A New Year deserves a New Look!

...Gotta love the new Blogger templates!

Well, I had a little time over Christmas to assess what I wanted to do with this 'ere blog. Over recent months where time and inspiration have been prohibitive in equal measures, I have used the blog as a portal only, to view links from the blogs I've been following.

But this amateur eye is not yet ready to close, ohhhh no! Instead, I want to take a more refined look at the things that genuinely catch my eye and post only the photos I deem worthy from my own collection. I'm also hoping to run another blog in tandem, focusing on the things for which I'm thankful (very much inspired by Lindsey at a GreatFull day and Nikki and her girls' Month of Gratitude on WhiMSyLove. These blogs particularly inspired me to take stock of the everyday things I take for granted when I'm too busy griping about public transport and feeling neglected to realise that I'm lucky to have a job to travel to, and that I have friends in the first place. And so on.

So A Year of Thanks will hopefully run alongside Amateur Eye, and feature on here as well in part.

The weekly (manageable?) "agenda" for Amateur Eye will look like this:

Tuesday: Top 10... (could be the Top 10 of anything in my weird little mind -- songs listened to in August, typefaces, actors of the 1990s, websites... anything!)
Thursday: Thanks Day Thursday -- a direct link to A Year of Thanks
Friday: Photo Day -- either featuring a photo I admire by a fellow blogger or Flickr-er (!) or one of mine

Let's see how it goes...

A White Christmas!

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.

-- 'Twas the Night Before Christmas/A Visit from St. Nicholas (Clement C Moore)

Blush.

Yeah, it's been a while since I posted on here. A long while, dogged with a dying PC and too many photos to sift through (don't ya just hate it when that happens? ;-)!)

But … trying to get back on track with a fully functioning PC so please do come back soon!

qb xx

Not going to get preachy on ya but …

This is how I've been feeling lately (evidently mixed in with shedloads of self-pity, natch):

Image from the notebook doodles

This quote, paraphrased from my vicar's sermon on Trinity Sunday, struck a chord with me, too:

"We each feel lonely when someone in whom we had invested hope of love deserts us or lets us down. Loneliness comes from the gaps in our lives that people don’t seem to be able to fill.

Listen though to these words from an obscure mystic quoted by Henri Nouwen

Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly

Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you,

As few human or divine ingredients can,

Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes soft. My voice so tender.

It has made my need for God absolutely clear  (Shams al din Hafiz)"

This has little to do with photography or anything strictly amateur-eye-ish; it's just something that has been preying on my mind lately, and I thought maybe sharing it here would help me to get over it! Fr. Andrew also spoke about putting people on pedestals, which also helped me make a big decision that I'm now glad I made. A little cryptic, I know, but to cut a long story short, I nearly contacted someone I don't know (on Farcebook/Fakebook), on the basis of having spent my adolescence (and some adulthood!) misguidedly idolising them, or at least the person I thought they were.

Anyhoo. I'll be back soon… been editing wedding photos from my first-ever (maybe last-ever, who knows?) wedding! 830+ … It's taken some time!

qb xxx

Yesterday I Received...

... my very own postcard from Jill @ Today I Saw! It's fantastic! I won't give too much away as to which p/c it was for personal security reasons but it cheered me up, nonetheless. ;-) I've been following this blog for a while now and jumped at the chance to receive one of Jill's hand-drawn, unique postcards. It's currently sitting atop my bureau, waiting to be framed as I want to embark on a huge framing project, at some point, and upgrade my chintzy frames to smart, black frames.

But for now ... thank you, Jill, it has arrived and I am really pleased and proud to be a recipient!

qb

Come Dine With qb

One of my latest obsessions (which has overridden the obsession with How Clean is Your House on a Sunday afternoon) is Come Dine With Me, the Channel 4 series that profiles four or five individuals as they attempt to cook and host a meal for the other competitors on the show... Not sure I've described this very well so check out this site for more deets.

I am a recent convert of the programme, anyway, and as with most fans the biggest draw is the very funny, sarcastic voice-over-man, Dave Lamb. Barbed genius. Aaaaaanyway. I decided to attempt a new recipe just for myself last week and ... here are the visuals. Pork and red pepper spaghetti bolognese from Sainsbury's -- I was dang proud of the outcome. Tasted magnificent. ...Vegetarians: look away, NOW.

Springtime and blossom in Kensington

For anyone who doubts my sanity in favouring early mornings ... here's a good reason!

A coupla shots from the Easter weekend ...

Step on it, driver…

Spotted at a service station over the weekend. Heehee!

Please may I have a badge maker of my very own? Please?

I borrowed a badge maker from a work friend for the weekend and my goodness I had some fun with it, to the point of somewhat embarrassing regression. Seriously

Five days later and these (above) are what I have to show for my efforts with the stampy-cranky machine which looks a bit like this. The Space Invader badge (perfect for provoking violence on a crowded train...) is a bit off centre (OK, very -- and how squiffy is the shot itself?! Bad. Bad.).

But I'm crazily proud of my WORD NERD badge, and the Craft Queen badge I made for my pal at the owl and the party hat! Less enamoured of my b seen badge but it's a start!

Oh and ... I should explain that "Fit as Biscuits" is a very arbitrary expression that a friend of mine invented about five years ago and which I rather took to. Takes some explaining as I'm not sure biscuits can possibly be fit (in the way that, say, Dominic Cooper or Hugh Jackman may be) but ... anyway. It makes a quirky badge, and with it I plan to bring the expression to the masses.

eye owe you

Love love love this picture: the fairy lights, the avenging-angel look . . . everything.

Photo of comedian Laura Solon by Jake Walters for The Guardian

I was inspired by this and by a feature in this month's Digital SLR Photography magazine to do my own. Some of them just plain freak me out. These are self-portraits so I've technically just scared myself silly... Click on the image collage to view.

 

Devon must be missing an angel

Long overdue: a snapshot of a short break to Devon . . .

amateur eye've neglected you!

Aargh, I've really been neglecting this blog. I thought I'd make it an homage of all things purty but there are plenty of blogs out there doing that very thing and so much better than I could ever do it so... I'm going back to my roots (!) and posting my own photos on here ever so often. I have a backlog from the last three months including some more seaside-y pictures, but I've also been creating this website and holding a family photoshoot to raise some money for charity and for more equipment, and also to build up ye olde portfolio.

There aren't enough hours in the day for everything I'd like to do but I'm working on that.

Love,

qb x

iLove!

These two were playing sweet music to each other all evening.

Though I suspect Silver wasn't so keen on Purple's playlist which contains … a lotta cheese. Hence why he's not plugged in.

When I have a brand-new hairdo...

...with my eyelashes all in curls
I float as the clouds on air do
I enjoy being a girl!

A little thought on "beauty". I know that even in the c90 years post-suffrage we're still flagging somewhat in embracing a more eclectic spectrum of beauty. Magazines (the ones with less integrity) are constantly citing female celebrities as 'hot', 'gorgeous' and beautiful -- and I sometimes wonder who set the standards these women have attained. This song from 1933, Keep Young and Beautiful, covered by Annie Lennox in 1992 (when you'd think we'd be more progressive, though let's hope it was covered with tongue firmly lodged in cheek) embodies all that is wrong about the perception of beauty: that only those deemed to be beautiful will ever be loved. And beauty by traditional standards does not embrace imperfections.

But every once in a while, no matter how we feel 80% of the time (and recently "dog-rough" has summed me up), the moment we invest a little me-time and embrace ourselves, we too can feel beautiful. Remember this Gap advert featuring Sarah Jessica Parker, from a few years ago?



I dunno about you but I think, much respect to SJP. This advert featuring the song 'I Enjoy Being a Girl' from The Flower Drum Song is fabulous; and she projects the kind of self belief that actually we could all do with every once in a while. (If you listen to the whole song you get the feeling it's all just a little bit sexist -- it was written in the 1950s -- but still quite sweet really!)

So in short: today I got my hair cut back into a bob. Admittedly a lot of the credit lies with my hairstylist but -- it looks cute, it really does. It's tidy, I have the fringe I wanted; and to celebrate I invested in some new makeup; just some mascara (Maybelline Falsies mascara) and lipgloss (can't remember the brand!) and some new jeans (Emporio de New Look) and feel, though temporarily, fabulous. So am now singing the verse above in my head just to pep myself up. :-)

Because even quirkesses with distinct noses deserve to feel gorgeous every so often.

(Of course I'm possibly one of the least photogenic folk I know so pictures of said hairdo on self are being vetted as we speak. Vain, moi? Non...)

A place, where nobody dared to go...

Hmm, OK, I think maybe when I said I'd post about all the pretty things I'd come across, I should have added the words "darn kitsch" after "pretty". Having stumbled upon some truly beautiful blogs since I've been in the blogosphere, I know that what catches my eye is not necessarily pretty but sometimes a little weird and, yep, kitsch! Like this Official Souvenir Programme for... XANADU! Pretty darn kitsch indeed.

Not sure how I came by this but I suspect I picked it up at a film collectors' fair somewhere, back in the 1990s (when I still thought that Grease was the pinnacle of all possible films, and nobody could tell me otherwise). I watched Xanadu again the other day and was struck by how absolutely bad it is (to the point of being good, of course); how much of a vehicle it was for ONJ and how Gene Kelly, you know, Gene Kelly of On the Town and, yuhuh, Singin' in the Rain, got involved in this project! (One final ponderance -- Michael Beck? Where'd he go after he and his implausibly short shorts skated off into the sunset? ...Ah. "Diagnosis: Murder" and "Nash Bridges", according to my beloved oracle IMDB.)

I admit, I do love the film and I love the 'Whenever You're Away From Me' dance sequence in Danny's huge old house... Oh and the 1940s/80s fusion 'Dancin''.

And I'm now old enough to appreciate just how darn kitsch the whole thing really is!

Happy New Year from Amateur Eye

. . . In the spirit of change, Amateur Eye will be shape-shifting in due course, and my photos will be migrating to a new blog until my photo website is ready to go live! Thanks for following, and big hugs and wishes for health and happiness in 2010!

Amateur Eye will become the home of links to pretty things I've seen in transit - photos, crafty bits, clothes, inspirations, that sort of thing!

quirky brunette