The Sunday Cycle Picnic: Please Come!

I will be at The Sunday Cycle Picnic next week at London Fields with these lovely ladies. Please stop by if you can for fun, games, cakes, jam, cycling accessories and the chance to win a Bobbin Playbike... Hope to see you then!


Bobbin Bicycles, Cyclechic.co.uk and Sawako Furuno invite you to an afternoon of fun, frolics and bicycles!

Put on your Sunday Best, pack yourself a picnic and come on down to London Fields for the very first Sunday Cycle Picnic.
The Magnificent Revolution's pedal-powered cinema tent will play host to Ray Pascoe's beautiful vintage cycling films,
alongside contemporary shorts. There will also be garden games, stalls and prizes for stylish bikes and their riders.

So saddle up and we'll see you there!

What you need to bring:
Your bike and a lock (secure cycle parking provided)
A picnic
Your friends

For one special lady a Red Bobbin Playbike is up for grabs. Just turn up on the day in a fetching outfit and sit on the bike for
your chance to cycle it away into sunset. For style inspiration visit bobbinbicycles.co.uk. May the best outfit win!

The Sunday Cycle Picnic, Sunday 7th Sept, 12-5pm
London Fields, Hackney

Grateful Friday

It's a dull, humid late-August day, the last of the summer creeping away gently as the promise of Autumn blows in on a cool breeze. The lilies on the kitchen table where I'm typing give off a fierce perfume which would be enjoyable were it not competing with the paint stripper fumes from the hallway. So, this Friday I am grateful for:

1. Perfect cycling weather - cool enough to not get too sweaty and warm enough to cycle in a t-shirt. There's a slight breeze and I've been loving ambling along slowly on my bike this week.

2. Dinner at Buono Sera last night - with my lovely sis. I had a tagliatelle dish with spinach, lamb and pecorino cheese, just perfect.

3. More gocco experiments - including some cards for two dear friends. I was nervous, the gold ink went everywhere, but they loved them!

4. My nespresso coffee machine - it's had a lot of use of late and I'm loving it.

5. The updated flat - our flat has had a wee makeover - new chairs in the sitting room, new paint in the hallway, a bit of a clear out and new carpet to come. Lush.

Whatever you are up to enjoy the late-summer weekend!

- The Nectarine -

At breakfast we slice a second nectarine
Because you are here.
The flesh is soft and you are
Surprised how red and textured
The sweet fruit is on your plate.
We eat crumpets, washed down with tea
And talk about the day ahead.
Work, email, supper and a show later...
Nothing strange, nothing out of the ordinary
Except for the red flesh of the
Extra nectarine at breakfast.

Gocco At Last (Part 1)

Yesterday was Gocco Day! I've been waiting for a free afternoon to try out my new Gocco (a small screenprinting device from Japan that I bought a few weeks ago), and yesterday was the day. Here it is:


First of all I needed to choose an image to print. I have heaps of ideas but wasn't really sure where to start. After much deliberation I decided to print a small image of a Japanese temple/pagoda and write 'Ni Hao', or 'Hello' in Chinese next to it. The gocco works by exposing the carbon on your image onto a screen, so I wandered down to a local shop where I paid the grand total of 14p to photocopy my images! This bit was cheap, just as well as the rest of the process uses screens and bulbs that are quite hard to come by in the UK and cost quite a bit.

So, here's the image I chose, it's sitting on the grey pad on the bottom of the gocco:


The next part is to put a screen and a blue filter into the top part of the machine, press it down and check that the image can be seen, like this:



Next is the exciting bit - exposing the screen. You have to use two single-use bulbs (like the old camera flash bulbs), that are screwed into a flash unit that sits on top of the blue filter you see above.

I'm gutted I didn't get a picture of the flashing part, but it's quite dramatic, a big flash filled the room and there was the unmistakable smell of burning...

Next I peeled back the cellophane on the screen and applied the special gocco ink to the screen. I choose silver for the temple, red for the sun and black for the writing.

The next part was the printing... I was kind of nervous at this point!

Gocco At Last (Part 2)

You can see the screen which has been put back into the top of the gocco.

All you need to do to print, is place your card or paper on to the grey pad (which is slightly sticky) and press down.

I really thought it wouldn't work, but imagine my surprise when this happened!

Isn't it amazing! I was so pleased. I kept on printing until I ran out of paper. I knew that you could print a lot from one screen, but I really wasn't expecting to be able to do so many prints.

I made about 70 notecards to send to friends.

Here's a close-up. I like the texture of the red sun and the clarity of the black on the Chinese characters.

So, it's official. I love gocco! Can't wait to print some different screens soon. Watch this space!

Grateful Friday

On this blustery, humid August day I am grateful for:

1. Getting out of the city this weekend. It's my dad's 60th birthday and I'm taking a little trip back home to share the birthday love. I hope the sun shines!

2. Finding the Flickr Gocco group - I am addicted! There is so much inspiration, I am overwhelmed with excitement and can't wait for my Gocco to arrive.

3. Spending yesterday in Hyde Park with this amazing photographer. We were doing a photo shoot for the project I alluded to recently - I still can't talk about it and it's almost killing me! Let's just say we had a ball yesterday and I can't wait to show you the results.

4. Paper packages tied up with string - I came home today to find the lovely H had made me this beautiful necklace. I shall be wearing it a lot, I can tell you.


Have a wonderful weekend!

Marimekko Purse with Zip

I had a piece of lovely blue Marimekko fabric left over from another project, and Sian from Bobbin suggested I could make it into a purse. It only took about ten minutes and I was really pleased with the result. I like how the pattern fits onto the sides. I've got my make-up in it!

Two Things That Made Me Happy This Week

1. Getting a personally signed copy of James Frey's new book Bright Shiny Morning.


I don't care that he thought I was called 'July', it's kinda cute and shows he has enough literary imagination to think I could have been called such a fun name! He even wrote the sweetest inscription (considering he doesn't know me from Eve):


I am so looking forward to reading it. I loved his other two books and the debate over their truth is kinda boring now, so I'm pleased to get his new book in time for a good read on the train home this weekend.

2. My lovely Japanese bag book arriving from this shop on Etsy.


The bag patterns are gorgeous and surprisingly easy to follow even though the instructions are in Japanese. I hope to post some bags made from these patterns soon!

Chinatown

One morning this week, I found myself walking through Chinatown to the tube, when I became aware of a gross smell - it was vaguely familiar, and after a few minutes I tracked down the source:


Durians! The durian is known as the 'King of Fruit' and it's eaten a lot in Singapore and Malaysia. I couldn't stomach it myself, but some locals love it. Needless to say, the bad smell had me retreating hastily into a nearby shop, where I somehow managed to leave with all this:


And the best part was char sui bao for dinner!