Books: Jeffrey Brown's cat and Fire & Knives

Sorry for the lack of posts lately - I've been off work all week sick, but all better now. I've also been furiously working on the new blog redesign which should be ready in a week or so! It's so pretty, I'm really excited to get it live. I've had this layout almost a year and I'm bored of it :)



I bought two excellent books from Magma today, thought I'd share:





Fire & Knives is a beautiful zine-book made by these fine fellas. As you can see, the design is beautiful and it's a lovely tactile thing to hold. It's also well-written with interesting articles on why and how we're inclined to photograph our food (or particular interest to me) and a nostalgic piece on the history of railway cuisine. A great read for food fans.





'Cat Getting out of a Bag' by Jeffey Brown caught my eye as a set of postcards in the window, then I saw the book. Yup, it's yet another cat cartoon book but as soon as we picked it up and started to flick through it, every page we were going 'awww Yoni does that!' 'he does that too!'. It made us realise our cat isn't quite as unique as we might have thought - both reassuring and a shame! But it's good to know someone else puts a sports sock on their hand to play bitey-games and nearly trips over their cat getting underfoot on a daily basis. A must-have for owners of crazy kitties and guaranteed to cheer me up any time.

Across the Way: Exhibition

I think I need to make a daytrip to Bristol to see this exhibition - a collaborative show between four artists/illustrators - Adam Hancher, Jack Hudson, Luke Jinks and Owen Gatley. A mix of folklore-inspired illustrations, papercutting, handpainted signage.. a dream show for me.



Might as well make a day of it if I do go - can anyone recommend any other nice things to see/do/eat in Bristol?

Alice manuscript

From this Wednesday, the British Library is displaying to the public this gorgeous original Alice in Wonderland manuscript, handwritten and illustrated by its author Lewis Carroll. If you can't make it to the Library, you can view it online using a nifty Silverlight viewer.

It's supposedly to tie-in with the release of Tim Burton/Disney's new Alice film, which frankly I'm worried will be a bit rubbish - nothing will beat the original Disney version!

Recipe look

Aww, I love this new site Recipe Look, combining as it does two of my favourite things - food and cute illustrations, all user-submitted and curated into blog form. I've been considering making a little illustrated cookbook/zine for a while so maybe I will submit something to this site as a warm-up!

Record Tripping

A bit of Monday delightfulness, this gorgeous little Flash game called Record Tripping is super charming and fun. It features Alice in Wonderland, kitties, bunny rabbits and using your mouse to skip through time, what could be more fun? Take five minutes out of your Monday morning to play.

Ask me anything...

I've been a bit slack with the old blogging lately - too wrapped up in my newest hobby, Japanese cooking! Remember to check out my foodie blog if you're interested to see what I've been making, and I also update my tumblr almost daily with pretty images and things. I've also just started work on a fairly major blog redesign...

Until then I thought I'd set up this formspring account that seems to be doing the rounds at the moment. It's basically an anonymous survey site so feel free to ask me anything - but be nice :)

Kinetica Art Fair

I popped over to the Kinetica Art Fair yesterday, armed with my E-P1 and crazy little CCTV lens. I figured the nature of the exhibition - motion-based installations mostly utilising light as a medium - would be a nice match for this cheap but fast little lens.

My favourite exhibit were these holographic light sculptures by Rosaline de Thelin. They are made with fibre-optic cables and apparently inspired by 'astronomy, scientific theories and quantum physics'.



I love these abstract bokeh photos; the unusual spiral characteristics of the lens really made some interesting results.





This was a cool little kinetic sculpture of a broken-up pair of glasses with motion driven by cogs; every so often if your point of view was right, you'd see the glasses reform into a what appeared to be a whole.

An installation of hundreds of LED lights which pulsed according to levels of sound in the room. Video of it in action here.


An interesting setup where a sensor traced the outline of a sculpture of a head and drew it onto paper on the floor.





This sweet installation entitled Flutter, by Cinimod Studio, shows the motion trail of a butterfly's wings on several 'video fins'.



Today is the last day of the exhibition, so get over there if you want to see it! Lots more photos on my Flickr.

Japanese cooking class

Ever since getting back from Japan, one of the (many) things I've been pining for is the food. Simple, light, fresh and nearly always delicious, it's a fantastic cuisine. I've read two books on it in quick succession and have attempted a few dishes using tofu and miso paste. The results have been nice and tasty - with the bonus of being very quick to prepare - but probably not very authentic.



Luckily Josh bought me a course of 5 Japanese cooking classes at Atsuko's Kitchen for my birthday, so I could learn how to do it properly. The first class was last night and it was so much fun.

It's held in the lovely Grocery store in Dalston and taught by Atsuko, who has travelled all over the world teaching classes. Her enthusiasm really came through as she talked through all the ingredients and processes at the basis of Japanese cuisine.


Guess which are Atsuko's egg rolls and which are the students' attempt!

She expertly showed us how to make sticky rice, miso soup, egg rolls and wakame-sesame salad - and we got to have a go ourselves - then we sat down to a delicious meal of the results at the end of the class.

Finally we made a rice ball each to take home in our bento boxes. I can't wait for the next class.

What Katie Eats

I go through phases with cooking.. sometimes it's a dull chore when I get in from work, I'm uninspired as to what to cook and usually end up with packet pasta with jarred pesto. But at the moment I'm finding it really fun and exciting. I signed up to the BBC Good Food site which has loads of great recipes and lets you add your favourite ones to a folder so you can check it for quick inspiration. You can also search by ingredient which is great if you have some random things in the house and can't be bothered going out. For the mushroom Wellington (above), I only had to buy in the field mushrooms, everything else was in the storecupboard or freezer, and it tasted great.


I just started a tumblr site of my more successful cooking adventures (along with a few nice meals out), mostly to serve as a reminder to myself for the next time I'm feeling uninspired. Check it out here.

I'm also really excited because tonight I start the Japanese cooking classes that Josh bought me for my birthday. Big post on Japanese food - with a review of my class I'm sure - coming later this week!

Fffflckr

Ffffl*ckr is a really great new site for finding images you might like on Flickr. It loads in your favourited images and by clicking one you can see the favourited images of that user - the idea being that if you like someone's photo, you'll probably like what they like too! Much better than the Flickr Explore channel which generally contains overdone faux-vintage Photoshoppery and horridly chesy HDR style landscapes of mountains. Have a play and see what you find.