eReader case v.2

About two years ago I made a case for my beloved Kobo. Alas, it has not lasted; silk is not very durable!

Here's version 2, in what is hopefully a more robust material, a thick cotton.
 

Graffiti

Bermondsey Street.

T-shirt cushion cover

This t-shirt was one of the first presents that my husband ever bought me. It is 10 years old and doesn't really fit me any more, but I am too sentimental about it to hand it over to a charity shop. Instead I looked online for something to do with it and found this Jezebel post on turning a t-shirt into a cushion cover.

Stack: December

Stack ended on a high note for me with two magazines, both of which I enjoyed and both of which I would buy again!

Works That Work
This was a bit of a puzzle when I opened up the envelope it arrived in: a grey cover, that on closer inspection was a picture of racks of fish hanging outside in the snow. I think I'd describe Works That Work as a design magazine, but I'd feel like I was underselling it as I did. It's really a testament to human ingenuity and problem-solving, although I guess that's not really a section in most shops.

This issue is based around extreme environments – deserts, war zones, the Arctic – and the things that people have built in them: homemade guns and stoves made from scrap during the siege of Sarajevo; a temporary city of 30 million people for a Hindu festival; a rocket intended for Mars built by amateurs in their spare time. It's fascinating, weird, sad and delightful all at once.

Would I buy it again? Yes, despite its outrageous cover price of £13.

Belleville Park Pages
Belleville Park Pages is a great idea. It's a tiny thing, made from a single sheet of A3 paper folded four times, and it contains a mixture of poetry and prose by new writers (there are 12 pieces in this issue). I liked the idea of Belleville Park Pages so much I wanted to like everything in it. I didn't, but I liked some enough to look up the authors online, which seems like the point of this magazine.

Would I buy it again? Yes. This is the most straightforward answer I have ever had to this question.

Stack: November

I get quite excited about my Stack deliveries so the delay on this month's delivery built up my expectations to unreasonable heights. In the end, this month's Stack, huck, was alright. Its strapline is "radical culture" and its contents are a mixture of culture, especially music, and left-wing politics. It's an easy read – I read it from cover to cover on my way to work over a couple of days – and it was enjoyable, but it left me thinking of this song:



huck is a counterculture magazine that wants me to think corporate rock is for suckers, but comes with a £30 voucher for a shop where I can buy a £201 jacket. And I'm not sure it has any sense of irony about that.

Would I buy it again? I honestly don't know. I enjoyed it, I just thought it lacked self-awareness. Maybe if there was a particularly compelling cover story?

Graffiti

Behind the BFI Southbank.

Stack: October

This month's Stack was an interesting experience: two magazines, one of which I enjoyed more than the other, but in answering the question "would I buy it again" I realised that I'm more likely to pick up the one I liked less in future.

hello mr.
hello mr.'s strapline is "about men who date men". I love a subtitle that explains exactly what you're getting and hello mr. is perfectly encapsulated by its subtitle. It's a collection of writings – personal essays, interviews, poems, etc. – by gay men, and while sexuality is a huge part of the content, it can also be entirely incidental to the experiences being described, for example, "Scarred" and "Libra with Cancer" are both about dealing with serious illness at a young age. The writing styles and topics are hugely varied, (understandably, as the authors' main point of commonality is their sexuality), and it's beautifully designed and well-edited. Overall, it's a lovely product, although I'm keenly aware that I'm not the right demographic for it.

Would I buy it again? I really enjoyed reading hello mr., but ultimately I'm not the intended audience for this magazine and I felt like a tourist reading it. I'm not going to buy it again, but I hope it does well.

Root + Bone
Root + Bone is a free London-based food magazine, the content of which is a mixture of restaurant reviews, recipes and articles about food, cooking and eating. At its best the writing was enthusiastic and genuine, if unpolished, but too often it veered into a laddishness that irritated me. It might have been a problem with this particular issue, which focused on unconventional ingredients and methods of cooking and at times gave me the distinct impression the writers wanted me to know just how "crazy" they were. That said, the restaurant reviews made me want to try a number of new places and some of the recipes look amazing. I really wanted to like this, but overall I found it frustratingly hit and miss.

Would I buy it again? Because it's free I'd probably pick it up again for the restaurant reviews and the recipes despite not particularly enjoying its editorial style.