1. Vanish stain remover - it really does work!
2. My tulips flowering
3. High Street gutters with drifts of pink cherry blossom from Canongate Kirk
4. Late Junction
5. Jam making inspired by reading 'The Domestic Goddess' by Nigella Lawson
Loathe lists
1. Hello / Picassa 3 days trying to upload a picture
2. the election
is something I think happens in Japan - I've not had a huge amount of luck finding any info about it online. I think people gather in parks and have picnics drink saki and write haikus.
There are some spectacular blossom displays in Edinburgh at the moment, St Andrew Square, Gordon St in Leith, and in the ususal suspect parks. Waiting in Portobello High Street last night for a bus a group of children had great fun scooping up handfulls of pink petals from the pavement and flinging them into the air.
A friend of mine talked in a very scathing way about a friend of hers who would take his bicycle and take a tour of trees in blossom 'He goes to see the same trees every year'. So ??? Like the Japanese the wonder of a cherry tree in bloom after the gray of the winter is a miracle and I'm happy to rediscover it every Spring.
to write something about Derek Jarman - Michael's drawing made me haul out the Tony Peak biog from my shelf last night
penguins going through security - probably a publicity stunt. Via Caterina.
thursday 6pm - we're the ones with the needles! If you want to learn come along. Email me if you need to borrow some wool & needles in advance.
Whether by happenstance or design, Cake Man Raven has become the city's most visually strident opponent of the restrained preciousness that has overtaken the baking world. Few would confuse the results of his labor with anything found in Real Simple. Instead, Mr. Dennis's cakes and Mr. Dennis himself - or Cake, as he identifies himself over the phone - have a sense of the epic about them. For the Rev. Al Sharpton, he once made a model of the Bible turned to Timothy 2:15 ("Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved"); for Cab Calloway's 80th birthday, a songbook with a grand piano resting on top; for Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn Borough President, a replica of its Borough Hall, twice. When the rapper Jam Master J died in 2002, he made a cake in the shape of a large Adidas sneaker with a gold chain and two turntables on it.
more here
quick link via Superhero Designs as my computer is being slow and weird... spring convulsions?
Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, the artist once interned as an enemy alien who later turned the entire country into an open air gallery of his work, died yesterday at the age of 81 after a long illness.
His last outing was a few days ago, to his retrospective at the Flowers East gallery in London - but anyone interested in him only has to look around the streets of the capital and dozens of other British towns and cities.
"He was a vital member of the Independent Group and can be regarded as one of the fathers of pop art. His public works, including the designs for Tottenham Court Road underground station, reinvigorate images drawn from comics, design and advertising and place them back in the public domain."
Wilfred Cass, founder of Sculpture at Goodwood Park, West Sussex, described him as "one of the greats, unquestionably". The park holds London to Paris, his last major piece, a 25ft bronze and timber train based on fond memories of childhood trips to the Continent: it filled the Royal Academy courtyard in 2000, before steaming on to Goodwood.
"He could do so much," Mr Cass said. "Other artists are one-string fiddles, but Eduardo was good at everything he turned his hand to."
The artist, who was knighted in 1989, once described himself as "an old poor pro", and accepted hundreds of public commissions.
He enjoyed the unique distinction of having thousands of commuters tramp through a creation every day in his spectacular 1980 tile decoration for Tottenham Court Road tube station. He also gave a major collection, including most of his archive and the contents of his studio, which instantly re-filled with new work in progress, to the National Galleries of Scotland.
He was brought up in his Italian parents' ice-cream shop in Leith, Edinburgh - where he later claimed he had to work from the age of four - but his world changed drastically when he was 16 and Italy entered the war.
His father, grandfather and uncle all died when the ship carrying them to internment in Canada was torpedoed, and the boy was himself jailed at Edinburgh's Saughton prison.
He collapsed in his studio in the late summer of 2000, when London to Paris was completed, but he was still deluged with work. He never fully recovered. Many who knew him thought overwork contributed to his collapse.
At the time his youngest daughter, Emma, said: "The poor old thing, I think all artists like to go out with their boots on."
From The Guardian
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At the top of Leith Walk you can see Paolozzi's scuptures the big foot and hand.
Get a book of stamps - find some postcards - I pick up free ones all the time at bars and cafes - 1.Write to people you would love to hear from but never have time to contact
2. People you always think about phoning late at night when they will be in bed and you don't want to wake up
3. People going through a hard time - a bit of real post instead of another 23 missives from the Bank of Scotland.
Post them forget about it. The good karma from this is incalculable.
Once you have got into the swing of this and really it only takes about 10 mins out of your lunchtime you can expand the good karma exercise. For no reason whatsoever except that you found a packet of teeny tiney green envelopes send your female friends a rose sented tea bag, a creative partner a Darth Vader chocolate lolly ' You saw a lolipop of the Dark Lord of the Syth - the embodyment of all that is evil and corrupt in the galaxy... and you thought of me?' was the email I got back... one of the nicest envelopes I got in the mail was a selection of hot chocolate sachets.
In dire necessity great ecards here. But remember some real mail is a wonderful thing.
How the people of one small Scots fishing village launched their own record label - and became a global phenomenon. From The Guardian
Ever had one of these? Saturday I'd had all planned out a series of diverting pleasurable events starting with sleeping in, getting some wool from the charity shop... then it all went wrong. The garden centre I'd planned to buy some tomato plants was closed (permanently) I'm a militant non driving public transport taking pedestrian so buying plants would now be problematic. I went to the funky wool shop only to have my quiet browsing of skeins interrupted by someone I really did not want to talk to. I fled across the park muttering to myself trying to talk myself into enjoying the new spring leaves on the trees, the fresh air, spring blossom etc etc. And the more I tried to look on the bright side of life ta da ta the grumpier and crosser and grouchier I felt. I thought I'd salvage it by going to an independent bookshop. I know the owner slightly and the last time we'd met was at a funeral so I relived that funeral then she said an aquainance of both of ours who had died recently had committed suicide. I hadn't heard. I went home and gave up on trying to have a pleasant day.
Interestingly I only began to feel better on Monday when I met someone told them about the terrible terrible day and she sympathised and said how frustrating and how painful to hear about the suicide. And after the sympathetic and accepting response I began to feel so much better my mood lifted and I went to the beach and walked alongside the surf and felt my equilibrium return.
What is interesting is how often we try to talk ourselves out of our authentic response to life's events. And in pushing them away they persist all the more just turned into a grouchy irritable out of sortsness. Acknowledging the real feelings behind made it possible to leave the irritability and move on.
