Garden Market, where they specialise in cupcakes with a couture theme (the woman behind it used to be a model, the face of Versace, apparently)

 

 

They're yum. Very very yum in fact.  I brought them to the volunteers' meeting at Wilton's that evening, as I'd already brought baked goods to work once this week - and to my neighbours too.  I am luring the guy next door into a false sense of security, once he's hooked on the cookies I'll be asking for some help putting up the long awaited shelves in the studio. I baked like a maniac last week because my grandmother had fallen and fractured her hip (fine now after an operation) and I needed displacement activities.  Cue two dozen cookies, rye sodabread, and muffins.  Plus the sourdough that didn't quite work out (the sponge starter is hidden under Lotusen's cupcake teatowel below) which I'll be attempting again today.

 

I've been back to the Make Lounge (the more of observant of you may wonder if I ever leave) to do the embroidery class. Super sweet teacher whose name I've forgotten, eek, but you can find her via the ML's website. I started on a pillowcase using one of the Sublime Stitching patterns, Dutch-Russian but due to attempting time-consuming satin stitch on it, it's still languishing.  It's a supercute pattern though, and you can see another classmate's project from that pattern here.  So for some instant gratification, I cam home and did this: a quick cupcake onesie.

I'm still persevering with running, 3 miles every other day. I loved the physio I saw about my feet/shins/knees/hips (nobody can agree what it really is) the other day because the first thing she said when I walked in was 'So you're a runner' and then I realised she didn't think this was lunacy and rather was focussed on how to keep me running rather than simply telling me not to. Incredibly refreshing. She did suggest that after a spin class or any other time when I'm having problems with numbness that I should get someone to massage my outer knee and showed me how to do that - I can't quite imagine throwing myself down on the floor of the spin studio and saying 'You, here, now'... but otherwise the advice was promising.

Lots more weekend news to come but given the issues with Typepad recently I'll quite while I'm ahead. Though when I bitched about TP on Twitter, I got a swift response from someone in their technical customer service offering to help.  I'll be taking him up on that. Between the b key and procrastination, I'd become lax enough at posting and then the renewed technical issues, after the utter debacle earlier this year, made me wonder whether to just shut the blog down but now I'm a little more optimistic...

Typepad, I hate you again

I got an email to say that I'd been upgraded to some new version of Typepad. I spent an hour on a post. I even cut and pasted to avoid the issues with formatting in the last post. And Typepad chewed it up again.  Are we back to that ridiculous situation where they've upgraded and screwed it up again?  FFS.

More than I thought

I mutter to myself 'well what will you blog about - you haven't done anything much recently'.  Upon reading the divine Lotusen's blog though, I realise that in fact I've been out and about quite a bit! (I'm the G that she mentions).  Here's the dress - not yet shortened but it's actually quite cool!  

I'm not sure that it's really designer, but this is what's on the label:

I've had a lot of freelance work on - I spent today repaginating a 500 page book, yes, all of it - and also the day job has prevented me from doing fun stuff like having coffee with Helen and the bub, bah. To say it's keeping me busy would be quite the understatement. That's also my rubbish way of saying 'I'm too braindead to fix the formatting problems here, sorry guys'.

London's climate has been temperamental, to say the least. Last night was cold enough to warrant pulling on the Misti Alpaca socks (long since finished though apparently never detailed here) and grabbing the quilt, though we've had scorchio days and too-hot-to-sleep over the last weeks too. I'm persevering with the running despite the weather (purchased shorts on Friday. Needed to wear thermal running tights on Saturday) and using the Nike+ is really helping, as I've mentioned before I am ludicrously competitive with myself. I get a little thrill every time Tiger Woods chimes out to tell me that I've run a new 1m PB. (9:11 - yeah, I never said I was Speedy Gonzales but I compensate with stubbornness)  If anyone else is using the Nike+ website, I'm Scampermouse on there. Come and say hello.

 

I'm spending far too much time on Twitter lately, mainly because it has introduced me to lots of interesting people and places, both conceptually and IRL and all of the following was introduced to me via Twitter.  The zeitgeist nature of it coupled with the fact that it seems increasingly to translate to real life, intrigues me wildly.  On Saturday I went along to meet some Tweeps (ok sorry - the terminology drives me insane, I can't really bear to say that) to meet some people from Twitter at the Crafternoon at The Old Queen's Head in Islington. I'm halfway through making a Measuring Tape Rosette from a kit I got there - I have to say my only gripe about these craft kits is that the thread supplied is usually crap - in theory I'll finish it at home. Ahem.  I did teach someone to purl though.  Halo polished.

In the evening it was off to Wilton's Music Hall, with some of the knitting crew thankfully as time with them recently has been far too curtailed, to see Tiny Wallop's Phantasmagorical Extravaganza.  It was utterly hilarious - to the point where my cheeks were aching from laughing so much - tinged with the sense of buttock-clenching fear that comes only from Audience Participation with us all trying to judge which strategy worked best to avoid being chosen - look at the performer, or avoid their gaze? There's one more night, which is Saturday 18th July, if you're in London. Come! Catherine Rose, the magician and mind-reader who opened the show, was amazing too. I want to know how she did that with the table.  Even when the hall is dark, Wilton's is a magical place, currently raising funds for renovation, so you should pop along and 'drink for charity' - patronise the bar if you're in the area.

 Finally, again via Twitter, this is one of the funniest things I've seen in ages and I now feel the need to purchase the kit. If you don't like profanity with your pastry or are exceptionally easily offended, there's no need to click here. 

Don't tell my mother.

Yesterday I went for my first run since January. Well, a ralk (run/walk) around the circumference of my most loved local park. As I plodded - without grace, speed or even much purpose because really, you don't want to to jinx these things - I came to the realisation that for me, running (much like writing) makes it all make sense. Paradoxically that's probably incomprehensible to most people. Most people outside my head, at any rate. I'm slow and lumbering, while being incredibly competitive with myself. Yet I so relish the mental clarity combined with a zen "tuning out" that happens once I get into the flow of a run.  My podiatrist will tie only with my mother in the 'Not Really Thrilled About This New Development' stakes.

The overwhelming desire to be able to run again as safely as possible - in a biomechanical sense, bearing in mind the collapsed arches, prolapsed discs and spondylolisthesis, ahem - is giving me new incentive to stick to the low-carb low-calorie diet for a little longer and get some more weight off these poor feet. I was getting restless and wanting to return to 'normal' but hey, the last few pounds are the hardest, right? So it will go on for a little longer. I've had such amazing support from friends and I feel roughly a million times better about so many things - it's definitely been worth it. Now hopefully the podiatrist appointment in July (a mere three and a half months after first referral - the lesson is, use the private health care next time) will sort the feet for once and for all.

Once more (with feeling) I'm attempting to complete The Artist's Way. I'm on Week 4. The reading deprivation, as anyone who's done the program will know, sucks. Also I am failing miserably at it. Though I've been severely restricting myself on email and social media in an attempt to get my freelance work done for the month.  I'm building up my freelancing and it was an immense thrill to be paid for my first official copy-writing job last week. The thought of pursuing that full-time makes me slightly giddy - it's definitely worth aiming for.

In craft related news, last month we:

Went to the UK Ravelry Day. Great company.  Good shopping opportunities. Crap weather.  Jon from Easyknits gave away gingerbread knitting men with purchases which we rather liked.



Don't have any pics here but we triumphed in the I Knit International Knit in Public Day treasure hunt!  Entirely due to GingerLucy's excellent balloon husbandry skills.

Some more stuff to come once I download pictures. Have found some new places to play, including one that you should certainly visit if you are in London... Right tis time to sleep. Up early tomorrow morning to run. Shhh, I didn't say that.  'Night Mum!

An experiment

Ok I know how flaky I've been. This is partly due to me forgetting all the interesting stuff I've been doing and also my little mac is really cranky with photos recently and it just all seems to take forever.

So now I'm just giving this a shot to see how the iPhone works for blogging.

I'm still working on the Ariel wrap and have cast on some socks too in some Opal from the factory trip. And... Ack. Not quite sure how to put photos in. Ok back to the drawing board. In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves. How have you been?