My Top 5 Albums of 2011

I'm not (generally) the sort of person who buys a lot of new music as soon as it comes out. I rarely go out browsing for music in shops and if I come across something online, I usually just get the one track rather than a whole album. In order to actually invest in a whole album I have to be convinced that I'll listen to it until I'm sick of it. Add to that the fact that my tastes are pretty eclectic (and about 25 years out of date) and this list will probably be pretty weird.

Chameleon Circuit - Still Got Legs

I've mentioned this album in my other blog before, and four months later I'm just as obsessed with it. Still Got Legsis the second album by Chameleon Circuit, the Doctor Who themed rock band. I love concept albums and novelty songs, and I'm slightly obsessed with Doctor Who, so this is the perfect album for me. The only problem is choosing a favorite song.... Is it this one (I do love The Mister Master) -



Or maybe it's this -

Unwoman - Uncovered volume 1: 1980-1995

I love Kickstarter, and this is by far my favorite thing that I've been able to support through that site. I've supported a few of Unwoman's projects in the past, but Uncovered combines some of my very favorite things - Covers! Nick Cave! Robotic voice effects! It also has one of the very best covers of Nine Inch Nail's Hurt that I've ever heard-

Aperture Science Psychoacoustics Laboratory - Songs To Test By

Speaking of robotic voice effects, I'm a huge fan of the Portal game series. For years the original Portal was the only game on my Mac and I was hugely excited when the second installment came out, it was a fantastic bonus when Value released the entire soundtrack in three albums. It's not that helpful when you're trying to work as it makes you wish you were playing Portal but its huge fun for running about to. And now I'm off to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that'll burn your house down.

8in8 - Nighty Night

Until she married Neil Gaiman I wasn't especially familiar with Amanda Fucking Palmer's work. I have a few Dresden Dolls songs on my harddrive but nothing else. Where as I have stack of Neil Gaiman books and graphic novels, some of them signed. I was attracted to this album simply because Neil Gaiman has a dreamy voice but AFP's love song to Nikola Tesla should be a steampunk classic!

Gary Numan - Dead Son Rising

So I said at the beginning that I don't usually buy music as soon as it comes out, Gary Numan is one of the exceptions. Since I first saw him live at Leeds Festival In 2001 I've bought all his releases as soon as they came out. I probably shouldn't say anything else on the subject though, just in case I won't shut up again.





So far for 2012, I'm looking forward to the last of the Ego Likeness compass point EPs and the next TMTWNBBFN album "This May Be The Reason Why The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing Cannot Be Killed By Conventional Weapons" which will be out in March. Awesome.

Happy New Year! When Did That Happen?!

Hello 2012! Please lock the door after 2011, we don't want him getting back in! Sorry I’m a teeny bit late in post this, at least it was only a day rather than three weeks like year!

I hope you’ve all had a lovely holiday season and a great new year. And that you’ve recovered from the hangover by now, if not, well done sir but cut back on the boozahol next year!

Inspired by the lovely Margrethe over at One Life Documented, I’ve decided to make some resolutions. I’m terrible at resolutions (didn’t even make any last year) but hopefully putting them in a public place might shame me into sticking with it.

I’m hoping to make at least three posts to this blog each week. Currently my posts are mostly cookery but I’m hoping to restart my book blog and add various craft/gardening/organisation projects well. I've a few projects that I’ve taken photos for over the last year and never gotten around to uploading.

I'm currently planning for my posts to be along the themes of - Monday Makes, Tuesday Tunes, Wordless Wednesday, Thursday Thoughts and Foody Friday. Not all the posts will be in detail, but I'll try to follow the general themes. We'll see how long I actually stick to that though :p

As well as Wordless Wednesday, I’ve also signed up to ShutterCal which is a calendar-based daily photography project, so I’m going to try to post there every day. If you’d like to follow my calendar you can find it HERE. Expect lots of cat pictures.

Another resolution is also to finish at least one old abandoned project every week. That might be art, or a half-knit sock, or the unbuilt garden furniture, but whatever it is I’ll be sharing my progress here, and I’d love it if you guys would share yours too.

Last year I took part in Julia Crossland’s Being Creative project, though I did rather badly at keeping a record of what I was doing. If you’re looking for inspiration or creative prompts, that’s a good place to start.

My last resolution is to spend more time on languages. I have many lovely international friends who speak better English than I do as well as their own language. To quote Korben Dallas – “Whoa, lady, I only speak two languages, English and bad English.” To try to make up for the shameful ignorance on my part I’m going to try to spend at least 30 minutes a week on both German and Norwegian (Bokmal), which might not sound like a lot, but I do read both languages regularly throughout the day. If anyone speaks either language and would like to help me embarrass myself, feel free to write in that language and I’ll try to reply. I’d love to learn basic Icelandic too, but I’m struggling to find a suitable course so that might have to wait until next year.

Glückliches Neues Jahr! / Godt Nyttår!

Candy Christmas Treats

[I'm not Christian, but the people I made these gifts for celebrate the winter season on the 25th so that makes these Christmas treats.]

I love Bakerella. Soooo many awesome, beautiful treats. Sadly most of my baking attempts do not turn on as lovely looking as hers. Partially due to laziness i using my iPhone camera for everything instead of my Nikon, partially due to generally cooking failure.

But I fell in love when I saw this project - Cowgirl Cookies - Mix Things Up! I like cookies! I can bake cookies! I can put things in jars! Huzzah!



Unfortunately one thing I don't love is the American cup system of measurement. I know we all get used to the system we grow up with and I'm usually pretty tolerant of wierdnesses, but this one makes no sense to me. How are cups easier than scales? If you're using a cup to measure with (unless you're shoving stuff out of a large container) you have to use a spoon to fill it, have to keep refilling it rather than just measuring once, you have to wash it out repeatedly if you're using wet ingredients and (somehow) I always end up with flour in my shoes. It's frustrating.

So anyway, since I was making three jars and I didn't want flour everywhere, I measured the ingredients in cups for the first jar, weighed them in the scale and then wrote down the amounts. Made everything much much faster for the other two jars.

Note, if you're going to use the same method, do it properly. Do not assume that a cup of flour is the same weight as a cup of M&Ms. Unless you melt them, M&Ms do not fill all the space in the cup. Same with the chocolate chips and, to a lesser extent, the oats. Guessing won't work. I had three lovely American friends try to work out the measurements without weighing and the guesses varied from the results by as much as 50g.

I couldn't find any seasonal M&Ms, I don't think they exist in the North of England so I bought ordinary M&Ms and spent an hour separating the colours. The pecans are all in the lid space of the jar.

Sadly, my printer refused to co-operate on the labels, and these streaky results were the best I could get.

I did make a half batch of cookies with the left over ingredients, but I forgot to halve the amount of butter and ended up with very tasty, very sticky gloop. Sorry no photos of that :p

Happy Wordless Yule Wednesday

So there I am, in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, at about 3 o'clock in the morning, looking for one thousand brown M&Ms to fill a brandy glass, or Ozzy wouldn't go on stage that night. So, Jeff Beck pops his head 'round the door, and mentions there's a little sweets shop on the edge of town. So - we go. And - it's closed. So there's me, and Keith Moon, and David Crosby, breaking into that little sweets shop, eh. Well, instead of a guard dog, they've got this bloody great big Bengal tiger. I managed to take out the tiger with a can of mace, but the shop owner and his son... that's a different story altogether. I had to beat them to death with their own shoes. Nasty business, really. But, sure enough, I got the M&Ms, and Ozzy went on stage and did a great show.

Wordless Abduction Wednesday