Mother's Day Cross Stitch

Happy Mother's Day! Mama Buttons enjoys my cross stitches so I made her a "HOME is where the MUM is" one. It was fairly simple to do (always struggle with centering though!) Got the inspiration from Pinterest when browsing mum/ daughter quotes. They're always so horribly naff though, I really hate it when people take these random objective quotes that someone else has anonymously written and layered it over some twatty image and everyone's like ERMAHGERD THAT'S SO ME (classic example, "Keep Calm and..." or Tumblr blogs like justgirlythings, bleugh)

Another classic Mother's Day
cross stitch from a few years ago...
still in the kitchen!

ANYWAY, I saw this quote and all that kind of went out the window. I was thinking about just before I moved a couple of weeks ago, I heard a statistic about people having on average 8 houses in their entire lifetime. I'm 26 in July and I'm on my 10th! But none of them have really felt like "home" apart from where my mum lives (to be fair, she's also moved twice in the last 18 months haha) I love my weekly visits back home, even if I do have to sleep on the sofa and listen to my parents bicker about what to watch on TV! Tonight in stead of doing that, we all sat in the living room and chatted and caught my brother Joey in Cologne on FaceTime. My family are my best friends, they make me laugh, they're all different personalities and they're just happy people who are nice to be around!

Me & Mama Buttons
May 2013 (not drunk)

Today I'm thanking my mum for being tolerant. Tolerant of my many stupid hair colours and fashion phases, but still being seen outdoors with me. Tolerant of me having to sleep on the sofa for 2 months when I split up with my boyfriend and didn't have anywhere to live. Tolerant of the daft things that I say and do on a daily basis and still laughing. I've made a lot of bold decisions of the last few years and she has been nothing but supportive of any path I have chosen. I'm not a shining example of the perfect daughter, I don't have a degree or a "proper job" or a mortgage, but she's really proud of me and my 2 brothers. She's happy because we're all happy, and we're all happy because we've been raised happy. And for that I would say she's a pretty amazing mum!

Breadcrumb Trail

My knowledge of the post-rock band Slint was never vast. I own the Spiderland LP on record, which just has 4 dudes in water on the front and some song titles in a handwritten font on the back. The one fun fact I know is that Bonnie Prince Billy took that photo, but I only know that because he obviously gets credit. I've always loved Spiderland but in the same way that I love Explosion in the Sky's The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place or Mogwai's Come On Die Young. I guess I went through a post-rock phase and although I wouldn't say it all blended in together, I really liked everything I heard.
I missed the opportunity to see them live last year and Manchester's Albert Hall, and considering this was one of only rare UK gigs they did, I was pretty gutted. So when I heard about the film on Friday afternoon, I got tickets straight away. Me and Richard went down to the nearly sold out screening at the Cornerhouse that evening, which also included a Q&A from the director Lance Bangs.


Without giving too much away, I loved this documentary for the following reasons:

1. They were so fucking young - this was consistently emphasized throughout. Everyone who was interviewed from Steve Albini to Ian McKaye kept talking about how they were "just kids wanting to do something different." Which is what made the thing they did even more extraordinary. They got through their teenage years on a string of inside jokes and rehearsals while never taking themselves too seriously. 
2. It was slow and thorough but with messy qualities - I'm not sure how many other viewers I speak for when I say this and maybe I should have done a bit more research before I watched it, but I still barely have a clue who's involved with Slint because there were so many names being thrown around! The line up chopped and changed so many times between Maurice, Squirrel Bait and Slint and although I could have done with like a chronological timeline of what went down with those bands, I quite liked all the different perspectives and stories from all the musicians thrown together.
3. It's a beautiful watch - In between interviews with the band, producers and parents, you're treated to grainy film footage of car parks, old Super 8's of high school battle of the bands competitions, adolescent photos contributed by Will Oldham and videos of the band rehearsing songs from Spiderland in their basement before they were put to record.

Unfortunately it was cut short due to technical difficulties (there was an awkward 5 minutes or so where everyone was just sat listening to the film with no picture while Lance described the visuals.) There was then a short post-screening Q&A hosted by Everything Everything's singer Jeremy Pritchard. Lance discussed letters sent to the band regarding the note on the back of the Spiderland record requesting a female vocalist, the future of Slint and the possibility of him making a Neutral Milk Hotel documentary.
It's a fascinating, funny and gorgeous insight into the making of a fantastic record and the Louisville music culture it emerged from and I'm finding it hard to take my Spiderland LP off the record player now.

Single of the Week: Lowell - Cloud 69

If you're in the mood for some loud, punchy, girl-vocaled, bassy jams, check the new single by Canadian-based shouty-cheerleader Lowell. Plus the artwork is raaaaaad.

Manchester Bee Cross Stitch

My latest creative creation, a Manchester bee cross stitch for Miki's birthday. Fairly simple to do and based on a pattern I found online, would like to make them more often as presents!

Making Sculptures with Miles Gavin

www.milesgavin.co.uk

Miles Gavin is my colleague, my good friend and a fantastic sculpture artist. Originally from Stoke on Trent, ceramics is in his blood and he's got the weird thumbs to prove it (srsly, they bend backwards, it's gross, but apparently it's an odd genetic mutation that's specific to Stoke?!) He's got some fancy Ceramics Design degree from Central Saint Martins and has done shit loads of scholarships and junk. He has interned for the amazing Elizabeth McGrath in LA and created some wonderful masterpieces with her. Basically, he's fucking rad with moldable materials n clay n that.

 

Miles' most recent finished piece

I follow his Facebook page and his other side projects (he's also extremely talented with Photoshop) Miles recently took the plunge and decided to rent out a small studio space, near his home just outside Manchester city centre. When he put a status up asking for a guinea pig for some sculpture making classes, I sprang at the opportunity. I've never dabbled in sculpture before and I've always wanted to work with Miles, plus his studio is like 10 minutes from my flat. So after work one night last week, we went down to his Salford sanctuary. His studio is in an old typical northern pub hotel, it's awesome and creepy with classic deep red, gold and mahogany decor and vintage Guinness advertisements everywhere. Once there, he showed me his latest piece which I would be recreating my own version of and the different materials we will be using. This was great, everything I had seen completed pictures of was being stripped down to just wire and polystyrene and I was feeling enthusiastic about making what I could see in my head a reality.

Pizza, wine and sketching

We then went to his for the luxury of pizza and wine. Miles had given me my very own sketchbook to draw sketches of what I had in mind, make note anything I liked from other artists we were looking at and look at the structure of our classes. We started off by looking at artists who he has been influenced by. In particular Elizabeth McGrath stood out a lot. As a good friend of his, he has talked about her work with me before (some of which he had even worked on.) I'd never looked at it in detail, but the books he showed me (Everything That Creeps and Incurable Disorder) were beautiful, she's clearly very creative and has a keen eye for detail in her work, I loved it! His other reference material were:

• Jessica Joslin - "Strange Nature" Creating hybrid beasts out of brass and bone
• Scott Musgrove - "The Late Fauna of Early North America" Wide bright-eyed paintings and sculptures of creatures
• Juztapoz: Dark Arts - Collection of contemporary weird and dark shit
• High Fructose: Collected Edition 1 - Modern, fresh, colour saturated collection of art prints
• Camille Rose Garcia - "Tragic Kingdom" I can't describe her work better than her Facebook Page description: 'creepy cartoon children living in wasteland fairy tales are critical commentaries on the failures of capitalist utopias. Creative influences include Phillip K. Dick, William Burroughs, Henry Darger,Walt Disney, as well as politically aware bands like The Clash and Dead Kennedys'

Although I loved all of these different artists and got loads of ideas while looking through the reference books (particularly McGrath's use of embellishment with bows and gems and the huge high gloss eyes she uses with eyelashes) I had my own ideas. I love how Miles' work is like really cute but also kind of grotesque and I wanted to take that cute element and make it something hyper hyper cute. I was thinking of the round, curved, squidgy, cartoon shapes I see when I look at the work of Ash Davies and Rachel Baldwin (which is like, daily, thanks Instagram.) I was visualising a cat/ dog creature with a cute :3 style mouth and anime eyes... pink and glittery of course and with whiskers. So together we created a few preliminary sketches, talked about the structure of our classes and after a few more glasses of wine, we finally settled on my chubby cat creature

Miles went through with me how we will be making the skeleton-esque structure for my little fur baby, which we will be doing this week! This will be the first time I've used resin and I can't wait to get started. He has opened my eyes to a new medium of creativity which I'm feeling very enthusiastic about, and I can't wait for our next session on Wednesday!

Follow Miles Gavin on Facebook

Record of the Week - Ibibio Sound Machine

I've gone for a whole album in stead of just a single this week, because this whole dancey Nigerian afro funk MASTERPIECE deserves recognition. Ibibio Sound Machine well got your on your feet and moving while grinning like a maniac! Listen to it now on Spotify.

Inner City Pressure

"Counting coins on the counter of the 7-Eleven 

From a quarter past six till a quarter to seven 

The manager, Bevan, starts to abuse me 

"Hey man, I just want some Muesli"

I moved back into Manchester this week! After initial stress of not having all the right documents to move in, the inventory not being done and lugging a double duvet and four pillows up Deansgate, I've finally moved into my 19th storey home.

It's temporary until my boyfriend buys a flat, but based on the location and the awesomeness of the flat we decided to for it. 

This however was probably not a massively sensible decision. Richard is basically doing me a solid by moving out of the gorgeous flat he has been in for the last 5 years, which was not necessary at all because he wants to buy. My old landlord essentially evicted me and my housemates so he can move back in with a single tenant, but he hasn't found anyone else to move in so I could have technically stayed. The rent is nearly half my monthly wage, the council tax bills are.bound to be sky high and I had to borrow money to pay for my deposit and admin fees. At the moment I'm living off £10 a day and every penny which isn't spent goes right back into my bills fund.
So why, if it's not financially sensible, if I could have stayed where I was and if its kind of screwing my boyfriend's plans over, have I decided to do this?

2 words; CARPE DIEM. Seize the day. I just watched the 3rd episode of Community where Jeff has to seize the day to pass a ridiculous class (which I kind of want to teach.) I think generally if I get a golden opportunity to go for something bold I'm likely to do it and it tends to pay off. Jeff struggles with it because he tries too hard to create the opportunities for himself (also he's annoying and the worst Community character, jus sayin) When we viewed this flat we paid our admin fee the next morning and our deposit 2 days later. We realised we might never get the chance to live 19 floors above Manchester and a 10 minute walk away from work. So without really considering the cost, current situations, alternative plans or future commitments we went for it. And it paid off! I mean, check out our view...

Life is too short to umm and err and mull things over, if something is right just fucking do it!

Single of the Week

FAT WHITE FAMILY - TOUCH THE LEATHER

Kicking off the blog relaunch with my favourite single released this week. Have been hearing this a lot on BBC 6music, and have been waiting patiently for it to turn up on Spotify. Apparently Fat White Family were formed in a squat in Peckham and take their clothes off when performing (apparently, fuck fact checking.) Their album Champagne Holocaust is also worth a listen, definitely one of the best things I've heard so far this year.