Underneith the blanket all is well

I have a sort of "art" page on DeviantArt.
I say "art" page (with quotation marks added) because it's mostly fan-fics from way back when I was a hormonal Potterhead teenager as opposed to the feminist Potterhead adult I've become of late. Aside from that there are some pictures of my early outfits for the Medieval Week. I don't update very often these days because... reasons. Most of them ridiculous. I happen to be a bit of a perfectionist, and also I'm an insecure person and compare my work to other's to the point when I'll just give up on creativity altogether and go sit in a corner with a blanket over my head.
In the last month my pageviews on said "art" page has gone up about 140% and although I should be excited I'm essentially just embarrassed. All there is in my gallery is badly written fan fiction that I'm itching to rewrite and poorly sewn dresses in cheap materials. How am I supposed to be proud of that? I have a few new dresses lying around I should take pictures of, so why don't I? Well, that's because I want them to be part of an outfit - a completed outfit. I should be happy that more people find my page but frankly, I'm panicking. I'd like to think that I've improved since I submitted my first material in 2009; my first dress in 2011; and my first fan-fic in 2012 but as of today I don't feel I have proof of that. I'm putting unnecessary pressure on myself and I know it. I just can't help myself.
I'll go hide under a blanket now.

Kipple

"Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you to go bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up there is twice as much of it. It always gets more and more."
J.R. Isadore - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (by Philip K.Dick)

The question every single person ask themselves when they're moving and packing/unpacking their belongings is often "WHERE DOES IT ALL COME FROM?". Well... Isadore seems to have a theory.
Yes, I'm reading "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". At the beginning of the book I could tell why I thought the film adaption (Blade Runner) was so depressing and not at all what I want from a film but the book is actually growing on me. Keep in mind though, that I say that after nine chapters which would be about half the book. We'll see what I say after reading the whole thing.

Those tattoos

I have a few of them now. To the right is the newest contribution to my collection of skin doodles. It just had to be done. The police box and a rose simply because Eckleston and Tennant were my Doctors. About seven hours under the needles in total.

And the faun is finally all done (picture below) but she's a real bitch to snap a good picture of! Somewhere between ten and eleven hours to complete.

I'm guessing that my next project will have to be a sperm whale and a pot of petunias down on my left shin where you'll find a fan of cards with 42 written on them.

It's either the whale+flowers or a Tolkien-themed back piece. I don't know. I don't have the money for it right now.

What I do have is a flat to furnish.

Dear Old Fictional Friends

There are certain things that you should have done together with a friend that has put up with you and your weirdness for the last thirteen years. To celebrate ten years of firendship we travelled to New York City together in 2012 but despite both of us being huge Potterheads we've never been to London together. We felt it was time to rectify that.

Highgate Cemetery
One of my wishes for the trip was to go to Highgate Cemetery. Partly because the Cemetery itself is beautiful in its own overgrown way and I can be silly among the ivy and headstones (see photo to the left) but also because some of The Greats have been buried here since its opening in 1839.
Highgate Cemetery has two parts; East and West. We visited the East Cemetery, which you can do for free, but the West Cemetery is accessible by guided tours. It's more elaborate with catacombs, mausoleums, vaults and bigger monuments. Also, the West section was used in filming Dorian Gray (2009). We didn't go there. We found out there were some large, rare spiders nesting in the West Cemetery.

One of The Greats I spoke of before being in particular one Douglas Adams in my not-so-humble opinion. Adams is without hesitation my all time favourite author. He wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the books about Dirk Gently, Starship Titanic and some classic Doctor Who.
Forever loved and forever remembered.

Nerds, Adams is the reason You should always know where Your Towel is.
Join in on Towel Day on the 25th of May, because a Towel is just about the most useful thing an intergalactic hitchhiker can carry with them.

Everything is Harry Potter.
Our main purpose for this trip was to go to Warner Bros Studio Tours - The Making of Harry Potter in Leavesden. We've been talking about it since they built it years ago and we were definitely not feeling twenty-seven by the time we arrived at the studio. These books have been with us since we were twelve years old. We grew into adults with them. I, for one, cried tears of joy when I stepped onto Platform 9 3/4 and saw the Hogwarts Express.

We love the books but are not great fans of the movies. I'd say they did a good job with most of the story but nothing will ever be as amazing as one's own imagination. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until my dying days.

We walked through the creative process from books to movies, hitched a ride with the Knight Bus, drank butterbeer (YUCK, by the way, yuck) and had a blast.

We certainly bought souvenirs to bring back home. I'm drinking coffee out of mine as I write.

I love being a nerd. It offers me a perfectly good excuse to act like a total weirdo when faced with things like scale models of fictional castles.

What else?
Being nerds meant that we simply had to go to certain places. But then we are also more than nerds so there were more things to do while in dear old Londinium.
We went to pubs because I like beer. We had some great food and some less than great food because we both love eating. I bought shoes of course (just one pair). We went to Ogre's Nest for board games and Forbidden Planet (twice) because awesomeness. We went to Oxford Street to find Disney Store but they didn't have much to offer us older children. We took a stroll through Kensington Park (and had a real party when we met a friendly and playful puppy). We went to Camden Town and saw the same shirts being peddled by a hundred different people at a hundred different prices.
As it turned out we found most of the things Harry Potter at other locations than The Making of Harry Potter though; PJ's at Primark, shirts in Camden and a passport holder at Forbidden Planet.

Trevor
It was a good vacation. The only thing that put a hamper on our good moods was that the cleaning staff at our hotel left a lot to be desired. We named the dead cockroach lying on the stairs Trevor. We felt brave to be eating the hotel breakfast every morning.

Cheers!

I'm Home!

I have now moved in to my new flat and set up the things that are most important to me; the kitchen is fully operational, the bed is made and my computer has internet access (oh, Spotify and Netflix how I've missed you in the last few weeks!). Everything else is sort of... sorely lacking. Since I've always lived in furnished rooms I own no actual furniture. I even had to buy my own bed now that I got my own place! Furniture's the next step to be taken I guess. (Now that both of my tattoos are done and completed whatever money's left will be spent on redecorating my new home. Mine! My own... my preciouuusssss...)
Also, I'm just home from Dear Old Blighty and it was superb. So I'll be telling you about that as soon as I've decided what pictures I'd like to share. Until then, enjoy this gem.

"Ain't no party like a Communist party."