A SAFE MOORING: March 2012

Doodled

Thursday, March 22, 2012

"I graduated in 2005 from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee with my degree in Printed Textiles and a portfolio stuffed with monochrome silk screen prints and drawings. Following that, I set-up my little studio and began on my mission to vanquish the vector and champion the (wobbly) hand drawn line.

Every piece I create starts life as a simple pencil sketch, evolving into a rambling pen and ink drawing usually spanning several sheets of paper. I love the tactile nature of the materials I use and the joy of smudgy fingerprints."

At the risk of sounding like a lame-o design blogger (sorry, I mean "curator"), how beautiful are these pieces by Johanna Basford? So delicate, but with such depth and richness. I could look at them all day. Her work has graced everything from candle packaging to Starbucks cups to the brochure for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, as well as the branding for one of my favourite florists. Oh, and she went to art college with one of my favourite people.

I know very little about the intricacies of producing art in the digital era, but it makes my heart happy to know there's still a place for the humble pencil and paper, and for the uninhibited joy of a good doodle.

Johanna's aren't the only good doodles I've been admiring this week. Phase Two of Project Bridesmaid has commenced: time to start planning the hen party. The bride, being a fun and sociable sort, has zillions of friends. This is a good thing. But when it comes to finding a date at the height of summer that is going to work for more than two dozen women from all over the country, this can also be a stressful thing. Enter Doodle.

You might already be familiar with Doodle, but it's such a genius concept I thought I'd share it anyway, in case anyone else, like me, is struggling to a conjure a convenient date out of a tangled mass of emails. Basically, you create a little poll (it takes two seconds) and then the attendees can click the link, fill in their name and tick the dates that suit them. The good dates are shown as green, the bad dates are red, a mutually convenient date magically appears and your brain is no longer about to explode. You're welcome.

Have you found anything online worth sharing recently? Feel free to curate your suggestions in the comments...

{All images by Johanna Basford. You can purchase prints of some of her pieces in her shop, you lucky things. By the way, thanks to this post on ESB, all links on the blog from now on will open in the same browser window by default. If you decide you want to open a link in a new tab, just hold CTRL (or command for fancypants hipsters, or "Apple users" as they're otherwise known) + click.}

In which my faith in the internet is restored.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

If I'm honest, last week's unfortunate encounter with the seedy world of plagiarism and automated article spinning left me feeling a bit, well, gross. It was hardly the crime of the century, but I went into the weekend faced with the uncomfortable realisation that the fluffy, cuddly internet I knew and loved had suddenly rolled over to reveal a nasty, flea-ridden underbelly. I wasn't angry; I was disappointed. Which, as every errant schoolchild knows, is much, much worse.

But then, out of the blue, I received not one but two amazing emails from total strangers that had me gently cuffing the internet's ear and agreeing to say no more about it.

Back when I was wedding planning for myself (as opposed to playing out elaborate wedding fantasies for someone else), there were a couple of things that I simply couldn't bring myself to pay inflated wedding rates for. £300 for a five-minute car journey was one. £150 for a bit of net stuck on a plastic comb was another. So I rode to the church in the back of a friend's wonderfully cranky old motor and made my own veil thanks to a DIY veil tutorial from Rebecca Norris, formerly of Rock My Wedding and currently of the always enjoyable Florence Finds. The veil was just grand and the tutorial invaluable, so when my wedding was (finally, blissfully) over I decided to appease the wedding gods by sharing my own DIY hair flower tutorial with the fresh crop of bridelets. Off my post went into the ether, and with my debt duly paid I promptly forgot all about it.

Until, that is, an email popped up in my inbox on Friday from the gorgeous Steff, who only went and made herself a wedding hair flower using my tutorial! Behold the amazingness:

Doesn't she look beautiful? (And is it just me or is she a dead ringer for Florence Welch?)

Not only did she adorn her own head with my creative legacy, ~~Florence~~ Steff took it a step further and made hair flowers for her ENTIRE BRIDAL PARTY:

I am one proud mama right now. To think that something I cobbled together in my living room ended up being part of someone else's *actual wedding* is just the best feeling ever. I can even begin to understand why all those DIY bloggers devote so much attention to dip-dying and neon-spray-painting everything that moves. Thanks so much for getting in touch, Steff. You made my day.

Oh, and the other email I mentioned? Well, I can't actually reveal too much right now, but let's just say it has something to do with my planned blog makeover and made me squeal at my desk. Watch this space...

(YESSS! I've always wanted to end a post on one of those vague-dangling-teasers-that-hint-at-exciting-things-to-come-when-really-everyone-knows-it's-probably-something-really-boring type endings. What a week! First content-poaching, now teaser-dangling - I'm telling you, this blog is GOING PLACES. Maybe. Or, erm, not.)

Images: 1. Rodarte for Opening Ceremony Fall 2011 lookbook via Fashion Gone Rogue 2. Lillian and Leonard 3&4. Steph's own

Exciting things.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Well. This is weird.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Best in Show

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

This weekend, I watched Crufts*. I don't mean I watched it in a "it came on while I was doing the ironing and I was too lazy to change the channel" kind of way, or a "had it on in the background while I wasted hours of my life on Pinterest" kind of way. I mean I sat down on my couch and, quite deliberately, watched it. I checked what time it was coming on and watched the clock compulsively until it started. I perused the programme of events online to see when the hounds were being shown. I expressed opinions on obscure dog breeds about which I know precisely nothing. I even, in a brief spurt of enthusiasm, followed Clare Balding on Twitter. All of which led me to ponder the following question:

What the f*ck has happened to me?

I've never been a dog person. The only dog I had regular exposure to as a kid was my friend's springer spaniel. She would bark hysterically every morning when I appeared at the back gate to collect my friend for our walk to school. What I initially mistook for joyful exuberance turned out to be a post-traumatic reaction to being tripped over and trodden on by me one too many times (accidentally, I hasten to add). She would scrabble frantically at the kitchen door in a vain attempt to evade me and my clumsy hooves, the fact that I had been present in the house when she first arrived from the breeder completely overshadowed by my subsequent inadvertent trampling.

Coincidentally, this is pretty much the reaction I receive from infants too (I have a bad habit of dropping them on their heads. WHOOPSIE) and so throughout my adult life I have always proclaimed, with a breezy indifference, that animals and children "just don't like me."

I can't explain the mysterious transformation that culminated in us acquiring Smidgen; the process was so incremental that it's impossible to point and say, "there, that's it - that's the moment I became a dog person." It's a bit like falling in love. You're merrily bumping along, skimming the surface like a stone, until one day you look down and realise you're actually waist-deep, and sinking fast.

So now, for better or worse, I'm officially a dog person: boring friends to tears with tales of sleeping patterns and gastric worms; befriending strange and slightly shifty rottweilers on buses; conducting in-depth research on different brands of dog food; and, yes, watching Crufts. (This fundamental personality shift doesn't bode well for if we ever have children. Am I suddenly going to start finding breast pumps and Supernanny terribly fascinating? File under: Worrying.)

And even while part of me is despairing at what I've become, another part is screaming, "where has this been all my life???" Because - and I don't know if you know this - Crufts is actually AMAZING.

As well as the almost deadly levels of cuteness on display - the pomeranians! the dachshunds! I die! - there is just something so wonderfully bonkers about the whole thing. People travelling from all over the world to have their dog fondled in front of thousands of people. Lengthy features on the history and preservation of otterhounds. Animals who experience more grooming in a single day than I have in the last month. A dog wearing an actual RAF cloak with actual medals.

And oh lordy, the heelwork to music. Heelwork to music! The ice dancing of the dog world! Who knew such a thing existed? When Mary Ray strode out into the arena clad in her M&S dungarees and ill-advised headscarf, I had a feeling it would make uncomfortable viewing, and I was right. The dog was clearly some kind of genius, but surely even he was cringing as Mary swept away the last shreds of his dignity with her patriotically-striped broom. I could just picture his wolf ancestors shaking their heads sadly, wondering how it had all come to this. You know, if they were watching it on TV.

But despite the nonsense, there is a genuine sense of pride underlying the whole affair. It's impossible to remain scathing in the face of such passion and commitment. Frankly, I would rather live in world where people care so deeply about something, even if that something is training their dog to dance around a broom. I would rather be the kind of person who high-fives her husband when the greyhound makes the cut in the hound group, and then goes in the huff when the borzoi wins (the borzoi? I mean come on, that thing looks like a greyhound and a retriever welded together). What it comes down to, I suppose, is that I'd rather be a dog person than not.

Pretty sure kids still kind of hate me, though.

What about you? Are you a dog person? Or - *shudder* - a cat person?

*Random fact: Did you know that it used to be called Cruft's, before the Kennel Club "rebranded" the show in 1974? The Waterstones apostrophe's got NOTHING on the Crufts apostrophe. I like to imagine it slumped in the corner of a bar somewhere, pickled in gin and yelling "dachshund" and "kooikerhondje" at random.

Right, that's enough of that feminist rubbish.

Friday, March 09, 2012

International What Day?

Thursday, March 08, 2012

Apropos of nothing

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Really? Gender stereotyping? We're still doing that?

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

What, you can't even buy TROUSERS now without finding a bad sexist joke on the washing instructions?

I am morbidly fascinated by the ways in which women and men are stereotyped by companies trying to flog their pointlessly gendered wares. Fin and I are thinking of getting a new car (our current car is too small for Smidgen, it makes a very ominous noise if you go over 40 miles an hour and bits of trim fall off at random on motorways. All valid reasons for a replacement, I feel). So I was on the What Car website looking at estate cars. The fact that my entire being is appalled by the very thought of buying an estate car - for my husband and my dog, URGH - is a whole other can of worms, but suffice to say I was already depressed enough before I noticed a little pink link inviting me to check out the "Female Verdict". One regrettable click later and I found myself on What Car's sister site, evecars.com. Because of course women need a separate car website all of their own. How are we meant to absorb information if it's not wrapped up in a pretty pink package? It's, like, totally hard!

Evecars seems to trade on the assumption that if you talk about cars like they're sexy beasts, women won't notice that they are, in fact, cars. The particular model I was looking at was described as "almost as smooth as 007"; its "sassy styling really stands out in a crowd". Erm, great. Any, you know, actual information about the car? Other than the fact it's "one of the cutest in its class"? I thought I was buying an estate car, not Justin Bieber?

The category descriptions are even worse. On and on, cliché after cliché. Easy to park! Great for the school run! You'll look fabulous! In fairness, there is an executive car category - "going to work is great!" - but whatever you do, don't try and drive to work in an MPV. That's "Mum's Taxi". No executives allowed.

Okay, fine, I'm probably overreacting. A lot of women might find the idea of walking into a car showroom intimidating or confusing (I certainly would), and might welcome a resource that talks about the different options in a simple, light-hearted way without descending into Top Gear territory (gah, the horror). But this relentless division of us all down neat little gender lines - women and men, girls and boys, pink and blue, even for something supposedly neutral like buying earplugs - is it really necessary?

I suppose my fear is that by endorsing the idea that women need only take a superficial interest in supposedly "manly" things (and vice versa), it encourages a particular brand of silly faux-helplessness. "Oh, gosh, I have no idea how many miles per gallon it does, that's for boys. But look at my sassy pink cup holder!" "Change a tyre? Well, I was hoping you might help me with that [cue hair twizzling and much batting of lashes]." One of the many reasons I'm grateful for knowing Fin is that he will always call me out when I lapse into daft lassie territory; I know I'm bright, he knows I'm bright, and allowing me to pretend I'm anything else is just irritating.

Having said that, I still have no clue how to change a tyre. Frankly, I'm not so hot on the washing and ironing, either.

Does anyone else get frustrated by this stuff?

{Images: 1. Emma Barnett/The Telegraph 2. Rion Sabean}