Plans and things

I’ve quit my job. One month to go until I’m unleashed into freelance freedom! My boyfriend and I have quit together and decided to set up a little creative company called bigsmall (we’re currently working on our first two sites together, how exciting)! Our portfolio is online and we’ll soon be updating it with a few radio ads we wrote and recorded for Foot Locker in Italy as well as some Tesco work we did for a pitch we won. We’ll be freelancing as a team for a while and hopefully in a few months (closer to the end of the year) we’ll have enough experience (and clients) to set up shop. We’ve also emailed our portfolio over to some agencies in China… it would be an amazing adventure to go out there and work! It’s an exponentially growing market with unimaginable opportunities… anyway, let’s see what happens. Right now I feel like the world is our oyster! More updates to come, fingers crossed!

I knit

I went to my first knitting class last Tuesday at I Knit London. It was great to go over after a stressful day at work, sit around a table in a cosy shop and have a nice girly natter with 6 other ‘beginners’. We all had very similar (totally unrealistic) expectations – that we’d have a relaxing 2 hour lesson, knitting away stylish chunky accessories to give to our boyfriends… how wrong were we. What actually happened, was that 4 of the 6 girls were actually like stiff nanas, swearing at innocent balls of wool. Our teacher Sue, is lovely, but as you can probably tell from the photo, she’ll have to work hard to teach me to knit something half decent. The only things I learnt in my first lesson where casting on, knitting and casting off. Next week I’ll hopefully start on purling. So for the meantime, the chunky scarves, woolly hats and etsy.com will have to wait. I’ll keep you updated…

Save the world, make a flower

Designer Jung-taek Choi created original origami flowers to encourage people to dispose of their gum properly. I quite like this idea – the thought of bins being sprinkled with colourful paper flowers makes me smile. I guess the only way to implement this would be to get all chewy brands to include coloured paper with their wrappers. Whether this increase in packaging would beat the project’s eco-friendly purpose is an obvious question. Still, I believe it would help our rushed western society in more ways than one – if each of us took 5 minutes to sit, make this flower and throw it in the bin, I believe the world would be a a cleaner more peaceful place. Maybe it’s a slight utopian thought, but part of me believes it’s small actions like these that help make a change. If you want to learn how to make these little beauties, have a look at Yanko Design.

Sunday

Having a great Sunday… Started off by driving down to Brick Lane market in search of original buttons and fabric for some hand-made broches I’ve been wanting to create (and hopefully sell). Unfortunately, after a few hours of walking and exploring, no buttons or nice fabric available to purchase in small sizes were found. It was a shame actually, because I was really looking forward to a cosy afternoon of crafting. We did, however try some Ethiopian food for the first time – it tasted lovely. Their cuisine seems to be very carb and veg based: we ate a mixture of sweet potato and green beans in coconut sauce, cabbage, lentil and spinach in a sort of thin pancake called Injeera.

I love it when we get the chance to try food from a new country. Next week (when we finally get paid) I’m going to try and book a table at a Turkish restaurant in north London that’s meant to be nice. Apparently it serves delicious fresh fish with exotic and fragrant spices. Hmmmmm I’m excited already.

There were a few comical episodes while we were out, one of them being a t-shirt with the Warner Brothers logo that read: If you see the police, warn a brother. That really tickled us. Apart from that sighting we also laughed at some of the sales pitches we heard throughout the market:

“Valentine’s sale! Unisex dresses, you can wear them and your husband can share them! We’re doing a 29.7% discount!”

“5 t-shirts for a tenner! Be the envy of all your friends”

A guy selling some magnetic things that he claimed cured muscular pain: “You’ve seen us on sky tv, you’ve read about us! We guarantee no pain for a lifetime! We know pain hurts”

Going to have some food and continue my Sunday relaxation…

Florida Keys Guide

A photo I took during my 2007 summer holidays in the Florida Keys (Key Largo to be more precise) has been selected to feature in a Schmap travel guide!

When you access the site, click my photo of the Tropic Cinema to see a bigger version on flickr.

Secret Cinema

Here we are, anxiously waiting to find out which film we would be watching that eve at the Secret Cinema event hosted at the Royal Academy of Art. It turned out to be ‘Funny Face’ featuring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire.

snogging by the sea

This Sunday, my big love and I went to the seaside for some fish and sun. Here’s a photo of us up on the west hill cliffs.

Share your shelf

If you love reading, then aNobii is definitely a cosy corner of the web worth checking out. It’s a great little place where you can share your book collection with the world as well as discover interesting new titles – absolutely worth having a rummage through. Have a look at my shelf and see if there’s anything that excites you.

I’m currently reading Brave new world by Aldous Huxley, a great dystopian classic. It presents a future, hedonistic society, where everyone is happy despite not having the things that are central to their identity as humans, such as love, a family and freedom to decide their future. It’s an excellent read, I would definitely recommend it.

Virgin God

It’s subtle, slow but sure – Richard Branson is taking over the world.

What started off as a musical megastore empire has now progressed into a business that is taking over all strands of our lives – communication, travel, health and entertainment – all channels are slowly being controlled until we live under one  massive Virgin domain.

Maybe our society will become like George Orwell’s 1984, with Richard as Big Brother controlling our every step – from the books we read to the people talk to. We’ll have to go to drive to a Virgin church every Sunday in our Virgin pods to sing our Virgin hymns.

To combat this mass (still incognito) take over I had decided to boycott all things Brandson, that was until I booked my summer holidays to Florida with Virgin for a great price. Despite having given in just this once I still stand by my thoughts and will be hunting the Interpipe for others who might follow this hunch.

Here are a few facts on Virgin business (well there’s only one fact really but it’s enough to back up my theory):

The Virgin Group has now expanded into international music Megastores, air travel, mobile, financial, retail, music, internet, drinks, rail, hotels and leisure, with around 200 companies in over 30 countries.

don’t be SAD

Before coming to England i’d never experienced (or heard of as a matter of fact)  Seasonal Affective Disorder – a slightly grumpy condition which affects human beings less exposed to sun light.

As a means to combat this chronic gloom I’ll be submersing myself in gardening, knitting and developing my cooking skills. Basically become a nana during winter and polish up on skills that will hopefully help me maintain my sanity as well as my happiness.

I’m also looking into buying a SAD light, but still haven’t managed to find one that doesn’t look like a hospital lamp. If anyone knows of any, please let me now!

More to come on the combat the gloom front.