On the wall in our flat was a big old poster that had once been in a school. On it were chalky pictures of a newt’s life-cycle (I say newt, because the newt was the biggest and most eye-catching part of the cycle) on a background that looked like blackboard – if a blackboard was ever to take on a flimsy and material texture, that is.

There was an array of 1960s furniture, and among the polish porcupines and pomanders and other Christmassy crafts that slowly mounted up towards the end of November this will stick in my mind. Some of it was long and harsh and metal, and some of it was more lovely, distinctive and unpretentious. I took idle notes. (One note was never to stack such large quantities of Elle magazines artfully everywhere. I spent a lot of time knocking them over and picking them up.)

There was a chair waiting to be upholstered. It was orange and warm-looking. I liked it as it was. I came across this on Etsy (because it is 2am and this is, apparently, what certain females look at when sat in front of a laptop at 2am) which reminded me of it. It’s very nice, though perhaps I would say this of most retro-style furniture on a wooden floor. On the downside, it doesn’t look good to hurl yourself into after a long day (these are not armrests for throwing legs over). It would also, in order to be complete, need a large wicker basket full of wool by its side with some knitting I’d started but of course forgotten about, as I am wont to do.

And in other news, these are pretty lovely too. I am pretty (read: very) fussy about ornament and cluttery bits, but these get my vote. They would require acquiring single flowers which is not something I do so much, but I will have both for an imaginary place in my head.

I am curious as to what I would fill rooms with, given a choice. Wood, books, and daffodils, I suspect.

Oh hello, lots of shoes hanging infront of a balcony? This sort of arty shit makes me happy. I pottered around Clerkenwell Design Week (by which I mean they lie as it lasts only 3 days) before going to the Pop Up Pirate typography bar thing (Bitchbuzz review here).

I thought a light by Dare Studio was cool, but distracted myself from a lot of things that weren’t that interesting by trying to juggle a camera and a square of pizza. Pepperoni can be a tricky bitch.

It was all pretty interesting apart from the section about floor panels. The band that played from the balcony was pretty good, though I don’t know their name. There was lots of shiny stuff to keep me entertained. And fancy back-lighting of a wall behind a chair. Some of it came in mirrored cubicles. I could have wept. Photos instead of words.

Oh, and a Robot thing that doubled as a bike rack. CAN I HAVE ONE?

I was watching Eagle vs. Shark yesterday, which is good and essentially negates all the subtle bits of conversation with a summary of how most romantic conversations go. It’s rather good, quite unsubtle, but not a Napoleon Dynamite sort of film. Napoleon Dynamite essentially works as a perfect benchmark for comparison.

“I have to keep creating, otherwise I’ll juse die” says Jemaine Clement as Jarrod.

How embarrassing, thought I. Often I find that days without doing or making things are horrible. What a painful comparison.

Here’s my very old video from Kinetica that I’ve just put together. Because of camera ineptitude there’s no video of my favourite part: the lights that reacted to sound, but there’s an inadequate photo of them here on Flickr.

The exhibition had a section with the pencils that rotate and make circles (above) – which drew on our ability to stand aimlessly watching pencils draw motorised circles. Something I noticed is that the holder design didn’t allow for the pencils to get shorter – it didn’t compensate by pushing defaultly against the wall, but left them suspended away from the paper when they were blunt going round in sad little circles. Perhaps I’ve got too much pencil empathy.

There’s also the small beer robot that poured you beer into plastic cups and then flashed red in an alert to tell you it’s drinking time. Lots of good stuff there.

Kinetica, a number of Saturdays ago, was a mad mess of flashing lights and things that swirled. I love that it counts as art. I spent the day joining the league of irritating people with cameras, toting an EP-1 that’s never left the house – and thus have video footage.

Beside the robot that served you beer, my favourite bit was a block of hanging lights that reacted to sound. Simple but wonderful to watch. As part of the league of camera holders the adults lined up against the wall to do camera jiggery pokery, whilst a small kid ROARED at them. It was lovely, but I failed to hit the record button or some more technical error (very sad). May have to practice my button-pressing. Video on way – my laziness with it has already delayed this brief post. It will appear one day.

A little Flickr set lives here.