You wouldn’t like me, if you met meee

Re: Title - I’ve listened to a shameful amount of Tegan and Sara today. Really shameful.

It’s been a packed summer, I can tell you. Too much play and not enough work. As always.

Firstly, in July a few friends and I took a long drive up to Manchester (this is much further into 'THE NORTH' than I would normally comfortably go) to see Nine Inch Nails on their farewell tour. I'm pretty skeptical of 'last' tours, because they are rarely as ultimate as the hype suggests (Rolling Stones, anyone?); however my boyfriend hadn't yet seen NIN live and was desperate to go. So we shelled out a ridiculous amount of money for tickets, petrol, alcohol and Travelodge for a band I've already seen twice. But I guess it was worth it; they put on a good show.

Straight after Nine Inch Nails was Glade festival, which was great fun. I recommend it to anyone who likes electronica, even just a little bit. However, after so many days of grating, squeaky, noisy music I was kind of yearning for some folk by Monday.

After Glade I went to Denmark for a fortnight to do a Viking archaeology course in Aarhus. Well, in Aarhus isn’t strictly true - we were living in a manor house away from the city, next to Moesgaard Museum and Aarhus University’s Archaeology and Anthropology Department. (You can see the house we lived in at the top of the museum website.) Super interesting talks and ‘hands-on’ stuff, but I did resent being taken on a two hour coach journey to be shown a place where a wall used to be. Maybe it’s because I’m a historian, I don’t know. The tiny museum at Moesgaard is really worth a visit if you’re into anthropology or that kind of thing (they have the Grauballe Man, who is apparently the best preserved bog man ever discovered).

Erm, after that period of actually using my brain I returned to the mindless hedonism that is festivals, going to Beautiful Days and Shambala Festival pretty much consecutively. At Days I was working at the bar run by Otter brewery a lot of the time, but it was still a laugh. Got to spend some time with a friend I rarely see these days. Beautiful Days is one of my favourites, possibly because the Levellers are always there; it’s their festival.

Shambala is also a fantabulous festival. There is truly something magical about that place. I’m going to be reviewing it for The Third Estate, so check there for more info.

(Shambala this year, taken by and featuring the wondrous Jade [right])

As per usual, I have too many thoughts racing round my head at the moment, and so I’ve unwittingly resorted to a narrative of all the things I’ve been doing up till now. Sorry about that. As this is probably a sign I need to focus my thoughts, I shall write a list of “things what are in my head'”.

Things what are in my head:

• Polaroid Land 250 Camera
• Dresses to make (does anyone hand-sew clothes these days?)
• Pretty organic fabric that needs to be bought
• Raw food
• Exercise
• Wisdom poetry
• Camping trips in Wales
• Friends in faraway places, letters
• Tattoos

Stitchiness

I've been sewing this portrait of my dog Pippi for my dad for Father's Day for a long time, and it's going depressingly slowly. Still, it's the first time I've done anything this detailed so I'm quite pleased with it. (click on picture for a larger version in my flickr photostream)

It's also an excuse for me to look at pictures of my dog for days at a time, which I always enjoy doing. She is super adorable, but she does have us wrapped around her little claw, my dad especially. I'm going to take a chance and say that she's probably the only dog that can, with a couple of barks, get a family member in another room to scurry to her and move her chair (yes, she's claimed it) to a sunnier spot. Bless her.

Anyway, on another note, to me the super god of hand embroidery (and many other arts, like papercutting and scratchboards) is William Schaff, whose flickr photostream everyone should look through obsessively. He is extremely talented. His embroidery is inspiring, my favourite by far is 'What is Human?' which I could probably also stare at for a very long time. (All this staring at things probably explains why I never get anything done.) Last time I checked this piece is on sale in his etsy shop, and I so wish I could afford it. Makes me sad. :( <-like this.

In other news, one of my closest friends Alice has returned from France after wwoofing for seven months. Her stories of freedom and madness in foreign places have inspired a bit of existential angst in me; I don't want to be here, I don't want to go back to university, I just want to run off and have adventures in the sun. But ah well, I won't. At least not for a couple more years.

My parents (who currently own a chocolate factory which you can see here, and who are maniacal touters of local produce and craftiness) have acquired a soon-to-be chocolate shop in a small local village, which needs to be decorated and kitted out (to IKEA!). Exciting times!

Eclectic Eccentricity

Seeing as I have taken to wearing this necklace from Ecclectic Eccentricity Jewellery pretty much daily, I think this website deserves a mention.

Lucy Averill's collection of kooky jewellery is just awesome in so many ways. Constructed from shiny gold and silver monkeys, telephones, seals, bicycles, flowers, feathers, letters and trinkets, the necklaces and bracelets are a magpie's dream. I'm a magpie, and if I had more/any disposable income I would have bought up half of her collection.

Go look now. Especially see her Exclusive Eccentricities collection (one of a kind pieces made with vintage finds), and if anyone wants to buy me the necklace with the compass and swallows I'd totally be OK with that.

Lost words

While thinking about an apt name for my new blog (which I most definitely found!) I came across this wonderful website - the Compendium for Lost Words, on the Phrontistery. It reminded me of an article I saw recently on Time about 24 words being dropped for the Collins English Dictionary. 24 words? Is it really saving that much paper? Most of the words are pretty unattractive, see oppugnant, or niddering. There are also some gems in the list - skirr in particular I absolutely love ('a whirring sound, as of the wings of birds in flight'), and muliebrity has its charms. But disregarding relative appeal, this list makes me sad. Everyone has given up on these little words; they have been abandoned and cast into the lonely world of non-official existence. Poor things.

I'm studying Old English, Old Norse and Latin - three languages which have shaped our modern English, and I can tell you with complete certainty that the development of language has had some casualties. Language is a living, evolving thing, but can you believe we left some of these beauties behind?

Old English words that could be re-instated:

swinke - survived all the way into Chaucer's Middle English but didn't quite make it through to the present day, meaning 'work'.

hwaet* - the first word of Beowulf, followed by an exclamation mark (I think it was meant to catch people's attention at the beginning of a recital - HWAET! see?) often translated as 'what', or 'lo'.

neorxnawange - means 'Paradise' (in the christian sense - Eden) but is much more fun to say than its modern day counterpart.


Here is hwaet in its original setting. Yes, when we started writing in English in the Latin alphabet (rather than runes) we chose the letter P to represent the sound W, which doesn't really appear in Latin. Way to confuse things, guys.




Anyway, my point is: keep your vocabularies expanding people! Don't let perfectly good words disappear! Think of NEORXNWANGE!

I think that was my point. I'm not too sure anymore.

* the 'ae' in hwaet should be the letter ash, as in an a and an e that look like they have been squished together forcibly, but apparently Blogger doesn't like this letter. *scowl*