till feeling too rubbish to do anything, go anywhere or see any interesting art... so instead you'll have to make do with more things off the internet that have entertained me during my sojourn on the sofa.

Today it's Daily Drop Cap: an ongoing project by typographer and illustrator Jessica Hische. Each day (well, most of them anyway), a new decorative 'drop cap' is posted on her blog, which (via Creative Commons) anyone can use on their own site 'for the beautification of blog posts everywhere'... as you can see! Here are a few recent favourites:

[All images by Jessica Hische from Daily Drop Cap]

This is fun: Live Now is a collaborative art project started by Eric Smith. After being diagnosed with not one, not two, but three different types of cancer, Eric started the project as a way to focus on the positive, and celebrate living in the moment.

The project, described as "a community of happiness", consists of quotes, thoughts, lyrics, stories and other creations in different mediums focusing on the idea of "living now", which have been submitted by a range of designers, illustrators and other creative practitioners. Just the thing to brighten up a dull February day!

[all images via Live Now]

I am always intrigued by the google searches that bring people here. Here's some recent ones:

bad for bunnies
about being slow
yellow things
the best moods
disaster owl knitted hot water bottle
sculpture of pineapple by the road
tra la la lingerie
bunnies are the best
red shoes perfect for yellow party dress
when is paraphenalia good?
best things about brick
enchanted shoes stuck on her feet

So pleasingly random, and also strangely inspiring - I feel I'd like to write a story featuring enchanted yellow party dresses, slow but cheerful bunnies, disastrous owls, musical underwear and pineapple sculptures.

In other news, follow the yellow brick road has ventured into uncharted waters - the somewhat baffling world of twitter. I'm still not really sure I get it, but I'm working on it (I mean, if Russell Brand and Fearne Cotton can manage it, I'm sure I can). For twittering, tweeting and other general bird-type noises, find and befriend me here.

Any expert twitterers out there with any tips/insights to share?

1. the unicorn diaries 2. the cherry blossom girl 3. treats & treasures
4. the tea drinking english rose 5. blaze danielle 6. wish wish wish
7. wild keikei 8. rose posie rosie 9. (inside) a black apple
10. monmartre's sketchbook 11. scout holiday 12. i'm not antisocial, just shortsighted

Today, for a final blast of 'December loveliness', I thought I would share these blogs - all relatively recent discoveries, which I like as much for their lovely images and overall aesthetic as for their written style.

I especially like the fact that all of these blogs make the most of the potential offered by online platforms without feeling scarily uber-digital or hi-tech: in fact, if anything, blogs like the tea drinking english rose, or the unicorn diaries more closely resemble an old-fashioned handwritten journal that you could imagine you might tie up with a ribbon or lock with a key.

Whether or not the particular aesthetic appeals to you, what really stands out about all these blogs is how defined their individual styles are - visuals, content and prose style all work together to create a particular identity. It’s perhaps for this reason that these blogs feel so personal - reading them is like taking a little peep through the keyhole into the space of the bloggers’ imaginations.

It's interesting to observe how blogs such as i’m not antisocial just shortsighted (a very recent find, which I discovered via jo’s blog) or the cherry blossom girl develop, becoming a broad creative space to experiment with a distinctive personal style, bringing together together many different interests and sources of inspiration - from fashion to design to writing to photography to fine art.

Blogs like these seem to be first and foremost spaces to play with and share ideas, becoming (quite literally in the case of blogs like treats & treasures) ongoing scrapbooks or collages which are always growing and developing. These blogs are little treasure-troves of inspiration.

My plans for daily December loveliness haven't worked out so well this week. Perhaps that's just because it hasn't been a particularly lovely week: I seem to have spent most of it working, or sitting on the bus, or being tired, or walking round town on a fruitless quest for Christmas presents, getting periodically bashed by people with armfuls of Primark bags in remorseless pursuit of the nearest bargain bin, all set to the tune of hyped-up electro Christmas carols.

Bah humbug indeed.

I feel the need to catch up a bit on the 'loveliness' front. Today has been a lot lovelier so far, in spite of the greyness and the rain: it's Saturday, and I've just come back from a nice pub lunch, and now I'm sitting under two blankets because the house is cold, and am contemplating lighting the fire and making a cup of cocoa.

First though, here's some rapid-fire 'good things' to make up for some of the ground I've lost through general apathy this week:

I quite like this new blog. It's full of useful advice and eyeopening insights, mostly in capital letters.

The excellent artyarn will be launching their Shed Jumper project next week. Working with the local community, they have knitted a jumper for a shed! Check it out at the Pool Arts SHED Gallery, Tonbridge Road Allotments in Levenshulme from Thursday.

Academy:academy is a new blog and a very useful online resource, with links to 'free material of educational value' on the web. Go there to check out lectures, interviews, artists film and video and tons of other interesting stuff.

I like this new blog too. It doesn't have a lot of posts yet, but I have a good feeling about it.

The Manchester Craft Mafia Christmas market is taking place at the Whitworth today and tomorrow. Go there for everything from paper shoes to cuddly robots. Check out the information here.

A new exhibition at FACT opened this week called DING>>D0NG (very appropriately seasonal) which I'm looking forward to seeing when I'm next in Liverpool. The exhibition 'closes FACT's 2008 programme with bleeps, bangs and electronic noise' and features new work by Andy McCluskey, Peter Saville, Hambi Haralambous and The Fragmented Orchestra.

And just for a little variety:

I stumbled on this blog quite recently. It is called 'Sea of Shoes' (a good name) and it is penned by a young lady called Jane, who lives in Texas and is 16 years old. Although I can see that her taste might not be everyone's cup of tea (I thought these Martin Margiela 'sandal booties' were fabulous but my boyfriend thought they were horrendous) I can't help feeling deeply impressed that any 16-year old has such a strong sense of personal style, especially when I look back at the kind of things I was wearing at 16 (we won't go into details, but in retrospect, it was Not Good). To be fair to me though, Dries van Noten and Balenciaga were a little out of my price-range, and not really readily available in Lancaster town centre!

Right, that's enough for one day - now it's cocoa time...

I found another interesting web-based project recently, which seems very appropriate for my daily post of goodness. Booooooom! and Design for Mankind have joined forces to create Free encouragement, a project which is absolutely all about positivity and nice things. The idea behind the project is to counteract the negativity that we find “all around us these days... infesting the internet... taking over the big screen... showing up on your bank statement”.

The first part of the project, led by Booooooom!, has been the creation of an online 'gallery of encouragement' - anyone can submit their own personal encouraging messages to the project: “You can use this gallery to encourage a close friend or someone you just happened to pass by on the street. You can encourage a relative who may be ill or the girl who handed you your coffee this morning. You could even use this place to encourage yourself!” You can see the gallery here, which makes very entertaining reading. The images here are some of my personal favourites from the gallery.































The second half of the project, led by Design for Mankind, has not yet been announced - it's veiled in mystery until it kicks off this Friday. I'm intrigued to see what will happen next, but there's no doubt that it will certainly be cheerful.















I went back to work today. It was quite challenging, but I survived the day and made it home, despite the freezing cold, and nearly falling over on the ice about a hundred times on the short walk from the train station back to my house. Here are some other cheerful and lovely things from my day:

• Frosty hedgerows and sunshine in the morning
• Steak and kidney pudding, chips, gravy and peas for lunch (which really should have been on my ‘100 favourite things list I think) - greedy but good
• This monkey
• A forecast for 8 inches of snow tonight!

I can't really talk about lovely things without mentioning tea and nice teacups. I like this quote from Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women, which I read over the weekend:

Perhaps there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy tea-pot. We had all had our supper, or were supposed to have had it, and were met together to discuss the arrangements for the Christmas bazaar. Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look. “Do we need tea?” she ecohed. “But Miss Lathbury...” She sounded puzzled and distressed, and I began to realise that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind.

I mumbled something about making a joke and that of course one needed tea always, at every hour of the day and night.

This is my favourite cinnamon tea with cardamom, ginger, cloves and black peppercorns. I also like this one which comes in a pretty box. However, my favourite of all is weak earl grey (no milk of course) in a teacup, ideally with a slice of cake on the side. I think Barbara Pym would approve.

I came across Tea Blog, an interesting web-based project by artist Ellie Harrison, via Mark Robinson’s Arts Counselling blog, which is well worth a read - one of his definitions of ‘strategic’ as ‘really, really big and expensive’ nearly made me snort tea everywhere. Anyway, each time Ellie drinks a cup of tea (or any other hot drink) she records a snippet of what she is thinking about on the blog. Since 1 January 2006 when the project started, she has gathered over 1,500 thoughts online in a tribute to tea and thought. Tea Blog is due to end at midnight on 31 December 2008.

...'bad for women' is one of the things someone searched for on google which brought them here. I can't imagine why that should be, but perhaps, unbeknownst to me, this is actually very dangerous and subersive. Perhaps it is a bad influence. Perhaps it should come with a warning at the top in big, scary, flashing red letters: BAD FOR WOMEN. Maybe it is bad for women, or indeed... even men (shock!). Perhaps it's just too pink and there are too many bunnies, you know, in a sort of dangerous and subversive way.

Or maybe it's the red shoes that do it. Red shoes have after all been known to be a little dangerous on occasion.

Now for a few messages to some of the other visitors who made there way here via the magic of google search:

to the person who searched ‘leopard tights’: I really hope you meant leopard PRINT tights, not tights FOR leopards. I don’t think that would be practical. It would also be quite weird.

to the person who searched ‘boeuf bourginnone’: I’m very sorry there are no boeuf recipes here. I bet you were expecting lots of nice beefy, stewy-type things, and then you wound up here where there were mainly just pictures of rabbits, and not even stewed ones at that. Actually, I can’t remember ever having actually written anything about boeuf, but it does sound like something I would do.

And finally, to the person who searched ‘you know what they say about girls in red shoes’: what they say, actually, is that they are extremely stylish and fabulous. And that’s really all there is to it.

And last of all, here's a picture of Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes, just because why not?

I am feeling cross today. I am in a bit of a bad temper. There are various reasons for this, but it is perhaps partly just an accumulation of little things. It's been a long week and I have a very sore throat, and someone has stolen my recycling box from my front garden, and I have had a disaster with the blanket I am knitting for my friends’ baby, and my kitchen door has fallen off its hinges and my hair is not looking good today. None of these are especially important, but they are the kinds of small things that do sometimes put one in a bad mood.

There are lots of things I would quite like to be doing this weekend but I am not going to do any of them. Here are some of the things I would like to be doing:

I would like to be going to see the new play Peacock Boy by Crystal Stewart. Described as 'a grubby adult fairy tale of desperation and deception' this combination of live action, music and puppetry is on at Contact Theatre this weekend.

I would like to be going to look at lovely new artist's books and publications at the Liverpool Artist's Book Fair at Wolstenholme Projects this weekend.

I would like to be going to 'Night of the Owl' at A Foundation tonight. This event will offer the chance to see and hear some of the first results of a collaboration between the Owl Project and musicians Leafcutter John, Kaffe Matthews and Thor Magnusson to develop a new range of wooden instruments for live performance. It will also include performances from Philip Jeck, Tim Lambert and Simon Whetham as well as short films from Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan. There is more here.

Instead I have been staying inside, nourishing myself with cups of cinnamon tea and a hot water bottle, and reading The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard for the hundredth time, which is always very cheering. Sometimes small things can also put you in a better mood, especially if they are things like small fluffy bunnies.

I have also been looking at some good things on the internet. I have been listening to lovely live birdsong here, which can only be a very cheerful sort of thing.

I have also been reading about this interesting new project from the excellent if:book London, which describes itself as ‘an experiment in close-reading’: seven women, including Laura Kipnis and Naomi Alderman are reading The Golden Notebook by Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing, and will be carrying out an ongoing online conversation in the margins. The project went live on 10 November and it will be interesting to see how it develops: project objectives are to enable a culture of collaborative learning, and to explore the possibilities of carrying out complex conversations ‘messy, non-linear and complicated’ via the platforms offered by the web. I’m embarassed to admit that I’ve never actually read The Golden Notebook though it’s been on my 'to read' list for a long time - this project makes me want to go out and get myself a copy so I can read along.

And for moments when I feel a bit less intellectual, I have also been looking at pictures of other people’s breakfasts (mmm, breakfasts) and oh yes, of course, looking at photographs of bunnies. An orange rabbit is the best antidote to a bad mood. You can also try looking at silly photographs of dogs and videos of cats doing ridiculous things, of course. If a cat getting excited about putting its head in a box doesn't cheer you up, then I'm afraid nothing will. It's a fact.

In case you too are having a bad mood day and the bunnies haven't done the trick, there's some videos of a particularly entertaining cat called Maru doing that very thing here. I feel better already.

... a quick selection of some of the tunes I've been listening to of late. Check out my retro pink tape player!

I'm quite impressed that I managed this all by myself.

Truly, the internet is a magical thing.

Making this just now reminded me of when I was writing a certain novel which has since been banished to my bottom drawer. At the time, I put together a whole playlist to get me in the right mood, and some of the songs even ended up working their way into the story itself, seeming to just appear, as if by themselves, at critical moments in the narrative. There's something so sad about a lost novel: I've been thinking about it a bit lately and wondering if its worth re-writing and resuscitating. It's hard to know when to have another go and when to just say goodbye.

Actually, I seem to remember that one of the songs on that playlist was 'Return to Oz' by the Scissor Sisters, which I couldn't help including here - it just seems so very appropriate given the title of this blog. Though you may be glad to hear that I did manage to refrain from including any Elton John.

NB// There is a pause button on the front of the cassette thing if you're sick of it and want it to shut up.

OK, people. And of course, by people I mean readers. So that’s one, two of you maybe, if I’m lucky? At least one of whom is my mum? (Hello mum!)

But I digress...

Starting this blog has got me thinking about writing in general, and blogging in particular. Before I started writing here, I knew next to nothing about blogging, and indeed about writing online - though I’ve had work published online, I’ve always approached writing it in exactly the same way I’d approach writing in general. I think (I hope) I know a little bit about writing. I certainly have vey extensive experience of what I might term 'personal' writing - diaries, journals, that kind of thing. In spite of this, I’m very happy to admit that I know very little about what writing a blog is really all about. I’m even a little bit ambivalent about the whole exercise, as you will see from this initial post in my having-a-go, testing-the-water blog, unpacking my library. And as I’m sure any reader of this blog will gather, I certainly haven’t started with any particularly coherent plan or considered approach to what exactly it is I’m doing here - I’ve just been posting whatever is in my mind.

But since starting to write here, I’ve become aware that this whole world (I really can’t quite bring myself to use the word ‘blogosphere’) is a complex one, and far from being as straightforward as it might initially seem. Now, I find myself asking two key questions. Firstly, what is a blog, really, when it comes down to it? Personal diary made public? A forum to discuss and communicate with others? A place to gather stuff together? To explore ideas? To showcase work? Or even something akin to fiction - a novel, a fictionalised autobiography? What does a blog really mean? Or, to rephrase the question in a particularly annoying way, which I am afraid I can only justify by explaining that I can't help it - I am currently half way through an English Literature MA course which is especially heavy on the cultural theory - how does it mean?

And then my second question, perhaps the most important one: what is it that makes a blog good? What makes it readable, compelling, meaningful, interesting, engaging? What is it that takes it beyond just another place to mess about and waste time online, and turns it into something altogether more?

Like any good and faithful student, of course my next step is to undertake some research into the subject - i.e. do the reading! I already read a number of blogs I like, and in my work I come across lots more -usually writer's blogs - on a more or less daily basis. However, I’m very much aware that I’m only just starting to scratch the surface. So with this in mind, I’m (perhaps rather optimistically) asking passing readers (if there are any of you out there) to leave a comment below with a link to any blog(s) that you think might be of interest. Blogs you love, blogs you laugh at, even blogs you think are downright awful. Blogs to inspire or enrage or enrich, or that you simply think are a really great read.

We’ll see what I get and I’ll do some investigating. In the meantime, I’m starting by reading this article about internet writing on the Canongate website by fellow Manchester resident, writer (and blogger) Chris Killen. (Chris is also the author of the fabulous 'untitled supermarket nightmare' novel which you can read online here)

And of course, whatever I find out, I’ll be posting it here.

It's been another week of madness. On Wednesday night, I was at Manchester Art Gallery for the launch of the b.tween conference. Wandering through the beautiful pre-Raphaelite and Victorian galleries with my glass of wine whilst we waited for things to kick off made for an interesting contrast with the main event - pitches from five creatives for the exploding narratives project, which uses cutting-edge technology.

On Thursday, I headed over to Liverpool for the Design Show at the Contemporary Urban Centre. I am quite impressed that I managed not to spend any money (except for buying a quite disgusting tuna panini - though that, as they say, is really another story). I did take quite a fancy to Rachel Eardley's pretty dove earrings, but sadly they were rather out of my price range. The dangerous Tatty Devine stand was also quite difficult to resist. Oh the gorgeousness of the black cat bangle! Oh how covetable is the petite antler pendant! I think the Tatty Devine people could see me drooling because they kindly gave me a rather fabulous heart-shaped lolly and and this most excellent badge which I love. (Secretly, I am still only about 5 years old.)

Today, I was back in Manchester for day two of the b.tween conference at MoSI. I felt like a total wally when I arrived this morning because I was (literally) the only one there without a laptop (specifically, a shiny new mac book), a blackberry or an iphone. Instead, I had a pen. A pen. My god, I like pre-Raphaelite oil paintings and I use a pen. I am practically analogue. I am surprised some kind of digital police force didn’t come and forcibly eject me from the auditorium because I wasn’t Web 2.0 enough to make the grade. However, I did start to feel better when someone made a cheezburger joke on the webchat screen and I actually understood it. (Is that a good thing?)

It was an interesting day - I enjoyed listening to this guy whilst watching my neighbour's rather impressive doodling. I got another free badge! And then there was Bill Tidy - the highlight of the day. His slightly nonsensical but entertaining talk, which took in everything from coathangers to Lady Godiva, was illustrated not by boring old powerpoint slides, but by his own rapid-fire illustrations. The audience loved it: the glossy meeja type sitting next to me was audibly snorting with laughter at one point and on the webchat screen a whole “bill tidy rocks, death to powerpoint” movement was rapidly gaining momentum. I felt a lot better after that: clearly analogue has still got it after all.

... And now the week is over! It's Friday night and my plan for the weekend is for sunshine, artlessness, and sleep!

Some friends and favourite things online:

artists, illustrators, designers

andrew bracey
art yarn
contents may vary
keri smith: wish jar
krisatomic
little doodles
maeve rendle 
nicola dale 
obsessive consumption
rachel goodyear
sandra diekmann
the pansy project

galleries, studios and projects

apartment
castlefield gallery
cornerhouse
exocet
international 3
islington mill art academy
manchester art gallery
raven row
rogue artists studios
we make london
 

books and book design

bibliodyssey
book by its cover
book cover archive
bookmunch
booktrust
carcanet press 
comma press
covers
dogmatika
library of unwritten books
manchester literature festival
persephone post
première de couverture
stuck in a book
untitled books
vulpes libres

writers and writing

a handful of stones
anna mckerrow
art of fiction: adrian slatcher
benjamin judge
chris killen
diary of a bluestocking
emily mcphillips
emma j lannie
jenn ashworth
manchester writing
manchizzle
max dunbar
my shitty twenties
nik perring
nikesh shukla 
no point in not being friends
paperhouse
rainy city stories
richard barrett
sh - the interactive library novel
six sentences
the manchester review
the other room
walled city
words and fixtures

blogs


baroque in hackney
lady levenshulme
liberty london girl
like father like daughter
lions, tigers, elephants and bears
manchester blog awards
manchester is ace
manchizzle
mithering times
this little lady went to london
travels with my baby

fashion

amelia's blog
casey's musings
monmartre's sketchbook
sea of shoes
style bubble
the cherry blossom girl
the sartorialist
the thoughtful dresser
wee birdy 
wish wish wish

inspiration

all the mountains
blaze danielle
cute overload
daydream lilly
english muse
greedy girl
hulaseventy
ihanna's creative space
little brown pen
lolita
sfgirlbybay
that unreliable girl
the selby
the unicorn diaries
what katie does
where the lovely things are

Check out my sidebar links for some of my favourite art blogs.

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