Much of a muchness

I haven’t got a book to show you today. I’ve had a busy couple of days. I had some friends over for dinner on Friday night and as I am not one of life’s natural cooks, it took me most of the day to shop and then prepare the food. I made crab and scallop chowder with home made bread, followed by rack of lamb with a red wine and shallot sauce, green beans and asparagus, rosemary and garlic roast potatoes followed by coconut rice pudding with mango and lime and yummy cheese and biscuits. A feast – even if I do say so myself. For once it all turned out well (the rice pudding was slightly stodgy but still tasted nice).

I was woken at 8am on Saturday morning by a delivery man – marvellous. He was delivering a new TV so I cleared up the mess from the night before and then unpacked the TV and started to set it up. The connections were all very complicated involving a satellite receiver and a DVD player but I just unplugged the cables from the old TV and attached them to the new TV. I just couldn’t get the DVD player to talk to the TV and fiddled about for ages trying to tune the TV to pick up the signal. Finally I realised that I was missing a scart lead ( I vaguely remember one of the boys ‘borrowing it’) so the DVD player wasn’t even connected to anything. I ransacked the garage and finally found another one then the DVD player still wouldn’t work but eventually it dawned on me that the batteries in the remote control were flat – DOH!

I spent the afternoon smashing up my old garden table and chairs which had rotted beyond repair – surprisingly satisfying! Some friends had come round to help and they carted the bits away for me and by the time they had left, the day had gone, so no books again. So instead of a book, I am going to share with you, some of my recent ‘StumbleUpon’ finds.

First up is Clive Stevens who does amazing paper sculpture. This is one of my favourites.

All the work is for sale and he sells kits, books, greeting cards and calendars too. Fabulous stuff.

Next up is a photograph of the new coins which are going to be introduced in the UK over the next year.

“The new designs have been chosen via an open competition which was widely publicised in the national media in August 2005 and attracted 4,000 entries. The winning designer is 26-year-old Matthew Dent, originally from Bangor who now lives and works in London as a graphic designer. After exploring a number of different options, Matthew Dent finally developed the heraldic theme, taking the greatest heraldic device ever used on coinage – the Royal Arms.

As you can see in the image above, the Shield of the Royal Arms has been given a contemporary treatment and its whole has been cleverly split among all six denominations from the 1p to the 50p, with the £1 coin displaying the heraldic element in its entirety. This is the first time that a single design has been used across a range of United Kingdom coins.”

Aren’t they gorgeous? I love the way they form a compete design and I foresee hours of fun playing with them when they are finally released :-)

Next up is the work of Thomas Keeley, as featured on the woosta.com website.

He creates surreal 3D objects which are both thought provoking and fun. Obviously, this book appealed to me, so inventive.

The last thing I want to share with you is a voice. The voice of Andrew Johnston to be precise. There is a TV program on Saturday nights here in the UK called ‘Britain’s Got Talent’. This young boy appeared on the show last week. Enjoy this and if you are not crying your eyes out by the end then you have a heart of stone.

Hope you are having a great weekend. I’m off to make a book…..