Tower Bridge

Based on a true story!

This is from the same series as the Battling Knights and the Executioner. The pieces for this required cutting out by hand, but a lot of it uses a relatively thin card so cutting them was fairly easy. It took me a while to figure out how the mechanism fitted together though.

Process photos after the cut.

Weaving

Recently I impulsively bought myself an Ashford Knitter's Loom. James, possibly fearing an evening spent helping to set the thing up, wisely suggested that perhaps I should start by learning from someone, rather than just having a stab at it on my own. And to this end he very sweetly arranged for me to have a lesson with Ali Holloway, who has been weaving for 25 years.

This is the result of my first two hours of weaving (before washing):

Life-drawing at Candid Arts, Islington

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.