Songs: Dream a Little Dream of Me

Some smooth, sexy jazz for your sunday:

Making Things: Swain Snapper

An invention by the wonderful Mr. Swain while we were bored at work.   Hours of entertainment, both for us and the customers!   You will need: two plastic credit cards or similar that you don't want anymore.   We used two blank membership passes.   Sticky tape, hole puncher, elastic band, scissors.   Firstly take the two credit cards and punch a hole in each, in the same position, with the hole puncher.   Next, tape the two cards together in such a way that the holes are both on the outside edge.  

Then fold the cards together along their taped edged.   Cut an elastic band open and thread it through the holes.   Secure to the outside edge of the cards with tape.   The elastic band must not be pulled tight.   There must be some give in it.  

Fold the cards the wrong way so the elastic band is tight, then put down on a flat surface and let go.  Watch your swain snapper leap into the air!   Woo!   

Songs: Halo

A love song for your Saturday morning.   I love this!  Both the song and the singer are so powerful!   One of my favourites to do at karaoke too.   :)
 

 

Photography: Fields of Gold

On a family trip to the beach at Berwick upon Tweed we stopped at a service somewhere along the way.   There was a glorious view of an oilseed rape field.   It put me in mind of Sting's Fields of Gold.   Take a look around you!   There's plenty of beauty to be found in everyday unglamourous things.   Shame the sky wasn't blue, but you can't have everyone in the North of England.

Songs: I Spy

Kind of hipstery but I like it anyway:

Feathers: Hyacinth Macaw

The summer before last I went to Brazil and picked up a gorreous feather (there wil be photos to come, errr, when I've edited them).   I have a bit of a collection of pretty feathers.   It's from a bird called a hyacinth macaw.   They're the biggest parrots in the world, and also really stupid.  They're kind of odd in that they look kind of grey, until the sun hits them just right, and then they're suddenly the most brilliant blue.   Well, my feather is the same.   It just looks like a plain grey feather until the sun hits the inside edge just right.   The photo doesn't really do it justice, but here it is all the same.

 Without the light

 

 With the light

A Short History of Nearly Everything: Atoms

From A Short History of Nearly Everything:

"Atoms, in short, are very abundant.

They are also fantastically durable.   Because they are so long-lived, atoms really get around.   Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you.   We are each so atomically numerous and so vigourously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms - up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested - probably once belonged to Shakespeare.   A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name.   (The personages have to be historical, apparently, as it takes the atoms some decades to become thoroughly redistributed; however much you may wish it, you are not yet at one with Elvis
Presley.)"

Baking: Moustache biscuits

I was given moustache biscuit cutters by a lovely friend, and set about making moustaches for all my colleagues.   The actual recipe was one I've used before, pinched from my good friend Lady Scoof-a-lot (minus the chocolate) and as she describes it so well, I won't bore you with repeating the procedure.  I will, however, show you the actual result.   Aren't you lucky?

 Different shaped moustaches

  Me modelling one

Songs: Candy

No, not the Robbie Williams one, the one by Ash.   Blast from the past.   I always think this sounds so 90s, though it was actually released in 2001.  Enjoy!

Photography: Exhibition and Sale

So I'd been helping a colleague by providing some photos for her to use in workshops.   She liked them and decided to put some of them in an exhibition.   I don't think either of the ones she chose were particularly good, but hey, it was still cool.   What was cooler still is that at the end I said I didn't want the canvasses back, so she sold them for charity!   Another colleague bought them and they fetched about 15 pounds each.   Woo!   Go me! 

 Mine are the colourful trees and the pink cherry blossom.   One is the same photo as in this post.