Pedal-powered smoothies

Free smoothies, made in a blender that was driven by the back wheel of a bike... on National Bike to Work Day. Awesome!

Musique

I can't believe I had never heard of La Blogotheque/The Take-away Shows before... Simon stumbled across it on youtube last night while trying to learn a Yeasayer song. An absolutely incredible and vast collection of candid, raw performances from lots of bands and musicians I know and adore, like Beirut, The National, Fleet Foxes, Andrew Bird, Bon Iver and Sigur Rós. But there are many many more from bands I haven't heard of, how am I going to get through them all?

This one from Yeasayer gives me goosebumps!


Now that I think about it though, there is another fantastic project, devised by Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich - From the Basement. I came across it ages ago, when Thom Yorke performed, then promptly forgot about it! D'oh! There's oodles more fantastic stuff on there, including Radiohead,  PJ Harvey, Band of Horses, and Beck. Ooooh, (re)discovering new music (even if it's only new to me) makes me so profoundly happy...

Block printing, attempt 1

A mess, a punctured and bloody finger, sore shoulders (from the carving) and several hours of a Saturday morning produced two relatively pleasing looking owls.

The printed versions weren't quite as pleasing. I just couldn't seem to get the amount and distribution of the ink right. The cards are also too small. But as my very first attempt at block printing, I don't think they turned out too bad - not bad, but not great either.

I followed Lizzy House's lovely tutorial, although I don't think I followed it that closely, because I thought "Well, how difficult can it be?" Rather difficult, apparently! I also wish I was more artistically talented... I picture something in my head - I know what I want to draw - but when I put pencil to paper, it doesn't look as it should. Something I can work on, no doubt, but I do wish I had some of that natural artistic ability!

Happy Saturday!