Pussies, Power & Pleasure, Oh My!

I don’t like my voice. I don’t like the way I look. I don’t like the way I move. I don’t like the way I act. I mean, period. So, you know, I don’t like myself.

Elizabeth Taylor, the most beautiful woman in the world once upon a time…

Venus in furs

Ok, so I’ve started frequenting Starbucks. I don’t really like Starbucks, I’m usually a Pret patron, and then mostly only because I can’t relax enough to hang in independent cafés – oh, that and the soya lattes. Monolithic mass produced coffee houses may be High Street hussies, but they take your money and don’t ask questions when you stay long after your cup is dry, tip tapping away on your laptop – not so ethical I know.

Just tea zen

I console myself with the thought, at least the coffee’s Fairtrade, but then gobble fruit toast dowsed in butter washed down with English Breakfast tea – when in London, I say. After all it’s the toffee-ness of the warm, sticky fruits and the decadent drizzle of butter which bribed me to sign my divorce papers, before I went to work the other week. I’m harnessing the power of pleasure to have my way with the world, you see –although this may be more ‘ a spoonful of sugar’ as Mary Poppins called it.

Moaning over spilt milk...

The other week I had a day or two off and I was thinking as I read, Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts – Using the Power of Pleasure to Have Your Way With the World, that instead of reading the pretty-in-pink book while devouring fruit toast I should be in New York taking a bite out of the Big Apple.

After all Sister Goddess Mary told me I could have ‘all my dreams and desires’. She said, she ‘believed’ in me and that if I wanted in on the Womanly Arts Mastery Program I could. But I either didn’t want it, or believe it, or something it enough. Mostly I just found it too damn hard to take that leap of faith over the pond and go with the cash flow.

You godda have faitha, faitha, faith-ahh...

Let me explain: Regina Thomashauer, aka Mama Gena, has a School of Womanly Arts in NYC. No, it’s not a finishing school…well not the sort for balancing books on yer ‘ noodle. It’s a kinda modern-day temple-cum-training-centre for nurturing the divine in every female – thus the Sister Goddess epithet.

The word ‘goddess’ has been undermined of late; oft used in conjunction with conspicuous consumption, cookery or copulation – think ‘domestic goddess’, ‘sex goddess’, or Vidal Sassoon hair appliances. Mama G on the other hand is here to tell you ‘women are the most untapped creative resource in the world’ and that being a Sister Goddess – power with a heart and soul – is the way.

“Your dreams, your desires are not too big for you. They are just the right size. And they are rapidly and readily accessible if you follow me through the doorway of pleasure.”

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted

Sounds deliciously Alice in Wonderland-ian, right? Her Mastery manifesto sees Mama G citing such luminaries, as siren of the silver screen, old wiggle hips, sofa lips, Mae West, who reckoned pleasure not pleasing was a girl’s best friend:

“I felt it was time to play. Most of my thoughts, time and energy had gone into creative effort. And this restriction of the love drive, the headshrinkers will tell you, is the greatest urge one really has. When one sublimates the sex drive into creative work it puts a person in high gear mentally. I admit it. But it is against my nature to bottle up the biological plans of pleasure for any length of time. I hope I don’t sound as if I have discovered the secret salve that soothes the universe, but I do want to add my small footnote on the subject.”

Mama calls these “biological plans of pleasure” Pussy:

“Pussy extends way beyond the crotch. In my world, Pussy is a metaphysical term that refers to the essence of female power.”

Birth of Venus

Cor, I can see the men in my life wincing in my mind’s little eye! My otherwise female-friend-ly manager is convinced any of the goddess-style, women-centric classes I rock up to are actually male-hating, sock-titted, feminist covens. And as for Mr Glittery, god’s gift to good girl pleasure, he was completely freaked over my capsule collection of what he called ‘porn’ memoirs, like The Sexual Life of Catherine M, and erotic tales by Anais Nin. Alright, they could be porn I guess, but he said it like ‘porn’ was meant to be a male preserve. And my possession of erotica seemed to arouse his suspicions and question his manhood.

Bedtime reading

Twice he compared me to paintings of Venus, goddess of love and sex. Yes, really. And yes, love is a bit blurred of vision guys. Two different paintings, in fact. Same feeling: powerlessness. He had a thing about action women. How much more passive can you get than a painting? How much more powerless can you feel than when you let a guy in your bed? That’s how I’d come to see it anyway. So when I read the words:

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Maya Angelou, Still I Rise

I began to cry. In Starbucks.

Shake Ya Tailfeather

My adventuressing over the last couple of years has led me to realise I’ve needed a guy partly to feel socially acceptable. But whenever I found out a chap dug me I just didn’t geddit. “The one thing I don’t like about you,” Mr Glittery observed, in bed one day, “Is you don’t like yourself.” Therein lies [sic] the problem. You wind up saying what you think people want to hear for fear of being found to be, well, you. The fear I felt trying to hold it all together – not very well I might add – manifested in myriad ways; including menstrual irregularities and ultimately an eerily silent halt to proceedings.

Darling, Im feeling a bit flat

I guess Mama G would say Pussy was protesting.

New Year & Northern Lights – A Kaleidoscope of Possibilities

I used to mark the New Year with a list: all my dreams and aspirations for the 12 months ahead written in black

Everything's crystal clear now...

 and white. Everything seemed possible. Clear as crystal. The year spread out before me ‘Like a virgin… shiny and new’. And my cup brimeth over with great expectations. Until, one year, I had ‘The Shining’ moment.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, TSM is when you realise someone, in this case me, is a total fruit loop. You know, when you take a peek at what you thought was a masterpiece of a novel only to find it’s actually: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” typed a terrifying number of times. This is, of course, a whole lot worse when you are both the discoverer and the discovered because it just begs the question: Who the hell am I? And possibly: Am I dangerous? And: Should I believe myself anyway?

In my nut-case, my crazy-as-a-coconut head had deemed it necessary to create a To Do list at the beginning of the year which it then tried to prevent me from completing with all it’s lame excuses. You can do it tomorrow. That guy smells funny. There might be spiders in there. What if it turns black and falls off? And so on. Until one year, having completed my deep and crisp and even NYL I turned over what I thought was a new leaf, only to find last year’s practically the same completely uncompleted list on the other side!

Yes, my name is Earl (actually it’s not… that’s a boy’s name, but I like that programme.) and I’m a list-aholic. It’s just that it wasn’t until New Year last year that I realised how grave the situation was. NYL had seeped into everyday lists… which had just sort of multiplied like germs. And as my room

and my life got out of control, in an attempt to feel just a teensy bit better I’d write another list to sort it out. Then the list’d look so darned long, that I’d get all overwhelmed and just ignore it… until I felt compelled to write another one.

So when Mr Glittery was helping me organise my stuff ‘n’ nonsense last January, he was perhaps the victim of his own TSM, when he realised I really wasn’t just a coconut in name, but also in nature. “I need a lever arch file for my lists,” had been the moment of realisation. And I think

Crazy as Coconuts

sifting through all my unfinished art, writing, customisation projects and whatnot just emphasised the fact. He opened up a scrap book full of seemingly random magazine cuttings and said, “Now I know what’s going on in your head.” I felt ashamed. I wanted to hide it away like the mad woman in the attic. I tore my semi-completed sham of a novel away from his prying eyes and threw it in the bin. We’d unearthed far more demons than I was willing to face.

Then I made him angry. I think he thought the outburst was about one thing… possibly because the words which came out of my mouth suggested so, but in fact it was all about me feeling s**t about me and thinking: he must just wish he was back with his ex Sigourney-Weaver-look-a-like-script-editor girlfriend who actually gets things finished; doesn’t live with a bunch of rowdy 30-something guys who carry on like students; and most definitely doesn’t have a lever arch file for her lists. And… as it turned out I was right.

So this year, to mark the new me, as well as the new calendar, lists are banished and I’m creating a vision board. In fact I’ve had one on the wall for about six months or so now, well actually there’s kinda two. One side is a

Mr Universe

prompt for me, the other’s for the universe – by this I mean, you kinda let the powers that be get on with it… I know some people will think this is yet another sign that I’m on the slippery slope to insanity with skis on, but let me tell you something, just as many, if not more things have gotten done

on the ‘universe’ board than the ‘me’ board. Top of the popsicles is Iceland!

To make my grand entrance into 2010 in style I’ve attempted to purge myself of some of them aforementioned demons by having a bit of ‘spiritual detox’. I had my chakras balanced, cards read and a bit of sound healing – drum and all! People say, “Do you believe

Winter of discontent

all that stuff?” But I hardly believe myself most the time… Not to mention the fact that at our first reading she said – without prompt – “Oooh, it’s a bit crazy in there, isn’t it?” Meaning my head. “It’s full of magazine cuttings!” Sounds like my head to me.

And I’m leaving this year, this decade, behind feeling like I’m really starting to excavate the diamond from underneath all that rough stuff. I’ve gone back to basics: my roots. I’ve dug out my childhood dreams and put them in motion– honestly I knew far more then than the older me! My love of colour, need for creative expression, and enduring fascination with fairytales, I’ve realised, are far more than mere whimsy; they are necessary to my wellbeing – food for the soul if you will.

Northern lights at the end of the tunnel...

I’ve been experiencing my own Narnian netherworld (always winter, never Christmas), a kinda dark night of the soul, in recent years and although it’s been a bit of a bleak trek, I think that in being forced to retreat, to take a back seat, I have at last been able to see the always present light in that all encompassing darkness.  Like the Northern Lights the future is a bright, iridescent, kaleidoscope of possibilities in the midnight sky.

Email from the Future You – Ooh, scary…

Cosmic ordering – I’ll have no. 36, 67 and a coke please…

Being Green [with Envy] – Monsters, Dare Devils & J Alfred Prufrock (Who he?)

“To thine own self be true.” (Above the stage at Conway Hall)

 

Lady Gaga happy in the faux frog skin she's in

Green may be the new black, but what happens when green goes bad? I don’t mean when you go all OTT with the emerald velvet and wind up looking like Kermit the Frog. I mean green as a way of being, as in green-fingered, as in balanced and harmonious; the flipside of green as in pleasant, green as in good. I’m talking green as in envy. This was the question the School of Life was posing the other wild, wet and windy Sunday. 

I was having a go at killing 2 birds with one stone, not literally of course. All sounds rather messy if you ask me, you’d need a big stone, for starters, the kind Wiley Coyote used to drop off cliffs to flatten Road Runner – speaking of which, there’s a lesson to be learned here: only stone a bird while it’s standing still and if you’re going for two, then maybe opt for something that’s not gonna move suddenly – think dodo.  

So… anyway, the birds: The School of Life Sunday Sermon and My Cultural Life. The stone: Me turning up. Two different outfits I’d been meaning to tag along to in the same place at the same time – it just had to be done!

Satan's happy in the satin-lycra skin he's in...

Finding and meeting the My Cultural Life crew was easy enough; us early birds… escaped the elements and shivered with the rest of the philosophically curious flock in the foyer; under the all-seeing gaze of an improbably tall, improbably thin chap in a scarlet satin-lycra catsuit. Apparently this almost mythical man was no less than the legendary Johnny Satan, the Sunday Sermon’s minister-cum-compere.

Mr satin-clad Satan led us in a sing-a-long kinda hymn thing of that depressing Donnie Darko ditty Mad World, before introducing guest speaker, Oliver James, of Affluenza fame. Basically, OJ said envy = jealousy with claws on (aka the green-eyed monster). Well, he didn’t, I said that, but you get the idea…

"Surprise, surprise, Scylla!"

And if you don’t, then good old (ancient, in fact) Ovid gave us a damn fine demo of the destructive force of envy-in-action in his tale of Scylla, the water nymph – not the red ‘aired Liverpudlian songstress and host of Surprise Surprise, in case you were wondering. Glaucus, a minor sea god, had gone all Lady Gaga over sexy Scylla, but got seriously browned off when he failed to bag his babe. So who you gonna call? Well, not Circe the Sorceress, if this is anything to go by; cos, taking a shine to Glaucus herself, she decided to turn Scylla’s watering hole into a toxic hell hole, and poor Scylla into swamp thing. Eek!

The point is, envy is bad, not just for the envious, or the envied, but for everyone and everything. OJ laid the blame squarely at the door of capitalism and that crazy carousel ride consumerism. Keeping up with the Joneses and indeed coveting the Joneses stuff is basically the root of the fleurs du mal we call envy. The solution? The Scandinavian approach for one, apparently… And looking a bit closer to home – (1) feeling good in your own skin and (2) getting into your flow (ie, stuff you loved to do as child) as often as possible. Perhaps Circe should have tried fuzzy felts before resorting to poison?

The sermon concluded with tea and a slice of green-iced cake. Mr Satan urged the flock to have a chin-wag with a stranger over cha, but I felt that I was doing my bit by meeting up with the hitherto unknown My Cultural Life groupies. Honest. Actually, I harboured a desire to say something ground breaking to the marvellous Monsieur de Botton, who I’d seen swanning about the entrance hall. This was, oooh, the fourth time I’ve been a stone’s throw from my fave philosopher, but what to say? “I’m your number one fan?” No.  So I said, nothing, again.

Speaking of procrastination and major lack of self esteem I was most intrigued by OJ’s brief reference to TS Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.  He reckoned it was a portrait of life half-lived and Prufrock, like all those scared of their own shadows, was likely to be struck by the green-eyed monster:

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered – Hitchcock & Halloween Style…

Keats said autumn is a time of ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’, but it seems to me it’s more masquerades and fruity madness.  From Halloween to Christmas it’s the done thing to don a disguise, over do it and carve faces into your cucurbita pepo.  With the long dark evenings providing ample time for reflection and getting some Hitchcock action I got to thinking about the masks we wear day to day. 

Vertigo:  Kim Novak plays a woman (Judy), playing another woman (Madeleine), who falls in love with the guy (James (Scottie) Stewart) she’s stringing along.  Unfortunately he’s developed an infatuation with the faux Madeleine, portrayed by Judy as an elegantly disturbed, icy blonde with a penchant for staring wistfully into whirlpools; and twisting her hair into knots tighter than the tangled web of lies Judy has conspired to create with the genuine Madeleine’s wife-murdering husband.  Pant pant. Phew. Anyone feeling dizzy yet?

Anyway… the real Judy is actually a brash brunette with a line in big brassy earrings and even bigger eyebrows; and however relieved we might feel that scatty Scottie has taken it upon himself to give his girl a Gok over, when Judy-as-Madeleine-part-deux steps out of the bathroom, bathed in a ghostly green glow, it’s obvious this weird menage a trois is a menage gone mad… 

Scatty Scottie is driving both himself and Judy crazy by insisting Judy agree to be Mad-eleine (again).  And more to the point, what the hell is Judy thinking, if she is ‘thinking’ at all?! Even if Kim-Judy-Madeleine-Novak hadn’t unwittingly given the game away and pushed James (Scottie) Stewart even further to the brink of insanity, by waving that necklace around, you just know that either Madeleine-Judy will be forever reminded that her real brash brunette self is not good enough for James (Scottie) Stewart, or eventually he won’t believe in the make-believe-Madeleine any more.

Vertigo is always a film conoisseur’s fave, and I wonder partly whether it’s because we’ve probably all played one or other of the characters ourselves in real life.  We are often bewitched, bothered and bewildered by beloveds who are Frankenstein-phantasms we’ve fashioned from fairy tales.  Or, perhaps worse still, we try to squeeze our proverbial foot into the glass slipper of a guy’s imagination, and are destined to forever feel like the ugly sister. Compromising some je-ne-sais-quois-ish intangible part of us we thought we could live without can only ever end badly because two’s company but bringing along your masked alter ego for comfort ends up being a bit of a crowd.

Just a thought…

Life is Just a Bowl of Jelly Belly Dancing

What is it with those demo-whatsits on laptops? Having tripped over and broken yet another lead my parents lent me

Do my rolls look big in this?

their ‘puter for the evening. All fine and dandy, until I looked up and saw what looked like a scene from Seven: all tumbling rolls of flab in chiaroscuro. What the hell?! Mildly sickened and somewhat confused I wondered how this abomination had appeared. Had I googled ‘Jabba the Hutt Porn’? Then I remembered it was my parents’ laptop after all… eeewww. But no.

Then I noticed something. As I moved Jabba moved. I waved a hand. Jabba waved. I stood up. Jabba stood up. I am now considering suing Acer, or whoever it is who put these damned things on their machines, for exposing an impressionable mind to her own exposed body.  I mean, I’ve been experiencing what I’ve self diagnosed as IBS and often look 6 month’s pregnant.

If I’d wanted to be exposed on screen I’d ‘ve been Paris Hilton, as it is I prefer to keep my body to myself and possibly a carefully vetted other.  Although I was psycho-bullied into flashing my boobs in the communal showers at the swimming pool the other day. Everyone gets their kit off and eyes your cozzie-clad torso warily. What lies beneath that layer of lycra, they seem to ask. A third nipple? A sticky-out-navel? Alright!  Alright! So I gave in and went … topless.

First, I felt like a fish outta water. Second, I later learned a work colleague had also frequented the pool that very evening. Perhaps that’s why she was unusually quiet the following morning, rushing past me, head bowed, mumbling something about needing the toilet…

Anyway all this had got me thinking (again). If the key to happiness is to be self-contained contentment then the

Lizzie Miller - revealing her roll

container needs a bit more lovin’ – or else all that contentment is gonna seep out. Plus how can you get content if your body is a huge bone of contention?

Loving the lady in the mirror is a simple concept but about as easy as a bowling ball to digest. We live in a society which throws a wobbly over the beautiful Lizzie Miller showing, what by most people’s estimation, must be a small roll of flesh around her abdomen, calling it ‘ground breaking’. And however many times Gok tries to get us to look-good-naked and love-the-skin-we’re-in, what if it looks more like the loathsome-orange-peel than smooth-as-a-hot-dog-sausage? It can be pretty hard to keep this stuff in proportion.

At the beginning of August I attended a Heal the Self, Heal the Earth event. New Age hogwash some might say, but I’m getting the feeling that the way you feel about you, or the way I feel about me matters and not just on a personal level. Think The Fisher King. Think Hamlet. Think outta the box and self-contained-despondency. Do as Judy Garland sang – not as she did – and ‘Get Happy’, cos it might just cost us more than our collective Duvet Days costs the economy (more on this soon).

So as I watched one of the Heal the Earth attendees, a lovely, lithe, slip-of-a-thing – who happens to be a Nutritional Therapist – belly dance in a purple haze, pure joie de vivre emanating from her whole being, I thought, I’m gonna get me some of that.  Not sure why I felt compelled to do something which involves getting my tummy out in public; or which contains the word ‘belly’ – one of my least favourite words. But I signed up to a 12 week course with the Mia Serra school anyhow.

Turkish Delight? It's low fat...

Moving one’s bottom cheeks independently takes a lot of concentration, which makes me look quite angry. And doing anything verging on shimmery-shaky-Shakira style just makes me look like I’m about to foam at the mouth. Fortunately participating in the end of term show is not compulsory and probably ill-advised, if the first lesson was anything to go by! But so far I have enjoyed the celebratory, very feminine feel of it all and I’m thinking it will be a fun, fabulous and undoubtedly frustrating way to learn to love-the-skin-I’m-in! 

And maybe have just the one roll…

Inspiring Health – Eat less rolls have less rolls
Mia Serra Belly Dance – Rippling rolls
Light Workers Unite – Roll up and spread the love

Dinosaurs & DIY Disasters – Making A-do & A-mending By Way of Creative Alterations

Which bitch is which?

 I’ve been a charity shop shopper for donkeys – years, that is, not actually for donkeys, that would be a pretty niche market I reckon – and one thing I’ve gleaned from all this sorting and sifting is: you’re bound to find your ‘that’s-exactly-what-I-was-looking-for!’ dress, or coat or whatnot only to find it has shoulders an American football player would be proud of!  What to do?

In the past I would go for the get-it-and-leave-it-in-a-pile-of-‘Things to Adjust’-a-little-unsure-of-how-to-go-about-it-all option. And then, when I did have a go, I’d invariably be left with something kinda wonky and I’d look kinda wrong.

Mr Glittery commented earlier in the year, when observing my humungous scrap heap collection of car crash couture awaiting a nip and tuck, that all this potential to-do-ing must be adding to my general confusion. He was right. So

A match made at the Make Lounge

recently, Tuesday night for a couple of weeks was spent at the Make Lounge making do with and a-mending some of my finds at their Creative Alterations course.

I took along the remains of my once precipitous pile: an oversized dinosaur print sweatshirt I spied when I worked at Rokit, a shapeless Hawaiian print shift, and a but-it-looked-nice-on-the-hanger red silk dress I’d picked up in the £3 sale in TRAID.

The class was led by Nin Castle, founder of Goodone, who “…produce innovative, quality, one-off clothing which is made from hand-picked, locally-sourced, recycled fabrics.”  Having gone round the table and waxed lyrical about our visions for the stuff we’d brought Nin noshed a biscuit or two – biscuits abound at the Make Lounge – then urged us to get real.
Her top tips:

Needing something to be bigger is not better where adjusting clothes is concerned.  Making something smaller is far easier.

Which stitch is which?

However drastic a makeover you’re planning, just do one thing at a time and assess your progress – it may not need as much tinkering as you anticipate.

The Make Lounge has a relaxed vibe with just the right amount of focus to make sure you get what you came for.  We tried on, trimmed and tacked our pieces together with the aid of Nin, the overlocker and a glass of wine.  And if  Nin was otherwise engaged with a creative query, then Make Lounge owner, Jennifer Pirtle was always there to lend a helping hand.

When I asked Jennifer about the Make Lounge strapline ‘Meet People Make Stuff’ she said to her the meeting is just as important as the making. Traditional crafting courses on offer were either too long winded, or too long in the tooth (old fashioned) and held in drafty church halls said Jennifer.  And so, the concept of short, practical, yet fun courses – you can make anything from frilly
knickers to candles in a tea cup – hosted in a sociable and stylish environment – with biscuits – was born.

I went with a friend who was trying to rectify some DIY disasters and we met an eclectic gaggle – giggle? – of women ranging from a classic, sophisticated, business lady who’d lost weight, to a tall, arty type wanting to adjust and update a lacklustre family heirloom.  And we left with some craftily altered outfits.

So make lounge not war on your wardobe and get creative.  ‘Make lounge’, geddit? It’s funny right?  No?

Magpie Genes & Charms of Hummingbirds – Making Jewellery out of Memories

I’ve had a magpie gene since I was a twinkle in my daddy’s eye (errrgh). One of my oldest memories is spreading the contents of my Nanny’s button bag across the carpet like a treasure trove. And my estate to date comprises: a tatty silver tinsel Christmas tree; a pair of clip on crystal cluster earrings donated by Les Dawson look-a-like Grandma Last; a tiny rose pendant dad bought me from Miss Selfridge because I told him I liked it but my then boyfriend didn’t; and a few avian-themed pieces, partly a nod to Hitchcock’s The Birds, partly a symbol of freedom, partly cos I just like ’em.

Memories are made of many things, but jewellery acts as a kind of tangible portal, a shimmering path, to nostalgia-ville. Making jewellery, or having it made for you – as in the case of my now defunct engagement ring – also imbues a piece with memories and meaning. A few weeks ago I went to Treasure, part of Coutts jewellery week, and met a cluster (?) of jewellers using vintage pieces in their work. One in particular, Rosie Weisencrantz, focussed on this idea, creating what the company terms ‘memorial’ jewellery, made from pieces left by deceased loved ones, “As each precious life is personal to the one who lived it, every necklace tells it’s own unique story.”.

So having found myself washed up on the sandy shores of Southend-on-sea-the-place-to-be once more, seemingly destined to re-live this chapter of my life repeatedly, until I discover that certain something… I’ve finally come to understand you just have to go-with-the-flow. So I am learning to lurve my home by indulging in another fave pastime, beach combing. When I was a wee nipper smacks of jellyfish used to silently terrorise beach combers with their alluring crystalline cabochon bodies; and way before that Amy-Johnson-queen-of-the-air lost her way, or ran out of fuel or something, somewhere round here, disappearing plane ‘n’ all beneath the waves, waiting to be discovered by one of those men with a clickity-click-metal-detector. I’ve been less adventurous collecting sea glass – bits of broken bottles smoothed, shaped and frosted by the sea – which I aim to turn into re-used, wearable, treasure-able jewels.

Scanning the stony, sandy shore for shards of glass glinting in the sun is a peaceful preoccupation. Tortoiseshell butterflies camouflaged amongst the stones take flight, disturbed by my inquisitive fingers. Birds strut, squawk and glide silently against the slightly eerie watery-Whistler-esque-scapes flecked with diamond light. But this is just the beginning of the process – how to join the sea glass pieces once I’ve drilled them? It’s a work in progress.

 Last weekend I attended a course at Cockpit Arts in Holborn, “a social enterprise and the UK’s only creative-business incubator for designer-makers”, on making silver jewellery. It was the tutor’s first time tutoring, just as it was my time silversmithing, which was …interesting.

We sawed sheet silver with blades, hardly wider than a string on a bow, which snapped with the slightest sign of inappropriate pressure – “This is really a magical… mystical process,” the tutor said to me when I told him I had  gotten through 6 of my 12 blades in a morning. “You have to be calm. Meditate. The metal knows if you are angry and it fights against you.”

Madeleines, memories & moustaches

But patience has to be partnered with brute strength I reckon. I sustained a groin injury from trying to push metal through a press and nearly seared my eyebrows off with the blow torch. But I soldered on (sorry – couldn’t resist)… quietly focussed on creating ‘something’ – despite the fact my outer-circle-frame-thingy pinged off and set me back a tad, meaning I ended up with a pendant instead of the planned ring.

However, going with the flow worked like a charm. As luck would have it I’d wanted to make a pendant in the first place, seeing as I’m collating a hummingbird (?) of charms in order to create a necklace for my sister, in celebration of the birth of her first child. Did you know a group of bedazzling hummingbirds is a ‘charm’? I wonder what the collective noun for memories is…a Madeleine, perhaps?

Make Your Own Memories:
Designer Courses – Expert tinkering tips
Flux Studios – Vicky Forrester’s courses aim to be affordable
Jewelry Lessons – DIY demos

Sock Tactics

Part 3:
Socks & Tights

If you were to cast your mind back… oooh, say, to February, then you may remember reading Part 2 of a series of 3 blog posts on Foundations and have been eagerly anticipating the third… Yes, I knew it! Well, here it is at long last. Having paid too much attention to balancing cherries atop a partially baked pastry shell I find myself here, 3 months later, writing the last in this series – oooh, it sounds so fancy! – lying in a pool of jam amongst pie debris, all too familiar with what happens when your foundations are flimsy.

If I’d heeded the warnings emanating from my wardrobe, I may have realised that the Norah

Sock of doom

Batty-esque wrinkling of my over the knee socks was a harbinger of foundation doom. I mean, if the the actual look of flagging footwear isn’t bad enough, it’s the feel of it sliding slowly down your leg – a kind of creeping sensation I imagine they are referring to in vintage horror films when they say, ‘Oooh, that ghastly face at the window really gave me the creeps’.

Speaking of which, hosiery meets eco-horror in this spoof film, The Sockfather – Part 1 …

As this film demonstrates the humble sock can be environmentally devastating. But like most things, it’s not the socks that ruin the environment its the feet that wear them – leaving their carbon footprints all over Mother Nature’s clean floor, tut. However the sock, like the brief, is now available in a range of eco-friendly materials, notably lenpur and bamboo, which are breathable and deodorising – phew.

Obviously comfortable, well-fitting, hosiery should never be underestimated, but I also have certain style prerequisites: I like a long sock, in either a black or ‘natural’ shade, all the better to hide that flash of fuzzy, white,

A good sock is hard to find

 bruised flesh when your trouser hems ride up as you sit down. However finding eco or ethical hose which reaches my standards has proved perplexing. Boots has a pretty good range of basic green black socks and tights, but for the longer length I desire I’ve had to trawl the net, and at last I’ve found G=9.8 which are made from the aforementioned lenpur – tree cellulose no less.

All well and good except eco-friendly tan tights / stockings / pop socks – yes, the most unsexy footwear known to woman after orthopaedic sandals, but a necessary wardrobe evil, I find – is still proving as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel. So until I discover such an item I am going on with the regular ones and endeavouring to find ways to re-use them. Having rejected the bank robber’s mask as too cliched, I was really at a loss as to how else to re-use my hole-y hose. But then I came across this little gem: why not turn your tights into a necklace? It just goes to show that off the right feet and in the right hands anything can be transformed into treasure…

Re-use those hose…

Mean Reds & the Seven Chakras – The Rainbow Resolution

Hey! It's Meeee!!

Red is not only the new black economically speaking, but for me, wardrobe-wise too.  The thing is, sliding Back to Black, both on a mental and material – although rarely on a financial – level, seems too easy. And after years suffering from, the emotionally numbing Beige Zombosis I’ve taken to operating on Code Amber.  Anxiety has become my emotional set point  interspersed by not infrequent forays into full blown Mean Reds.  As Holly Golightly said in the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s:

You know those days when you get the mean reds?

 The mean reds. You mean like the blues?

No. The blues are because you’re getting fat, and maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid, and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?

I have to say, yes Holly I do! I got Beige because I was too yellow to face my fears.  As a result I’ve been off kilter, out of whack, off key, off colour for as long as I care to remember.  The world looks pretty jaded through this particular looking glass, thus I’m keen to try on some of them fabled rose-tinted spectacles and get me a different perspective on things. So I’ve decided to try balancing my Chakras.

What the bejesus are chakras I hear you cry!  Well, like dwarves they come in sevens – for starters anyhow.  Each represents an energy centre in the body, which receives, transforms and distributes that energy. Sanskrit for ‘wheel’, chakras are believed to rotate in a spiral vibration with graduating degrees of frequency.  They are also identified by certain key characteristics –  notably a clear and vibrant colour.

So this week I’ve been working on the root chakra, or Muladhara. Located at the base of the spine, this is supposed to be our bedrock, energy speaking. Physically Muladhara governs sexuality and sensuality, mentally it governs stability, and spiritually it governs a sense of security.  It is thought to vibrate at the densest frequency and is represented by the colour red. 

To get your root chakra ship-shape you can get physical – getting down and dirty in the garden is good, apparently – get some sleep, or paint the town red … no, not so much going out, as wearing and consuming anything ruddy or rosy. You can even imagine opening the Muladhara to improve the energy flow and visualise it being flooded with a ruby hue.

Always trust your vibes...

Not only have I become a scarlet woman, but I’ve also been making good use of the red iPod Shuffle Mr Glittery got me for Christmas.  He had it engraved with the phrase ‘Always trust your vibes’, which seems kinda ironic, but hey ho, I’m finally doin’ that, I guess.  And I’m not sure if it’s the chakra balancing or what, but I am feeling calmer.  I met a friend for lunch yesterday who noted my red ensemble on arrival and on departure said she reckoned I seemed the happiest she’d seen me in ages.

So something’s working.  Is this prose too purple by the way?

Shape up your chakras:
Chakra Energy – Ancient philosophy, now a hot new trend
Journey Through the Chakras – A guided meditation
Aveda – Balancing body mists

Colour Fix:
Chakra Jewellery – Get your rocks on…
Inner Light Art – Prints to ponder
Serpent Mandalas – Pretty as a picture these are…

Part 2: Svadisthana – The Sacral Chakra

Spring is in the Hair…

Apparently hair is a pretty good indicator of emotional well being – which is probably why mine has been looking a bit Miss Havisham-esque of late! Well that and the fact I just haven’t paid it that much attention. The thing is I dread the hairdresser’s. You never know what you’re gonna get …

Take Edward Scissorhands who loomed up from beneath the swivel chair, peering from behind a curtain of black hair, like the girl from The Ring!  In fact I thought he was a girl until he spoke, at which point a chill ran down my spine… was he a 12 year old boy!? He went about doing the do like he was trimming some topiary. The done do: a damp 80s Jon Bon Jovi. What do I do?  I cough up the cash and run for my life.  I’ve hardly dared step inside a salon since.

 Thus in an effort to breathe some new life into my lacklustre locks I’ve been doing a kinda spring clean – tidying up split ends and cracking eggs on my head…that sort of thing.

Last week I ventured back to the salon for a much needed pick-me-up cut. The Break Up Haircut, often derided in popular culture, is I reckon a much maligned heir to transitional markers or purification rituals observed the world over since ancient times. I mean, there is so much riding on this post-relationship panacea – you are not simply seeking solace in a new you do, but also the TLC provided by the stylist who strokes and cuts your tresses and with them your stresses and emotional ties.

And voila! Fresh from the salon, with the bounce back in my hair and a renewed spring in my step I went to see a girl about a flat.  With egg on my face. Egg mayonnaise in fact.  Egg mayonnaise and gherkin, to be precise, which had oozed out from the Brick Lane beigel I had stuffed in my bag. Although unfortunate my saving grace – I felt – was my new coiffure:  I could conquer the flat no probs … maybe even the entire estate!

What a great feeling! But how to keep this new do voodoo?  No sooner had I asked than I was given the answer – egg of course! Is this the Law of Attraction in action? I asked myself. 

Turns out there’s more to the phrase ‘good egg’ than meets the eye …ear?Eggs are protein-filled, hair is mainly made of a protein, keratin, which means that eggs make great natural and cheap shampoos and conditioners.  I went for the basic egg yolk, olive oil and warm water combo as recommended on the Beauty Bible website.

The result: pretty good egg-tually. Oh god, no wonder I had egg on my face…

Eggheads:
Informed Women – Haircare from your kitchen cupboard…
Journal of an Italian Girl – The Italian’s know how to use food
The Natural Haircare Blog – Err… natural haircare – may contain egg

Eater Eggs:
The Daily Green– Eggs Rapunzel… sounds like a hairytale…
The Guardian – Break an egg …
Whole Foods – Good eggs are good for you…