Monday miscellany

Apples, scarcely bruised

Sweet songster, keeping an eye out for worms turned out by weeding

Fading fast - old advertisement in Walthamstow

Three magpies, visiting next door

Wrapped bollards, opposite Southwark tube station

Turkish delights - shopping in Istanbul (thanks, Erika, for the photo!)

Freemartin - an androgenous bull, or a spayed heifer, resulting from a twin pregnancy in which a bull and heifer share a placenta. Both fetuses produce hormones, which mix in the shared placenta , affecting their development. The heifer will be infertile in 90% of cases, and the bull's fertility reduced. Sometimes the heifer will develop parts of the reproductive tract of the male. In some cases there will be no symptoms of freemartinism because the bull calf will have been aborted at an earlier stage of pregnancy.

Fruitful pursuit

These jars of chutney used up 20 apples - and took 2.5 hours to make, much of it spent peeling and chopping the apples and tomatoes and mint. With The Food Programme and Gardeners Question Time on in the background, for much of the time.

Which, at time of writing, leaves these bruised beauties to turn into jelly (with lemon and ginger) -

And more will be coming off the tree... Might get around to trying chilli apple jelly with the next lot.

Apple Mint Chutney

Peel, core, and chop 4 lb (2kg) cooking apples.
Skin and chop 1 lb (500g) ripe tomatoes.

Cook apples with 1/2 pint (450ml) vinegar until thick and pulpy, then stir in the tomatoes and
another 1/2 pint vinegar
1 lb (450g) soft brown sugar
2 level teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 tsp mixed spice
large pinch cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 lb (250g) seedless raisins

Cook for 15 minutes, then add
2oz (50g) finely chopped mint and cook a further 5 mins or until thick.
Pot and cover.

Apple Jelly

per 2 lb (1 kg) apples - use 1 large or 2 small lemons, 1 tablespoon ground ginger. 

Cut up the apples, removing bruises etc. Put in a pan with grated lemon rind and cold water almost to cover (the amount depends on the hardness of the fruit), then cook slowly till soft, 30 mins or so. 

Put pulp into jelly bag over a large bowl and leave to drain for 3-4 hours or overnight. Don't squeeze the bag (it will make the jelly cloudy). 

Measure the juice and put in a large pan with an equal volume of sugar, the juice of the lemons, and the ginger. Bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Boil vigorously for 10-15 minutes or until setting point is reached. On a sugar thermometer, the setting point will be reached at 105C/220F - or, drop some jelly onto a cold plate and if it forms a crinkly skin, it's set.*

Remove the pan from the heat and leave to settle for a few minutes. Skim* the surface. Pour the liquid jelly through a wide mouthed funnel into jars that have been sterilized (put in oven at 90C/200F/Gas¼). Seal each jar with a lid.


Here's what Delia says about setting point, and about skimming -

How to test for a set: at the same time as you begin cooking the fruit, place three or four saucers in the freezing compartment of the fridge. When you have boiled the jam for the given time, remove the pan from the heat and place a teaspoonful of the jam on to one of the chilled saucers. Let it cool back in the fridge, then push it with your finger: if a crinkly skin has formed on the jam, then it has set. It if hasn’t continue to boil for another 5 minutes, then do another test.

Don’t worry about any scum that rises to the surface while the jam is boiling – if you keep skimming it off, you’ll finish with no jam at all! Instead, wait until you have a set, then remove the jam from the heat and stir in a small lump of butter, which will disperse the scum.

"I am here" art project

"I am here" was installed on the Haggerston Estate - an estate in steady decline since the 1980s - in September 2009. The future of the estate has been contested for some 30 years, and since 2004 no new tenants have been accepted, but empty flats boarded up. Now the estate is set to be demolished and a new estate built on this canal-side property, in an area that over the past ten years has become increasingly gentrified.

The project shows the faces of ordinary people so often excluded from the visual material produced to market an up-and-coming area. The photos replace the rather terrifying orange boards put up (by whom?) over the boarded windows; 98% of residents were in favour of replacing the boards with photos, and the project went ahead.

The artwork is produced by Fugitive Images, an artist collaboration founded in 2009 by Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Lasse Johansson and Tristan Fennell - long-term residents on the estate. "Fugitive Images explores the subtle and haunting traces of memory and desire that weave together identities and communities, while seeking close and sustained collaborations within communities. Their aim is to develop reflective production methods and create imaginative works at the intersection of documentary, fiction, and collective dreaming." Read more about the project here.

Ungrateful wretches!

The mosaic project in Romford market "has had to withstand...the constant complaints of the stall holders."

See more of Tessa Hunkin's mosaics here.

Hooked (rag rugs)

The hooked chair pad, started in January 2012, is finally finished! It now graces my studio chair (a souvenir, via a refurbishment, of my former place of work) -

The patterning was derived by throwing some beads onto the burlap backing, and drawing circles where they fell - or not -

I wanted to keep lots of "empty space" but as the hooking progressed, those big expanses of black cried out to have little bright dots in them, so how could I resist? It's so easy to pull out a bit of hooking, and to redo it afterwards.

Hooking in progress -

Again, the drawn lines are only a suggestion, a starting point.

Since Hooked in London started, my output consists of these items:

"Road Rug" - about 90cm wide

"Chicken Challenge" coasters - 12.5cm diameter

Chair pad - 33cm x 36cm

All are wool, recycled from charity shop garments. Recently I discovered that some wools can be torn, rather than cut, into strips - a great time-saver; the effect of the "fuzzy edges" is different from cut edges, though. Using strips from knitted garments gives yet another effect, as the edges curl into a tube when tugged slightly.

Other members of the hooking group use strips cut from teeshirts, yet others use woven cotton - have a look here to see the variety of work in progress.

(This post is linked to Off The Wall Friday.)

Pipers Central London model

The model, which can be seen at The Building Centre, is built to a scale of 1:1500. It covers and area from Paddington in the west to the Royal Docks in the east, and from Battersea in the sout to King's Cross in the north.

The buildings in white are recent buildings and proposed buildings with planning permission. Buildings are laser cut from perspex; each layer is the equivalent of one floor.

The model took 9 months to build and involved 15 model makers; it is regularly updated.

Get a (dizzying) aerial view in this video.

Poetry Thursday - poems about meteor showers

The annual International Meteor Conference has had an Astropoetry Event since 1997, which in 2009 resulted in a special web page of meteor poems from all over the world - illustrated, of course, with photographs of meteors. The page was put together by members of the Romanian Society of Meteor Astronomy.

If you've ever lain on the lawn in an August night, watching the Perseid meteor shower, you'll understand why people feel enthusiastic, even poetical, about meteors!

A magnitude 4 Perseid and a halo (photo by Valentin Grigore, Romania)

THE PERSEIDS
-by Marge Simon (U.S.A., 
Editor of Star*Line, the Journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association)-

We follow the fire
of Comet Swift-Tuttle
as lovers do
but she evades

like tears of Perseus
our myriad lights
paint the night skies
with unrequited love

Fireball on the Perseid maximum night 2009 (photo by Monica Dragan, Romania)

A MAD ASTRONOMICAL CLAIM
-by Alfredo Caronia (Italy, 
co-discoverer of 3 asteroids)-

Perseids
first in class
but not unique,
best sellers
of the astronomer's attention,
matter for evaluation
and media for reference,
model
in a ring
of almost monthly
rains,
sons
of a mother comet,
birth
from cosmic germs,
conventionally
classified
in periodical swarms;
meteors
are waiting
for a resolution
of a cosmic dispute,
concerning
the reservation
of a turn over,
in order to
obtain
the collocation
in a focal
issuing point,
in dynamic symbiosis
with a periodical comet,
grooving
and going
across
the constellation Ophiuchus,
the newborn
zodiacal
celestial body.

Real photos

Once upon a time, in the days before digital photography, the film had to be given in, or sent away, to be printed - and the photos, 24 or 36 per film, stored in their envelopes (with the negatives) or, for people who shot a film every week or so, in shoeboxes. 

I used boot boxes to hold two ranks of photos - arranged by subject ... dates and places of trips, types of objects seen in museums, categories of landscape features. Quite a little system, three double boxes full.

A random selection from the "museums" category, possibly useful in the near future for my course.

Mostly the accumulated photos are redundant - "plants" and "trees", for example (well, it seemed important at the time) - except that seeing them brings back memories around taking them, the where and the who and the what else, and even the why.

Rather than spend all day sorting photos, I pulled out a few to scan in ... photos with people, photos taken last century. This one is from August 1987 - we're on the way back to Pitt Meadows from a family visit to Denman Island - 

Arithmetic can be applied to the situation: I am older now than my mother was then, and my son is almost as old now as I was then. But when I look at the photo, all that logical part of my brain shuts down, and lots of other things come flooding in.

Idris Khan at Victoria Miro gallery

"Beyond the Black" is on until 9 November - it's on my list to see, and happily the catalogue is available online - page through it here to find images like this one -

The show consists of "a suite of large black paintings, a monumental site specific wall drawing and a series of works on paper, all of which consider the metaphysics of creativity", says the gallery's website.

Khan is known for his multi-layered photographs of musical scores, literary texts, etc. This latest body of work focuses upon Khan's own texts influenced by Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy."

The monumental wall drawing, taking a month to make, includes some 120,000 lines of text.

Khan says: "The title Beyond the Black asks you to think of looking past the surface of the painting, past the existence of the words and through the work to the meaning of its creation."

Canal walk

Starting at Angel tube station, preparing to walk east along Regent's Canal

Lunch on the balcony at The Narrow Boat, watching canal traffic

So much new building (people will pay more for a view of water)

Clouds looking like they've been painted on the water with at palette knife

More reflections

As far as the Haggerston gasometers

Exit the towpath to Broadway Market

Across London Fields, with its wildflower meadow ... coffee at E5 bakery, and home

Two exhibitions, some textile art, and a restaurant

The Jerwood Drawing Prize show is always interesting. It's the UK’s largest and longest running annual open exhibition for drawing, which aims to explore and celebrate the diversity, excellence and range of current drawing practice.

We went on a Friday afternoon and the place was full of students - drawing. (On Saturday 5th, the space hosts a Big Draw event, 1-3pm, details here.)

From over 3000 entries, 76 were shortlisted. The show is on till 27 October. See the winning work (£8K), by Svetlana Fialova, here; 2nd prize (£5K) went to a video - Interior (Utopia) by Marie von Heyl, and in fact several of the videos are among the pieces I remember best, eg Jordan Rodgers' Virtual Dérive, along with the 3D "needlework" by Kate Nolan that was hung up high in a doorway and may have been missed by many viewers, and the "blue circle", a sublime work of simple means by Emma Douglas.

Another annual prize is the Threadneedle Prize for painting and sculpture - this is on (at Mall Galleries) till 12 October. This year the prize (£30K) was shared by Clare McCormack and Lisa Wright. See all the works in the show here.

Several "textile" works were selected to be in the show -

Home by Louise Folliott ("stormy weather blankets and wood")

Femme au Foyer by Lauren Drescher ("cloth, thread, fill and antique stand")

Detail of Plot 1/Anglo-Persian by Ghazaleh Avarzamani ("embroidery and patchwork on quilt")

The End by Alexis Nishihata ("wool on canvas")

Finally, the restaurant ... we went to Chinatown, which is on the other side of Trafalgar Square from the Mall Gallery, and tried Baozi Inn - north Chinese cuisine, mainly dumplings, steamed buns, and noodles. I was rather taken by the "kitsch Communist Revolution decor" above our table -

Colour mixing 8 - dictionary done!

Seeing the end so near, I put on a final spurt at the weekend, and now each page of Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary, 1983 edition, is painted.

 union-up to warhable-warren 1427-1469
cobalt blue, magenta, mixing white, phthalo turquoise, yellow light hansa

 wasserman-watch to Wren-write 1471-1509
yellow light hanse cadmium red, bright green, titanium white, mixing white, naples yellow

X to appendices 1511-1543
naples yellow, turquoise, magenta

appendices 1545-1583
magenta, cadmium red, mixing white, prism violet, turquoise, titanium white, cadmium red, payne's grey

pages 1427-1583, ending with payne's grey

What next? First, fixing the loose pages and the broken spine of the book. Then, perhaps a video/animation; or, a scroll (of the "page edges"); and maybe, some little books riffing on the colour names...

Also, I'd like to use some of my collection of gouache paint (some tubes have rather hardened)

or the half-dozen tubes of watercolour found in another drawer, in one of these dictionaries (having repaired the spine of the little one) -

and read this book, acquired recently and full of amazing information -

Wish list

It seems impossible to go to a bookshop and not find something you want to take home and read. I'm not about to order these online "just to save money" ... but hope to come across them when I have some extra ££ and some unclaimed time.

Seen in another bookshop (but not photographed, and badly remembered) - a book with a turquoise (and brown?) cover, written by E... H... (an architect), with a title something like "memory is a place", cost £25. I happened to dip into the chapter/essay on a list of the contents of a Kunstkabinett, written in 1607 and "lost" until after WWII. The entire process of making such a collection, and the way this particular list was written, makes me want to go back to the description, and to the rest of the book.