Indian wall hanging

We got a beautiful Indian (we think) wall hanging from a charity shop. It's up in our dining room, which persuaded us to theme that room as our "world" room. We have lots of lovely things from all over the world - a hand carved aboriginal lizard that my Mamgu brought from the outback in Australia; some lovely Shiva and Ganesha  statues that I got from a lovely little hippy shop I used to work in; lanterns and frames and all sorts of things.

We're also going to make curtains out of recycled saris and scarves, to match the room.

Charity shop selfie

Part of my new job is to take photographs to illustrate the stories I write. I spent an afternoon at one of our charity shops, taking photographs of a professional photographer (who is also a volunteer) taking photographs of the shop volunteers. How very meta!

One of the photos had one of those perfectly timed, serendipitous moment; an older lady walked past and looked to see what was going on just as I preess3ed the shutter release. Perfect!

I also took a selfie, but I've changed my hair again since then :)

Gingerbread & other stories

While I (finally) finish  writing my novel "Greenboy", I thought I'd publish a collection of short stories. They're all loosely based on folklore and fairtyales, both rural and urban, Welsh and English, and almost exclusively queer. They're gay re-tellings of known stories, or completely made up contemporary tales for modern fairies.

Here's the contents/tracklisting:
 1. The kissing tree
 2. Fairy tale
 3. Hiraeth and the ladybird
 4. The three sons of Gwydion and Gilfaethwy
 5. Gwydion and Blodeuben
 6. Y Gwernfrenin (The Erlking)
 7. Footprints in the Sand
 8. Finding a bible
 9. How to make an egg
10. Gingerbread
11. Days of our lives
12. Reasons

The reason I say 'tracklisting' is that everybody who buys the ebook, will get a voucher to download a whole LP of music for free. Each short story will have its own music track, evoking the mood and feel of the story.
 
'Fairy tale', 'Days of our lives', and 'Finding a bible' have all been previously published, the rest have been marked as "too weird to publish" by all of the publishing houses I've shown them to. Everybody wants me to write modern gay urban - but I'm only one and a bit of those things! I was brought up on Tolkien and The Mabinogion; I was told stories by both Grandmothers of ancient Welsh Kings, fairies and goblins; it's in my soul.

I thought that to show that I have more in me than the modern gay urban being pushed on to me (yes I'm gay, and yes I live in the big city, but I'm not very modern - my soul is green) I'd self publish this, and make an album of weird music, to go with my weird words.

I'm planning to make it free for a while before it goes up to £1.50 or something. It's not for making money, it's for expressing myself. There will also be some poems in it, and maybe a knitting or crochet pattern too. Like I said, I'm a weirdo: unashamedly so!

Watercolour sketch

I just found this little watercolour sketch I made, ooh, probably about 22 years ago!

Splott beach

Well who knew there was a beach in Splott? I've lived in Splott for nearly ten years and I first heard about it a few weeks ago. I did a quick Google and one of the first hits was Doc Mortimer's blog.  I'm not going to link to it as I didn't think it was very nice, to be honest.

Yes the beach is made up of debris from old Victorian factories that fell into the sea, yes there are wave-worn bricks and bits of glass... but it's beautiful. I'm going to make a film about it. I love Splott, it's the place in Cardiff I've lived in longest, and where I've made my home. Chris and I are currently renovating the house, and have spent the last few years really getting to know the area. Shirley Bassey used to live here, and I walk the dog down the road she used to play on as a child. I walk him past grass verges that used to be pubs where working class people spent their wages on a Friday having a pint or two.

I'm trying my best to get Cardiff Council to reopen an unused park to turn it into a community garden for the area. I run a flytipping and litter action group called Tidy STAR. I sing in a choir in Splott. My band has band practice every Thursday in Splott. I'm an adopted Splott boy!

 

The Bugs Bunny is a cereal toy from 1984 - which means it's older than Christopher!

Putz houses

I made some putz houses. I found instructions on Pinterest (though I did cheat and use a Sizzix die), and made seven of them. I love them! I made them to sell but I want to keep them all :)

Hallowe'en (late post)

I gothed up for Hallowe'en :)

Currywurst - my recipe

As Christopher is part German, we've tried cooking lots of German recipes. Currywurst is a popular street food in Germany (you can even get delicious bratwurst street food in Cardiff!) so we tried it out ourselves. After experimenting with recipes I found online, I made my own.
You will need:
1 onion, chopped
2 large mushrooms, chopped
1 tsp of curry powder (I use medium, but you can choose mild or strong depending on your taste)

a shake of onion powder

a shake of garlic powder

a pinch of sea salt

a good pinch of black pepper

a chicken stock cube (I use the jelly type ones)
good squeeze of tomato ketchup

First chop the onions and mushrooms, and fry them in a saucepan or shallow frying pan with some oil, along with the curry powder, and onion and garlic powder. Fry them until they are starting to become translucent, about 5 to 10 minutes on a medium heat.

Next add a big splash of boiling water, the ketchup, salt and pepper, and chicken stock cube. Heat through for a further 5 minutes. Then blitz with a hand blender.

You can make this ahead of time and reheat when needed. The bratwurst we bought were from Aldi, and really delicious!

 

You need to make six or seven cuts in the brats before you put them in the oven. Slice into them at regular intervals so they open up in the oven. Lightly oil them, and put in a hot oven or about 20 minutes.

Serve them with fresh bread, and a sprinkling of curry powder.

Imagining book characters - Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite [Billy Martin]

I loved Billy Martin's novels written when he was Poppy Z. Brite, but I always had an idea in my head of what the characters looked like.

If his hair was black, here's what I imagined Zillah, Twig and Molochai to look like:

And this is Steve. Fwoargh: 

Homemade healthy bars

I've recently discovered that I love chocolate Nakd bars, but at £1 each they're a little expensive to eat every day. I looked at the ingredients on the back of the wrapper and saw how easy it would be to make my own.

Here's what I did.

Makes 18 small bars (approximately 33g each, and approximately 130 calories)
You will need:
200g dates
100g cashews
75g raisins
2 tblsp cocoa powder

Pop everything into a blender, and pulse until it all comes together (you may need to add a teaspoon of apple juice or water to get it to the right consistency - the right consistency is like playdough!)

Line a square cake tin with cling wrap, smoosh the mixture into the tin, cover with more cling wrap, and press down so it is in an even layer. Pop in the fridge for a few hours to firm up, then remove the cling wrap and turn on to a chopping board. It should be big enough to cut into 18 equal pieces that you should then wrap in squares of baking parchment.

Ice cream loaf

I saw this online and had to try it. It's really easy, all you need is:

1 pint of ice cream (that's been left out of the freezer to melt)
210g of self raising flour

That's it! Mix them together and pour into a lined loaf tin, and bake at gas mark 4 / 180 degrees for about 45 minutes.

It's not bad, maybe a bit expensive - but definitely give it a go! :) I used Ben & Jerry's Phish Food, and I also threw in some chocolate chips.

A night on bald mountain

I blogged about this in 2010, but then I forgot all about it! I wasn't on Soundcloud then either, so didn't have anywhere to host my sound experiments. Here's the original blog post:

Night on Bald Mountain is a fantasy for orchestra that was composed by Modest Mussorgsky; and based on a tone poem of his. The original tone poem was called St. John's Night on the Bare Mountain and had a Witches' Sabbath as its theme. He completed it on June the 23rd 1867; on St. John's Eve, and exactly a hundred and ten years before I was born. I've always been drawn to this piece of music, ever since I saw Disney's Fantasia when I was little. Now that I know more about its evolution and history, I love it even more.
I thought it was about time that Fflwcs had a go at making a version of Bald Mountain. I use all the original score, but have tried to emphasise the otherworldliness of the piece, and also the downright scariness of it. Wales has so many beautiful mountains, and lots of my childhood was spent climbing them, so I think that has inspired me and my love of this Mussorgsky work. There is a legend in Wales: if you sleep on the summit of Cader Idris, when you wake up you'll either be mad, or a poet. My Mam used to joke that if I slept up there I'd wake up exactly the same.

Cinnamon drizzle cake

You will need: 

For the loaf
Loaf tin (and liner) 
150g caster sugar 
150g butter (or good margarine) 
3 large free range eggs 
2 vanilla pods, seeds scraped out (or table spoon of vanilla paste) 
150g self raising flour 
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 
1 teaspoon ground ginger 

For the icing
30g icing sugar
good shake of cinnamon (about 1 level teaspoon)
table spoon or two of water (or lemon or orange juice)

Method:
Preheat oven to gas mark 4 (180 degrees)
Cream the sugar and butter
Beat in the eggs and vanilla
Sift in the flour, cinnamon and ginger, and fold gently in
Spoon into tin (greased and lined with baking parchment, if not using a liner)
Bake for 45-55 minutes - it's ready when a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean
Leave in the tin, on a cooling rack to cool

While still warm, poke a skewer a good few times all over the cake
Make up the icing by sifting the icing sugar and mixing everything together
Spoon over the cooling cake and leave to set

Fingerless gloves *free pattern*

You will need 

One ball of Sirdar Crofter DK, or 110m (120m, 145m) of DK yarn 
3.5mm needles 
4.5mm needles 
2 stitch markers 
Needle for seaming 

Sizes S, M, L 

Using 3.5mm needles CO 36 (40, 44) sts using cable CO. 
Rows 1-8: k2, p2 rib 
Row 9: change to 4.5mm needles, k33 (37, 41) kf&b, k2 [37, 41, 45 sts] 
Row 10: p Row 11-14: knit one row; purl one row; knit one row; purl one row 
Row 15: k17 (19, 21), m1r, k3, m1l, k to end [39, 43, 47 sts] 
Row 16: p 
Row 17: k17 (19, 21), m1r, k5, m1l, k to end [41, 45, 48 sts] 
Row 18: p (for large size gloves, knit an extra row, purl an extra row, continue as for small and medium) 
Row 19: k19 (21, 23) pm, m1r, k3, m1l, pm, k to end [43, 47, 51 sts] 
Row 20: p 
Row 21: k19 (21, 23) slm, m1r, k to marker, m1l, slm, k to end 
Row 22: p 
Repeat rows 21 and 22 until there are 15 sts between each marker, ending with a purl row [53, 57, 61 sts]. 
Row 31: k (remembering to slip markers) 
Row 32: p 
Row 33: k to marker, slm, p2, k2, p2, k2, p2, k2, p3, slm, k to end 
Row 34: p to marker, slm, k3, p2, k2, p2, k2, p2, k2, slm, p to end 
Repeat rows 33 and 34 twice (repeat three times for large size if needed). 
Row 39: k to marker, remove marker, BO in pattern to marker, remove marker, k to end 
Row 40: p18 (20, 22), p2tog, p to end [37, 41, 45 sts] 

Stockinette stitch for 8 (8, 10) rows, ending with a purl row (making sure you p2tog on last row to get back to an even number of sts). 

Change back to 3.5mm needles, k2, p2 rib for 7 rows, BO in pattern. 

Sew the side seam. Wear!

Zombies in a row - EP

After the franticness of my Musical Advent Calendar in December last year, to raise money for Shelter Cymru; I've been doing some musical experimentation. I've made a few tracks and remixes using hann stretch techniques, and some of my selfmade VSTs. Drone, noise, experimental, ambient fuckery.

The tracks feel like they go together, so I made them into this little EP. Free to download, as always.