hometown tourist: Upfest 2016

 My eyeballs are still reeling from the weekend, in the best possible way. 

Upfest, a live street art festival (apparently Europe's biggest), was right on my doorstep in Bristol so I took a wide-eyed wander round. 

Saturday afternoon, the sun was blazing, ice cream vans were out and so many artists were busy creating. There's something pretty magical about seeing beautiful things progressing right in front of you. I love gawping at people's WIPs (hello, Instagram) any day of the week, but one dedicated weekend where it all happens live? That's pretty cool. Count me in.

I'm a real sucker for illustration, so I enjoyed seeing this mind-boggling Russian doll by Liz Clayton materializing. Note: she wasn't the only one whose outfit coordinated with their work! 

Add of course I tracked down some yarn. Can I say life goals? This embroidery in the wild by Danielle Clough is the best thing ever. I'm so pleased I came across her work. She stitches seriously beautiful stuff. Makes a girl wanna pack up her own suitcase full of yarn, right?

Some of the other enchanting things I spotted included pugs, children spray painting a car, Skeletor riding a banana (a painting) and an IRL glitter beard. I mean, am I the only one who thought they just didn't exist outside of Pinterest? Sadly no pictorial evidence of said be-sparkled facial hair was obtained - we chickened out of asking for a pic!

So much colour, vibrancy and inspiration. I basically know nothing about street art, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, but I will say that I'll be back next year for more colour-fuelled gawpings. With bells on. Nice one, Bristol. 

Have you encountered anything awesome in your hometown lately?

knitstagram

I've been slowly but steadily getting my knit on, with some delicious Noro and Louisa Harding yarn.  Here are my knits of the moment in all their fuzzy, instagrammy glory.

Wool Week and a new pair of needles were a great motivation to get excited about knitting again, but now I'm in some kind of moss stitch rut!  Time to take on new knit challenges.

This month I plan to:

1.  Knit in the round.  I have never knitted in the round, it simply does not compute in my head. How do you join?  Which needle do you use when and where? How many needles will I need?  Won't I get lost? Je ne comprends pas.  

One of my colleagues is halfway through a beautiful cabled sock.  She advised that the only way to get your head round working in the round it is to give it a go.  

2.  Block the lace trim bonnet.  Blocking - another essential stage of the knit process I have yet to attempt.  There, I said it.  I'm a fraud!

3.  Get my Movember knit on.  Being a female lady girl, it is not socially acceptable, or indeed possible, for me to grow an impressive gentleman moustache.  The Chap was going to grow a mo', but his place of work wouldn't allow it.  I intend to stick it to the man and knit a pair of His and Hers 'taches.  

Any thoughts/purls of wisdom, knitters?

I like how the stitches look like little x kisses!

Those colours!  Gah! 

All patterns on Ravelry. 

 I'm beccamathilde on Ravelry and Instagram.  

writing inspiration - orchestra skins

'Three young surrealist women holding in their arms the skins of an orchestra'

Dali 1936

Oh surrealism.

In one of my writing classes last week we discussed tragic flaw, and were challenged to write prose poetry exploring this idea, using a Dali postcard as a prompt. I have to say, I'm not really a Dali fan (melty clocks and mighty 'tache aside) but I found this quite a nifty excercise. This postcard did hurt my mind a bit, but it was great to work from an image that is already established, to tease the story out of it.

What images inspire you?

P.S. When I googled 'Dali Moustache', I was greeted with this excellent bit of hair/architecture. Who is this man and where can I find him? What a champ!

of deadlines and moustaches

I am cutting and pinning and stitching and panicking. Tomorrow I need to draw and research and knit and stitch some more. It is now two days until deadline day. Fron is off battling this weekend, so you'd imagine that I'd be using my time even more productively. Alas, this is not the case, there has been much dallying. Not least of which being the fact that I am, at the moment, very preoccupied with moustaches.

Moustaches are everywhere at the moment; on the catwalk, on indie fingers and faces, even in my dreams. Yes, it's true. The other night I dreamt that Tom Selleck gave me a spare moustache that he had grown himself. Oh dear.

I don't know what it is about them, but I believe that they are good. I once convinced Dad to shave his moustache off. He looked wrong without it, and Mother found it very unnerving. I guess he'll continue to be, in his own words, "a refugee from the Seventies".

I think that a lot of people could benefit from moustaches, women included. During a recent trip to the guildhall, we discovered that a moustache is precisely what is missing from Ros' face. There was an older American gent at work today, and he had a splendid upper lip 'do. The 'taches were a plenty at the summer ball last night too - they are officially THE THING.

to beardly go . . .

This could very well be the solution. As a woman, I don't have option of growing a beard, and that stray eyelash I found on my chin was never going to make for an impressive barbe. So, knitting my own seems to be the answer, and this way I could have a detatchable 'tache too - woop!