Dismaland Revisited

I've often extolled the virtues of living in the South West of England.

I live in the beautiful county of Somerset where we are surrounded by stunning countryside and hills as well as being close to Exmoor national park.

We are within an hour of the dramatic Jurassic coast, a natural world Heritage Site.

It's not much further to the North Devon and Dorset beaches and I can be right in the heart of Cornwall in 2 hours.

But the one place you would be unlikely to hear me raving about or suggesting you visit is Weston-Super-Mare.


It really doesn't have a great deal to recommend it and locally it's known as Weston-Super-Mud.  It does have a sandy beach but it's situated on the Bristol Chanel which has a large tidal range and the low tide mark is about a mile from the seafront.  At low tide large and very dangerous mud flats are exposed.

Despite that it does seem to be a fairly popular family holiday destination with it's Pier and amusement arcades.  There also appears to be a certain amount of regeneration taking place in the town itself as a quick wander around yesterday proved.  I actually think Weston is generally a much nicer place after dark and out of season but it's certainly not one of my 'go to' places.

Until ...

Well, you'd probably have had to have been living with your head stuck in a mud flat not to have heard about Banksy and his latest venture, Dismaland.

Banksy is a local lad and hails from Bristol (just up the road).  He is a satirical street artist, political activist, film director, and painter.

Much of his artwork is politically motivated.

Well, I am not a political animal but I AM a lover of art and of being challenged and much of Banksy work is certainly challenging!

Dismaland is housed in the derelict Lido  on Weston's seafront.

The Lido used to look like this:

Image credit

The site was first developed in 1937 and had an Art Deco diving board and was the largest open air swimming pool in Europe.

 In 2000 the Tropicana closed and since then there have been a number of unsuccessful attempts to re-open or redevelop it.

Earlier this Summer it was announced that Banksy would be hosting an exhibition at the Lido.  He called it a,  "family theme park unsuitable for children".

Well of COURSE I wanted to go!!!

The exhibition was to run for 5 weeks with tickets released in tranches and 'walk up' tickets available on the day.

The website crashed in spectacular style in the first weeks leading many people to believe that it was all part of the 'dismal' experience.

However, SD knew of many people who had bought the 'walk up' tickets on the day and so, a couple of weeks ago that is what WE decided to do.

We arrived in Weston at about 5.30pm, the next entry time was at 7pm and I really wanted to see Dismaland in both daylight and at night.

We eventually found a parking spot and, as we walked towards the seafront I mentioned a fairly urgent need for a loo.

'You'll need 20p said SD', the toilets in Western are NOT free, 'have you got any change?'.

Well, I hadn't brought my bag.  I'd heard they were doing bag searches as you went in and to be honest, I couldn't be bothered to clear out all the used tissues etc.

At that moment SD realised that he had forgotten to pick up his wallet and in fact, WE HAD NO MONEY!!!

After some debate we decided we would drive home again, pick up some money and come back.

Some time after 7pm we returned and joined the queue.

The QUEUE ...!!!

I don't know HOW many people were queueing.  The grass area across the road had been reserved for queueing with a series of fences set up in a chicane fashion.  There may have been as many as 1000 people there.

SD (who has much better long vision than me) saw a sign in the distance saying 'no walk ups today'.

It could have been a joke ...

It WASN'T!!

We went for chips and admired the lights from Dismaland from outside ...

So anyway, to cut a what is becoming a very long blog post short!

Last Thursday I hopped on a train.  Got to Weston at about 1:30pm.  Followed the signs on the pavement:

Joined a HUGE queue.  Was convinced my chances of getting in on my third attempt were very slim when!

An angel named Caroline came to the queue and asked if anyone wanted to buy some tickets.  She and her daughter had both been on line hoping that one of them would get lucky and they BOTH did so she had some spares!

I almost bit her hand off!!!

By 2:30 I was inside Dismaland and, well, the photo's in my earlier post speak for themselves but I'll re-post a few and talk you through them.

Dismaland isn't ALL about Banksy although there are many of his works around the place.  It's actually a collaboration of more than 50 artists, sculptors and photographers some, like the Big Rig Jig by the American artist Mike Ross were on a HUGE scale:

The sculpture was created from two unused tanker trucks that have been hollowed out and made into a vertical tower.  It's impossible to see what keeps it up and it's hugely impressive as well as being huge!

Some are just small bits of paper tacked to the walls with messages on like these by Wasted Rita who uses sarcastic words and dark humour:

Not sure why this is appearing upside down - consider it part of the dismal experience if it gives you neck ache trying reading it ...

 To me it  would have seemed wrong to live so close and not to visit Dimaland whatever your views might be on Street Art/Graffiti and the subversive nature of many of the artists.

There were a lot of serious points being made, some with (dark) humour:

Cinderella's upturned carriage inside the castle was surrounded by paparazzi taking photos and for many was too reminiscent of princess Diana's accident.

This guy formed part of the carousel which was open for rides as he sat on boxes filled with lasagna with a carousel horse suspended above him

To be honest, there WASN'T any light humour although much of it would have passed over the heads of many of the younger visitors.

The children seemed to enjoy hook the duck where plastic ducks swam in an oil filled pool with an oil covered cormorant hanging down and the dismal 'fairground worker' shouted, 'hook a duck from the muck, win a fish finger ...' as she squirted visitors with oily water:

And I saw plenty of people playing Mini Gulf where the obstacles included a crashed helicopter and an oil slick:

On a lighter note, I DID get chatted up by Tom one of the workers as I stood at the top bar overlooking the sight.

He offered me half his baguette (which I declined) and covered my cold hands with his very warm ones as I tried to make the puppets below dance:

I did question his cheerfulness in the face of all that was Dismal and he told me that he had had 5 weeks of scowling at people and being rude and unhelpful.  He also told me I had nice eyes and a lovely smile and if he were ever in Taunton he would like to take me for tea and cake.

There has been much talk of what might now happen to the Lido.  The thought of turning it into a centre for art might just be a knee jerk reaction to the huge success that was Dismaland and the fact that it is purported to have brought 20 million pounds to the local economy.

What would I like ...

Well, I think the absolute best thing that could happen is for the original Lido to be restored to it's former Kitchness.  Weston needs somewhere you can swim when the tides out as far as Cardiff!

Failing that it would be a great place for open air concerts on the 3 evenings a year you would want to be at the seaside in the UK at night.  Or maybe the suggestion that Wetherspoons turn it into a pub isn't such a bad thing if they kept it as much as possible as it is now in it's dilapidated state.

The one thing I hope doesn't happen is that it just fades from the spotlight and slowly decays until it's pulled down.  That I think would be a great shame.

Anyway, that's about all folks apart form these two videos.  One is a spoof which made me laugh (but be warned, there is a LOT of bad language and it IS very puerile ...).  

 

The other is a clip from the BBC news and guess who gets 2 seconds of fame???

No, not ME!!

Miss Mac and her friends were interviewed and after the edit they get a couple of seconds air time.  All I could think when I saw it was that those 18 months in braces had been a great investment in Miss Mac's future (on the far left) - GREAT teeth my sweet!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-34375391

A Leg In Each Corner

Or, to be more precise, a hole in each arm!

What did you inherit from your parents?

Eye colour? Curly hair? An aptitude for maths?

Know what I got from my mother?

Wide feet, a tendency to pull terrible faces when someone points a camera at me and collapsing veins!

Thanks Ma ...

These tablets I'm taking can have an adverse affect on your kidneys so I'm having regular blood tests and so far everything's fine except for the blood tests themselves.

Luckily I'm ok(ish) with needles and if I look the other way I can pretty much deal with having blood taken but I just wish my veins would play ball and give out some of the red stuff easily instead of disappearing completely or very reluctantly pumping it out sluggishly.  Invariably they have to try both arms and then end up taking it from the back of my hand leaving me festooned with bits of cotton wool and surgical tape and then, as my veins then wont quit once they get started - huge bruises.

Anyway, enough of the moaning, guess what I've been up to?

No, it's NOT the beach for once!

On Friday night SD and I dressed to unimpress and headed for the O2 in Bristol and the legend that is John Lydon and PiL.

My first introduction to John Lydon (or Johnny Rotten as he was then known) was at the church youth club when I was about 10 or 11.

God knows how we snuck 'Friggin in the Riggin' through the strict control of the youth club leaders but somehow we did (but maybe just the once ...).

The Sex Pistols completely revolutionised music for me.  I was far too young to understand much of the things they were singing about and their attacks on social conformity passed right over my head.

All I knew is that I'd never heard anything like it and almost everyone over the age of 30 hated them which had to mean they were great didn't it?

I loved the image of the punks.  Some of my earliest memories when I came to Taunton are of the punks that congregated at the end of the High St outside the now long gone George pub where underage drinking was rife and fights were a common occurrence.  Sadly I was far too underage to ever get served in even the George but, my claim to fame is that when it was demolished some of the ridge tiles somehow made their way to the house I live in now and to this day adorn the top of the wall that separates my house from next door.

You can't really tell but I ripped that skirt to shreds - it possibly wasn't entirely decent by the time I'd finished with it but SD seemed to like it ...

After being repeatedly told to leave I finally gave up hoping for a decent photo in front of the stage.

John Lydon may be a little older these days.  He may have gained a little weight over the years but the one thing he hasn't lost is his passion, his unique delivery, his energy.

He takes control and he hammers home his message with self depreciating humour and belief.

It was a huge privilege to see him live especially in a venue which meant I could get to within just a few feet of him.

That look on my face is mainly due to the realisation that my bum was being slowly welded to the window sill in the famous Hatchet pub opposite the O2 by spilt beer after the gig.

Lydon left the Sex Pistols in 1978 to form his own band Public Image Ltd (PiL) a post punk rock band that was far more experimental.

He had a fairly tough upbringing.  The eldest of 4 brothers he often had to look after his sibling due to his mothers frequent illness and his father absence when he worked away on building sites and oil rigs.

When he was 7 he contracted spinal meningitis and suffered with various side affects including hallucinations and memory loss for the following 4 years.

He was often bullied at school until he was about 14 or 15 when he started to fight back at what he saw as the oppressive nature of the school teachers, whom he felt instigated and encouraged the kids to all be the same and be "anti-anyone-who-doesn't-quite-fit-the-mould".

After rowing with his father about his long hair he had it cut but dyed it bright green.

As a teenager he was influenced by bands like Hawkwind , Iggy and The Stooges and  Alice Cooper.

Later he became friend with Sid Vicious (then known as John Simon Richie) who  he squatted with in a house in Hampstead and who later joined him in the Sex Pistols replacing the original bass player Glenn Matlock.

He was asked to join the Sex Pistols after impressing Malcom McLaren with his ragged look and unique sense of style, particularly his orange hair and modified Pink Floyd T-shirt (with the band members' eyes scratched out and the words I Hate scrawled in felt-tip pen above the band's logo).

There's so much more I could say about the man, he draws, he writes, he paints.

He continues to challenge and be challenging.

You don't have to like him (he probably won't care)  but it's hard not to admire someone who has such energy, such courage in his own convictions and the guts to challenge politics and society.

Someone who's belief is rooted in diversity and equality.

It has to be said, I'm a bit of a fan ....

The Best Of Autumn

So much has been going on in the last few days that my head is literally still spinning and I have enough fodder for several blog posts!

Last Thursday I spent the day at Dismaland and I WILL write a proper post about that later in the week once I've downloaded the camera photos.

On Friday SD and I went to Bristol to see the legend that is John Lydon and PiL at the O2 - what a night!  But again, THAT deserve a post of it's own!

On Saturday we spent the day at the farm picking apples (again) and blackberries and packing up the van for a car boot sale yesterday.

Summer has made a bit of a comeback here in the South West of England and, although the temperatures are slightly lower than they were in August it's still been warm enough to pull on shorts and a t-shirt and enjoy the sun on our bare shoulders.

Yesterday after packing up at the end of the carboot we headed to the farm for some more blackberry picking.  It doesn't matter that my freezer is now groaning with fruit, I can't bear to leave that juicy fruit unpicked and rotting in the hedgerows.  It just seems like such a waste!

It was the most beautiful afternoon!

The sun was hot on my back.  Gus brought me a small pile of sticks and barked at me to throw them for him.  The cows with their young calves followed me from field to field watching as I reached for the plumpest fruit which is always just a little too high and the hedgerows were full of life.  Bright green flies buzzed around me, a dragonfly with brilliant blue wings dive bombed me for a while.  Crane flies rose like gangly legged helicopters and birds sang the last songs of summer.

Everywhere was a riot of colour.  The dusty blue of ripe sloes,bright red, shiny rose hips hung in clusters, ladybirds ranged from deep orange to fire engine red.  Toadstools nestled around my feet like the gateway to fairyland in shades of beige and  teasels clutched at my clothing as I brushed past them.

 And in the garden the roses are having their own last hurrah.

It's such a perfect time of year, if only it didn't herald the beginning of Winter then it would be perfectly perfect.

I vote we move September to the beginning of Spring - who's with me???

Totally Bemused By Dismaland

Ok, so this WAS a fascinating post full of sartorial wit and interesting information but I have had to delete it twice because the photos and text keep jumping around and repeating themselves.

No idea what's going on with it and frankly I'm done trying to sort it!

I suspect Banksy of sabotage ...

So ANYWAY, just so you don't miss out completely (and possibly the lack of words is a blessing anyway).

I went to Dismaland yesterday.

Here are some of the pics:

If you want to know any more about it then may I suggest you GOOGLE IT!

(or I might gather my toys back up at some point and write the damned thing for a third time ;-) )

Never Admit He May Be Right (unless it's somewhere he will never read it!)

I've appointed SD towel monitor in this house.

Actually, I've appointed him towel AND toilet roll monitor!

To be perfectly honest it's a self appointed errm 'appointment' ...

SD is obsessed I tell you!!!

I've mentioned before that he thinks towels work on a kind of rota system.

Clean, in use and used and I DO understand the theory behind it, honestly I do I just don't necessarily think it's a sound theory!

I like MY towel clean - I do not wish to use a USED towel when I climb all shiny and new from the shower.

I do not buy into this (predominantly) male thing of sniffing items to check for freshness.

If you feel the need to sniff it then it ain't clean!!

If you asked SD he could tell you the exact position and colour of each 'in use' towel in the house.

Large blue towel - hanging on the back of the bathroom door (where it will NOT dry properly due to not being spread out).

Large white towel - hanging over banister where I will brush against it as I climb the stairs and it will then slowly slide off and fall down the stairs as I reach the top forcing me to go back down to pick it up and re-hang it and forget why I was going upstairs in the first place.

Small pink towel - hanging over spare room door so every time I pull the door shut it bounces open again.

Small blue and white striped towel (no, I do not do matching sets of towels ...) - hanging over my bedroom door (see above).

Invariably when I have a shower I choose a clean, fresh one from the pile in the basket in my bedroom and it drives SD nuts.

'You have 'in use' towels' he wails - 'what's wrong with using one of the ones festooning your house in various stages of dampness and freshness???'

Well, I think you answered your own question there don't you SD?

He's also obsessing about the amount of toilet roll Miss Mac and I go through at the moment.

Actually, we possibly DO go through an excessive amount but it's a girl thing!

Apart from the obvious toilet roll is used for all manner of things female related.  I never remember to buy tissues so if I want to blow my nose then - toilet roll.  I want to take off my makeup but forgot to buy wipes - toilet roll.  I clean the toilet and want to wipe the seat etc - toilet roll.  I spill conditioner, hair dye, moisturiser etc on the bathroom floor - toilet roll.

I use toilet roll for a multitude of things.

I would of course use kitchen roll for many of those things if SD weren't obsessed with that too!

I spill some water and reached for the kitchen roll.

'STOP' shouts SD - 'why waste kitchen roll when you have perfectly good used towels about to go into the washing machine that you could mop the water up with?'

I drop an egg on the floor and reach for the kitchen roll.

'STOP' he yells - 'Clean it up with the sponge thing under the sink, don't waste kitchen roll'.

I clean the kitchen counter and reach for the kitchen roll to wipe it dry.

'For god's sake - why are you drying the counter when if you leave it it will just dry by itself?'

I've yet to discover anything SD feels warrants the use of kitchen roll.  Perhaps he feels it should just stand in the corner of the kitchen and be worshipped or something ...

I hinted the other day that SD might just have a touch of OCD.

He puffed up to twice his original size in righteous indignation.

'I do NOT have OCD' declared the man who does not own a SINGLE odd sock, who turns clothes inside out and does up all the zips, buttons AND empties the pockets before putting things in the washing machine, the man who can lay his hands on obscure bits of paperwork from 7 years ago when a government department demands he produce them, the man who sorts his DVD's by gendre, director, title and date, the man who, if he has suggested watching a film at 8:30 and happens to be ready by 8:20 will find another job to do for 10 minutes, the man who writes list and ticks things off as he does them and transfers anything undone to a new list- 'you are just totally chaotic and disorganised!'

Contemplating 11 clean towels blowing on my washing line while the only remaining ones in the basket are the nasty scratchy ones I wont use, the yet again empty cardboard loo roll and kitchen roll holders and the bits of tissue paper adorning my collection of solitary socks in the washing machine, the pile of DVD's, some just empty cases and some with the wrong film in the box in the shaky pile next to my TV, I have to concede:

He MAY just have a point ...

Grandad Didn't Grow Tomatoes

The back garden, which was very large, was almost entirely given over to root vegetables.  Row upon row of potatoes, carrots, swede and parsnips were intercepted with wigwams of runner beans, cabbages and cauliflower.

He grew fruit too.  There were raspberry canes, red, black and white currants and, in season, strawberry runners spread along the ground with their jewel like fruit.

Grandad was a traditional gardener and he had no time for pesticides.  He would hand pick the cabbage white caterpillars from his vegetables and feed them to the chickens.

He spread straw under his strawberries to keep the slugs off  and prevent the fruit rotting in the damp soil (slugs don't like the sharp edges of straw on their soft bellies)

He grew marigolds between his runner beans as the slugs and snails would eat these first and he encouraged earthworms with regular digging between the rows, keeping the soil open to allow them an easy passage.

Most of my memories of Grandad are of him working in his garden, his flat cap always on his head.  In summer his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a spade or a fork in his hand.

Grandad was a prolific gardener just as my Grandmother was a prolific baker and everything he grew was either used fresh, stored for winter or turned into jams and chutney.

The large built in wardrobe to the side of the fireplace in the large front bedroom was filled with jars and bottles of homemade strawberry and blackcurrant jam, redcurrant jelly, homemade mint sauce, green bean chutney and homemade pickles.

My tiny garden doesn't allow me to grow very much but I aways have a few tomato plants.

This year they went wild!

I grew some as I always do in the large Belfast sink outside my kitchen window. 

The rest I planted in a small patch of earth at the end of the garden.

We must have had just the right amount of sun and rain this year.

This is how they looked at the beginning of August

And they grew MUCH bigger completely smothering my lavender (which was growing alongside the arbour) and taking over the decking as well as rendering half of my washing line unusable.

Eventually I decided I'd better prune them a little to allow me access to my garden and to expose some of the fruit so it could hopefully ripen.

Well, apart from a handful of fruit (mostly from the Belfast sink plants) NONE of my fruit has really ripened.

I have and abundance of green tomatoes which, due to the change in weather (and it's FAR to soon in my opinion for it to be Autumn) my tomatoes are starting to split because they are waterlogged and the slugs are having a field day eating them.

I have to make a decision!

So far I'm leaving them in the hope that Summer will return and we will have a few sunny days to ripen them.

If that doesn't happen in the next week or so then I will have to either pick them and cook them while they are green (nothing wrong with green tomatoes and they are perfectly ok to eat, just not as sweet as when they are red) OR, I have to try and ripen them inside.

The problem is the time and space it takes to do this.  I've read up a little on ripening tomatoes and they need to be laid out not touching each other in a box somewhere not too hot and it can take between 2 weeks and 3 months for them to ripen!

I don't really have the time or the space for this and to be honest, I want my tomatoes NOW.  I want the summer back (last year I was wearing shorts on the 1st of October in Cornwall!) and I want to be eating my tomatoes in a salad.

It could happen, fingers crossed, who knows what might happen with the weather in England.

Meanwhile we are full on for picking the Bramleys and Blackberries this weekend if it stays dry.

The Blackberries at the farm are a little late this year due to the lack of sun at the crucial time and if it isn't dry for a few days then they too will become waterlogged and start to rot.

It's not like I NEED any more blackberries, I still have plenty in the freezer from last years bumper crop but I hate the waste and I love blackberry picking.  It's such a gentle soothing way to spend a couple of hours ...

The Rise Of The Rasin AKA The Cereal Killer!

Cereal is out to get me you know ...

Seriously!!! (or should that be cerealsly ...)

In a strange twist of Murphy's law or something it is not I who is killing serially (is that a word ...?  I think it could be a word ...) but rather cereal that is one day going to be the death of me

There was the incident with the stray muesli when SD thought he'd eaten one of my moles.

Now that was funny (assuming you weren't SD)

There was the time he thought I was lost or gambolling across the fields with a pink plastic bowl of the stuff like a hairy footed hobbit.

Which was just silly because I don't HAVE hairy feet ...

NOW look what the damned stuff has done to me!!!

I KNOW!!!

That's a bloody great lump on my bruised and battered hand and it really, REALLY HURTS!!

(I didn't even have to colour with makeup to make it look worse to garner sympathy like I did with my foot when SD ran over it with a trailer and wasn't suitably sympathetic). ...

 So ... How did it happen?

I'll TELL you how it happened!

It was all the fault of a rather juicy raisin (except it WASN'T!!!).

I was making breakfast for Miss Mac and I before she set off for college.

Invariably I have fruit and fibre with a sprinkle of muesli topped with natural yogurt - healthy I know!! (but actually I eat it because I just like it), and I'll make Miss Mac beans on toast or a bacon sandwich or something.  Something to keep her going as I'm never convinced she will eat properly during the day.

ANYWAY!

Today I thought I'd make Miss Mac cereal too.  She won't eat the same one as me and prefers something called Rise and Shine Clusters which are bran flakes with fruit and stuff that looks like popcorn in it.

ANYWAY (again)

I had already poured my cereal before deciding I'd make Miss Mac's some so I opened the cupboard and reached in for another bowl.  As I did a large juicy raisin dropped into the bowl.

I was slightly surprised and wondered where it had come from before concluding that it must have dropped out of the sleeve of my dressing gown.

I picked it up and contemplated popping it straight into my mouth and then hovered over Miss Mac's bowl as I thought it might make a tasty addition to her breakfast.

Then I remembered ...

While we were on holiday Miss Mac had pointed out that I still had the bit of scrambled egg in my hair that she had told me about at breakfast and it was then lunchtime.

She also told me I had some glitter in my moustache and I couldn't remember the last time I'd used glitter.

What if that raisin had been nestling in the sleeve of my dressing gown for MONTHS unnoticed - It could be harbouring all kinds of nasty disease.

So, I put it on the counter while I reached into the fridge for the milk.

Turning back I saw the raisin had GONE!!!

A movement caught my eye - the raisin had grown legs and was scurrying across the work surface.

THAT WAS NO EFFING RAISIN!!!!

IT WAS A BLOODY GREAT SPIDER! THAT HAD JUST CURLED UP AND PRETENDED TO BE A RAISIN!!

AND I HAD NEARLY EATEN IT!!!

 I screamed...

I screamed VERY loudly ...

I threw the milk to the floor - ran around the kitchen swiping at my hair (because that's what you do when you have a spider on any part of your body isn't it?) - torn off my dressing gown and stomped all over it - screamed some more - ran into the bathroom still screaming and swiping at my hair - smacked straight into the bathroom door which had become jammed by a towel that had fallen off a hook on the back of it  when I barged into it and hit my hand REALLY hard on the wall thus sustaining the injury above ...

Fairly normal behaviour I think ...


I still feel a bit queasy thinking about how close I came to eating that bloody spider - personally I think I would prefer to eat one of my own moles ...

Yarn Bombing Sarah Style

I meant to write a post a couple of months ago after walking into town and discovering it had been yarn bombed.

Maybe I DID write a post about it ....

Did I ...??

I can't remember and of course I'm FAR too lazy to check back ...

Anyway, if I did apologies - If I DIDN'T then here are some photos of my town all knitted out (sorry, I know making them xlarge means they spill over the edge of the page - one day I'll work out how to stop that ...):

Doesn't it look amazing?

Most of the yarn bombing was concentrated in Bath Place, an historic street that lies off the high street.

Bath place is quite unique with little independent shops on one side including gift and craft shops, galleries and a book shop as well as the WI Market and a fishmongers and, on the other side, a row of the prettiest houses with small front gardens.

If you ever visit Taunton take a stroll down Bath Place, you won't be disappointed.

The yarn bombers had also been out in force in Goodlands Gardens, a favourite stretch of greenery for me that runs alongside the river in the centre of town and also houses my favourite coffee shop, The Shed (where they give you shot glasses of smarties with your coffee!).

They filled trees, lined railings, covered benches and even bombed a London taxi!:

Several other places were yarn bombed too including the library and a couple of churches.

I liked this one at St James church just up the road from me:

ANYWAY - back to me - isn't it ALWAYS about me ....

I'm no knitter - seriously - I KIND of know how to knit but, as I've said before, I don't do corners and I don't do casting off so if you want a never ending scarf them I'm your girl!

I do do other stuff though (you may say 'she said do do' and chuckle at this point - I did ...).

And I have IDEAS, and I START stuff and often it's either a huge disaster or I just don't finish it but, I am a little crafty in my own way and one thing I do love to do is make something special and homemade for Miss Mac for her Birthdays and Christmas to kind of off set all the stuff that just cost money and to give her something made with love.

Well!!

While we were in Cornwall I obviously trawled the Charity shops.  I had several good finds and one that I was uncertain of.

This:

It's one of those things you stick on the wall and put photos etc in.

Not really my kind of thing but Miss Mac likes hearts and Miss Mac likes photos.  So much so that she is taking photography at A'level and I thought, well, maybe it could be useful  when she's trying to organise groups of photos.  It could give her a different perspective if they are up on the wall rather than grouping them on a table etc.

Anyway, it was only 3 quid so I thought I'd buy it, spray it white or something and see what she thought.

UNTIL!!!

I had one of my ideas didn't I?

Like I said, I don't knit and I don't crotchet but I CAN make friendship bracelets and I do know several different knotting techniques so why not use then to decorate this heart thing??

Why not YARN BOMB IT???

I'll tell you why not!!!

There are 101 of those little loops around the outside - there are 19 hearts and there are god know how many individual pieces of edging to do.

THAT'S WHY NOT!!

Added to which the yarn (I'm using embroidery thread gets caught up in everything and some of the bits are too close together to be able to wrap the tread neatly.

But obviously I'm giving it a go anyway.

Thank god I have until Christmas to finish it, it's taking AGES as it's so fiddly and I can only do it when Miss Mac isn't around.  The rest of the time it's hidden under the sofa (but don't tell her that ok?).

So far I've got this:

It's not perfect and I may well unpick and do some of the bits again once I'm finished (If I can bring myself to).  I've been working on it on and off for about 10 days and I'm learning as I go along which knots work best and look neatest.  Mostly I've decided it should have a rustic, multi coloured look because that seems to be how it's turning out.

Hopefully the finished thing will look bright and cheerful and she will like it.