Work, weddings, gigs and tattoos

Hi there.
It's certainly been a while since I've written anything substantial on here, but there's been lots going on in my life lately.

Work
 I completed my first big project at work about a month ago (a Spring/Summer update of new books in our catalogue), which I'm really proud of, and went to London twice in one week for London Book Fair and London Wild Bird Watch, both of which were really good experience, albeit a bit knackering!

Romanian stand at London Book Fair - loved the hanging books!

 I got to spend some time with uni friends at the same time (and randomly bumped into another on his way to a football match!) which was just great. I'm now working on the main catalogue for the year which is party a quite tedious job, so I'm looking forward to finishing the amends/proofing stages and getting on to the more creative design side of it. I'm also working on a website refresh project which is going to be an ongoing thing, but am enjoying seeing little things change bit by bit, and working on some proposals to link up with a few people in the industry, which is very exciting, and again really good experience.

Weddings
 In other news, my friends Steve and Jemma also got married a couple of weekends ago, which was just a brilliant day. If you've read any of my previous posts about the wedding you'll know that Tom and I had agreed to play guitar and sing respectively at the ceremony in addition to other wedding party duties - it was really fun learning new songs together and despite being horribly off-key at the start of the first song (I'm blaming the nerves) we got into it and it ended up sounding quite nice and the bride and groom enjoyed and appreciated it, so that's all that matters in the end.

Luckily enough I also managed to get a new prescription for my labyrinthitis that has recently made a comeback, which has made a huge difference to the dizziness (so no falling over in Church!), and also meant I could have a couple of drinks at the reception as well, which was a real bonus!

The Portal companion cube cake with Halo 'Bride & Groom'

Everything was just so much their personality at the reception it was just awesome. The cake, the name cards, the decorations, their entrance music (the Halo theme!) - everything was just perfect for them. The speeches were great too, especially Andy (best man) - despite his fears, it was funny and very well judged, so well done Andy! :)

I might put this on my desk at work

Jemma and Steve got gifts for all of us in the wedding party as well which was really sweet - the boys got personalised cufflinks (Tom had motorbikes!) and I got a gorgeous notebook and pen set, and a lovely turquoise pendant, which will always remind me of the day (it's the same colour as the wedding colour scheme). It was really thoughtful of you guys so thank you!

The party was great fun - the Transformers theme as the first dance, the band, the 'Jaeger-train', and the last few songs secretly planned by Steve (1000 miles by Vanessa Carlton made me cry). All in all it was one of the best weddings I've been to, and it was great to be staying at the hotel too - we all met up for breakfast in the morning to laugh and joke about the night before, pig out on fried breakfast and copious amounts of tea, or nurse hangovers as the case may have been.

The next day the wedding party (parents excluded) all went to Alton Towers, and again we had amazing luck with the weather - it chucked it down on the Sunday and then was glorious all day long on Monday! - and there was hardly anybody in the park so we managed to get a go on all the best rides at least once (I finally got on Air and Sonic Spinball!). We also tried the new new 'ride' Nemesis Sub Terra which isn't really a rollercoaster, it's more of a scary experience based on the Nemesis backstory - it didn't last very long, but was prett good for what it was, just don't expect a rollercoaster. I'm just glad I didn't have bare legs, put it that way... Here's an ad for the ride:

Gigs and tattoos 

The fun didn't stop after the wedding and Alton Towers though, as I'd booked tickets for the following weekend (for Tom's Christmas present) to go see one of our favourite bands Alkaline Trio on their 15th anniversary tour. When we got there we discovered that one of the support bands was in fact The Dear & Departed, who are fronted by Dan Smith, who is also a tattoo artist who works with Kat von D at High Voltage Tattoos in LA (where LA Ink was filmed). Having seen the band featured on the TV show it was great to see them live and in person, and besides the cool factor, I genuinely really enjoyed the music and they were really good live.  

I want a butterfly in this style

After their set we went to say hi and had a chat and a photo with Dan. We started talking about tattoos (couldn't pass up the opportunity!) and discovered that he's actually going to be working in Swansea in September so we agreed I'd e-mail him an image of what I was after and hopefully we'll sort something out with his assistant to get an appointment booked. It's very exciting, and because what I want is a little different I wasn't 100% confident that it was something your average tattoo artist was going to be able to achieve in the way I wanted it. At least this way I've seen lots of Dan's work, and I'm confident he's a real professional so if anyone should be able to do, then he should.

After the second supporting act, a guy called Dave Hause (who sang a cover of the Hold Steady's Constructive Summer - yay!), we finally got to see Alkaline Trio! They opened with 'We've Had Enough' which is one of the songs I've been listening to a lot lately, followed by another favourite of mine 'Time To Waste, which they didn't play last time I saw them, so that made me very happy! This is the best video I could find on youtube (my videos were terrible quality) of the opening.

They did quite a few older songs as well that I wasn't so familiar with, but since it was their 15 year anniversary it was to be expected. They did some brilliant acoustic songs including Crawl and Blue In the Face with Dave Hause joining them on stage. I didn't get a good video of this (plus you'd hear me singing in the background which would ruin it slightly), but I found a decent-ish video on Youtube of the same song performed in London a few nights later on.

So that's pretty much everything life-wise so far. I've got a separate post coming up for Cooking Challenge and general food updates, but also lots of other things to be looking forward to as well. I'm going to work at Chelsea Flower Show in a couple of weeks so will be an opportunity to see London friends again, and then I'm planning on looking at wedding dresses again with Tom's sister after that, which should be fun. Then we've got my best friend's birthday weekend and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, then Tom's birthday, then Australian Christmas, my sister's graduation, and loads more!

Buy for now!

Lettie xx 

The starving artist?

Hi there,
I just recently had a quick look back through some of my favourite pages on Stumble Upon and top of the list is this one about tattoo artist Scott Campbell.

If you have a chance to check the link out you'll see some truly fascinating sculptures that are made by laser cutting the shapes out of stacks and stacks of...wait for it....






US dollars!

The images he uses as a base for his sculptures are traditional fare for a tattoo artist - lots of skulls, flames, spider webs, butterflies, etc - and the article points out the contrast between on one side the notions of wealth, plenty, and the lack of concern about 'wasting money' (one of the pieces is made up of $11,000 in uncut but genuine currency), and on the other side what could be considered "working class" imagery. Now I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that particular terminology, as I don't think the imagery is exclusive to class, but as I mentioned before it is indeed reminiscent of traditional, All-American, tattoo imagery, which I suppose you could argue is not commonly associated with the upper echelons of society.

But it does also shock, as the use of so much money seem to directly contradict the notion of the starving artist who has to live from hand to mouth - just how did this guy get all that money I wonder. You could of course see it is a visual representation of an attempt to free oneself from the shackles of money - it reminds me of Rage Against The Machine's music video for 'Sleep Now in the Fire' when they occupied Wall Street, and where a homeless man wins a wheelbarrow-ful of cash on a game show, only to walk away in disgust at the money hungry audience and TV host. History seems to have repeated itself of late, with the Occupy Wall Street movement of the past two months protesting against greed and corruption, and indeed yesterday saw 30,000 take to the streets in NYC, and all entry points to the New York Stock Exchanges were blockaded. 

But back to the art. To my mind, what is particularly interesting is the motif of the skeleton in several of the pieces, which acts like a 'memento mori' (latin for "Remember your mortality"). In my opinion, it seems to be talking about how wealth, and the material things we spend our money on, amounts to very little when we die in the end, but also how excessive wealth can be a destructive force in the world. The economic downturn that was caused by recklesd and unregulated lending and gambling of wholly intangible sums of money has been the downfall of many big businesses and banks, which sadly had the knock on effect of making the world a pretty damn impossible place to live for the all those little guys across the world who lost their businesses or their job, their savings, their homes, and in some cases their families, and so on and so forth. For some people the credit crunch really was the final nail in the coffin.

And in many ways we still can't get our heads around numbers that are so huge. When I was a student, I tried my best to pay attention in Finance classes, and although the lecturer was young, pleasant, and dare I say it, vaguely attractive, it was still so dry, that I didn't even bother attempting to revise Finance for the exam and just hoped that I could answer enough accounting questions to pass (it worked by the way). But there is one thing that the lecturer did pass on which was the link to the following article about how to understand the phenomenally gargantuan numbers sprawled across the news about debts, losses, bail outs, deficits, and so on.

"How to understand a trillion dollars?" by Time Business.

In some ways, I think that this is also another aspect of what Scott Campbell is trying to accomplish with his dollar sculptures. By highlighting the waste involved in creating his pieces, he is also helping us visualise money in more tangible terms. I mean, let's be honest, if we actually had to keep all our actual money (excluding credit and overdrafts) at home under the mattress in $1 bills (or £5 notes) then we'd probably think it looked like a lot, but you would soon be able to see the pile grow smaller and smaller as you had to spend it. But as it is we keep our money in a bank, where we have an overdraft, and most likely a credit card (and a lot of people have more than 1). We spend our money electronically for the most part nowadays too, and I think that is another reason why it has become so easy over the past decade for 'spendaholics' to get into debt.

If I were ever in a position to actually want a Louis Vuitton handbag that cost, let's say £450, then I (personally) would be 100 times less likely to purchase it if I had to hand over £450 in cash than if I could just whack it on a credit card. My boyfriend Tom, as a matter of fact managed to get out of his overdraft relatively quickly by just taking out £10 cash per week to spend on non-essential items (so anything apart from food, fuel, and rent etc), and he felt that having his spending money in cash was a much better way of making sure he stuck to his budget, because when it was gone it was gone. This is something that I really want to try as I hate having to pay overdraft fees, so the sooner I get out the better.

But I digress. One final comment on this work and then I'll leave it for today. I mentioned earlier the skull and skeletons can be seen as a reminder of our mortality and our impermanence in this world, and it seems nowadays that not a lot lasts for very long. In today's 'throw away society' it is not only appliances and computers that are no longer built to last (it's called planned obsolescence I believe), but even the latest fashions that we wear and the newest bands and pop stars that we listen to are all produced to be lusted over, consumed, and almost immediately forgotten as soon as the next big thing comes along. So the fact that these sculptures were created by a tattoo artist, whose day to day job is to create artwork that does for the most part endure is an interesting contrast.

Once again, I feel as if I really want to get the tattoo I've wanted for the last couple of years, but sadly I can't afford it right now...

Decisions, decisions, decisions...

Hi everyone! Hope you're all marvelous today :)
And by everyone I think I'm just referring to the four of my lovely friends who've chosen to 'follow' this blog - thanks guys! I'm not sure I really like this whole thing about 'following' people online if I'm honest though. Let's re-phrase, I like that people are even the slightest bit interested in my wafflings, it's just the word I don't like. Just because I'm interested in what someone's got going on in their life, or in their thoughts on something doesn't mean I'm a donkey with a carrot in front of my nose, or a modern disciple...hmm, I wonder what would have happened if Twitter was around in the times of Jesus. Think he'd have had more than 12 'followers', but then they wouldn't have been quite as committed 'followers' as the original dozen methinks.

I actually have a fear of deep water so perhaps that's why I don't 'dive'

I would have been a useless disciple for sure. I'm definitely the kind of person who flits from one interesting thing to the next without really ever acquiring any profound level of understanding. I recently read an article in Psychologies magazine which pretty much categorized me as a 'scanner' rather than a 'diver' (Doctors are divers for example), which is apparently why I find work frustrating as I get bored pretty much as soon as I've grasped the fundamentals of something, and am always looking for something different and more interesting to move on to. It's also why I find the job search process so hard as I don't like the idea of committing myself to something too specific that will prevent me from doing something different a few years down the line. Over the past 10 years I've wanted to be a translator, a civil servant, a Human Resources officer, a singer in a band, a teacher, a book shop owner or librarian, a baker, a venue manager, a Mythbuster, and even a psychologist or counsellor. Go figure.

I've also wanted a tattoo for a good few years now, and have actually (amazingly) settled on a design I like, but have never gone through with it because I can't choose a) where I want it and b) whether I want it in black & white or colour and c) if colour, which colours?? It's a butterfly so the options are pretty much endless, but also if I change my mind (which is a distinct possibility with me) then I might end up hating it. So it's a stalemate for me and the tattoo. *sad face*

But I'm also frustratingly indecisive about small things - I must drive poor Tom mad - for example this blog. If this is the first time you've tuned in so to speak, you won't have noticed anything odd, but in fact I've changed blog design 3 or 4 or even 5 times already. Part of it is probably just exploring all the different templates and backgrounds of the world of blogging which is all a bit new to me anyway, but part of it is that, in this world where customization slides its slippery self ("like an eel..." *Might Boosh reference*) into almost every aspect of our lives, I'm made to feel like this blog, this webpage has to be an absolute reflection of what makes me ME. Which is ridiculous. As I mentioned earlier, and as I state in my profile, I like a whole range of things, and I write about anything from translations, to recipes, to concerts, to art and museums, to musings on why I'm so indecisive, to travel, to ranting about this or that, to tattoos, to weddings, and so on and so forth. It's quite clear I lack focus as it is (unlike Andy's Completion Project which is a brilliant idea if I may say so), so how on earth can one blog design appropriately encompass and reflect all those individual interests and aspects of what makes me me??

Colour = good

So anyway, at the moment I've settled for something a bit simpler than what I did have, and which will hopefully be a bit clearer to read. I like this particular design template mostly because of the name, Awesome Inc - words are powerful guys - but also because it's bright and colourful (I spent a lot of my teenage years dressed in black so have somewhat recently discovered colour again), because it looks kind of like paint which is arty, but it also kind of looks a bit messy which is like me, especially when I've been cooking. So for now it's going to stay this way, but I can't promise I won't get bored and change it again. Sorry, but some things will never change... wait, is that irony...?

c. 1950. www.scienceandsociety.co.uk

So anyway... to change topic from the seemingly self-centred to the selfless, the other thing I find it difficult to make decisions about is Christmas, specifically, choosing presents for my family. If you thought I was crap at making decisions about relatively unimportant things, you should see me at Christmas. Shopping for my large family has always been a bit of a stress for me. Not in the 'this is such a hassle' sense you understand, it's just I put pressure on myself to get nice things that people actually want and I get frustrated if I can't just get on with it and make a decision. But I've come up with a solution which for the last couple of years has served me relatively well. Every year I send the siblings a Facebook message asking if there's anything they'd like in particular and then between the rest of us we can organise ourselves to either get them something really awesome (read, expensive) between all of us, or just make sure that we don't buy the same gift twice.

I know that might seem lazy on my behalf, but you have to remember that I don't live with (or very close to) any of my siblings anymore. I don't know what CDs or DVDs they already have (unless it's something I've bought for them), besides which, they, like me, probably change their minds about what they're 'into' quite frequently anyway. It's hard to keep up with people like that, me being the worst culprit. I suppose that's why I'm notoriously difficult to buy for and for the record I haven't thought of one thing I'd really like for Christmas. It's enough of a stress trying to find presents for other people let alone myself!

But hopefully this year I'm ahead of the game, and soon I'll get some ideas from the siblings (and maybe even Tom - that one I am going to need to put some serious thought into) in plenty of time to find everyone something they would like that I can also afford. I'm going to pop into town today anyway to see if I can find anything for my sister in the beautiful Vintage shop above the gallery (Timeless Vintage), and then hopefully I can get some inspiration for the others as well while I'm out and about.

Hope I've not bored you with my ramblings!
Bye for now!
x