The Hilton White Line

Look at what I could have seen this weekend... went to the local of my shady past, The Admiral Benbow, to check out the grooviest new kids in town... and missed the whole bloomin lot!!! Literally turned up at the pub about 10 seconds after they finished, durrrr!

Well thankfully for me my sister recorded the event for it's possible status as an historic event, so now I can sadly say I wish I'd eaten my dinner quicker and promise next time I'll turn up on time!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMS22yNaWbQ

So when The Hilton White Line tour reaches an arena near you be sure to go, and don't forget to buy a T-shirt, they're a bargain!

Wild weather and orchids

I love Cornish weather, in the last week we've had snow, sleet, ice, hailstones, pretty warm sunshine and crazy crazy wind and rain - whipping up the sea like a big cold lemon meringue pie. The rain on the windows makes the outside world all stripy, like a 'going back in time' link from Wayne's World...

So I think I'll hide behind my beautiful orchids and wait til spring is sprung!

She's done it to me again at Dior!

Now it's not actually that often that I yearn for great wealth, usually I'm pretty happy that I live by the sea, and I take little pleasures in beautiful trinkets that I find at the car boot and recycle into new beautiful things, simple life for a simple kinda person....

But jeeesus, sometimes whilst I'm looking back at my favourite 'well-out-of-the-price-bracket' inspirations something stops me in my tracks, and for the second time running it's the beautifully insane designer Victoire de Castellane with the new Milly Carnivora collection for Dior...

Yeah, just going out to buy a few lottery tickets...

The Tarot Garden

Today I had the unexpected pleasure of discovering Niki de Saint Phalle. After one small thing my dad said today I realised I had always been aware of the name but didn't know what she did, turns out (among many other things) she created this incredible sculpture garden in Tuscany. Why is it that everything I discover lately seems to make me need a holiday?!

Anyway, the thing that really struck me was that the garden depicts the 21 Tarot Cards of the Major Arcana, you know the drill - the Empress, The Devil, Death, all that stuff. I've been fascinated by tarot since my early teens and I don't think my mind will ever be peaceful until I have created my own design of cards, even though my many attempts over the last 10 years or so haven't ever seen the light of day! Niki's artistic interpretation of the cards is amazing, and I love the simplicity and every day language of the personal notes which accompany each one - too many writers get all ethereal when writing up the meanings of the cards!

I think I would be pretty happy to also explore Queen Califia's Magical Circle which Niki created in Escondido, California, but I would be like a kid in a sweet shop going around the beautiful Tuscan Tarot - Il Giardino Dei Tarrochi - bellissimo!!! Ooh, it's like Salvation Mountain but more pagan, ace!

Mission Impossible: Never!

Nothing is Impossible, and with some polyfillering in the old holes, and my very sexy handles (despite ebay saga and giving in to much more expensive but ultimately more satisfying B&Q versions), my vision is complete! It actually looks exactly as I had hoped... and that never happens with anything!!!

Chuffed to bits! Hence having the urge to tell the world!

Mission Impossible: Phase 3

Getting the pink paint on cheered me up a bit, although I still had a few reservations about whether this cabinet is really gonna be as cool as I'd hoped, or would it end up like an extremely naff seventies blancmange... I have reserved the right all along to relegate it to the firewood pile if my vision is not realised!


When I put the bugger back together, there was then a considerable delay, as I have never applied wallpaper to anything and was a bit on the nervous side...

...And also I'm really anal and the pattern had to line up vertically and horizontally, and the joins had to be evenly spaced, so I didn't really relish the challenge I'd given myself! I have to say though, I have made myself proud with this attempt, if you look mega-close there's one tiny gap, but you'd have to be as finickity as me to find it!

Mission Impossible: Phase 2

Ok, so the primer was a bit of a problem. Well, not so much the primer itself but the hideous wee wee yellow stain which kept coming through from the previous varnish, despite 3 coats.

Fortunately I remembered a couple of years ago using a specific stain block paint to cover a damp stain in my folks' French house, and one coat of that sorted out that problem!

And because that stuff takes a little longer to dry, and I'm ridiculously impatient, and the insides didn't need treating, I made a womb-like effort to start on the final coat...