Tuesday 27 March 2012

I want to get married in Alexander McQueen...


...to be married in this dress would be a dream...


...but alas, I doubt my owlish piggy bank holds the pennies. However, I have just discovered Amanda Rose Bridal on Etsy, and have fallen like petals for her vintage, tatty eco-handmade dresses, such as this lacy number... 


...and pretty please can I have these flower girls aswell? How cute!


Oh and yes! I'm getting married! I'm hoping it'll be in Exbury Gardens in my beloved New Forest, with foxes in tailored coats to serve handmade wedding cupcakes, one paw behind their backs, great tits to sing me down the aisle and geese to chase after the flower girls. Ponies to ride me to my honeymoon suite in Burley, and butterflies to lift my veil. Hmmm...and, of course, there will be deer too. Always deer, but not as venison on guests' plates. Nooo... and I will have fallow antlers upon my head...


...and as I dream I'm listening to a new favourite - CocoRosie. Strange and terribly beautiful is their music, and their videos stir a love hidden in the dark regions of my heart. I've been watching/listening to The Gallows, Lemonade and Werewolf especially. Give them a try, you'll fall for them like shadows <3


For now, I'm going to commence eating a vanilla slice, then once I've licked my fingers I'll continue embroidering a snippet from a Neil Gaiman story that I will finish and post soon. There is a border of pink hair! 
Many dreams,
Nina x

Thursday 22 March 2012

The NeverEnding Story intro...


A bit of 80's cheesy-pop here but we can't help but heart it. This is one of my favourite films since babyhood which I watched last night with Himself. It is a favourite of Katie's as well, which I inflicted upon her in babyhood also. We love the cloud formations in this intro!
Nina x

Saturday 17 March 2012

Frida Eats Flowers



So here it is: Frida Eats Flowers, my latest dark, surreal li'l ditty I, again, originally wrote as a haiku, but it worked out laid out this way anyway. I'm rather pleased with the end result: the stitched handwriting, the fabric (fat quarters Katie and I found in a crafts shop in Swanage, hell yeah!), the satin-stitch lotus flower, the buttons...there's a sunbeam in my belly, mefeels.


Let me introduce you to Frida: she is a character from the next novel I want to write called The Aviary, another fantasy but this time set in a fictional coastal town based on Tyneham, the abandoned village near where I live in Dorset that had been evacuated during WWII to allow troops land for target practice. The government at the time promised the residents that, after the war, they may return home. However, they never followed through with that promise, and to this day the village is a ghost town, open to the public on weekends for walks and time-travel into the past, when the military aren't firing their guns at targets posted on Warbarrow Bay. 


In the story, Florence and Frida are 14-year old twins. Frida however was born blind, so Florence guides her and describes to her the appearance of things. Frida becomes obsessed with birds and the idea of flight, especially as the war starts and the planes fly around the coast; and meets a man, ostracised from the village, who has the gift of sprouting wings from the backs of human beings. Their friendship ultimately ends in tragedy, coinciding with the evacuation of the village. 


Years later, when Florence is a grown woman and a trained ornithologist, she returns to the coastal village to supervise a voluntary mission to clean up an oil spill on the bay and rescue hundreds of birds that have been washed-up and muddied. There she is reunited with the man responsible for Frida's disappearance. And coinciding with all of this, during Florence's work on the coast, a strange bird is washed ashore, a species Florence has never heard of or seen before...


It's intended to be a fairytale-esque young adult novel, like the first one that I'm trying to find an agent for at the moment. We'll see if I ever get round to writing it. For now I'm enjoying embroidering and writing short stories to post on this cloud.
The character Frida that I stitched is inspired by the illustration on the cover of the above book, The Boy With the Cuckoo-Clock Heart. Hence the face and the lotus flower, the latter of which I have used to decorate the ditty. 


I started embroidering these little stories because after having finished writing The Thicket Dwellers I wanted to try something different and creative, so I took up a craft. It is also born out of the snobbery I feel is involved around the topic of 'What is Proper Publishable Poetry'; and frustration I feel with writer's agents not responding to submissions, with disheartening rejections and 'but please keep trying'-s, and the possibility that agents don't read a word of what you send anyway, but send an impersonal slip as a response stating that they are currently not accepting submissions. Should I accept that perhaps my writing is shit and therefore give up? Fuck no. 


So instead I'm combining my love of writing prose and poetry with my new-found enjoyment in embroidery, and intend to blog about it and soon, hopefully, sell it, where there's no one to send me rejection slips. But I also intend to take said agents advice and 'never give up.'


 Nina x

Wednesday 14 March 2012

And The Daffodils Look Lovely Today..


Yellow.. Not my favourite colour, but the daffodils definitely do help to cheer me up on dull tiring days (as well as a spoonful of dark melted chocolate and a book = yumminess. (The chocolate that is, not the book.))
    The thing is, every time I see yellow flowers (even if they’re not daffodils) I think of the song ‘Daffodil Lament’, and now I’m playing it on YouTube, which also makes me happy, and I also thought of this song when I saw this photo of our dog amongst the Daffodils taken this time last year.. He’s a cuteness <3


Since this post is revolving around flowers, I thought I might share this lovely picture I found today on the Juxtapoz magazine fb page of a mental health centre under attack from flowers.. Don’t worry health patients, you’re not hallucinating..


Recent days have been spent;
- tea-staining paper for reasons you’ll find out later on..
- pressing blossoms for a near-future illustration of an anonymous woman with flowers in her hair
- coming up with designs for a free-time jewellery project (if I succeed or not, we’ll find out later..)
- Reading too much depressing fiction than can be healthy (I’m planning on building my vocab, as I sometimes I use the wrong words in the wrong sentences)
-And eating A LOT of dried mango- I might turn out yellow..
-Katie x



Sunday 11 March 2012

Bathwater part 3



It was nearly midnight when Timothy, exhausted from decorating and taking the brunt of verbal and physical blows from his wife for hours on end, crept into his daughter’s room to wish her a silent goodnight. Seeing her bed was empty and messed up, he instantly turned to the bathroom door and, seeing that the light was on, gave a sigh of relief. But then his heart missed a beat of its own accord, attuned to foreboding as the heart naturally is. There was no sound of movement coming from within, so he stepped closer to the door and strained to listen. He could hear the loud plip of a dripping tap, as if it dripped in a bath brimful with water. What is Coral doing in the bathtub at this hour of night? he wondered. He knocked, but there was no answer. Then, after moments of silence, he heard a slight splash, as if the bath was overflowing and spilling over the sides. Knocking again and receiving no answer, he called her name; then shouted through the door, ignoring his wife’s curses and protests from the bottom of the stairs. It took five attempts to break down the door; but with each shove of his body against the wood, panic forced the door to give a little more, until he fell right through and landed on the door in a puddle of water. Pain seared through his right arm like embedded piranha; and when he looked in the bath and saw the dress, floating there in the deep, soapy water, he could pick it up with only his left hand. The dress hung limp, heavy with water, light of a girl. No sign of his daughter. It was as if she’d never been; had disappeared, as bubbles do in bathwater...

Sunday 4 March 2012

Pretty Dress Anarchy - Portwine Rose


 Look what terrible thing I did to my new dress from Jennifer Lilly (http://www.etsy.com/shop/jenniferlillydesigns?ref=seller_info):


 *
Portwine Rose
*

Rose bears her birthmark upon her face


And torn wing stumps so should you trace


Your hand along her back you'll feel her disgrace


On the bloody mounds of this featherless place...

Nina x

Friday 2 March 2012

Happy World Book Day!

...or belated anyway...
just thought I'd share a list (shortlist out of the many) of books I plan to be reading over the next few months...


Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan (I love Tender Morsels and all her short stories)


Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman - big fan of his children's books The Graveyard Book, Coraline and Crazy Hair! and I've read some of his short stories whilst 'working' in the bookshop...


How To Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran - because she's so cool! (And I got the book for half price from work, plus discount :D )


The Death of Bunny Munro because I love Nick Cave's music and lyrics, and recently read his biography which was...insightful


A Year in the Woods by Colin Elford, because I used to want to be a forest ranger when I was little, and I love the forest.


Automated Alice by Jeff Noon because my boyfriend recommended it to me as I love Alice's Adventures... as it's a postmodern sequel to the original stories...
and finally I'm going to be re-reading...


The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. It is by far my favourite book I've ever read. The characters are so strong and wild. It is about love, but far from being lovely and sentimental, it is violent and shocking. I love the switch between medieval Italy to modern-day America, and all the short stories that are thrown in, based in Japan and Norway etc. Feels like your travelling as you read. 
Brilliant and heartbreaking.

Nina x