Blog Overhaul

Time for another blog overhaul....

UK SQuids in!

New £1 will be open for design competition? 

Keep your eyes peeled fellow design folk and creatives for another chance to design the British coinage.

I wasn't sure about the return to the threepenny 12-sided shape at first, my first concern was for all the automated machines we rely on, and you just know that the public services will be last to change all their machines (library vending, hospital parking).

But then I think back to summer 2010 and I was disgusted by a wave of counterfeit (particularly the 2004 bridge design) and the ignorance of the shop assistants when I refused their change and asked them to give me a real pound coin.

Later, in 2011, I watched an episode of Fake Britain with Dominic Littlewood investigating the amount of counterfeit £1 coins handed over by the high street banks!! No wonder the shop assistants thought they were real, even the banks let so many slip through the system.

So whilst a change in the quid would be a pain, perhaps it will help with reducing the £43.5 million worth of counterfeit coinage thought to be in circulation.

Image from Royal Mint Blog, all rights Royal Mint

Have your say about the new design by taking part in a poll at the Royal Mint blog:

blog.royalmint.com/do-you-like-the-new-1-pound-coin

Fake Britain sr2:1 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011f4nn 

Life Hacks

This week, probably way behind the times, I encountered "life hacks" - simple, innovations using everyday items or methods to enhance daily life. Original link shared by a friend on fb.

Some of my favourites from the list include:

7. Nail polish on keys for easy identification
 I like this because I have bought kitsch key covers with cute monkey heads, which are lovely and rubbery, but they're not cheap and they do wear and tear easily resulting in dead monkeys. It's also a great way to use up old nail polish since recently discovering the fantastic quality of shellac manicures, although how long will it be until I find polish inferior for finger nails AND for my keys......

20. Separating egg yolks with a plastic bottle.
 It was awesome and delivered in animated gif form. Nuff said

5. Toilet roll inners as cable tidies
 because we all use bog roll and all have cables. No household is completely wireless. No normal household at least.

47. Giving plastic packaging a screw top
 going to have to give this a go, the resealable stickies that are provided with the supermarket rice/cous cous just aren't sticky enough risking scatters of starchy particles.


Here is my contribution to solving a home problem. It's not as elegant as the life hacks in the list but it's a problem that has plagued us since moving into out current flat. It was winter when we moved in and the leather sofas present at the flat would give us a chilly nip on the posterior, through clothes, whenever we sat on it. So I dug out an old throw which solved the problem but gave us a new one: cover creep.

fig 1 Cover creep. Where the throw would end up on the floor instead of the sofa.
(The sofa duvet keeps us toasty but exacerbates the creep)

I knew I couldn't simply tether the throw because as soon as you sit down with any force or speed, you'd snap the tether or break whatever it was tethered to. I thought about tying books to the throw, but then would it make an annoying thud every time you stood up?

The TiT solution was inspired by the ridiculous 30 second tutorials on the Great British sewing bee, specifically the curtain episode. I learnt that for a good set of curtains, they should be weighted and you can purchase lead discs (available at fabulous John Lewis). You know, we don't have a lot of money but we do have a lot of coppers. 

fig 2 the TiT solution. The seams plus the coin make a funny word, hee hee

The TiT formation is simply a way of making little pockets for the 2p coins that allows them to be removed for washing, but evenly distributed along the throw without them falling out or jingling. I put 16p in each corner and the centre and one coin in each of the remaining pockets. My sewing is far from neat, you can see thread where I just moved the needle to the next point and some openings were big enough to allow only 1p coins. However, this took me less than 30 minutes to complete (it would be much quicker if you're a proficient sewer and or not disturbed by door to door chuggers) and I'm not fussed because it's going behind the sofa. 

It's working so far, I can always add more coins if it's too light. I feel like I've had a mini life victory today....how sad :P

New Label: Doodle Dump

It's quite interesting where inspiration sneaks up on you....I read lastnight, quite accidentally, a page left open by my hub, a forum post on inspiration and motivation and the bottom line for most of the contributors was that waiting for inspiration is a waste of time, when you could be doing stuff, and that while you work away at your craft, inspiration evolves and you are not inspired any more, you are creating ideas and executing these ideas. Isn't that what being creative is about?

What I got from it was that I have to really work hard on those sparking embers to create fire.

So here's the first strike of the flint, no fire today, no inspiration today, just keep digging up that brain fluff....there must be a gem or two amongst all the fluff...and my there's a lot of fluff.

Belated Happy 2013 and Year of the snake.

What happens when you get a job?

You very quickly settle into new routines and very quickly abandon routines that took so long and with much effort to establish when you weren't in full time employment.

Hello blog, I have been in full time employment for 8months+ and I have not written nor posted, bar a near-death rant, during that time. It also looks like I abandoned my October 30 doodle quest. I actually did more than 2, I moved it to paper and pen doodles, but I confess, I did not do 30.

I had a conversation recently about starters, finishers and non starters. What group do you fit into? and which group would you like to be? Also, are there intersections of these groups?

Me? I think I am a bit of a starter: I have all these ideas for projects, go in all guns blazing and fizzle out quite quickly. (I'm talking personal projects, not work stuff). Projects that get finished tend to have external forces linked, a gift for someone, or deadline for submission. So I can finish, but need a purpose or a predetermined end point. Then there are non start projects that are great ideas (and some not so great ideas), that get stored in my "will get round to [eventually][honest][honest honest]" list. So I suppose, I'm a bit of them all.

Happy 2012 by the way :)

Never teach your child that the green man means it's safe to cross

Post-near-death rant:

Two minutes away from the safety of home. A taxi is stopped at the pelican crossing for me to cross the road, busy with evening traffic in spitting December rain. The poor taxi driver almost witnessed a wee woman bounce off the front of a large leisure coach as it failed to even notice there was a traffic light, never mind little me.

Fortunately, I had suspected the traffic coming from the left may not see me because the bus I had just alighted was blocking the view. I was prepared for a driver not stop, especially if the lights had turned amber. That saved me. It did not prepare me for the size and the speed of the vehicle approaching and I checked, it was still a firm red for them! Just the air flow almost knocked me over. The taxi driver, probably just as appalled and shocked, honked the coach driver, but at that speed, it was long gone.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that, get it off my chest and to remind everyone, that the green man doesn't mean it's safe to cross. It means it's your turn but there will always be eejits. There will always, be eejits.

More food inspired doodles

Today, I was drenched by the lovely scottish sideways rain, which wasn't coming down (or rather across) when I stuck my head out the window to decide what coat to wear, but immediately as I left the building.

Inspired by that and the fact we had spag bol for dinner tonight, here is my doodle of the day (JIT). My brain has just been invaded by the sound "foodle", not sure I like it though. Spaghetti sideways rain...