Basket Weaving

First week of two looking at re-using materials like card and plastic bags.  This week, we made a fruit bowl:

Seeing a murmuration of starlings

Today I learnt a new word - murmuration, which I think is a large number of starlings.  Our good friend Emma, who regularly gives up her house in Cornwall to our brood, took us out to Rough Tor on Bodmin Moor.  We got a brief glimpse of the starlings on the drive there - this is what we saw:

The visual effect of thousands of birds flying overhead for so long, is stunning, as is the hum of their wings in the air.  What I thought was more surprising was the (imagined?) warmth from the trees and the amazing feeling of intimacy - you can't actually see the birds in the trees, but the noise makes you feel like your roosting up there with them.

How better to spend your valentines night experiencing a brief moment when you feel completely connected with a world far bigger than you can imagine - to see, hear, feel a community of thousands around you, chattering and singing, swooping and diving, making their home in a mile square of farmed forest.

I love the Valentines Day of cheesy cards, posh meals and hank panky, but it's not necessarily the same as that connection with people, with everything around you, even with birds.  That sense of awe and belonging, of community and love, on a small or big scale, is the real Valentines - it's there in front of me but mostly I don't see it. 

When we got back to Emma's house, Nikki pointed out the image on the stairs was not an unusual collection of biro marks on paper which I thought it had been, but a photo of a murmuration of starlings.  Thanks Emma.

Useful links:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/14/money-gone-love-alternative-currency?CMP=twt_gu

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/the-miracle-of-murmuration/

http://www.westceramics.com/

Candles

Today was second week of candlemaking - over last two weeks we've made ice candles, mosaic candles hand mould candles, sand candles, cardboard moulds.

Thoughts on Herman the German

Recently we were given a (or is it the?) Herman the German Friendship cake mix from our friend Clare Chapman.  He's not much to look at - a bowl of bubbling gluey stuff, destined to a be a sourdough cake of some sort in a couple of weeks.

I wonder how German he is, and given my German ancestry, why I'd never come across him before.  The ancestry of this particular cake mix, apparently goes back to the 1970s - a bit worrying given the health and safety implications.

When you get a Herman, the first thing you do is wait a few days (do not put him in a fridge or he will die).  Then you feed him flour, sugar and milk, and leave him a while, wait a few days, then feed him some more.  At this point you divide him up into four and give away three of them to friends (there really is a bit of him that goes back a few decades).  He's a sort of 'pyramid' cake, where the intention is to make friends, not money.

As you can imagine, it's getting quite exciting now, as we think about who to give our mix to (anyone interested let us know!), and what type of Herman ours will become - at the moment apple is a strong contender, with outside chance of poppy seed.

It's the same kind of excitement I got when we had a turnip glut from our shared allotment in 1997, and I must have had a bit of time on my hands.  That was the year of the infamous turnip wine, and turnip cake.  We found a turnip cake recipe in a Guardian supplement years later, which I think justified the experiment - Wine and cake didn't taste bad, but left an unmistakeable turnipy after-taste.

Anyway, back to Herman.  First thoughts are, what a fantastic creative buzz, and yet, is there anything remotely creative about the cake?  You just follow instructions passed down to you.  Then I dug up David Gaunlett's definition of creativity:

'You have a world of people doing amazing, silly, clever, pointless, or heartfelt things, and putting them out in the world for others to experience, because they want to, and that seems to be more like what 'creativity' is meant to be all about.


Creativity is something that is felt, not something that needs expert verification.'

Herman might not be new or innovative, but he is to me.  He's made me feel part of something far bigger, and at the end of it, I'm passing that onto three very select friends, and a few more when we eat him.  Thanks Clare.

Useful links:

http://srroberts.hubpages.com/hub/German-Friendship-Cake-Herman

http://www.makingisconnecting.org/

Library burns, long live the Library

'The building was set fire to at night, and the building and contents were destroyed.  A book by Christabel Pankhurst was left at the site, along with a note reading, ‘To start your new library’.

It was not the first arson attack by the Birmingham branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union, which was active in the area throughout the period of its existence.

The burning of the library effected the poorest people in Northfield, including women and children, who had little access to reading.  The success in raising awareness of the suffragette cause came at a cost to sympathy for the movement.

It makes me uncomfortable to look at this image from nearly a century ago, and sad both for the women willing to risk everything for their cause, and for all people who suffered through their activism.

To me, it also demonstrates the (continuing) importance of libraries - their potent symbolic, and actual, link between power and knowledge.

Also the importance of photos (even an old black and white, low resolution copy of a newspaper) to tell a story.  Please visit Northfield Portrait and see our growing collection of photos, and send any images you may have of Northfield.

Please see:








Useful links:

http://www.connectinghistories.org.uk/Downloads%20(pdfs%20etc)/rtv-trails.pdf

http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/case-study-the-right-to-vote/

http://artsforumnorthfield.wordpress.com/northfield-portrait/

Happy Chinese New Year!

Plans and paper flowers