my 2013 reading list

Last year I joined the Goodreads Challenge, where I challenged myself to read 25 books. It shouldn't have been that much of a challenge to read only 25 books... but I still only managed to read 23. There was a long phase in the summer when I just didn't read any books for weeks, which probably didn't help.

This year I've joined it again - but challenged myself to read 30 books. I know, I know - if I can't read 25, how can I possibly read 30? Well, it's partly because this year will be the first full year of being self employed (yay!), so I can organise my time a lot more efficiently than I could last year.

Here are some of the books which are currently on my reading list:

Have you read any of them?

Are any of you taking a reading challenge this year?

book inspired bottle necklaces

I hastily posted about my new necklaces the other day without giving you an insight into why I made them... so I thought I might do that now.

I bought the tiny bottles ages ago (I just can't resist tiny things!) and couldn't think what to do with them once I'd bought them. I was fiddling in my studio t'other day, and I decided to make a necklace inspired by love-in-idleness, the purple flower used in a love potion made by Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Out came this necklace:

shades of purple - A Midsummer Night's Dream

Then I started thinking about some of my other favourite books and stories and these all came out...

shades of green - The Magic Paintbrush

shades of the sea - The Little Mermaid

shades of darkness - Hades and Persephone

shades of fire - Stardust

What do you think? Do you like them?

celebrating Hans Christian Andersen's birthday

I wish I had celebrated Hans Christian Andersen's birthday with more flourish, but I have been a very busy bear today! It's the first day of the Easter holidays, so I've been making lists galore, and running errands, plus having a day of DIY and tidying. And then I had an accidental nap, but now I'm here and I'm ready to find some pretty things to help celebrate his birthday...

~ Thumbelina ~

~Thumbelina bunting from Vintage Birds~

~swallow necklace from Julie's Jewelry Store~

~mouse in a walnut shell pattern from bvoe668~ 

~embroidered flower pendant from Queen of Cuffs~ 

~Thumbelina necklace from Fairytales by Bluebird~ 

~Thumbelina shadow puppet by Isabella Baudelaire~

~ The Little Mermaid ~

~heart of the mermaid necklace by Karin Castens~
~mermaid circlet by Chelsea Mae~
~mermaid necklace from Fox Flight~
~mermaid tags from Creative Visions~
~embroidery hoop from Gracie's Garden Bazaar~
~mermaid scales leggings from Carousel Ink~

~ The Ugly Duckling ~

~swan mask from Sundries and Plunder~
~ugly duckling print from The Little Fox~
~singing swans illustration by Lila Ruby King~
~swan watercolour painting by Nancy LaBerge Muren~
~porcelain swans by Crow White Pottery~
~needle-felted black swans by Daria Lvovsky~

~ The Snow Queen ~

~snow queen shawl from Anuitik~
~hand mirror necklace from Miss Cherries Boutique~
~girl and reindeer paper dolls by Dubrovskaya~
~frozen heart pendant from Inka Boutique~
~snow queen hair stick by Atma~
~snowflake cupcake toppers from PinkCherryMama~

~ The Princess and The Pea ~

~princess and the pea necklace by Rachael Sudlow~

~princess and the pea print from Creative Thursday~

~princess and the pea earrings by Amanda Montague of piehat~ 

~princess and the pea cards by Stasia Burrington~ 

~book pendant from The Littlest Bookshop~ 

~princess and the pea doll from Eliza Tootsweet~

Which is your favourite Hans Christian Andersen story?

on my bookshelf this month

I realise it's been a long while since I did an 'on my bookshelf' type post, but I can assure you it's not because I've been napping, drawing rabbits, playing with Yoyo or sitting about listening to Eurovision whenever I have had spare time since August... teehee, honest!

So, what's on my bookshelf this month?

have you read any of these?

what's on your bookshelf this month?

19th Century e-reader

I never thought I would buy a Kindle.

And then I went and did.

I kinda wish I could have bought one of these instead though.

Rachel Walsh, an Illustration student at Cardiff School of Art and Design, was given the brief: "explain something modern/internet based to someone who lived and died before 1900" and decided to explain the Kindle to Charles Dickens by making 40 tiny classics and encompassing them in a normal-sized hardcover book...

awesome sauce, non?!

cat hair crafting - what must Amazon think of me?

Just take a look at my latest recommendations from Amazon - an interesting bunch, non? 

{T-Bag} {Listography: Your Life In Lists} {The Polaroid Book}

{The Tiger Who Came To Tea} {Visual Aid} {The Magic of Reality}

{Atlas of Remote Islands} {Eerie Indiana} {Crafting With Cat Hair}

If you didn't know me, I imagine they would make an interesting first impression - childrens books and DVDs, a map book, a design book, a (social) science book, a photography book, a book about lists and one about crafting. That pretty much sums up my life!

What I am most amused by is the last book: Crafting With Cat Hair.

I had never really thought of using cat hair as a crafting medium. For a short-haired cat, Yoyo molts a lot more than I had expected, but even so, I had never considered collecting up her hair and making something from it. I suppose in a way it's not too different from using wool from sheep, and if you take that stance on the matter then I guess it is perfectly reasonable to use cat hair - after all, it's soft, it's probably quite a nice texture with which to work, it's eco-friendly, and it's free!

I certainly have enough Yoyo fur in the house to make something small, like a finger puppet or a ball garland or something. And although all of the projects in the book use cat hair in some form, many of them only use it for decoration, rather than to create the item itself, which is a bit of a relief - imagine how much cat hair you would need to make a bag or something!

You have to admit that whether or not you think it's a bit weird, using molted animal fur in crafting is an interesting concept - and although it's not really something I would think about doing, I would be intrigued to see some items that can be made with cat hair.

And just in case you find the idea of felting with cat fur odd... how about knitting with it?

You can buy yarn which has been spun out of your pet's fur from Aspen Leaf Fiber Farm! 

If you're interested, you can read a review of Crafting With Cat Hair by Nikki-Ann on Notes of Life, and as for the wool, I don't know anyone who has ever used it... but perhaps I'll start collecting Meower's hair and see what can be made from it!

How do you feel about cat hair crafting? Would you ever consider trying it?

summer reading list - part 2

Well I'm done with the first round of summer reading, though Unicorn Mountain has once again been left by the wayside for it.is.dreadful and I'm pretty sure I have better things to do, like looking for squirrel cardigans or going to Ikea, for example.

However, I now have more books to read, yay!

Although I'm already halfway through this, I forgot to tell you about it earlier (I'm not sure how I managed to forget it - it has even been invading my dreams)...

Oh Jason, I love you. And look at that, you love me too! How wonderful!

Reading this makes me feel like a teenager again: joyfully reminiscing about old characters from Neighbours - those were the days. In case I get too caught up in an emotional teenage state, I also have a very grown up book to counteract any such silliness:

The title is pretty to-the-point, and the author asks you to make lists and things throughout. Despite my love of list-making, it is a little annoying to have to stop reading the book in order to write a list every 10 pages, but hey. Perhaps it will seem better if I stop ignoring the demands to make lists and just give in... maybe that's the secret to enjoying the book? I'll investigate.

Finally, a nice bit of fiction:

This was recommended to me by Jms after we watched an adaptation of another of the 44 Scotland Street stories in Edinburgh earlier this month. The play was shockingly bad, but the story seemed quite charming so I'm willing to give it a go.

Are you reading anything interesting at the moment?

summer reading list - part 1

Since we’re only a week away from August (only a week, sheesh!) I thought I’d share with you what’s on my reading list for the month to come.

First up, ‘Unicorn Mountain’ by Michael Bishop...

I tried really hard to like this book (I mean, look at the front cover!), but it’s really tough to read. It’s just so twee (if that is possible for a book) and, frankly, awfully written. I know that was the whole point of choosing it – it looked so dreadful I thought perhaps it would be amazing, just to be ironic. The blurb says, quite clearly:

“Unicorn Mountain is the story of four people whose lives are transformed by a band of unicorns”

…and how am I supposed to resist a book with a blurb like that? Exactly! I had no choice but to read it. Intriguingly, when looking for the image, I discovered that ‘Unicorn Mountain’ has a 5 star rating on Amazon. Goodness, I must really be missing the point. I might start reading it again from the beginning (much as it would pain me to do so) in order to “get” the brilliance. Second time lucky, right?

To lighten the mood when I’m not forcing myself to read U.M., I will be dipping into ‘My Favourite People and Me’ by Alan Davies (of Jonathan Creek fame).

I have been a little bit in love with Alan since 1997, when the show first aired. If you haven’t seen Jonathan Creek (how could you not have?) it’s a BBC crime/mystery drama series about a chap named Jonathan who works as a creative consultant to a magician, and also solves seemingly impossible supernatural mysteries in his spare time, just for fun. Plus he lives in a windmill, which is just plain awesome.

Anywho, the book isn’t about Jonathan Creek, it’s about Alan’s own childhood and his idols while he was growing up. 

The final book in my list is called ‘Gods Behaving Badly’ – I found it in a charity shop in Haringey this morning with a plain black cover so I had no real idea what it was about, though now seeing the cover I'll assume it’s about mischievous Greek Gods – ooh, let’s hope so!

Nothing very sensible, I know, but it's the holidays after all!

Are you reading anything interesting at the moment? I'd love to hear about it!

an imaginary rabbit and the love of a kitten

When I was 12 years old my parents decided they wanted to move from the hustle and bustle of London Town to the quiet countryside of Devon. As you can imagine, I was not best pleased at the time - I had only ever been to Devon on holidays to visit family, and that was quite enough for me, thank you very much - I was born a city girl and that was how I wanted to stay. As an almost-teenager, living in London was exciting, lively and promising, whereas the prospect of living in the desolate, dull county of Devon, which was so far away from the energetic flurry of activity in the capital, did not exactly fill me with enthusiasm.

My parents got over this little blip by promising me that I could have a pet rabbit when we moved house. My view of the impending change in circumstances altered almost instantly. I had always wanted a rabbit, but a small, 3rd floor flat with a miniature balcony but no garden were not exactly the most favourable conditions in which to keep a rabbit. With the assurance from my parents that we would be moving to a house with a garden, I began forming a picture of my 'ideal' rabbit. I had a book when I was little called 'Leo the Lop' which was about a beautiful chocolate-brown lop-eared rabbit, so I naturally decided I wanted my rabbit to be chocolate-brown and lop-eared, but instead of a boy like Leo, I wanted a girl rabbit and I was going to name her Sofia. Yep, like the capital of Bulgaria.

In the end it was actually pretty exciting to be moving to a new house, although it was also scary with having to start a new school and everything, but I was far too busy worrying about it all to remember about Sofia. Plus, I had become quite a tomboy during that period and a rabbit simply wouldn't fit in with my new image (instead of a rabbit, I got a basketball hoop for the yard outside).

I didn't give a lot of thought to her over the new few years, until I was about 17. I had mentioned the story of Sofia to my boyfriend at the time, and he promised he would get me a rabbit for my 18th birthday. He didn't, he got me an engagement ring. I guess that's a bit better, though I have to admit I was a little disappointed.

I don't know if it would have been different if I had had a rabbit when I was younger, but now I have a kitten to look after my life feels much fuller. She's a little life that I have to look after, play with, entertain, feed and love. Having not had a pet before (other than a fish called Jeffrey - he was awesome), I didn't realise just how much responsibility comes with having one. I knew there would be work involved with training and everything, don't get me wrong, but I didn't know how emotionally hard it would be sometimes. I worry about her almost constantly when I am at work and she's on her own in the flat, though I bet she has a great time in my studio playing with scraps of paper and generally being mischievous, doing all sorts of cheeky things I wouldn't normally let her do when I'm at home. I worry about her when it's 5am and she hasn't come to snuggle me like she always does at that time, instead of thinking "she's probably just asleep" like any normal person would.

When I was unwell a couple of weeks ago, I learned that the feelings I have for her seem to be reciprocated: it was obvious that she knew something was wrong with me, and she followed me like a shadow for days after I came back from hospital, as though she had made it her job to guard me in case something else happened. She brought me her toys while I was in bed, nuzzled me when it was obvious I was in pain, spent every night pressed tightly close to me, and instinctively knew not to jump on my chest like she tends to do in the mornings. I know some people don't believe that pets can be intuitive like that, but I honestly believe they can after the treatment I have received from Yoyo during the emotion rollercoaster of the last couple of weeks. I can't imagine what life would be like without her , or even what it was like in the house before she arrived. I have never felt the same kind of love as I do towards her, it's more than just love, it's total, absolute, pure love. She keeps me sane and calms me down when I'm anxious or upset. We really do look after each other.

I can't imagine what I'm going to be like when I have kids, if this is how I feel about a kitten...

childhood memories of French and the origins of 'Matin Lapin'

My original interest in French started at a very young age: when I was about 4 years old my Granny B came to visit and brought me a couple of books - one was in French and one was a beautiful story based in France. The first book was for very young children, which my Granny had brought back from one of her many trips to France, and just consisted of pictures of animals with their names in French. 'Papillon' became my new favourite word (I was obsessed with butterflies at the time) and I would astound my friends and teachers with my fancy new skills at school in the weeks after every one of my Granny's visits.

The other book that I clearly remember was set in Paris, I think it must have been set in a boarding school, and was about the adventures of a little girl named Madeline. I always assumed the book was written by a Frenchman, but it was actually written and illustrated by an Austrian by the name of Ludwig Bemelmans. Ludwig was the son of a Belgian painter, and his first language was French, so I guess I wasn't totally wrong. I only ever had one Madeline book, 'Madeline's Rescue', the second book in the series of six. I've never even read any of the other Madeline books, I didn't need to as the one I had was absolutely delightful, the illustrations were beautifully stylised (Ludwig won the Caldecott Medal, an American prize for illustration, for 'Madeline's Rescue' in 1954), and the stories were charmingly written all in rhyme.

In the story of Madeline's Rescue, Madeline falls into the River Seine and is rescued by a lovely dog, which she names Genevieve and takes home to live with her and the rest of the girls. Their landlord doesn't like animals and throws Genevieve out into the street, but she comes back later that night and gives birth to lots of puppies! It's a simple story I admit (I was only 4 years old, after all) but everything about it is just perfect. I used to read it day after day, out loud to myself or to anyone who would listen. It was the first book I learned to read all the way through completely by myself, and I couldn't help but show off my pride at this accomplishment by repeatedly reading it aloud evening after evening, in front of the fire in the little flat in which I grew up. Although I lived in that flat from birth until I was about 12 years old, that is still one of the most vivid memories I have of the old place (most of the other memories I have of that house were from various Christmases spent there - for those of you who don't already know, I really love Christmas).

Unfortunately, after that brief and naive flirtation with the French language, my interest in it diminished as I got older and when I was at high school I really did not enjoy studying French. Perhaps it was the teacher, perhaps it was the loud classmates, or perhaps I simply lost interest because I was a teenager, and that's just what happens. Typically, as soon as I was no longer forced to study French at school, my interest in it picked up again. During university I taught myself some interesting phrases, and took far more of an interest in learning it than I ever had at school. In the second year of my degree I spent a month in a little town in the south of France, staying with my Granny's best friend who had lived there for years. Very few people in the town knew any English, so I had to use all the French I knew around and about town. I spent my days sitting on the grassy bank of a halcyon blue river watching kingfishers diving to catch fish while drawing pictures and making pretty beaded things; it was like paradise. After only a month I had learned so much more than I had expected - I felt I had been fully immersed in the French way of life and almost didn't want to come back to uni in the autumn.

Upon my return, I drew a tiny picture of a rabbit for my Granny and named it 'Matin Lapin'. It had nothing to do with mornings, at least not consciously, I just thought the words sounded as though they belonged together. My Granny kept that picture on a little shelf just outside her bedroom, and it was when I was living with her after I had graduated and was trying to think of a name for the little business I had dreams of setting up (where I could sell butterflies and beaded things and pretty illustrations) that I was reminded of that little picture I drew for her.

So that is where the name 'Matin Lapin' comes from, in case you were wondering :)

What were your favourite books when you were young?