New Zines out

Fanzine Ynfytyn 7 $2
The usual mix of articles, stories and photos about whatever takes my fancy. There's a longish article about an utterly bizarre English teacher I had at school, a story with illustrations, some photos of Brighton Pier in the sunset, and lots of other stuff.




Imaginary Uncles no.1- I started writing 100 word descriptions of imaginary uncles as a pleasant time waster on long train journeys. Here's 5 uncles with drawings. $1.

If you came to the Zine Fair at the London Women's Library on Sat, I had Fanzine Ynfytyn 7 out then, but I only finished the uncles one today. I've also got lots of freshly printed back issues here

Book Cover Archive

This website is ace. It's just loads of scanned book covers, but really beautifully designed ones.

I love my new camera + vintage 28mm wideangler

I love the fact I can use all my vintage prime lenses with my new DSLR

Hazy Sea

I went for a walk along the beach whilst waiting to meet up with my cousin, who's just moved to Brighton. There was a haze on the sea that day, and the pier looked like it was floating on nothing. I never get tired of photographing the seafront.

Grooving on down in a (flasher's) trench coat

Dear Emma,
Why do you have so many gigantic PERVE lenses?
Yours, Concerned (but also mildly disgusted) of Tunbridge Wells

I actually didn't buy any of these. My boyfriend Chris' deceased grandad used to do wildlife photography, specifically of moths, and he had a whole box of these lenses and novelty cokin filters to get the ultimate moth close-up to add his moth album. I got given the lenses last year because I'm the one really interested in photography.

I have never photographed a moth, and I have absolutely no plans to start, so I've always been at a loss as to what to do with these gigantic lenses, apart from spy on people in a voyeuristic type of way or prove my lens-based manliness to other sad middle age male camera fondlers, and I'm not really into doing either of those. I can use them to take close-ups of things far away, but really I can just walk closer to stuff if I want to take a photo of it. The smaller ones are cool and I use them quite frequently, but I have never really used the whoppers, and most of them need a lot of faffing about with the tripod. I recently got given a Pentax K100d, which is one of the few DSLRS that can still use all the vintage lenses, so I'm going to have a play around with the giant ones, see what I can do.

A wander along the beach

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to trawl back through forgotten photos on my hard drive/negatives folder and post-process them. This was one of the first untouched folders I found. Back in September, I went for a walk along the beach along Hove Lawns, right up to Portslade. It was a beautiful day, and there was hardly anyone about, because it was the middle of the week, and the tourist season had pretty much finished.

The ruins of the West Pier pretty much dominate this part of the beach.

I was walking here with my dad last week and he remarked that it must be very difficult to choose a unique colour to paint the door if you're a beach hut owner. People pay a small fortune to own them too. People are strange.

This bandstand is currently covered in tarpaulins whilst it's repaired. The "gong shower" guy often sits beside. He has some joss sticks burning, and gently plays a gong on a stand with a sign offering "aura cleansing gong showers" for donations. You know you're in Brighton when ...

Knitting Ahoy

When I was back home visiting my family in Kent, my friend Tukru came round and she fixed my issues with circular knitting, and we learnt some lace knitting patterns out a book my nan gave me. My mum laughed at us, and said we were very rock and roll. I won't show my lace sampler I made, because it looks really weird, but here's a stitch I learnt out of the book after my friend went home, it's very simple, and looks very 70s when knitted in chunky wool.

Garter Slip Stitch

Cast on an odd no of stiches
Row 1: Knit all
Row 2: Knit all
Row 3: Knit one, slip one, (repeat), knit last stitch
Row 4: Knit one, yarn forward, slip one, yarn back, (repeat)

The example in the picture is knitted with 4 rows white, then 4 rows pink. It also looks good with 2 rows per colour with 3 colours.

Frozen Chocolate Bananas

These are very easy to make, you just need a microwave and a freezer. They're great as a dessert on their own, or to go on icecream. (Or to found your dodgy property empire on . . )

You need:
Several bananas
Some chocolate
Some dessicated coconut
(you can also add chopped nuts if you like)

1) Chop the bananas into chunks
2) Gently melt the chocolate (don't do it too fast, or it will burn and go lumpy) and dilute with a little boiling water
3) Dip the banana chunks into the chocolate so they're totally covered, then roll them in the coconut. If the chocolate starts going too thick, add a little more boiling water.
4) Put the covered banana pieces on some kitchen foil, wrap the foil up, and freeze overnight

The Mating Habits of the Common or Garden Boiled Sweet

Here's my first attempt at stop-motion animation.