Sunday 25 July 2010

Erlend Øye


He's the guy behind The Whitest Boy Alive and also a member of Kings of Convenience, by the way. Go check out his music, I don't care which of the two bands you'll hear. You should probably hear them both.

Sunday 18 July 2010

Books 'n Bananas

I hope you're all having a great time, I'm making the best of mine. I've been home alone for one week now, my parents went on a trip so I got total freedom. I'll be moving to Ghent early September for half a year, so I've been able to get used to it for a bit now. Anyway, since I had a lot of freedom I chose to do things I don't usually do because of my parents. I played a lot of guitar in all of the house, at night, and put a big cushion in the garden to lay on. There's a lot of simple things I can never do when I'm not home alone. I also told myself to experiment a little more with cooking and stuff. One thing I did for example was to make ice cream from only bananas. Most people don't think it's exciting to make your own ice cream because it's simple, but how awesome is it to transform a banana into a little ball of ice with almost no tools whatsoever?


Here's the trick: you slice bananas in pieces, put them in the freezer for a few hours and then blend, put them in the freezer again. After half an hour of cooling it just turns into ice cream. I made a few photos to make it clear, but I found the recipe originally here.


I also did some bookbinding, which was not that new for me but it's only my third book and I really feel I should practice some more in order to get perfect books. There's a few things that always look like a little problem, like cutting the pages nice and plane. I don't really have a lot of material but I think I do a good job trying to make a nice book with really cheap devices and materials. Though, one thing I could really use is a book cutter machine. Anyone who has tips or tricks on this part really is welcome. The way I do it now is to take my block of paper and hold a ruler against the edge, cutting the sides with a Stanley knife one by one, until I'm through. It's not only hard and tiring that way, you can see the edges have choppy parts and aren't cut straight. I'll be a happy camper the day my pages look perfectly cut.

I really love the fabric I bought for this one, I've got plenty left and I think I want to use it to sew something. The little part along the back of the book (the piece of yarn that's got black and brown in it) is used for decoration. I had to make it myself, which is not recommended. I think it looks good enough though, but I hate how it's hard finding proper material in this town.