Nowhereisland

Today I became a citizen of Nowhereisland. 

This is part of a public art project which will form part of the Cultural Olympiad this summer.  There are 12 art projects running across the UK and this one is based in South West England.  In fact it will be floating round the coast.

This is what the website says “Nowhereisland has already come to represent the possibilities for thinking about our values and beliefs as citizens. 52 Resident Thinkers from around the world are contributing to a year-long programme of Letters to Nowhereisland. Over 4000 people have already signed up to become citizens of Nowhereisland and will begin collectively writing the island’s constitution from January 2012 […] in a time of global crisis, it opens up an opportunity to debate and consider important global questions that affect us all.”

Two of those resident thinkers are people I really admire – Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall and Keri Smith and they are giving the citizens the chance to write letters too.

So if you had the chance to start again from scratch what would you do?

I’d like a place of community.  Somewhere where I know my neighbours.  Where I can buy all my food from a farm just down the road.  Where I can buy all my clothing from someone else down the road, or even make my own.  Where people respect each other and their skills.

The best example I can give of this is an episode of Grand Designs that I watched last year.  A stonemason was renovating an old stone pump house in Cornwall.  If he needed help with plumbing he got his mate round and then paid him back by spending the equivalent time building him a shed for his tools or what ever he needed.  He did this over and over again with all the trades that he couldn’t do himself.  I would love to have the skills to be able to exchange in this way.

What I think we really need to work on is greed and this consumer culture that we currently exist in.  Why do I need this new product of yours – phone, computer, car, etc – the one I have works fine or, even, why do I need it in the first place?

“Owning things doesn’t make me happy.  Doing things makes me happy.  Helping others makes me happy.  Creating things makes me happy.”  Mnmlist.com

An apple pie a day...

I really like baking.  So much that I have an album of all my cakes etc on my facebook page.  Recently a friend was looking at this album and said that it all looked so nice, I should write about my cooking.  I thought about it a bit then created the 'An apple pie a day...' blog.  I'm not sure it works as well as a screen of cake photos, but I thought it might be fun.

The above is a double cheese and chive loaf from Dan Lepard's book 'Short and Sweet' a gratefully received Christmas present.  It is my first really successful bread.  I look forward to trying out the rest of the book.

Paper Animations

A mouse hug

 

Agreeable Sheep

A couple of weeks ago while looking for something else completely I came across robives.com.  It looked interesting.  I looked further, I realised it is amazing!

Rob has designed and created loads of moving paper models, or paper animations as he calls them, and you can buy and download the designs to make for yourself.

I had been filling very uninspired on the creative front recently (as you may have noticed), but it is easy to be inspired when you’ve got such exciting projects to create.

Or Goat - one of 3 logic goats

Dog ate my homework

Wag the dog

Of course I then have the problem of what to do with them once they are made.  The easy answer – give them to my work colleagues for Christmas.  They are just the thing to make a work desk a happier place.  So on the last day in the office, the team came in to find some little friends on their desks.  They seemed to go down well.  I look forward to making more.

Happy Christmas

This year we decided to make our own Christmas cards.  Last year I found a reindeer cutter in my local craft shop.  In April when our runner beans had just started to put forth their first leaves I came across one of the reindeer cutouts and couldn't resist sticking it to a leaf to see what would happen.  We were so chuffed with the resulting images we just has to use them.

Merry Christmas everyone and a Happy New Year.  

An early Christmas present

I received an early Christmas present yesterday.

My Open University books arrived for the next course – AA312 Total war and social change, which starts in February.

In a way it is quite scary, this large box of heavy books, but it is also rather exciting.  It probably helps that we had a trip to the Imperial War Museum last week, which really got me thinking.  It is easier to remember that the two World Wars were very real when you have weapons and uniforms etc in front of you rather than just a text which takes about numbers of people dying which are just too large for me to understand.

It also had a very interesting section on conflicts since 1945 which helped give me a better understanding of why we are where we are right now.  This is something I am hoping will be expanded on by AA312.

I shall leave them in the box until after Christmas though.

Handmade gift tags

This weekend I finally got all my wrapping done.  To make sure everyone know's who their wonderful gifts are from I've made my own set of gift tags.  I found the star cutter and reindeer cutter in my local craft shop and with the right colours I think they look pretty cool.  This is the sort of project I love, where there is a proper end product.

Christmas wreath

I love Christmas decorations, the ones with delicate lights that sparkle and push back the darkness that seems to be here forever at this time of year – it doesn’t help that the window of my office faces a brick wall and makes it feel dark all year round.

We don’t have anywhere for lights outside our flat, but a wreath will brighten any door.  I’ve always bought a wreath for the door, but this year decided that I would try making my own.  After all how hard can it be?

With this in mind we went for a walk into the woods near the flat on Saturday to collect suitable material for a wreath.  Holly, ivy and conifer of some kind were all on my list.

With a bag full of evergreen foliage we came home and I put together my wreath.  As you can see it is not the best looking wreath ever, but I collected the materials myself, put it together myself and tied the bow myself (with a little help from YouTube).  
Sometimes the joy is not in making something perfect, but in the satisfaction of creating something yourself.

Flower book

I found this lovely flower wall paper ages ago.  I knew it would be perfect to make into an A4 book, the design would just get lost on anything smaller, but I've been too busy, lazy and scared to start it.  Busy with all the things life normally throws at you, lazy 'cos its so much easier to sit and read or do something else, and scared because it has been so long since I last made a book I was starting to fear I had forgotten how.  And under all that is the nagging wonder of what I am going to do with all these books I've made.
But as you can see I haven't forgotten how to make them, and although I didn't think I had left enough room round the spine, it fitted perfectly.  Nothing to worry about after all.