weequizzie

This Surface to Air coat.

I know, it’s ridiculous but it’s also amazing. Ridicu-mazing.

A week has almost been and gone so here’s a roundup of good stuff I found, saw, thought about, heard and wished for:

BLOGS
A couple of the blogs I’ve enjoyed this week:
I'm Revolting is pure genius, the Pinterest boards are also amazing.
That Kate is a lovely blog depicting what Kate’s been up to. She always seems to have the best times and the photos are just beautiful. She also has a set on Flickr that I always go back to – I Like Words.

The Movie Title Stills Collection is all kinds of awesome.

WISHLIST
I keep my wishlist going strong over on Pinterest as it’s a great place to store all the things that inspire me (all the stuff I wish I could afford), as well as see what inspires everyone else. Typically, my wishlist is full of clothes…
Cute Zara wool messenger bag.
I’m a sucker for animal jewellery so I love this Lazy Oaf leopard necklace and this bumblebee necklace from Alex Munroe.
This David Shrigley pillowcase set would definitely help me sleep better. Definitely.
Topshop scatter stud dress – this looks and feels good in real life.
Bright blue cardi from ASOS.
This necklace from Dannijo is the best collar necklace I’ve seen so far. Beautiful. Topshop is knocking out some but they’re nowhere near as pretty as this.

Amazing mog plate from Donna Wilson.

ART
We caught the last day of the Edgar Martins exhibition at The Wapping Project on Saturday. I did a little blog about it.

ASSIGNMENT
I’ve been invited to participate in The Wing Assignment. I love an assignment, I think it’s because I’m at my most productive when I’ve got a brief. This is especially appealing as all those involved are given the actual wing or wings of a bird which they’ll use in an artwork, or as inspiration. (The wings are a by-product of the food industry.) Exciting stuff. My friend, the super talented Nina Farrell, is the brains behind the Assignment.

MUSIC
Since I heard about Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon splitting up I’ve been listening to A LOT of Sonic Youth. Turns out forever is not always forever.

Other good stuff:
Wild Flag – Romance
Little Roy – Come As You Are
Dive – Sometime
Jay Electronica w/ Mobb Deep – Call of Duty
I am listening to everything by Vondelpark.

Yesterday we caught the last day of the Edgar Martins exhibition at The Wapping Project. Afterwards we drank Guinness to calm our nerves. “The Time Machine: An Incomplete and Semi-Objective Survey of Hydropower Stations” is exquisite, hyperreal and collage-like, with an intricate and detailed beauty that leaves your eyes achey. IMAX screen style, you swivel your head trying to take it all in, but you can’t.

The majority of the images show us a future that fell all too quickly into the past, now a lumbering, beautiful beast lacking the compactness of what the future entails but, damn man, the forms themselves are immense, the symmetry evokes a familiarity that makes you want to climb inside but Martins won’t let us in – there’s no room for man here, it’s all about the machines that man made.

The image below doesn’t do the work justice. I swear, there’s something almost holy about it.

Mad and brilliant.

Untitled, originally uploaded by bethfromabove.

Finally getting the PhlAsh Yeti poster framed thanks to Andy. It looks amazing.

This has been doing the rounds all across the internets but I just can’t not have it here. The Black Keys, “Lonely Boy”. I can’t wait ’til Alexandra Palace, February 2012.

Hello, November.

Here’s a roundup of bits I’ve seen, heard, thought about and enjoyed.

NEW-FOUND FAVOURITE BLOGS
Seventy Tree, by illustrator Kerry Layton. I love her prints.
Owl On Holiday, by Isabelle. She finds the greatest stuff and shares it with us via the infrawebs.

BOOKS
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. WOW. Just WOW. This book makes me scream with the joy of reading. I want to thrust it into the hands of everyone I know, and don’t. Remarkable writing. I’ve got Everything is Illuminated lined up next and Murakami’s 1Q84 downloaded onto the iPad.

KNITTING
I really want to knit this crazy owl jumper by Kate Davies but I don’t think my knitting knowledge is up to scratch so it’s on hold until I’ve got my stitching skills back on track. Thanks to Jools over at Vélo-City-Girl for sharing.

FILMS
Happiness by Todd Solondz. This left me flushed, awkward and ill, but in a good way.
I also watched Norwegian Wood by Anh Hung Tran. I read the Murakami novel a while ago and enjoyed it, as I enjoy most Murakami novels, in a detached, “WTF is going on?” sort of way. I found the film awful, beautifully shot but awfully boring, Sofia Coppola post-2005, vapid vaseline-smeared soft focus tedium.

FOOD
I’m living on noodles at the moment. Noodles with prawns, noodles with vegetables, noodles with chicken and just noodles with noodles. Soupy noodles are my favourite so I love this chicken noodle soup recipe from Crumbs for Dinner.

CLOTHES
Eley Kishimoto AW1112 now for sale in the EK online shop. Bats are involved.

MUSIC
It’s been twee music week and I’ve been filling my ears with Camera Obscura and the Carpenters. I know, what am I doing?

The tune that kept the household going this week was Metronomy ‘Everything Goes My Way’.

Photo by Hilda Grahnat

or just plain old National Novel Writing Month.

November is sodden and weighed down, like me wearing my school uniform in the bath when I was 12, but it brings it’s own sparkle, it’s own little bath bomb to fizz away under the deluge of rainy metaphors that I’m not going to insert here because you know what I mean.

What is NaNoWriMo? You write a novel in a month, that’s it. Well, it’s unlikely you’ll write a masterpiece but it’s a structured and a finite period of time to bash out 50,000 words that could eventually be a novel, or the beginnings of one. They say it better than I could:

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing programme for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. This approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

So, I’m going to give it a whirl because I need the structure otherwise I fall into procrastination, which is hell for me. Hell = procrastination. The devil is a procrastinator. People who procrastinate are the devil’s children, or the children of this ghost. Can ghosts have children? Has anyone looked into that?

Wish me luck. I wonder if anyone who reads this old blog is a writer. If so, do you have any tips? I tend to be all about the characters, letting any idea of plot dwindle.

Also, if you are a writer you should check out Advice to Writers, I find the tweets can help to depress those keys a little faster.

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In love with Little Dragon and so sad not to score tickets to their London show on 4 December. Check out the new album and give your heart over.