They also asked me to do a reading at the wedding, with 48 hours notice; they had to be vetted by the Registry Office beforehand, just in case I insulted any evangelical Christians who happened to be skulking about waiting to be deeply offended by any reference to “wedding” or “marriage”. Luckily, one of the corners came up trumps with a beautiful poem. On the day I almost blubbed my little eyes out reading in front of the assembled families. The respective mothers liked it so much they asked for copies of it. Et voila:

Basically two £1.99 picture frames from Poundstretcher, some card, printed copies of said poems and some of the leftover tartan ribbon. One Scottish version and one über Scottish version and a whole hour’s work. And hopefully the poet won’t mind me posting it here as well:

This poem was written by one of the other Corners here. It must not be quoted elsewhere without their express permission.

So in the spirit of sharing you can go and listen to my highly embarassing and seriously-not-my-best and not-what-all–my-other-songs-are-like-at-all and if-anyone-I-know-finds-this-I’ll-die song on myspace. Go on, have a crafty listen.

- draw around your hand
- make your thumb a turkey head
- make the other fingers turkey plummage
- draw wings, beak, eyes and go crazy decorating and personalising the turkey.

We’ve now got a wall of turkeys in our office which the students are adding to. My favourites so far include ‘pilgrim and Indian turkey’ and ‘turkey with five turkey heads’.

What other hand animals/monsters can be made? A prize for the best one!

I love this French company’s products. They’re so clever it’s almost annoying, but their stuff is also charming and silly. It took me ages to decide what to pick from their website to show you here – I chose the magic hat tissue box. But I could have chosen the sponge microphone, water spill coaster, miss world t-shirt or surface of the moon rug, and you’d have been just as intrigued.

They deliver pretty fast considering it’s from France, but order in plenty of time because it could take a while to arrive. It’s sort of all the silly things you get in silly arty shops over here, but a bit fresher.

And – by the by – what was/ is your favourite book aimed at children? I love ‘The Little Prince’, all of the Mog stories, ‘The Tiger that Came to Tea’, ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ and all the Enid Blyton novels that took place in boarding school. To this day I’ve never had ginger ale and sardines at midnight, but I’ve always kind’ve wanted to.

When I googled ‘Lions Teen Tracks’, though, very little came up. This was an imprint of HarperCollins from around the years 1976 to 1991 – I can’t be accurate here because I can’t find any information (well, not through a quick google session anyway… must renew British Library membership!). Lions Teen Tracks published an amazing amount of teen fiction by lots of different authors, some of whom, like Francine Pascal, went on to fame and fortune. Others wrote a slew of Tracks novels, and some just a single gem of a book…

Many of the novels tackle serious issues like sexual abuse and disability, but I’m sorry to say that I’m a sucker for the more humdrum stories of high school, first love, and all that teen jazz. Sorry.

Part of my Lions love comes from the amazing covers. There were a number of standard cover ‘looks’ over the years, all gloriously, classically eighties. Torn effect coloured backgrounds? Check. Different coloured squares and triangles jostling for position? Check. Ill-proportioned pencil and watercolour illustrations? Check. Silver foiling? Mmm, check.

Best place for finding them now? Charity shops. My local library had nada. A couple of links for you: Wikipedia’s Young Adult Fiction page, and a teen fic post on The Lipster.

Recently at a village fete style event run by the lovely live art people Home, I met a lady called Izzy Lane, who rescues sheep which would otherwise be killed due to such crimes as being male, missing a pregnancy, being too lame, small, old or otherwise ‘flawed’ (it’s not only us humans under pressure to be perfect, you know). Once Izzy has rescued these shat-upon sheep, she uses their wool to produce gorgeous clothes. Izzy says she has a passion for “great clothes, animals and Britain”. That pretty much sums up my own interests, too.

I’m having fashion palpitations over her cashmere waistcoat above. It’s £148, which puts a slight dampener on things, although I do think that’s an excellent price. Everything is right about this piece – the goats are happy, the design is perfect, the construction looks beautiful, it’s probably softer than snow. I did just spend around this amount of money on a bowl from the new Rob Ryan shop, Ryantown, but I’m already paranoid about it breaking, and let’s face it, I’m not going to wear a bowl out or have to get it dry-cleaned, so my damage paranoia can be contained (just like my apples). If I had this waistcoat, I’d only be able to wear it in sterile situations.

So for now I’ll just stare longingly at this picture.

Sigh.

A lot like a UK based Etsy, this is a place to buy and sell items by crafters and small designers. There’s also a making section which will showcase how to guides and stories about the making of items on the site. Currently there’s a good showing of work for sale from design graduates. Here’s my picks:
Saturday Morning screenprinted tote bag by Mr.PS, 300 plate by CJ O’NeillAlice in Wonderland moleskin notebooks by Champignons, Laminated chair by Jamie Ward, all on Folksy.