puppets and knitting

Today some friends and I went to see a puppet version of The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me at the Little Angel Puppet Theatre. My friend Max helped build several bits of the set, and the audience was full of excited kids and happy adults. We had a great time; the performers seemed to be having a wonderful time, too. The Little Angel has been going for more than 50 years, but recently the Arts Council of England cut its funding. Earlier this month the British Theatre Guide published an article on the reasons (*cough* Olympics *cough*) and effects of this cut, which can be read here. Despite funding cuts and recent economic worries it's heartening to see a theatre manage to keep going through donations and fundraising.

In knitting news, today I was given a flier for my friend Fi's knitting festival, Unravel, which will be held in The Farnham Maltings in February. Fi is a fantastic knitter and designer, and I can't wait to see what she's put together. Today I also swung by Loop to pick up the right size circular needle so I can knit a hat with the yarn I bough in Maryland this summer:


The color makes me very happy!

To round out my puppetry/knitting day, I've been watching Wool 100%, a Japanese film about two elderly sisters who take in a feral, obsessively knitting girl. It features wild knitting, puppets, an accordion and a very fetching pair of silver Louise Brooks haircuts.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It has been many years since I've been in the US for Thanksgiving, and a couple of years since I've cooked a Thanksgiving meal. This year two of my favorite people came round for dinner, which made it a very nice day indeed.

Here I am at the start of four hours of cooking..


..and some of what we had to show for it. Veggie Thanksgiving, mmmm.


Ben and Max made the (very tasty) pumpkin pie, which had to be baked in a springform tin as my pie plates are temporarily awol.


Yummy. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

catching up...

I've gotten out of the habit of writing here even though I have had things to say. Last week I celebrated my birthday (I'm as old as Star Wars in case anyone wonders), and spent the day at Mudchute City Farm. We saw cows, sheep, llamas, pigs of varying sizes and breeds, happy free range chickens, horses, feisty big goats and feisty little goats. We also had a worrying run-in with a psychotic squirrel, but we didn't let him spoil our day. It was lovely and strange to find fields and woodland and animals right in the middle of the city.

The farm also has a very tasty cafe, which was serving still-warm freshly baked carrot cake when we were visiting. Mmmmmmmmm.

On the way home we ran into this Halloweeny fellow:

I also received a wonderful home made dark chocolate and Marsala cake for my birthday, making it a two-cake day. Not too shabby.

Today I had the amazing opportunity to tour the sets and workshops for Wes Anderson's stop-motion animation film Fantastic Mr. Fox. Having signed a confidentiality agreement I am not allowed to say anything about what I've seen, but suffice to say the people working on it are very, very talented and the tour was incredible for a design/modelmaking/puppetry geek like me. What we were allowed to see was fantastic indeed and I cannot wait until it comes out.

Hi Dad!

In case anyone has been wondering, I have not disappeared into a black hole. I've had one of those periods, which may be familiar to other artists who work in relative isolation, in which I managed to get stuck in my studio and in my own head like a snail in a shell. However, I spoke to my dad on the phone today and he told me he missed reading what I write here so I thought I should pull my socks up and stick my head out again.

I've been away this week seeing friends and meeting the rest of the Toast in the Machine participants. I have also (finally...thanks Max!) procured the perfect leather to finish up one of the sculptures I'm working on. There's been some news in my family as well... some very bad (but it's okay, because the robots are going to sort it out), and some fantastic. On the fantastic front, this man will soon be joining our family:


Doesn't he look nice?

the end of the world as we know it

Big Bang Day has arrived. Today is the day scientists finally switched on the Large Hadron Collider at Cern. The Large Hadron Collider is not just the largest particle accelerator ever made, but its running constitutes the largest scientific experiment ever conducted. Some members of the scientific community believed that switching on the particle accelerator this morning would create mini black holes which could swell and devour the earth. As I am still sitting here typing and drinking my coffee I think we're in the clear. What may be world-changing about this experiment are the questions it could answer. Cern scientists hope to create a mini big bang and examine the resulting particles, possibly including the hypothetical Higgs boson or "God particle," which could help explain why objects acquire mass and help fill in the blanks in the Standard Model of particle physics. The scientists at Cern could get to see first-hand what happened during the creation of the universe and gain a greater understanding of how the universe works, which is tremendously exciting.


black hole!

In the very slim chance the worst does happen, here's some music for the end of the world.

strange creatures

With the combination of one of my housemates arriving home late and noisy every night this week and the workmen across the street starting too early, I've not been sleeping well. Last night I had a very disturbing dream about a group of cat-sized rodents nesting in my bedroom. They had humps like camels, tails like water rats and clawed, webbed feet. I wonder what the humps were for?


(image - Matthew Robins)

Tonight I'm going to watch Matthew Robins perform his "science fiction opera" The Death of Flyboy at the National Theatre, with shadow puppets projected on the fly-tower and live musical accompaniment. Listen to some of Matthew's music here. If you're in London you should come along.

red letter days

For the past two weeks or so I've been reworking my portfolio, traveling, stressing out and interviewing (as well as getting to see friends I don't see often). The result is that I found out on Tuesday I've been awarded a place on a professional development program for puppetry and puppetry-related disciplines. It's being run by the fantastic Green Ginger company in collaboration with the Puppet Centre Trust and several other theatre companies and arts groups. Funding was provided by the Leverhulme Trust, which is funded, among other things, by sales of Marmite.



mmmm..Marmite. Tasty and good for puppetry!

On the very same day my best friend found out he has been given an allotment. This may not seem like a big deal to those of you not living in London, but in the city waiting lists for allotments can be up to five years long, and he got his in less than five days. He is now the proud tender of a plot of land the size of a tennis court. I'm happy because it's near some wild blackberry bushes, and Ben makes fantastic jam. I've almost eaten the last batch he made me and I've had the jar less than a week. Yummy!