Goodbye February! You were very cold and quite boring. Please can we have spring now?
Fave 5 from the blog in February
- Planning for Japan – 3 months to go!
- Your happy customer photos
- A day in my life at Made by Mrs M
- Recent purchases
- My very late Christmas card reveal
Links I Loved
- Love this illustrated guide to a day’s good eating in Tokyo at Lucky Peach.
- Behind the scenes at Creative Review’s amazing space cakes cover photo shoot.
- How have I never seen these illustrated interviews before? Mindy Kaling‘s is really fun.
- Zelda Week at the AV Club was great, especially this inventory of single game items (except the hover boots were terrible, are you crazy?)
- Really cool seeing Spoonflower’s Berlin office coming together. I cannot wait for EU shipping times!
- And I interviewed Kaila of Rainbowholic/Japan Lover Me for SCK and she’s so positive and inspiring so go have a read.
Reading
Ethical Chic by Fran Hawthorne
I got this from the library and almost didn’t finish it, but it just about managed to keep my interest. It focuses on six major US companies that are seen to be cool and ethical and digs into whether they deserve the label. The conclusion is generally, “kind of” for all of them so it isn’t really very helpful, but it was an interesting enough read. [Buy on Amazon]
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
Not going to say much about this as I’m in a mini book club for this with my mum and sister and Nic hasn’t read it yet. I did like it and it gave me really weird dreams but it was also a bit too similar to World War Z. [Buy on Amazon]
Kindred Spirits by Rainbow Rowell
This was so adorable! It’s a short novel about 3 Star Wars fans waiting in line for The Force Awakens and has all the usual amazing Rainbow dialogue with great characters and lots of fandom nerdery. It’s a UK exclusive World Book Day release so look out for it super cheap in bookshops, or it’s only 95p for the ebook. [Buy on Amazon]
Divergent series by Veronica Roth
Amazon gave me the first book for free and I got sucked in and bought the other two. The first one is really good in a Hunger Games kind of way and the pacing is so ridiculously relentless that you don’t think too hard about the plot. Sadly the second book is kind of boring and the third is pretty terrible but it’s an easy fun read overall. [Buy on Amazon]
Watching
Deutschland 83
Again. I miss this so badly! It got increasingly dark over the last few episodes but still very funny in places. Apart from a few ludicrous escapes and some meddling with history, they mostly pulled it off. Looks like it was popular enough overseas that they’ll get to make more, yay!
Mad Men
I finally watched the final half season! I’m not a big fan and at this point I’m mostly in it for Roger, Peggy, Sally and Pete. They all got great stuff so I’m happy. I liked the ending fine too.
Fringe
There’s been so little worth watching that I started a Fringe rewatch as I haven’t seen it since it ended. I love this show so much! It’s so underrated, I guess because the first season is a bit generic and X-Files-y, but it has amazing characters and has enormous fun playing with the alternate universes and the whole television format. I could talk about Fringe for hours. Where are my fellow fans?
Northern Ballet: 1984
A mention for this as I started out half watching it and by half way through I was transfixed. Who knew 1984 would make a good ballet? I really love when ballet staging uses video screens and that’s obviously perfect for Big Brother. It reminded me a lot of The Most Incredible Thing, the ballet scored by Pet Shop Boys that I was lucky to see in person. Anyway, it’s on iPlayer if you’re in the UK.
I also finally got to see Inside Out and it was…okay? Maybe it was hyped up too much as I was a bit disappointed. I liked it a lot but it would be way way down my favourite Pixar movies list.
On The List App
I had 3 featured lists this month, like some kind of celebrity. Here’s those and more.
- ORIGINAL ART IN MY HOME
- MAKING AN OEKAKI KYAN LAND JAPANESE CANDY KIT
- EVERYTHING I LOVE ABOUT SPACE
- MY SOUVENIR STAMPS FROM JAPAN
- AMAZING THINGS I SAW AT THE COSMONAUTS EXHIBITION
How was your month?
