look. talk. love.

Hiatus

2010-04-23T10:34:00.000+01:00

I'm taking a little hiatus from this little indulgent and experimental blog. In the meantime, here is a photo I took of some restful "order" to help you stay centered.

love,
f

In defence of the knit cupcake

2010-04-15T02:14:00.003+01:00

The audacity! Women's Hour on Radio 4 yesterday lifted us make do & mend, knit, craft and sew gals up on a rush of acknowledgement and then the presenter, Winifred Robinson, crushed us by tittering over knit cupcakes!

So I am making a stand here and now for the humble yet darling knit cupcake! I guess Winifred, bless her, has never held a handmade knitted cupcake in her little hand. But I do feel sure little 4, 6 or 8 year old Winifred would have been delighted to do so.

I confess I have made all kinds of wonderful knitted toys but never a cupcake. Instead, I've plundered ebay for lovely, sometimes granny (granny-love-vibe knitted-in, we like that) sellers, who make beautiful knit cakes, biscuits, sweets and fruits. The ones pictured here are available from CrazyDazyKnits of Belfast on Etsy - both knitted up and as PDF patterns.

We have a fabulous collection of all kinds of knit cupcakes, cakes, sweeties and biscuits. Also luxurious felt cakes and chocolates. They have been played with for several years and not just the usual dolls and bears tea party kind of game - in all kinds of imaginative play. They have been loved immensely and admired greatly by the most unexpected of people. Can't imagine that happening with icky, mass-produced in sweat factories plastic play food.

So if you have children, or just want to delight your inner child, don't let the tittering on Women's Hour bring you down and stop you from making your own or buying some handmade knit cakes, biscuits, sweeties and fruit direct from the creator on either Etsy or ebay.

Attack of the Glasgow Tan

2010-04-13T01:21:00.000+01:00

I'm going to talk about the attack of the Glasgow Tan. The insanity of the Glasgow Tan. The hideousness of the Glasgow Tan.

What is the 'Glasgow Tan' you say?

The answer isn't pretty. Even while I did say this blog would be about embracing loveliness I am bringing up this ugly only in an attempt to try to reveal the beauty underneath it.

When you first glance at a person with a Glasgow Tan you find yourself surprised they have ventured into the public domain with such a bright orange face, such a clear tanning disaster, such a brazen statement of beauty stupidity.

But then - jeez - you see another woman with the same orange face. And another. And it is not a virus, it is not a mass-spray tan massacre, it indeed appears that quite a lot of women in Glasgow think a beautiful face is an orange one.

OMG.

What planet is this?

Unlovely as I find the artificial Jaffa orange skin tone, what I find far more unlovely is the inferred suggestion that the natural peely-wally, white-pale, sun-drained naturally white and pink toned face of a Scottish gal has been judged so ugly as to need to be covered up and spray-painted a different color. And not just any color but ORANGE!

Is it the influence of lovely sun-tanned women in Australian soaps like "Home and Away" and prettily-bronzed super models at Cannes or a pal back from her Mediterranean holiday with a freckled, healthy sunkissed skin tone that has fed a desire to just look a bit less pale? Who told these women they were so ugly with pale white skin that they needed to get it spray-painted to be attractive?

I wonder, how do the Glasgow Tan women feel about Michael Jackson lightening his face?

The Glasgow Tan has madly escalated like a drug overdose into manic melanoma melodrama.

I was talking to a friend about why the Glasgow Tan continues to spread like a virus. The only rationale we could think of is that it has become the equivalent of "I'm up for a shag" when you're down the pub. As obvious a signal as a baboon's bright pink bottom. So I guess that must be the 'pay-off' for the Glasgow Tan brigade: it saves you wearing a sign or even needing to talk if you're on the pull.

Oh god, there is something else. The Glasgow Tan gals have also passionately embraced the fluorescent clothing trend. Of course they have! The more artifice the better! Bring it on! Fluoro orange face and fluoro orange dress - nice!

Un petit homage pour Malky de Paris, New York et Angleterre

2010-04-12T00:01:00.003+01:00

Ah Malky. You died. The media in its obituaries describe you as an iconoclast and ‘impresario’. I love that. You were an impresario in the theatre of my life too.

I was one of you and Viv’s thousand-fold faceless love-children. The tribe who donned your attitude and the clothes you made - too poor to buy your label, of course, and too silly to mimic your wit but rich in the energy, the creativity and anarchistic rebellion you loved to foster.

We ate up your thrills, your words, your outlandishness.

But while I, a teenage punk rocker, smoked cigarettes and got drunk at parties in people’s houses with hairsprayed, backcombed peroxide hair, black clothes and dark khol eyes, just another unformed adult listening to the Sex Pistols, Stiff Little Fingers, the Buzzcocks, the Clash and all the rest occasionally backslashed into soft Neil Young and Fleetwood Mac songs we began to consider your svengality a betrayal.

You became to us young fools like ‘the man’, the establishment you loved to taunt. You became to us, who related to the punks you managed, uncool. How young and foolish we were not to understand the creator cannot ever kill that which he has already created.

For so long it was pathetically unfashionable to like you. I am glad you did not care. I hope you did not care. I hope you revelled in it, you master of contrariness.

Then “Paris”. How I heard your Paris album I do not know. The discovery is vampired by my total devotion to you for creating this beautiful soundtrack. Songs and tunes that came with me through so many lovely times in Australia and Paris itself.

You made something so grand. A glorious collaboration. Catherine Deneuve breathing and whispering “sing away?”. And your voice, so liquid, confident, smooth.

You said on this album, “This collection of songs attempts to inscribe a map of feelings over this jazz drenched city of Paris. A city where I have often been lost in a daydream, listening to Eric Satie, Art Blakey and Serge Gainsbourg. Some of their blood and smells remain.”

Thank you Mr Malcolm McLaren for being an unstable, revolutionary yet constant thread of a kaleidoscope in my little life.

You did so much more than “rescue fashion from commodification by the establishment” – your stated objective back in the 1970’s. You unwittingly rescued me and many other souls, liberating us from ‘commodification by the establishment’.

Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren

22.01.46 – 08.04.10

Now your blood and smells remain with us.

Pleasures like petals strewn

2010-04-05T01:56:00.002+01:00

I just stumbled upon a lovely quote about Cecil Day-Lewis, poet laureate. Not a quote from him. A quote from novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard who knew him well for many years and helped care for him in the days before he passed away.

"Nobody was better at getting the utmost pleasure from the simplest thing ... A bunch of flowers, a toasted bun, a gramophone record ... a piece of cherry cake, a new thriller that he'd not read before ... a piece of sweet-smelling soap" noted Howard in her memoir, Slipstream (2002).

While we may not all be able to compose divine poetry like Day-Lewis, we are certainly able to get the greatest pleasure from the simplest things. You don't have to be an inspired poet to feel focused awareness and with it the rich appreciation that flows to our depths.

May the Easter bunny be good to you

2010-04-03T09:26:00.003+01:00

The Easter bunny is visiting us chocolate-eater bunnies at precisely 2pm on Monday.

Hope you and yours have a wonderful Easter.

Still with the scissors

2010-04-01T09:53:00.004+01:00

As well as cutting clothes, I also like cutting shapes out of paper.

So does Scottish graphic designer Jono Sandilands who created the papercut loveliness below.

See more of his papercut work for Promote Shetland - including a lovely photo and sketch storyboard of how his papercuts were used in a brochure at the central station community.

Be a couture fashion designer in a snip

2010-03-31T01:24:00.005+01:00

Why spend loads on deconstructed couture designer clothes when you can be a DIY raw-edged, deconstructionalist designer in seconds?

Here's how:
1. Feel confident.
2. Take a pre-made garment from your wardrobe.
3. Have a loose idea of what sort of shape / design you want to end up with.
4. Wield a pair of scissors with abandonment.
5. Enjoy the snip, snip, snippety-snip.

I'm finding surprising fulfillment in the cutting up of selected skirts, tops and dresses that have languished unworn but still much loved in my wardrobe.

It started quietly several weeks ago with the snipping of hanging threads I think. It was compounded by my huge decluttering.

Like some weird force of nature - a quaint rebellion against the ridiculous notion of mass slavery of women to made-up media fashion trends or perhaps liberated inner child therapy or just a whim - it has escalated into major garment alterations that are exhilarating (but not in a "Girl, Interrupted" way you understand).

My latest slashing was yesterday. I whipped a skirt from my wardrobe and slashed a good half metre off it. I wasn't even careful with exactly where the cut was. I let instinct take over and just let the scissors do their thing. Now I can wear it without walking like a Geisha (although I do love the Geisha-walk I don't like having to attempt it).

Now - joy. Empowerment. A skirt I loved for its pattern and fabric can be worn again without strait-jacketing my legs - maybe even with a cowl-thingy of the cut-off bit if I like.

Merrily go my scissors. I love deconstructed clothes. Especially the ones I deconstruct myself.

Glasgow Kisses | Glasgow Drivers

2010-03-25T00:22:00.030+00:00

The Glasgow Kiss

There's a good reason why head-butting someone is known as giving them a "Glasgow Kiss". Glaswegians like a good fight.

I'm in the queue at the BP petrol station on Great Western Road, Glasgow. One of the women shop assistants thrusts the front page of a tabloid newpaper at the other and says - with outright indignation - "whit man doesnay get a black eye at the weekend?!"

I want to meet the men in her life. No, really, I like a man who knows how to fight. Well, I guess I'll recognise them about town what with their bruised faces and knuckles n'all.

... meanwhile, behind a steering wheel ...

Get these same fighting men in any kind of vehicle and they become, like most other Glaswegian drivers, politeness personified.

If you're driving around Glasgow you'll notice hazard lights flashing at the vehicles behind them as well as headlights flashed by oncoming vehicles. It's like an illuminated carnival of civility. Little flashes of bright white and orange lights in the grey rain.

Let a car out into the traffic and you're sure to get a flash of its hazard warning lights as a "thank you". Or if you are trying to get into the traffic flow and someone flashes their headlights at you it means they will let you out and the other direction is clear for you to go.

You should then flash your hazards to say "thank you for your thoughtfulness - for stopping in your journey through life and the city to consider me, a stranger, footer about with your headlights and allow me to continue my journey, not just more quickly but with a warm glow in my breast over your galant kindness".

If you are driving along and suddenly an oncoming vehicle flashes its headlights at you it means, "be aware there is something going on ahead and slow down". It may be a hidden speed camera, an accident, a child cycling on the road, anything at all.

So when you see headlights flashing at you, slow down. The driver who flashed at you may have saved your life or a speeding ticket.

While all this addition driving activity: fiddling about with your headlight lever and hazard warning lights button can be a bit of a nuisance really, and is not mentioned anywhere in the Highway Code, it is very rewarding for everyone. Who knew driving in a city could be spiritually-uplifting?

The photo of the double-decker bus above was taken right after I let it out from behind two other buses and the bus driver flashed his hazards at me. Aww! You can kind of see his red stop lights on. I get special pleasure from letting buses out since the drivers must be in such a bad mood dealing with all the fights on the bus yet they still manage to say "thank you!".

Blowing eggs and emotional pain

2010-03-24T09:13:00.006+00:00

It's mind-blowing* how the world wide web reflects your individual psyche. And how deeply fulfilling that can be in the most surprising ways.

[I wonder, is the www becoming the external mind of the millions of people who - I want to say 'use' it but I am going to say - are part of it? Whoa!]

Yesterday, even while I knew how to blow eggs to decorate for Easter, I had to google it anyway since I google everything. I found this great egg-blowing instructions article on WikiHow. On the side-bar was a list of featured 'how-to' articles including "Cope with Emotional Pain".

I love that juxtaposition.

Out of curiosity rather than emotional pain (not that I haven't, of course, experienced emotional pain!) I clicked that link and found a lovely article - which I added to!

I've never done this before. I know about the wonderful people who spend time helping others by creating and editing pages on Wikipedia and so on. And I know the www has allowed for a massive demonstration of the kindness and generosity of people in this way.

I read the article and was just thinking, "it would be good if this article also mentioned 'mindfulness' as an effective technique to help with emotional pain since I have found this very helpful" when I noticed the "EDIT" button.

An EDIT button!

So I tentatively clicked it and I left my little contributory paragraph under 'tips' and it appeared as part of the article.

I was going to share my little contribution towards supporting and healing others by pasting my paragraph about mindfulness here. But someone has REMOVED it! Would you believe it? They have "rolled back to last good edit" apparently. LOL

I just wrote a whole post about the wonderfulness of creating wonder on the web and someone has removed my little piece of wonder. And demonstrated the tribal collaboration that goes on here. Love it.

Oh, wait, there is a list of edits on the page and there I am - another Anon and there too was my little contribution that got dumped:

Practise 'mindfulness'. Attend to even mundane tasks like washing dishes with your full awareness. Bring yourself back into the present moment when your feel yourself wandering into feeling down and focus on the task at hand.

See, the glory of the world wide web is that beauty never dies and every individual is empowered. Plus, you are able to blow eggs with aplomb.

* mind-blowing? Am I being judgmental again?

Feeling much better today thanks

2010-03-23T10:32:00.011+00:00

People do stupid things when they are scared

2010-03-22T12:37:00.021+00:00

People do very stupid things when they are scared. Even governments.

While some people feel absolute glee when spotting a badger, build dens for them in their gardens, experience a divine sense of wonder while badger-watching at dusk ... there are others who can't wait to get out there and bludgeon them to death - the Welsh government, for example.

What would account for such, well, let's call it stupidity?

It can only be that the government is conceding to rampant free-floating anxiety from large companies operating in the cattle industry.

You can imagine the perpetrators of this industry being the kind of people who think it makes sense to kill all native badgers just on the off-chance, the remote possibility there might be, in the future, maybe, some kind of transference of bovine tuberculosis from a badger to a (cash) cow.

There is no proof of any connection between bovine TB in badgers and cattle. Nonetheless the Welsh government feels that really, the mere idea that large agricultural corporations might possibly suffer a loss of future profit from another Mad Cow disease-like scenario and this in turn potentially damage the Welsh economy is just so frightening that it must protect -- no, dearheart, not its indigenous wildlife, its natural heritage, one of Britain's favorite native animals no, no, no -- it must protect and indeed appease the profit-driven agriculture corporations.

Apparently it is so scared it wants to get rid of anything that might cause those paranoia-struck folks any kind of worry - no matter how irrational and ignorant their fears.

Let's hope The High Court stops in its tracks the Welsh government's psychotic proposal to kill thousands of wild, native Welsh badgers.

If you like lovely, stand-up for it. Support the lovely Brian at The Badgers Trust who must feel like he's losing his mind with this proposed badger kill idiocy and having to discuss it calmly on national radio. And go plant some seeds, feed a bird or something.

Life just gets sweeter and sweeter

2010-03-21T02:11:00.023+00:00

Just when I thought life could not get any sweeter, I received an invite to the sneak preview party of Auntie M's Cake Lounge, Upper Floor, De Courcy's Arcade, Cresswell Lane, Glasgow.

Having already partaken in an unladylike amount of Auntie M's cupcakes, cookies and confections as well as her outlandishly luscious cakes at Heart Buchanan, Byers Road, I determined that like an alcoholic invited to a free bar I would approach Auntie M's complimentary cake buffet table last night with total devotion.

Alas, I am most disappointed to report that due to frail restraint I fell, all-too-soon, under-the-table. Any thoughts of pacing myself so as to try a little of everything in a gentile, pinky-pointing-fashion flew away when I was faced with vintage tableware laden with such sweet thrills as umpteen cupcakes (mini and big sizes) in chocolate and vanilla with pretty pink flowers and shimmery glitter ...

... giant-sized chocolate, banana, coconut and pistachio frosting-topped cakes, chocolate chip cookies, a lemon-drizzle cake affair, a beyond-gourmet caramel shortcake that should be classed an illegal substance and a completely new range of confectionery from America, Canada and beyond not previously available in Scotland. (I said, not previously available in Scotland!) And - AND a sumptuous range of you-wouldn't-know-it VEGAN cakes!

Look, truly, I made a valiant effort. I managed several mini cupcakes, half a slice of iced banana cake, someone else's leftover chocolate icing, a large chocolate cupcake, two slices of caramel shortcake (therein lies my demise) a glass of champagne, some pink lemonade and two tiny Tootsie rolls from a child's goody bag.

Yes, the children received goody bags of 1950's cut-out and dress-up paper dolls and clothes, Auntie M's keyrings and magnets and -- then the bag was politely taken from me so I know not what else.

Today I am very annoyed at myself for finding it increasingly difficult to focus on the positive of all the delectable tastes and rapturous sugar-joy I experienced instead of fixating on not managing to eat even a morsel of iced pistachio cake. I LOVE this pistachio cake.

I have eaten it before - it actually contains an abundance of real pistachios, people. *Taking a moment. Imagining. Remembering.* Damn, I shall have to go buy a slice on Monday when Auntie M's Cake Lounge opens.

I should say sorry to anyone at the party who may have seen me apparently snorting candles in a 1950's cabinet. These were sense-expanding scented candles with the aroma of oatmeal cookies.

I shall never stand in the line at Bradfords or Greggs again, my dear. Never. Auntie M's does take-away, of course, in pretty boxes. And orders can be placed for celebration cakes.

I shall not bother with any other tearoom, I shall shun Fortnum & Mason. I long for the solace of free coffee refills from a buxom waitress wielding Cona-style glass jug and witty one-liners while I fantasise I am honeybunny or pretty much any character in any American movie diner scene.

Sweet Mother of Cake I have tasted heaven. I shall never come back to earth.

Seven from Heaven - my delights

2010-03-19T11:09:00.016+00:00

You like that? Seven from Heaven. I'm doing 'seven from heaven' because it rhymes. I like that. So here is a curious collection of seven things which have made my life zingier this past week.

1. The Guardian on Saturdays. I don't buy it any other day. But I LOVE it on Saturdays. Actually, I NEED it. I read it all through the week. Then I use it to line the cats litter trays.

2. Etsy. I am an 'Etsy Cupcake' through another account so I pretend to be humble about that. No, I'm not telling you what crafts I make and sell on there. I LOVE Etsy as a seller and a buyer. It has dramatically changed the world by connecting like people, encouraging creativity in everyone, making it really easy to sell handmade and vintage items from anywhere in the world, direct from the artist or collector.

Etsy is the force of hundreds of thousands of individual artists, crafters and designers, vintage collectors and general wonderful individuals being empowered to sell easily online and in turn empowers individuals to buy handmade and vintage instead of mass-produced clothes, homewares, supplies, anything! I am looking forward to the individual sellers and buyers of Etsy suffocating bland global retail brands.

3. My vintage 1970's Radio & TV Times folder. I put all incoming paperwork in this folder (found in my main shopping venue, The Salvation Army store on Dumbarton Road, Glasgow) and my desk looks so pleasing and uncluttered. Am really loving the calm of cleared surfaces.

4. A box of Thorntons chocolates given to me by my friend, M, for Mother's Day on Sunday. (Actually, M overrides the chocolates in the Seven from Heaven department but that's a whole other website.)

5. Radio 4. Streamed via the iplayer website. God help me I am now very familiar with The Archers, Women's Hour and even Just a minute and Desert Islands Discs (which is brilliant!). Damn this getting-older business. But you know what? So are people like Nick Cave *swoon* and he might be on Desert Islands Discs any day now.

6. The vintage Mercedes Elegance my cousin has loaned us over the past several months. We have been calling it 'the beautiful automobile'. Not long after the wanton vandalism it experienced recently to its nearside window it has been given a death certificate instead of an MOT certificate. *sigh* So today is our last day driving it, our sweet little scarlet-red gangsta pimp-mobile. So long beautiful automobile.

7. My bed. I have spent around 75% of the last 168 hours sleeping in it.

I intend compiling a Seven from Heaven each week because it amuses me. And it's a nice gratitude journal thingy.

View from a bus stop, Glasgow

2010-03-17T18:26:00.000+00:00

I was waiting for the number 11 bus. I felt it was a meant-to-be circumstance since I am also a number 11 -- in numerology.

I sat at the bus stop, looked up and whoa! Look at the view from the bus stop seat on Dumbarton Road, Glasgow. The magnificent sandstone austere gorgeousness that is Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum. The bus was late enough for me to take this pic.

How can I be so in love with a napkin?

2010-03-17T16:01:00.000+00:00

- AND it's a paper napkin, not even a proper linen one.

My dearest galpal gave me a set of the above napkins and now, almost 100 days later, I still can't bear to open the packet.

However, I have prepared a canvas and god-help-me I'm going to open that packet, unfold a napkin and stick it on the canvas with reverence, place it on a big wall and stare at it dreamily, (like you would want to do with any loved one).

The confidence to clash patterns

2010-03-16T15:27:00.000+00:00

Clash patterns / Smash conventions. I love when people defy 'fashion' commentators and wear whatever patterns and colors they fancy, simultaneously.

As our beautiful English doyen of being-yourself, Ms Vivienne Westwood says, wear whatever the fuck you like - no matter how many years you've had it, how ripped, faded or manky it is so long as you love it, wear it!

When I was a teenager, avant garde though I thought I was, I would never have clashed patterns. Ew! Now I take great joy from it. I mean, real joy. It utterly thrills me to wear clothes that you'd think would fight each other. In some kind of cosmic conspiracy once on a body bold individual garments make peace to create a vibrant diversity.

Just the same way as many Scottish government agencies encourage people of different ethnic backgrounds to come together as one glorious new outfit. A much more diverse and fascinating outfit than homogeneous same-old (of course they don't put it quite like that).

I'm wondering if pattern clashing, whether on your body or in your home, is a statement of rebellious confidence. I always have more attitude when I'm wearing clashing patterns. Like I'm saying, 'yeah, I AM a contrary, contradictory kinda person'.

Pattern-clashing reflects a complicated outlook, don'tchathink? Pattern-clashing is for individualists. Not forgetting forgetful, Sulphuric, academic-type men who do this effortlessly.

Perhaps the leap of wearing or creating pattern-clashes creates more confidence to be yourself. To stand out and be gloriously different. Or is it that you have to be confident to pattern-clash?

Make the world more beautiful, show yourself in what you wear and where you live.

Hello

2010-03-15T17:16:00.001+00:00

I love that word. Hello.

The beginning of so much that is everything.