This is apparently the third May I have recapped! May was SO ANNOYING weather-wise. I could have drawn just about anything in my wardrobe this month from shorts and sandals to wooly hats and borrowed coats as we’ve had torrential rain, sunshine, gale force winds and everything in between. Good old Scotland. So this is pretty boring. I lack new clothes to draw, as predicted. At least I have a SCAR (which still hurts – 11 weeks later).
What I did in May
Did a ton of work getting my zine distro, pushpin, open for business. Read a few billion zines as I planned my stock. Went Up North for a windy visit. Bought a load of books. Came back home in a gale and spent a slightly terrifying 15 minutes waiting for a bus in a very rickety bus shelter. Went to, and sold at, my first zine fair. Made a new zine. Broke my fabric buying ban. Sold even more stuff on eBay. Saw my name on TV. Redesigned Super Cute Kawaii. Wrote a load of Tokyo Shopping Guide posts. Watched scar tissue form at the rate of 0.0000001mm per day.
Reading, Watching, Playing
Still having book completion issues, though I’m only really reading 4 just now. Big old zine post coming soon too.
Fire & Knives
I’ve been making an effort to subscribe to the (very few) magazines I actually read regularly. Not only does it help them continue to plan and print new issues but I don’t have to use any part of my brain to remember to buy them. Win-win! A new issue of Fire & Knives is always a delight. It’s such a nice size and weight and the content is always surprising and great. I’m not a huge foodie but F&K is full of personal stories that happen to be food-related, whether that’s retro supermarkets, knife design or Penguin cookery books. Plus it’s crammed full of great illustrations and old food ads, and takes about as long to savour as it does for them to put together a new issue.
The First Men in the Moon
I caught this on iPlayer and it was quite possibly made just for me – A HG Wells story about a bumbling professor going to the Moon, tied into the Apollo landings and given a Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Day Out meets Doctor Who spin (it was written, and stars, Mark Gatiss). I loved pretty much all of it – they didn’t try and make sense of any of the ridiculous aspects of the story (and especially spaceship design) and made it a romp, with a certain amount of sadness. The Selenites looked a bit stupid but no worse than your average Doctor Who episode. It’s a BBC film so I’m sure it will be on many times again – look out for it!
Upside Down
This is a new documentary about Creation Records so went straight on my Lovefilm list. Creation was one of my big obsessions as a teenager and home to a lot of my favourite bands, plus I visited the offices to interview Paul Cannell etc. This was a pretty great documentary, possibly because it focused more on the early days, and all the Glasgow bands/mates that got it all going. I cannot deny my eyes glazed over once the Oasis days arrived, although I have to say Noel Gallagher is growing on me – he is at least an intelligent and fairly amusing talking head. Lots of great footage of the bands too so I would totally recommend it if you’re interested in checking out some of the best music of the 80s and 90s. Would like a new compilation of all the (shoddy, cheap, terrible) Creation videos now – my VHS tapes are long gone.
Mollie Makes
A new crafty magazine in the UK about ‘living and loving handmade’. I quite enjoyed this and have signed up for the £5 for 3 issues deal but I’m not sure I’ll be sticking with it. It’s a slightly odd mix of handmade, vintage and High Street, and a lot of it looks familiar to me from various blog reading. If I’m honest, it might just all be a bit too twee for me. Happy to give it a chance over the next 3 issues though.
100 Tiny Moments From My Past, Present and Future by Edward Ross
I got this at the zine fair and it’s really great. As part of the One Hundred Days to Make Me a Better Person project, Eddie drew a little comic every day. As the title says, each one is a tiny moment from his past, present or imagined future and they’re all sweet, funny and sad. You can view all the original comics here, but you’ll be wanting the book so you can dip into them again and again. Hopefully I’m going to be able to stock some of his stuff at pushpin too.
Buffy
My favourite thing about Lovefilm is being able to do rewatches of old TV shows you never saw all the way through. I used to watch Buffy back in the day, until I moved out to go to art school where (old person alert!) I only had a black and white TV, with a dial for changing the channels, and, I kid you not, a wire coat hanger as an aerial. That was when I pretty much stopped watching TV. But, I’m now almost at the end of S2 of Buffy and I’m remembering most of these episodes – it’s all still good stuff, though a bit clunky and dated in these fancy CGI days. I’m thinking I probably stopped watching regularly around S3/4 so it should get more interesting soon.
iPhone app of the month
Nothing
I haven’t installed anything fun for ages – what’s new and good?
New Product Round-up
– Miles Better – a guide to Glasgow zine
– Kokeshi Flowers Gift Wrap & sets
Online sales
Items sold on Shopify: 8
Items sold on Etsy: 20
Items sold on Folksy: 10
Items sold on DaWanda: 6
Another quiet month – a good reminder that most people cannot live on Etsy sales alone. One day I will count up all my individual regular income streams – it must be well into double figures now.
