Peaks

There are many things you don’t know about me, dear readers. One thing I will enlighten you on is the fact that I don’t like slopes. I am un-inclined towards inclines. I get tired very quickly walking up slopes. You might think that at least there is the easier bit of walking down slopes, so it evens out the hard uphill bit? No. Walking down slopes is horrible in a different way, forcing your feet to assume an uncomfortable position that on normal ground would be ‘tiptoe’, and you actually have to exert more leg strength to slow yourself down, taking huge painful lumbering steps on often gravelly or downright slippery surfaces.

So. Armed with this new information, you will now be able to appreciate what I am about to tell you.

Yesterday I accompanied my partner Jim on a trek in the Peak District to film footage for his upcoming documentary. How upcoming? 6 days upcoming. So he’ll be doing some early mornings and late nights getting it all edited together nicely for the opening night on Friday 9th September! To which, by the way, all are invited ^__^

Anyway. Yes! Peak District! The hilliest place he could find, and he invites me along. He is well aware, by the way, of my dislike of slopey walking, having endured my whining on several outings/death marches. I have been feeling a bit stuck at home recently so thought, what the hell, I need the exercise and I can help him out. So, we hopped on a train to Edale and made our way across some farms to the base of the hills, enjoying the lovely sunny weather and sheep and lack of inner city there. Jim took some scenic shots of the countryside and I thought, ah this is nice, we’ll just get lots of nice shots with the peaks in the background.

Turns out I was wrong. Jim wanted to actually get up on top of the hills. Oh, like halfway up? No. The very top. Up one side and down the other. Introducing, Mam Tor.

Mam Tor, though not the highest in the area, sits 62 m (203 ft) prominent and translates as Heights of the Mother, and had me red-faced a large percentage of the way up. Pretty high, not that high in reality, but high enough for my first trek in a few years.

If I had known this when I was making my decision, this fact may well have put me off. But, having actually enjoyed a day in the countryside with my lovely boyfriend exploring beautiful corners of Derbyshire, I’m glad I didn’t know. The walking up/down hills bit was naturally horrible, but it also turns out it can take you to some wonderful sights. Plus, Jim packed us an exciting picnic with deli-counter foods, and let me borrow his camera for photos whenever I wanted, so I will try to be less whiney next time.

Some highs (har har) of the trip were getting a banana and fudge ice cream at the Blue John Cavern gift shop, and then relaxing with a cider and some humongous onion rings in a beer garden in Castleton. Also, the sheep were charming, and though they stopped posing as soon as we got the camera into position, we got a few good shots of them too. And, best of all, I think we got some really solid footage for Jim’s documentary. So, success!

One sour part, however, was encountering a rude bus driver on our journey back from Castleton. Jim and I had gone to some effort to make sure that we would have the right change to pay for our bus tickets. This included 1) Jim contacting the bus company to check what the fayre would be 2) getting money out of the ATM the night before 3) ensuring a note was broken in the right way when we bought our food at the pub. We queued for the bus, got on and politely asked for Sheffield, with a please and a smile and putting the exact change down on the tray. This went alright for Jim, but when it came to my turn the driver just said “Put it there” in a confusingly grumpy way. “I’m sorry?” I said, not understanding what was wrong with my perfect change. “Put it there” he said again, this time making a small motion towards the other coin tray a foot to the left. Oh. So that tray is the tray for money in, and the tray I put my money on was for money out. You couldn’t possibly reach where I put it? Not wanting to risk being turned away for calling him on his attitude, I picked up my coins and moved them the incredibly long distance to the other money tray. Grumpy git. You’re welcome for the perfect change, by the way. I could have made him give me change from a tenner. To get him back, I made sure I didn’t say “thank you” when we left. I’m such a rebel.

Anyway, overall, a lovely day out with some good work done for the documentary! Here are some more pictures to leave you on a high:

view over Edale

Peaks around Castleton

stream cutting through lower shale layers of Mam Tor

part of a ‘road’ on Mam Tor

Mam Tor hillside

view over Edale #2

Let Them Eat Cake

Ducks, I mean.

My wonderful boyfriend had some leftover cake pieces after cutting out a couple of unicorn shaped birthday cakes, and as we’ve had a bit of a cake glut recently we decided the best way to get rid of them would be to feed the local ducks!

Birds are very happy to eat cake as it provides valuable calories that they will actually use instead of store permanently around their waists and thighs.

So we were able to combine a pleasant walk around the lake with feeding some deserving ducks, geese, morehens and coots. Unfortunately, also seagulls >___<

Not that I don’t want them to survive, but when you throw the food for the other birds they always bully them out of the way and grab it all for themselves. Not so peaceful and life-affirming. Oh well. Fortunately I’m quite an accurate shot so I was able to deliver some good bits of cake to targeted duckies before the gulls had a chance to steal it all.

Here’s a cute photo I got afterwards of a ducks stretching his leg ^__^

In other news, yesterday I had a creative urge and quickly adapted a cross-stitch design I’d made last year for a pincushion. Cross Stitcher gave a free gift of a pincushion kit with Issue 238, which I promptly made and have been using ever since, so I used their instructions again to make my own version.

I made the darker rabbits ears a stitch too long accidentally, but I think it’s a lucky mistake because they suit him actually! They are in love and are eyeing eachother up accross a lush green field. The base is brown to be earth.

Who watches the watchmen?

Or, more appropriately, who draws the draw-ers?

Well, it’s me.

I went along to Pixel Synthesis tonight at Quad, where Laura Vann (left) and Samantha Eynon were digitally drawing for 3 hours with their work shown on big projections behind them.

The ladies were given the theme of ‘organic’, which they interpreted in similar ways, both starting with a scanned basic layout sketch, which was nice as we were able to see their different drawing styles clearly. Laura was using Photoshop to draw a naked lady in water with lily pads around her, and Samantha used Illustrator to draw a sitting naked lady with flowers covering her.

I could only stay for the first hour as my hardworking boyfriend Jim was tired after spending the day in the Peaks shooting footage for his upcoming documentary, so I didn’t get to see how they turned out, but if you check out the Pixel Synthesis blog you can see photos of the finished pieces :D

Earlier in the day I decided to make muffins to use up an old banana that was looking sad in the fruit bowl.

Soooo I made chocolate and prune (yes prune, they’re actually very nice) muffins! And kicked myself because I’d forgotten to add the banana >__< So I picked all my lovely freshly clean utensils off the draining board and used it for the second time in the same hour to make…

White chocolate and banana (hooray!) muffins! I also chucked on some simple icing and sprinkles, because they were in the cupboard when I was rummaging through.

I decided to display them on my lovely cake stand that spends most of its poor life empty on a shelf. A good chance to justify its existence in my cluttered house! Excuse the long grass, I ….. can’t be bothered to mow. There. The truth. Are you happy now??

I also took the opportunity of having good weather to photograph a couple of owl brooches I’ve made recently, in anticipation of the Sew Darn Crafty fayre and indeed eventually my etsy page.

If any of them tickle you then do contact me by leaving a comment and I can arrange a custom etsy listing for you! Get in before the 18th Sept though, otherwise they might have been snapped up at the fayre. The owl brooches are £6 each (£9 for the double one), entirely handmade and fitted securely with a brooch to fasten onto your apparel of choice.

They also have completely adorable hand-stitched feet!

Networking at Hatch’d Out

A great event yesterday was the Hatch’d Out networking space at Quad, which is a free informal event to allow local creatives to meet and see what everyone else is up to!

Here’s a little of what I saw there:

• Beau Shabby was showing off some gorgeous wooden furniture and carved wooden hearts, which I could definitely see hanging in my house at Christmas!
• Triona Doyle had an exquisite portfolio of photographic artwork which I had a good look through. I like to use this word to describe it because it reminds me of the art game exquisite corpse, which is rather appropriate because corpses are indeed present. Anyone who likes beautiful macabre scenes and Victoriana will be well served by a visit to the blog
• Cupcake Kay had a table laden with delicious-looking cupcakes, I tried a raspberry truffle one and it made my taste buds very happy so I can recommend them if you have a party to host!
• Natalie McKenzie had a huge portfolio of work to show! She’s obviously a very hardworking and talented designer and I’ll be astounded if I discover she got any less than a 1st in her uni degree
• Finally, I met the guy behind Pixel Synthesis which is a live digital artwork event where two artists create a response to a theme, with their progress shown live on a screen where everyone can appreciate the skill and buy the limited-edition run of prints at the end! I’ve never been to one before but there’s one at Quad tomorrow evening which I’m all over ^___^ If all goes well there is an oppertunity for me to be involved in a future Pixel Synthesis event so I’m excited to see what it’s like!

As for myself, I didn’t have any business cards to share (boo!) but I did bring along a selection of the owl brooches I make to show off. Tadaa!

Catch-up

Aargh! I had new things to show on Sunday but I’ve only just got photographs of them! And there’s no use writing a blog post to say that you have made funky amazing things without the pictures to back it up!

It’s been a busy week, made busier by the organisation around my partner Jim setting off for London to film for his company and the BBC (hells yeah!), and as I would usually borrow his camera to photograph my creations I was a bit stuck with him gone. So, today I finally hunted down the battery charger and used my own poorly shunned camera. Without further ado, this is what I wanted to show you:

I made badges! I had another meet-up with arty-girl Sally to try out her badge machine with my ideas for fabric-covered badges, with applique and stitching and beads and charms etc etc all on there. Soooo I packed a big ol’ bag full of interesting fabrics and ribbons and everything else, lugged it over to our meeting place and dumped it all on the floor in a big exciting creative experimental pile… only to find that the badge maker wouldn’t work with fabrics! Even when we (brilliantly!) used iron-on interfacing to make it stiffer. Naughty Badge It!

However, we are both arty types, so we resigned ourselves to the confines of some A4 printer paper and pens, and came up with drawn designs instead. The Badge It machine works easily and makes professional-looking badges, so despite my initial disappointment I was impressed with the machine and was pretty proud of the outcomes! My design is something I’ve been doodling in bars since being inspired by the big-eyed foods featured in a wrapping paper found in Paperchase, backed with some pretty papers. Sally drew a couple of characters from her comic that she’s working on. I may try to sell mine on my etsy, what do you think?

This is something that I made tonight at my regular crafty meet-up at Bar One, made from scrounged beads and shiny black wool that the others kindly gave me. I was originally stitching a ‘perfect’ brooch in pink (like a prefect badge but saying ‘perfect’ instead, not my original idea) but my heart wasn’t in it and it was looking a bit meh.

I also had fun this evening trying to figure out how to teach something I’ve never taught before, to someone left-handed. No, honestly, it was fun! The subject was crochet, and I foolishly/bravely offered to show someone how to do it. By the end, she had made a bracelet and figured out a flower by herself, so all credit to her for being a fast learner : )

I baked some yummy healthy muffins earlier during the day and brought them along to the craft meet, to general approval. Here’s the recipe for those with baking inclinations:

250 g plain flour
150 g sugar
2.5 tsp baking powder
0.25 tsp bicarbonate of soda
240 ml milk
115 ml vegetable oil
2 eggs
150 g blackberries
50 g wild blueberries
1 tbsp granola
1 tbsp flaxseed
4 drops rum flavouring
2 squares dark chocolate, shaved into small pieces

Makes 16 muffins. Bake for 20 mins at 200 degrees celsius

We are all working towards a craft fayre that we are holding at the bar, so if you are in Derby then please come along and support your local artists, and spread the word to anyone else who could come! It’s promising to be a fun day and I’m really looking forward to seeing what will sell : )

A good start

Today I went for the first time to Dr Sketchy life drawing group with my arty friend Sally who won two of the drawing challenges! It’s been a while since I’ve sat down to do a proper drawing in a long time, usually I just doodle constantly on a low level, so this was good practice for me to get my mojo back.

There’s some 5, 10, 15 and 20 minute ones in there, and one which we had to do with our non-writing hands. I think it’s easy to guess which one it is. I liked drawing in pencil but, novice that I am, I just used an HB, so there was very little exciting tonal range going on. I think next time I need to hunt down my charcoal sticks which I’m sure are hiding somewhere in my house. Looking at other people’s drawings, they were using a lot more expressive mediums like watercolour and chalk and graphite, so I’ll try to learn from them and try some different bits out next time.

I’m going to try to give myself more positive thinking (and hopefully my readers too!), so if I start this section I will hopefully definately go on. Right!?

Something new I leaned today: ‘Scansion’ just means ‘how it scans’. Like sentences in poetry.

Something that made me happy: Seeing a small dog gnawing at its lead in a very mischievous way.

Something I’m proud of: Practicing my drawing skills!

And… that’s it! I’m pretty tired now so I will save thinking more things up until next time. Maybe a sneaky peak at other people’s blogs will provide inspiration!