Festive Folk 2012

 I went along to the annual (and when I say annual I mean it happened last year too) Festive Folk gig in our local pub, The Swan.  It was a good evening all round, especially when I wont he mince pie competition, beating last years winner by just one point!  Homemade cranberry and ginger wine mincemeat for the win!

Being me I also did some doodles.  In the top left is our compere Caroline, and the others were our performers for the evening.  The music was great, and each of them had to slip a Christmas tune into their reportoire.

One of the performers, Jake Manning (whose website you can see here) liked his so much that I've done it up nice for him, so expect to be seeing it soon on mugs, stickers and other paraphanalia at his gigs.  Whoo yeah!

Why I love my new job

1.  My work is mentally stimulating.  Even when it's difficult and annoying, it's still an improvement on the previous job where I was bored out of my mind.
2.  I get to work in my home town.
3.  This means I get to cycle to work!  I say it like it's a gift, and you cannot imagine how pleased I am.  For ages the long commute at the old job bothered me as it had to be taken by car.  The 60+ minutes it took to get somewhere that normally only took 30 minutes.  The exhaust emissions (and everything that goes with that).  The constant road accidents.  The dulling effect it has on your brain to be sitting in traffic for an hour every morning for no discernible reason.  But now.... THIS:

Cycling takes me 15mins, of which I'm on a road for a total of 2mins.  The rest of the time I'm zipping along the canal towpath, which has surprisingly few pedestrians in the morning.  There is no noise, there is no smell, there is no danger of being crushed by a lorry.  I don't have to worry about traffic jams or parking spaces.  I can go to the doctors or the dentist, because I now work in the catchment area I live in.  I get home feeling like I've actually been outdoors and done something useful and active.  I leave home later than ever before and get home earlier - and I'm satisfactorily tired when I do!  Even when the weather's rotton, there's the satisfaction of having beaten it when you arrive at your destination, and I have waterproof trousers for the rest.


And it's beautiful.  Check out the ice beginning to form, next to the frost-tipped grass on the bank.  You don't get to see that on the motorway!

Congratulations Tom and Zoe!

My friends are getting married - Hooray!  To each other - Hooray!  And they asked me to do the inserts for the invites - Hooray!

It's always a pleasure to do something so unique and personalised for people I love.  Tom and Zoe are... not exactly an indoorsy couple.  They spend all the time they can in the great outdoors having adventures - climbing, cycling, hiking, you name it- and really wanted this reflected in their invites.  They already had some ideas, including having a tree as a recurring motif, and having several different invites to use for all the guests.

(The names, locations and contact details have been scrubbed out for obvious reasons)  Personally my favourites are 1 and 4, but they were all fun to do.

Le sketch d'enfant

This month I've been doing some black and white doodles for a book on 'Childcare That Won't Make You Lose Your Mind' (at least that's my translation of the title) which seems like an awfully sensible idea.  So far we're looking at:

1: YOUR BABY IS WATCHING YOU AND GRADING EVERYTHING YOU DO!!! (It isn't, I swear it isn't.)

Almost eaten by a deer...

I have a dark and autumnal story for you today.  You may not be scared by it, but I can assure you that I definitely was!

Preview...

Remember...

... and, perhaps more importantly, remember to learn from it.

More than slightly starstruck

So...  Terri Windling featured my workspace on her blog, The Drawing Board this week.  See...

...

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!

I am such a major fan of this woman.  Terri is a Dartmoor/USA-based publisher with a particular focus on folklore and mythology, and her blog is always a hub of activity.  If she's not simply sharing her thoughts and outdoor exploring then she's introducing us to artists, music, literature, everything under the sun.  Although she does a little drawing herself, a lot of her focus on the blog goes into showcasing other people.  She has a little feature there called On Your Desk, where artists from all round the world can send in photos of their workplace and talk about what they do.

I'm pleased as punch to see my entry up there, plus I got some lovely comments from other readers including Terri ("magical" was definitely in there.  So was "talented" and "charming".  I might just faint with pleasure!) and even one flattering commenter who approached me with an eye to buying a print.  My goodness!

The Folklore Bookshelf

I've been working on a personal project since I moved into my current house about a month ago.  Since I like to track my progress I took some photos as I went along, although most were taken in the dim bulb-light of my room and may have come out a little fuzzy.  What do you think?

When I first got this bookcase it was very very purple.  A bit too purple in fact, so I decided to redecorate it.  Being me, that doesn't just mean painting it a less scary colour, but covering it in images and stories I enjoy that really fire up my imagination.  So in there, hidden amid the oak leaves, you might see a Wasp Salesman peddling his wares, a leaping hare the size of a Shetland pony, a selkie just beginning to change into her human form, an owl brewing a kettle, and a motley gang of musicians scattered about, some of which are not quite human.

It took about a month to do from beginning to end, as I painted in one or two figures per night, and only then when I had the time, but I love having this in my room!  Totally worth the effort.

Bad day? I have some kittens to cheer you up!

The wandering minstrel

So this arrived with it's new owner today.  How exciting!

It's a bit of an in-joke, but my friend Matt really does travel the country, often on foot, with his mandolin (and more recently, a little squeeze-box) in tow.  It's wonderful to me to think that, in our society where people 'just don't do that sort of thing', some of us still do.

Matt carved me a spoon (which I can still hardly bear to use, it's so lovely) and I felt he needed something just as unique in return.  Someone called him by this title once, and it just fit him so well he clearly needed to have an emblem of his own.

The design I sent off to the badge-makers.

I was so pleased when it arrived in the post.  It's one thing to sketch out an idea, but quite another to see it transform into the finished article.  It took a while to find some badge-makers who would take on such a small order for a reasonable price, but eventually I did find some and they were very helpful in sorting out the final specifications for the patch.

Autumn, Handmade!

Winter's definitely snuffling it's way under the door again, there's mist over the grass in the mornings, and it's the time you start wanting the cosy closeness of warm comfortable things.  The extra time spent indoors in the evenings is handy for projects, and getting on with those things you've meant to do all summer.

I've fully moved into my new house now, and for a finishing touch I asked my friend Amy to set me up with some classy new cushions.  She runs Amy Allwright Homeware and handmakes all things textiley, from pinnies to iPad covers.  Her work is beautiful, and for ages I've been wanting to find a place for something made by her.  I unearthed two stained, battered and flattened old cushions, and handed them over to her.  Just look how they came back!

Amy restuffed the dying cushions, and made me two removable covers, so that I can take them off and wash them in future.  The one on the left has the pink back fabric I liked from her apron, and the front patterned one picked by Amy.  The one on the right (which I admit is my favourite!) was made from a woollen jumper.  A subtle cable-knit pattern runs through it, and although the cover is held together with poppers she's sewn the original buttons back over them.

They are beautiful.  They're sitting in my reading corner, a space made between a window seat, a wall, and my bookcase, where I can now wedge myself happily in and get lost.  Long winter evenings, sorted!


I've been making things too.  Mostly food.

Mincemeat

I've been wanting to try making my own mincemeat ever since I made pies for Christmas last year for a contest.  The homemade pastry was good, but I hadn't thought of mincemeat.  This year, my housemate Katie and I were prepared!

In each of them is a concoction of the following: currants, raisins, sultanas, candied peel, juice and zest fron lemons and oranges, suet, grated apple, brown sugar, brandy, cinnamon, ginger stem, ginger wine, cranberries, cherries, nutmeg.

Basically it's just a case of mixing the ingredients together, packing them into jars, and sealing them tight.  From mid-November they ought to be ready to eat.  Of course neither of us have done this before so we've tried it a couple of different ways, but ultimately we won't know what's worked and what hasn't until we crack open the mincemeat jars in a month or so.  I'm quite excited, and curious to see what we've made.

Cheese and Leek pie

I swiped this recipe for leek and cheese tart from The Guardian's website.  It's pretty easy to do, introduced me to some new cheese (although cheddar would do it, I might swap the taleggio out for some camembert next time, just for a treat.  The taleggio was good in the end, but whiffed a bit of feet for my taste!)  Goes nicely in my lunchbox for work as well.

Makes 4
Leeks 500g
Butter 50g
Puff Pastry 375g
Taleggio (or other melty) cheese 100g
1 beaten egg

1.  Preheat oven to 180C or Gas Mark 4.  Put some baking paper on a tray and leave it in there to heat up.

2.  Remove the roots and leaves from the leak.  Slice them small, melt the butter in a saucepan, and throw the leeks in.  You don't actually want to fry them, just soften them.  It'll only take 10 mins.

3.  While that's happening, divide your puff pasty into eight (a top and bottom for each pie) and roll them into the most circular shape you can. (You could just make 6 long ovals, fold them, and have pasties if you want)  You will need a bigger circle than you imagine.

4.  Split your leeks between the pie bottoms, add cubes of taleggio cheese - you don't need as much as you think you do.  Put a line of egg round the edge and stick the pie top on.  Stab it with a form to let the steam out.

5.  About 25mins in the oven, until the pastry is golden and crispy.

6. EAT IT!!!

Summer 2012 - Venice

Within days of getting back from Greenbelt I was moving house, and within days of that I was in Italy! My youngest sister and I had been planning to have a trip to Europe before she began university this autumn.  After a lot of deliberation we went with Venice, city of canal, culture, and good weather in September!

St Marc's square

As usual on my holidays, I kept a short diary of what we did each day...

Hobbit trailer-dump

There's just so much Hobbity goodness out there.  The more I see of it the more I think they've probably got it about right.  The Hobbit was never a massive epic like LotR, but a light-hearted, grumpy, homely little tale.  They seem to have expanded it to dovetail better with the overall narrative of how The Hobbit fits int the bigger history of Middle Earth, but hey, I'm fine with that.

Anyway, here's the current amount of stuff that's getting me excited:

Bilbo Baggins, the original Hobbit hero, paving the way for the Fellowship of the Ring years later, putting bad ideas about 'adventuring' into the heads of impressionable young hobbits everywhere...  and I do rather like his patchwork dressing gown.  Quite enjoyed the comment about incineration in the contract as well :)

Also, someone found this, which is rather epic.  Elvish as it was originally imagined, spoken by the man who knew it first and best.

Summer 2012 - Greenbelt

So, where've I been?  Well when you see the amount of summer events I want to blog, you may understand why I've been away so long!

Firstly, after last year's successful experiment as a volunteer at the Greenbelt Festival, I decided to return as a regular camper.  Volunteering was a great intro to Greenbelt, but my hours meant I couldn't see everything I wanted to.  This year I saw A LOT.  In Case of Fire, Aradnha, Weapons of Sound, The Proclaimers, Speech Debelle, Hope and Social, Shlomo, Nitin Sawhney, Folk On, Seth Lakeman, The Imagined Village, Bellowhead, and that was just the music!

I went to talks that stretched my brain, split my sides over comedians, was challenged and awestruck by drama...  but if I'm giving you the highlights there's one thing I should mention first.

1. The MUD

Return of the Geek

Fifteen birds in five fir trees

Virtual biscuit if you know which scene in The Hobbit this is from!

Podiums... and potatoes

Ok, I'm not really one for hype.  I was enjoying the Olympics from a distance, catching odd races on the television and hearing updates on the radio, but I knew I wasn't going to see it any closer than that so I didn't worry about it...  However, when my friend Graham very generously offered me his spare ticket to the badminton  I was not going to say no!

Getting Out - 4 of 4

On my last day in Norfolk there wasn't really time to go anywhere very far away.  Anyhow, with my brother and sister both working that Saturday, someone had to walk the dog.  This is him on the left, the soppy animal.  His name is Galaxy (like the chocolate) or else Gal, Gally, Galvin, Gallifrey, Galvanise, Gallivanting...  

We got him from a rescue centre so we don't know exactly how old he is or what kind of cross-breed he might be, but as you can see he's a very god looking mongrel.  A collie shape, but with retriever fur the colour of a chocolate labrador.  

He normally gets taken on the same walk every lunchtime, so the poor boy was very confused when I bundled him into my car and took him to the small patch of heath near the Nun's Bridges as you leave Thetford towards Bury.  He's not a young dog any more, but I have never seen him so excited.  He was bounding - bounding! -along the path and, because I prefer to keep him on the lead as his hearing is going, I had to run to keep up with him. 

Getting Out - 3 of 4

Holkham to Wells

The next day I headed off for the coast.  

20 min watercolour sketch of the salt marshes at Wells-next-the-sea

Getting Out - 2 of 4

Cambridge Folk Festival 

That same evening (I had a busy day!) I took my sister up to Cambridge for the 2012 Folk Festival.  It’s quite a small festival and we were only there for the evening, but after months of rain the weather was stunningly hot – exactly the festival weather we would have wanted.  Drank fresh lemonade, which had a massive kick, tried on various hats, and were well entertained with some great music. 

First we saw Megson, a married couple with a cheerful lightness to their music.  Then we listened (because the tent was so full we couldn’t get in) to the very harmonious ahab.  We could probably have got a seat with a view but on our way there we were side-tracked, as so often happens at festivals.  Blackbeard’s Tea Party were sending up a might ruckus from one of the beer tents, which distracted us.  Imagine folk music crossed with rock music played by pirates, and you’re heading along the right lines.  (Apparently ‘Pirate Folk’ is a real genre.  Who knew?!)  They were a lot of fun, and we told them so. 

The other bands we saw... honestly I can't remember their names, but they were awfully good.  Even as night snuck on and the beer kept flowing, the atmosphere stayed happy and relaxed.  It was a great night, and after a quick stop at the merchandise tent we had our memories to drive home to.

Ok, this is getting silly now

Ok, a brief interlude here, because this is (I think) the third Brave related post I've put up on here, and the film's not even out yet.  I was just having a quiet doodle and suddenly found I'd drawn this:

Ok, I just have to hang on for two more weeks.  How is it right that the US premier is before the UK one, yet they held their premier in Scotland?  Makes no sense to me at all.

Getting Out - 1 of 4

So having self-diagnosed myself with massive case of Cabin Fever, I decided to turn a brief trip home to Norfolk into a four day stay in the hope that this would give me enough space and quiet to... recalibrate or... whatever it is I do when I get like this.  I grew up in Norfolk, specifically the Brecks, and decided to re-visit places I’d been to as a child, but perhaps didn’t fully remember or had been too young to appreciate.  

Grimes Graves and West Stow

This was definitely the case with Grimes Graves, a Neolithic flint mine, and quite the loveliest heritage site to visit because there is really nothing there.  You drive into the middle of nowhere, enter what appears to be a large field (there is one small cabin for the loo, another marginally larger one for the visitors booth), and the rest is open land.  At least that's what you think at first...

A birds-eye view of Grimes Graves, scanned from the English Heritage guidebook

Getting Out - Prelude

I needed a holiday.  I know people always say that but it’s still true.  Or not even a holiday, but a lack of …civilisation.  The previous weekend I found myself pacing in the office.  Literally pacing, like the big cats you see in the zoo, going quietly nuts.  Clocking out couldn’t cure it and I spent the rest of the evening in a lovely wee melancholy and had to take myself out of town and off to the top of Beacon Hill for a few hours to sort my head out.  It was a good decision in the end, because if I hadn’t gone I would have missed this phenomenal sunset.  

It helped.  At any rate it patched me up enough to get through the next week, until I could make my escape!

Er'abody lurve cake

Finally, FINALLY, I have made a sponge cake that has risen.  I've always had a problem with sponge cakes (bar lemon cakes, for some reason).  Anything larger than a fairy cake usually ends up like a dense brittle biscuit.

BUT NOT TODAY!!!  TODAY, I HAVE MADE THIS!!!

And before I forget how I did it, I'm going to write it down.  I got the recipe from a friend of mine, and clearly she knew something I didn't.

Ingredients for cake
3 eggs
Self raising flour
Caster sugar
Margarine
Cocoa

For icing
Icing sugar
Cocoa
Margarine
Dark chocolate

1)  Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/ Gas Mark 4
2)  Weigh your eggs, still in the shell.  Remember that weight, because that's how much you'll need of everything else (this was my mistake before.  I used to measure the other ingredients by rote instead of matching them to the eggs each time).
3)  Weigh and mix your 'wet' ingredients, the eggs and margarine, and the sugar.  It will look like mush.
4)  Weigh the flour, but replace about 3/4 oz of it with cocoa.  When you add it to the mixture, don't swirl it in with the spoon, fold it in, in stages.
5)  Fold in one teaspoon of boiled water.
6)  Bake for about 30 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean.
7)  For the icing, mix together the icing sugar/cocoa and margarine in a 2:1 ration to make buttercream.  Then mix in a few lines of melted dark chocolate.  This will make the icing less tooth-rottingly sweet and more like rich fondant.  Once your cake is cool, cut it across the middle and spread your icing there, then put the rest on the top.

8)  EAT IT!!!  OM NOM NOM!!!

Blank canvas

Been doing a bit of painting.  I've not sat down and tackled something big for a while.  It was really fun!

Here we are about three-quarters done.  I'm not much of a planner when it comes to drawing.  I find it I draw the same thing too many times it tends to take the spark out of it.  If you're lucky I might doodle you a scruffy thumbnail.  I'd rather have a rough idea in my head, and then tackle the whole painting as it it was a massive problem-solving exercise...

One or two more evenings should do it and then I hand it over to go up in the lovely Lizzy's office.

Hidden Loughborough

You think you know a town just because you have your day to day routines, your favourite haunts, and your regular aquaintances.  You think you know a town that is ordinary, but you don't.  Right below the surface, tucked away in back rooms and modified sheds, is a vast well of incredible people with hard-won and well-nurtured talents and interests you never saw before in your life.

This is what's going on outside my office right NOW...

I know this is a terrible drawing, but it's done in MS Paint with a mouse because that's literally all I have on this computer (I'm at work.  Shhh, don't tell anybody)

MS Paint and dodgy mouse

It's been humid and muggy for three days and finally the weather breaks and I get my thunderstorm.  Right outside my window.  YES!!!

Also that that tower block on the left is new.  It's such a eyesore, we all hate it.

Why the Bible is awesome

I've had more speed-doodling challenges (so much fun to do but with technically abysmal results so I don't know why I'm sharing them with you! ;D ) which is where someone reads a story aloud and I have about 5 seconds to draw it as it happens, standing sideways, on an A-frame.  It's not easy, but it has proven one thing: the Bible is awesome fun!  Just one chapter, in this case Acts ch12, covers all your major TV soap genres...

Murder...