Bradford Baked Zines

Last weekend we had a stall at the Victoria Baths Zine Fair in Manchester. We were sharing a table with the super cool Stef Bradley again (Go and see the Today Zine exhibition at Landbaby, Liverpool now!) and had the dead good Sugar Paper as next door neighbours too. Here's Liz and I looking dead chuffed to be there:

Even though she wasn't selling at the fair, we also managed to nab ourselves a copy of the excellent 2nd Hand Zine by Isobel Harrop and a badge to go with it! I would definitely recommend getting a copy of the zine (for 50p!) as soon as she makes them available to buy online, which will be soon, apparently. It's all about good places to go to buy second hand stuff and is both educational and fun.

Anyway, the gist of this post was supposed to be about Bradford Baked Zines and I'll start talking about that now, okay? While we were at the zine fair we got talking to Jean from Loosely Bound about the Bradford Baked Zines popup shop that's opening in an empty shop in Bradford between May 13th and 19th. We've sent along a big bundle of our zines so if you're in the area, pop over and have a look at all the ace self published stuff available to spend your money on.

As well as selling loads of cool stuff, they're also hosting some zine related events too. Our pal Natalie Bradbury, who does the Shrieking Violet zine, is doing a talk and so are loads of other people. All the events are free and are sure to be really interesting. I wish there was something like this in Manchester! Well done Bradford for sorting this out.

In other shop/retail related news, we're now selling mountain cushions at the brand new Nottingham Craft Mafia shop in, uh, Nottingham. We haven't been yet but, according to local sources, it is full of dead nice stuff. You can also have a look at our equally brand new 'stockists' page to see which irl places you can go in order to purchase things that we have made.

See yer!

S

Brrrrlin

At some point in the future we will probably make a zine about Berlin and how great it is. Until then, you will have to make do with this hastily put together blog post, complete with photos ripped from our Instagram. Nice one!

Firstly, we got back from Berlin about three weeks ago, so apologies if you have been on tenterhooks waiting for a blow-by-blow account of what we got up to. Here's some quick highlights for you! We stayed at an amazing place in the Neukölln area of the city. It's called Huettenpalast and is, basically, a big room full of vintage caravans and little cabins. We stayed in the Alter Palast, which means Old Palace if you're talking in German. Apparently. Here's a photo of it:

We did loads of touristy things, like hanging out with giant statues of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, casting our eye over Soviet architecture, eating amazing Currywurst, devouring traditional German stodge, cycling around the park and getting told off for asking for too many postage stamps in a souvenir shop.

We went to R.S.V.P, which is an amazing little stationery shop just outside the city centre. We went to the Museum of Things, which was pretty great. Row after row of cabinets of collections of everyday objects that, for some reason, was absolutely fascinating. If only we'd know about it when we were putting together the Collecting issue of the zine!

We'd read, in various places, about Spree Park, an abandoned theme park on the edge of the city. You can sometimes go on guided tours there, but sadly there weren't any running while we were in town. Some people off of the internet suggest climbing over the fence so that you can get a closer look, but we decided against that. We like the idea of urban exploration, but the prospect of being chased by German police/German Shepherd dogs/German security wasn't one we were particularly keen on. Instead we had a walk around the perimeter, where we got a fairly good view.

We did loads of other stuff that we will probably document in the zine when we get around to making it. You should definitely go to Berlin if you get the chance!

While we have your attention, we will be at the Victoria Baths Zine Fair on Sunday May 5th, so come and have a look at our stall! We're sharing with the supremely talented Stef Bradley again, so bring loads of cash. We're launching the new issue of our zine on Sunday too, which is all about food. Ace. Also, remember to come to the Internet Forever + Her Parents gig we're putting on at the end of May. It will be fun.

See yer!

S

Internet Forever + Her Parents

Hello! You may have read on Twitter that we're putting on a gig in Manchester next month. Well, here are all the juicy details you need! If you could share this info with all your pals that would be great. We're going to be selling copies of the new issue of Young Explorer, too, so even if you hate music you should still come. Here's the slightly annoying blurb I wrote about it, plus the amazing poster that Liz made:

:

Young Explorer presents: 

INTERNET FOREVER
everyone's favourite pop band are touring in may and we've managed to talk them into playing for us at kraak! the nme gave their debut album 7/10 and said very complimentary things about it. they don't play live that often so take this opportunity while you can, yeah? 

HER PARENTS
ace punk supergroup comprised of members of stairs to korea, dananananaykroyd and internet forever. pitchfork reckon they're good as well. they have a new album coming out on alcopop! in may, and the video for their most recent single "why don't you just fuck off?" is well worth watching. 

DETAILS
the gig is on saturday may 25th and will take place, roughly, between about 7:30pm and 10:30pm. the gig will start and finish quite early because we don't like staying up late.
tickets available from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/217780 NOW! £5 in advance or £6 on the door. tickets are already selling pretty well so book now! 

there will also be a stall selling zines and nice things and i may find a way to utilise the tombola wheel that i salvaged from work at some point during the evening. watch this space!

Tell us you're coming on Facebook so we don't spend the next six weeks or so hyperventilating about nobody bothering to come. It will be really fun, we promise!

See you there!

S

Choux Buns

We've always considered choux pastry to be beyond our limited cooking abilities, but choux pastry is amazing. Chocolate eclairs, profiteroles and choux buns are up there with the best cakes/desserts, so we've been meaning to try and make something with choux pastry for a while now. Liz's friend Sarah (who seems to be getting mentioned all the time on this blog these days) bought her a beautiful Ladurée recipe book and we eventually got around to trying their 'Choux a la Rose' recipe yesterday.

Sadly, as our closest supermarkets didn't have anything even vaguely like rose water or rose syrup, we had to go without. So technically we made 'Choux a la Nothing'! I was secretly pleased because rose is a bit gross.

Ingredients

120g plain flour

100ml milk

100ml water

1 tbsp granulated sugar

1 pinch of salt

80g butter

4 eggs (beaten)

A pot of double cream (whipped)

Raspberries
80g white chocolate
Some red food colouring

This recipe takes a while, so make sure you have plenty of time to faff about letting things cool and all that. A Bank Holiday, lazy Sunday afternoon or day off work would be excellent.

Step one: Sift your flower. We never usually bother with this bit when making other things, but thought it was worth the extra effort in this case.

Step two: Put your milk, water, sugar, salt and butter in a saucepan and then it will look something like this...

Step three: Bring this appetising looking mixture to the boil and then remove from the heat. Tip your flower into the hot liquid and then mix it with as much enthusiasm as you can muster until it forms a kind of thick batter/soggy dough. Put it back on a low heat for a minute or two to get rid of some of the moisture.

Step four: Put the mix in a bowl and leave to cool for a bit. We left our bowl on a windowsill to speed things up a little bit, and the unseasonably cold weather really helped us out here!

Step five: When the batter has cooled down a bit, start adding your egg, a little bit at a time so that the batter doesn't split. This bit will look a bit gross and you'll feel like you've completely ruined everything, but don't panic! Persevere and you'll get there. When everything's mixed in and in one large, smooth blob in the middle of your bowl you're ready to get piping!

Step six: Stuff the batter mixture into a piping bag and then pipe circles on to a baking tray with greaseproof paper on it. We used a cookie cutter as a guide for how big we needed to pipe our circles, but you could draw circles on the paper or just do it by eye. The recipe wasn't clear about how thick the circles needed to be, so we did them about 1cm thick. Probably?

Step seven: Put the tray in a pre-heated oven (About 160 degrees) for 10 minutes and then open your oven door slightly to let out some of the steam. Prop the oven door open a little by wedging a wooden spoon in the top and then bake for another half an hour or so (Thankfully our oven is broken and the door doesn't close properly anyway - this is the first time this has actually been an advantage).

Step eight: Poke a little hole in the bottom of your delicious looking buns (To let the steam out) and then leave them to cool on a cooling rack.

Step nine: Now, the recipe calls for creme patisserie here, but we just used whipped double cream because we're lazy like that. Also because whipped cream is amazing. Put the whipped cream (Or creme patisserie if you can be bothered) in a piping bag and then, using the little hole you made earlier, fill each one until you can feel it bulging. You don't want them to burst though, so don't go mad. Here you can see some cream poking out of our buns!

Step ten: Melt some white chocolate and mix in a little red food colouring to get a nice pink colour. Dribble over the top of the buns and leave to set a little while. Then dab some of the leftover whipped cream on the top of each bun. Use this as a glue to stick a raspberry on each of the choux buns. Voila, as the French say.

We were pretty chuffed with the finished results. Maybe being a French patisserie chef isn't as hard as it looks?

S

Dead Exciting

While we were in London last week we popped in to the British Library for their temporary exhibition 'Murder in the Library: An A-Z of Crime Fiction'. We are both fans of a good murder mystery, whether it's an Agatha Christie novel or Murder, She Wrote on the telly, so we were both pretty excited by everything on display.

A was for Agatha Christie, probably the most famous writer of crime fiction ever. She was knocking about during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, which was in the 20s and 30s. As well as her, you had Margery Allingham, Dorothy Sayers and Ngaio Marsh writing usually quite gentle murder mysteries involving upper and middle class English people poisoning and strangling each other. We watched a thing about Agatha Christie on telly the other night and it was saying how she'd worked as a pharmacy assistant. As a result she knew loads about poisons and things like that, so about half of the murderers in her stories use poison to kill their victims.

This is the kind of murder we can all enjoy. Sometimes not entirely plausible plots, posh people killing each other and a satisfactory conclusion where the perpetrator is apprehended and everyone goes home happy (unless they are dead). Now there seems to be a new trend in lighter crime fiction, though, that completely fascinates me. We're talking (usually) hobby themed mysteries!

If you look around Amazon, or your library, you will find loads of these things. For example, I am currently reading 'Fatally Frosted: A Donut Shop Mystery' which is part of the Donut Shop Mysteries series. It basically involves the owner of a donut shop being implicated in a murder and attempting to solve the mystery in order to clear their name. Here's the best bit though: after most chapters there's a recipe!

Similarly, on my list of books to read is 'A Crewel World: A Needlecraft Mystery'. From what I can tell, the plot of this consists of a woman attempting to juggle the stresses of owning a small business with solving a murder. Whatever your job or hobby, there is probably a murder mystery series to accompany it. There's Library Lover, DIY Home Renovation, Tea Shop and Cheese Shop mysteries (and plenty more). They all seem to work on the premise that as long you can come up with a good pun for the title, you can always think of a plot later.

When I'm looking for something a little grittier than 'Clobbered by Camembert: a Cheese Shop Mystery', I particularly enjoy reading Raymond Chandler novels. As a child I used to get too warm and then faint and it was the weirdest feeling ever - and not a feeling that seven-year-old me could describe very well. Chandler's famous character Philip Marlowe is always getting smacked upside the head, drugged or mistreated in a number of different ways. Chandler writes loads of really good passing out descriptions, probably because he drank too much and had quite a bit of experience of lapsing in and out of consciousness. Here's an example from 'The Little Sister':

A face swam towards me out of the darkness. I changed direction and started for the face. But it was too late in the afternoon. The sun was setting. It was getting dark rapidly. There was no face. There was no wall, no desk. Then there was no floor. Then there was nothing at all. I wasn't even there.

I could talk about Philip Marlowe getting knocked out all day, so I will leave it here before you all get so bored that you start thinking of ways to bump me off without anyone (amateur sleuth, private detective or professional cop included) being able to figure it out.

Like all good TV detective shows, I am going to summarise the contents of this blog post for added drama and to help out the less able members of the audience who might have forgotten what happened earlier. Imagine I'm Jessica Fletcher challenging a murderer or something like that. Okay? So, I would completely recommend going to the British Library exhibition - it is great. Also, we learnt that some crime fiction is rubbish in a good way and some is good in a good way. Thank you for your time.

Just one more thing! There's a new episode of Jonathan Creek on the telly on Easter Monday. Sadly it has Joanna Lumley in it, but it will still probably be flipping excellent.

Here follows a list of our favourite crime fiction/murder mystery telly programs and writers that we like. Do you agree with us? Comment below, ta!

Telly

Midsomer Murders

Murder, She Wrote

Poirot

Miss Marple

Jonathan Creek

Writers
Agatha Christie
Raymond Chandler
Ann Cleeves
James M Cain
Michael Chabon (Although he's not a crime writer per se, Yiddish Policemen's Union is great)

See yer!

S

Wool House

We spent this past weekend in London, enjoying all kinds of capital city fun. The main reason for us venturing down to London was because Grimsby Town had somehow managed to get into the FA Trophy Final and were playing Wrexham at Wembley (Spoiler alert: they lost). However, as excited as Steve was to go and see the football, I couldn't find it in me to go and sit in the cold and snow for 90 minutes. 

I made my own plans instead, which meant that I got to spend the whole of Sunday with two of my favourite people, Sarah and Toby, who live in that London. We decided to go and see the Wool House exhibition at Somerset House. The Wool House is part of the Campaign for Wool, which aims to promote real wool as the superior natural and sustainable fibre for fashion, interior and the environment. 

The exhibition was set out as a collection of very different themed rooms from a house, with the common aspect of using as much wool as possible. Different designers had been allocated their own room and brief. My favourite room in the exhibition would have to be the Nursery by Donna Wilson, but that was to be expected as I am completely in love with all of her work and would love to have a house full of Donna Wilson products! My favourite pieces in the room would have to be the large knitted cloud and rain drops hanging from the ceiling in the centre of the room because I am into all things cloud related at the moment. 

My close second favourite room would have to be the Natural Room by Josephine Ryan, who is an antique dealer, interior designer and writer. This room had shelves full of the most beautiful woollen throws and blankets made from all different kinds of wool. There was an awful lot detail to see and she had clearly showcased a wide range of woollen products that normal people could own! It was all very inspiring.

Along with the interiors of the rooms, there was also an area in the exhibition to highlight the use of wool in fashion, showcasing the Savile Row Bespoke Association, who aim to protect and develop Savile Row's reputation for being the home of the best bespoke tailoring. In this area there was work from Dashing Tweeds, one of my favourite weave companies, who use a whole range of British mills and workshops to produce high quality woven stuff.

The whole exhibition was fantastic and it really showcased the brilliance of wool and how it can be used in so many ways. I am a firm believer that you can’t beat good quality woollen products and I hope everyone else who visited the exhibition left feeling the same way.

L

x

Sheffield Zine Fest

Two blog posts in one day! Woof! Yesterday we went to Sheffield Zine Fest where we were sharing a table with the ever brilliant Stef Bradley, who now has hand drawn tote bags as well as her super cool comics! If you don't believe me, here, look for yourself:

Just in case you didn't catch the significance in the last paragraph, I will repeat it for emphasis: these tote bags are HAND DRAWN. I can't even begin to fathom how long it must have taken to do that. Stef had loads of them, too, each featuring a different image from her dead good comics. The pollution bogey one is my favourite.

We had a lovely day and it was great to meet all the tablers (this is a term I had never heard of before until yesterday) and visitors and stuff. We even got to have a chat with local indie pop celebrity tonieee from Plouf! and the Parallelograms. We were particularly lucky to have a table next to the supremely talented Jenna Lee Alldread. It is unreal how much good stuff (Etsy link!) she has. Here's my favourite illustration that I could find on her Tumblr (I like illustrations of houses):

We were selling some new things on the stall, too, including some pretty nifty little ladybird brooches and a newly designed little bear that you can now buy on Etsy too!

The event was extremely well organised and we were made to feel very welcome by Chella and Bettie. I think there was talk of there being another zine fest in June some time, so hopefully we will be able to go back and do it again! Here follows a dump of photos from Liz's phone that were taken at the zine fest. They are: 1- our stall! 2- me and Stef! 3- Jenna and her stall!

1

2

3

Bye!

S