Odds and Sods

After a mega busy couple of weeks, I'm finally back to craft central!

As is tradition, all of my best laid plans have gone terribly wrong and I have managed to run out of time for Halloween crafting! Halloween is my absolute favourite celebration (my boss described me as a recreational pagan!) and I always go massively overboard on my halloween crafting, decoration, costume, food, the lot! I had meant to make a load of halloween things but have simply not had the time to do it. I have been up to lots of interesting arty/crafty things over the last few weeks though:

1. My momma came to visit for the weekend, and we went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to see the Jaume Plensa exhibition AGAIN! I have been to see this at least 4 times now, and I still enjoy it. The massive metal sculptures made up of different lettering are amazing. There were a few new sculpture that I hadn't seen before, and a new exhibition of drawings and animations by Rachel Goodyear that I liked a lot.

2. I did manage to do some Halloween crafting and have made a bunch of felt 'day of the dead' sugar skulls. They will be attached to ribbon for hanging when I manage to grab a moment!

3. The Halloween decorations went up! I tried to keep the madness to one corner of the room, but it has gradually spread out over the whole downstairs of the house. Most of the decorations are from various pound shops (and the now defunct hyper extra value in Newport) . The bat lights are from the current Sainsbury's range for a fiver!

Light Night / Steam Punk Market

I've just enjoyed a rather hectic and exciting weekend of arty doings for Leeds Light Night which has taken over the city.

I have to admit that I knew nothing of Light Night until I was given a flyer at last weekends Alternative Comics Fair and was asked to go along by a friend. There were so many events happening at once that I felt rather flustered as I wanted to see everything RIGHT NOW! Luckily common sense prevailed and we managed to pick some things to go and see.

Sadly I forgot to take my camera with me, so I apologise for the lack of photos with this post!

Particular favourites for me were the Craft Garden in the old victorian cells underneath the town hall, which had turned the cells into different crafted worlds. My favourite was the autumn/urban room complete with crack fox rooting through an upturned bin, knitted mice and snails and demonic creatures with red glowing eyes. Well worth the 20 minute queue!

We also experienced the Caravanatron - a Barbarella / Sleeper themed installation. After a 45 minute queue in the frankly freezing cold each participant was given a silver pill (a Smartie) and indiviually entered the caravan. Inside was a silver room, where you lay on a silver bed/cushion and were strapped in to experience a projection about the stars and a vibrating bed.

We also got to see the takeaway poetry van operated by Morely Literature Festival , paper nests in the Art Library, an 'art trail' across the city using flashing buttons as beacons (mine fell off at the Caravanatron), free cocoa on the 18th floor of West Riding House and a knitted interactive keyboard from 'Knit a Bear Face'. Some of the events we fancied were fully booked by the time we got to them, so pre-booking is a must next time!

On Saturday it was also the Leeds Steampunk Market in Headingly. This was a tie in to the Semaphore Office which appeared as part of Light Night (although we were unable to find it!).

Loads of fantastic stalls full of shiny things, comics, memorabilia, costumes and of course tea and cake. I was horribly underdressed compared to the good gents and ladies of the market, but was complemented on my 'fox fur' scarf several times!

I managed to miss out on the goggles I wanted as they had sold out by the time I'd gone to the cash machine (Note to self: get money before attending market!) but I did managed to come away with this awesome stuff:

" Kill your Velocity, Not an Air Kraken" poster

"milk 2 sugars" and octopus patches

and this amazing leather cuff (technically for my boyfriend but still awesome)

I have also been trying to craft in between all of these arty doings, so there will hopefully be some Halloween decorations appearing in the next few days.

Leeds 3rd Alternative Comics Fair

On 1st October it was the 3rd Leeds Alternative Comics fair at Nation of Shopkeepers and like a good nerd I went along! I have managed to miss the last 2 of these, so was really keen to go along and check out the local comics on offer.

Despite it being the hottest day for quite some time (vest tops in October. IN YORKSHIRE! What is going on?!?) it was reasonably busy, and everyone seemed to be enjoying the comicy goodness. I had a bit of a splurge and got some really awesome comics I thought it would be worth sharing!

'The Steampunk Literary Review' by Dr Geof which features fictional reviews and adverts of all things Steampunk. And smut. Lots of smut! My Favourite is the 'REDUCE YOUR VELOCITY - SAVE A SKY CRAKEN' poster!

'Hermit' by Andrew Waugh about a guy who goes crazy in the modern world and tries to escape to the wilderness (I mainly bought this as the font cover looks a lot like my loveable housemate who is also keen on a little hermitude)

'Find Comet Hit Comet Watch Comet Sleep' by Hugh 'Shug' Raine about the end of the world if it were to happen in Dewsbury!

Some gorgeous hand printed cards from Hello Memo

And this little guy! He has a moustache and boss eyes...whats not to love!

Bananarama

Yet more baking!

In my office, there is a tradition of having a positive ending to our weekly staff meetings. Sometimes this takes the form of Pictionary but more often than not its rather cake-based. I was warned before I made my first cake to avoid bananas as our finance guy is allergic to them. So it was decided amongst the rest of the office that I should make a non-banana banana cake!

The cake itself is a chocolate tray bake from Beautiful Baking by Jane Asher. This was my first 'baking' cookery book and has some really good simple recipes for cakes, biscuits and random stuff like crumpets. Its pretty much my go-to book for easy but yummy cake.

I then chopped the corners and middle section off to make a basic banana shape (or wonky moon as by housemate described it!)

I then coloured some ready-made icing yellow (using trusty Dr Oetker) and covered the cake to make the 'inside' of the banana. I forgot to buy jam to stick the icing to the cake, so improvised with golden syrup!

I wasn't happy with the overall bananary-ness of it, so made some half peeled skin using a darker shade of yellow icing. I folded back the tops of the 'skin' pieces to make it look more realistic. Some scored lines down the banana and skin later and tah dah! One novelty cake!

This is my very first novelty cake and I am unbelievably proud of myself! Whether the finance guy will feel the same way is another matter!