You can read a mini interview with me over at Calm Air All Ice ahead of the exhibition Fifty Two. I have just worked out that ‘Calm Air All Ice’ is an anagram of the names of the two curators, Claire and Camilla. I feel a little dense now!

So today is the day to announce my big news, it really isn’t all that exciting, except for us! We will be leaving the island and moving to Edinburgh, Scotland in 3 weeks time-yikes! I can’t tell you how much I long to be back in the city, it is so beautiful here but we haven’t thrived, I will miss the sea, but hey, Edinburgh has the seaside too. I don’t think we could have picked a more perfect place to finally grow some roots. So, we are bound for Morningside to the south west of the city centre. I am looking forward to taking you on a walking tour of our new area, just look at the view over the rooftops.

Being in Edinburgh will allow LL&O more room to grow, craft fairs galore and less than a hour to Glasgow and the Craft Mafia gang, not forgetting my sister for essential Ishi-sitting (only kidding Ali, kind of!). Did I mention that Morningside has its own craft fair once a month! Plus, oodles of charity shops/thrift stores. I am a little in love with the flat we will be renting, I have only seen it in photos, Mr A has seen it with his own eyes though. Lots of light and ooh parquet flooring, I have every room planned out, this is the fun part. I will be busy packing up and making work for a show in May. The LL&O shop will go into vacation mode for a few weeks while we transition, no internet connection for a little while I expect. Wish us luck kittens, I will be back a little later with a tiny shop update, fingers crossed.

Images above from The Good Machinery & Artquirk over at Etsy.

Harum scarum March is here again, my favourite month. This particular March will be an incredibly full one and I hope to be able to announce some exciting news very soon. I will be keeping a low profile for the rest of this week as Mr A is out of town, just the bean and me, ballet rehearsals and lots of nervous nail biting.
Bob the Hare (above) from Kyoko Imazu.

Polar Bear Love print (above) from Spinster Summer

Sticking with the polar theme I am about to announce the winner of my little giveaway. Drum role for the random number thingamy – the winner is Diane (dkoss2) , hooray! I will be in touch a little later to ask you for your address and choice of star. Thank you so much to everyone who took part, that was fun, now I have broken my contest duck I won’t be so worried about doing another one. Watch this space!
Oh and the reason for the giveaway, the release of my exclusive for Schmancy, you can adopt one of the polar pack here right now!
I am pretty sure I had some other state smashingly interesting things to share with you but my jelly head isn’t cooperating. Ishi is obsessed with skipping/jump rope, we watched this video a thousand times yesterday. Malcolm McLaren annoys me but I confess I liked this song at the time. Ace skipping!

I love this sad ghost guy by Marcel Dzama.

I love 100000 Years of Revenge too. I may never have discovered the work of Canadian artist Marcel Dzama if it weren’t for an exhibition I am taking part in next month.

Calm Air All Ice are curating the exhibition entitled Fifty Two which will run from 28th of March- 3rd of April at Room 212 in Bristol. I am so excited to be taking part in my first show based in the UK! The premise of the show is quite ambitious, Claire & Camilla have invited Fifty Two artists and makers from around the world to take part. Fifty two, that is going to be a lot of work to hang, especially as the gallery is the smallest in Bristol! I read the mini interviews with some of the artists taking part over on the Fifty Two blog and clicked a link to Dzama’s work. I confess that I haven’t written my interview yet, soon, soon. Pop on over to Calm Air All Ice, you may discover a new love too.

I had some postcards made of the fish boys and the two wall hangings pictured above and below. It was so exciting seeing my work in a new format, I think I am going to make some prints next. Oh yes!

I am so in love with the time lapse videos that are popping up all over the place at the moment. Check out 20 hours of papercutting in 2 minutes from Famille Summerbelle and my favourite from Love and a Sandwhich. If you have never made a plush creature this video really highlights the amount of work involved. Love it to pieces!

Two giveaways in one week, has the world spun off its axis! Click on over to Kenziepoo for your chance to win a Lapin de Lune and a hand embroidered wall hanging made by me. The giveaway is open internationally, get clicking!

Here they are, The Polar Pack, please say hello to Arctic Fox in Spring, Black Lemming, Snowy Owl, Caribou, Ringed Seal, Musk Ox, Bearded Seal, Red Aurora, Arctic Hare and Ice Blink. They don’t have super powers, just a love for the Arctic and the ability to assume an alternate identity, well, that is pretty super I guess. These little guys are available exclusively at Schmancy from the 1st of March, the online store is here. Each member of the polar pack is one of a kind and will never be repeated. In fact Schmancy is the only place you can grab yourself a Fish Boy of any kind at the moment! You can read more about the gang in an interview I did with lovely Kristen over at Plush You. I would love to hear if you have a favourite, I am willing to bribe you to leave a comment letting me know which of the pack you like the best. So, I am giving away a star pin of your choice from my Etsy shop and some other goodies too, a Lou Lou & Oscar treat bag, it will be lovely I promise! The winner will be chosen at random by the number picking gizmo, you have until the 1st of March if you would like to play along.

You can now reserve the guys from the Arctic Exclusive if you feel like adopting one! All the details over at Plush You. It feels good to be a ‘creative heartbreaker’, thank you Kristen! But now I have that Led Zeppelin song in my head!

Can’t embed the live tight trouser action version, so this will have to do!

While revisiting some Led Zeppelin and chuckling at the lyrics to ‘Whole Lotta Love’, hilarious, I remembered the ‘Sex Rap’ scene from Nathan Barley. So, funny and cringe making, it is also quite rude, be warned if you click over, again embedding disabled. Annoying! CLICK HERE!

So I managed a shop update today and listed the handkerchief wall hanging (amongst other things) you see at the top of the post. Really it is my favourite so far and I would love to keep it for myself. My Nanny (by Nanny I mean ‘Grandmother’, not the Mary Poppins kind) was fond of the old adage ‘cold hands, warm heart’, she used this expression often, whenever we complained that our digits were freezing, she also had a store of more acerbic sayings in her verbal arsenal, my favourite being “mutton dressed as lamb!”. Nanny would use this phrase to describe women, usually just a little younger than herself, who had obviously made a bit of an effort with their appearance. The last thing my Nanny would do before leaving the house was look in the mirror, pat her hair, dab her face with a little powder (I distinctly remember the smell of her powder puff) and apply lipstick, she had a wicked ‘mirror face’. I am cast in a similar mould to Hilda May Tulett, you wouldn’t catch me out and about without my slap & I suck my cheeks in when I check my reflection! Inspiration for another wall hanging, oh for sure- thank you Nanny.

It would have been nice to insert a picture of my Nanny and Grandad here. When I left my mother’s house under a big black cloud 22 years ago I took very few family photos with me. I have one photograph of myself as a baby, one as a toddler, one of my mother when she was much younger and a wonderful image of my Grandparents looking super sharp in the 1960s. A couple of my brother and sister too. These precious images have disappeared somewhere inside this house. I have looked but to no avail, I am hoping that they will turn up in the huge spring clean I have planned for next month. Sigh.

I have been doing a lot of thinking this week, really I owe the thanks for this synaptic kick start to another, you know who you are! Not *over* thinking which has so often in the past lead to inertia, the beginnings of an awareness, increased consciousness, less lazy work, maybe a story. I have been learning in public this past year, unaware that this is what I have been doing, there will be developments I know.

And, compromising all of the above, I lazily listed some lavender sachets today too, they are nice and pretty, smell good, keep the moths away, that’s it! A question of economics, another path of obsessive rumination, related of course to the above. Yes, they had to go, destined as gifts I think.

To take the taste away, below is a clip from Béla Tarr’s film Werckmeister Harmonies (Ishi was almost named Béla, I confess for Lugosi as well as Tarr!). If you haven’t seen this film rush to do so, it is one of my favourites, it repays the viewer a thousand times, the antithesis of lazy, a dialogue, an engagement. Be patient and you will see, I hope.

Oh, and I am behind with emails again, that old tune I’m afraid. Coming soon good people, you also know who you are!
XXX