Yesterday I spent a grand total of 99p while walking around the Mapperley shops. I don’t own that many Agatha Christie’s, believe it or not, but the ones I do own I’ve found in charity shops and have beautiful covers. This might be the start of a new collection. The lovely bit of framed lace I came across for the grand total of 49p! You can’t really say “no” when a treasure like that pops up…

Last week I received this beauty in the post made by the talented Tracey Meek! Isn’t she cool? I’m completely smitten with Miss Meek’s work – her Russian dolls are amazing and definitely on my wish list.

It’s official and it’s right around the corner!!!

I’ve been plotting and planning this little adventure for months and months and it’s only recently sunk in that it’s happening in less than 2 weeks!!! (slight panic)

I present to you, via The Malt Cross Gallery (Nottingham), a group show featuring art work and loveliness by Gemma Correll, Lizzy Stewart, Helen Entwisle, Jen Collins, Gemma Latimer and myself.

The opening evening starts from 4pm and there will be a lovely little table of artist books and zines available for you to purchase. Everyone’s welcome! Come along and say hello! Also, spread the word!!

PS – Here’s a link to a little article I got in the local Left Lion paper. Says a little bit about what to expect from my corner of the show.

Another mini book rant (these are becoming a bit of a habit and I’m quite enjoying them). I’m reading this at the moment (The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber) – it’s really good. Some of you UK folks may have caught the recent TV series they made based on the book. Full respect for Ramola Garai, I think she plays the character Sugar incredibly well. It’s quite gritty, which is to be expected due to the subject matter. To my own embarrassment the day I picked up my copy I was quizzed by an old man on the bus ride home. It went something like this:

Old man: “Oooo you bought yourself a book?”

Me: “Yep” [nervous smile]

Old man: “What’s it about?”

Me: “Um” (it’s about Victorian London’s Ladies of the night, but I didn’t have the courage to admit this so I was as vague as vague can be and said…) “It’s about London-?”

Old man: “Oh, right. What happens then?”

Me: “Err…” (by this point I’m turning an apt shade of crimson and since I have a good 15 minute bus ride ahead of me with this chap I couldn’t help but tell a pork pie… hoping the fib might put him off asking me any more questions) “Shopping?”

Old man: “Riiiight…” (fortunately he went on to tell me all about his reading habits… and I felt far more comfortable discussing that, phew!)

Anyway,  so far I’m only a quarter of the way in but it’s a page turner (and I’m hoping it continues to be during all 894 pages… gulp) I’d love to hear what you think of it if you have read it already.

I started reading a (very) well loved copy of this book yesterday and I’m completely hooked. You know when you get recommended certain books so many times by different people and it sort of puts you off or intimidates you a little, you have that mini “what if I don’t feel the same” panic. Well if that’s the case with this one, ignore those doubts. It’s brilliant.

I have a book! It’s for sale in my shop! …and I can’t seem to stop adding exclamation marks to everything! It’s priced at £7! Yay! (It features 26 cat themed doodles and measures 13cm x 20cm)

Just a little note to all you etsy shoppers – I have finally converted my shop currency to GBP which means the prices are a little bit weird now in dollars. I hope this doesn’t frighten anyone away :)

Here’s a sneak peek at a project I’ve been working on. It’s a book! I got the test copy through the post this morning! Just a couple of tweaks here and there and then bingo, it’ll be ready! I’m so excited.

As promised – another random post for the day. I dug out some old instax photos from my uni days. This one was taken on one of my many hunts for inspiration around the city centre. This place is right by the train station so some locals may recognise it. Every time I passed this building, with it’s crooked lettering and grimy windows, I always pictured it as the perfect location you’d check yourself into to write a murder mystery. I could imagine someone sat by the window, chain smoking and then frantically tapping away at their typewriter. Lounging around the room reciting snippets of dialogue, working late into the night. I thought it would be fun to share that memory with you. I’ll see if I can dig out any more instax photos – better yet, I’ll see if I can dig out the camera and some film.

Talking of murder mysteries, I just finished another book: Sleeping Murder (another Agatha Christie). Highly recommend it!

I’m reading a fantastic book at the moment ( “The 13 Problems” )and I figured since I eagerly update my ‘Virtual Bookself’ on facebook why not make my fiction intake a bit of a feature here on the blog as well.

I’m a huge fan of Agatha Christie but I’ve not actually read many of her books. I’m familiar with loads of the stories from listening to radio adaptations and devouring the feature lengths on Christmas TV but I’ve decided it’s one of my belated new years resolutions to catch up on my Agatha Christie reading list. This one in particular is a collection of short stories merging to create one big story. I can’t say too much because I’ve only chomped my way through half of it but I love her style, her characters and the little mysteries they’re each spinning. I also love that Miss Marple is mid knitting project – as am I. Although I reckon she’s doing a much better job since I’ve just had to start my Cardigan project from scratch for the 5th time. Fingers crossed this book will bring me a little luck in the wool depatrment.

Finally! Some house related pictures to share. Woke up this morning to a pleasant surprise – although I can imagine it’s going to make getting into town later tricky. Anyway, this is the view from the MOUNTAIN (it’s a hill really) we live on.

Below is the first half of our kitchen/dining room. We’re still in the process of filling up the shelves with our colourful picture books. Through the windows you can catch a glimpse of our snow covered garden. Illya’s enjoying skating around on the tiled floors – as you can probably imagine. I’m trying to decide whether I want to make some table mats or settle for incredibly overpriced habitat ones… Since I’m on a strict budget and my ‘studio’ space isn’t accessible I’m leaning more towards homemade. Maybe that’s going to be this weeks project – now where did I bury my sewing machine…

This is a shot of the other half of the room (the bit where the food is made – not by me obviously as I don’t cook) and the door leading to the hallway. I’ll have some more photos of the rest of the house soon. I’m taking it room at a time – no point in showing you a lovely house with my chaos scattered around it :) Also the light’s better at this time in the morning in this room.

Below is just a random picture of rose face I thought I’d share too.

Back soon :)