Introducing: My Crafternoons! Craft Workshops in Hamilton, Victoria

I'm excited to announce the reason for my relative silence recently: I've been busy setting up a new website and small business/hobby: My Crafternoons!

Since moving out to rural Victoria to be with my sheep farmer beau, I've had to have a bit of a life re-organisation, not to mention learn some new skills (who knew the ability to light fires and muster sheep would become so essential!)

To make more friends, make some money and also do something fun and positive in the local community, I've come up with the idea of running monthly craft workshops in my local town: Hamilton.

In order to shout about this... picture me yelling from the mountains; "HOLLA! IT'S CRAFT TIME!"... in a less weird, more efficient way, I built a website using Wix.com.

I'd recommend using the templates on sites like this but add your own flair through fonts, images, backgrounds and layouts. In order to change the website address from wix.com/blahblah to www.mycrafternoons.com, you have to upgrade the site, the most basic domain-hosting only package starting at around $5 a month. If you're going to be selling something through the website, you need an eCommerce package, which is around $17/month.

I'll be using my site more like a blog and info portal for anyone keen to come to the workshops, which will be held one Sunday arvo per month (for the time being).

As for venue, there are a few places in Hamilton I've been considering. Do I choose the cool Roxburgh cafe with upstairs function hire rooms, the new HIRL art shop opening in a few weeks time, or the practical but non-trendy Community House? Perhaps I could rotate it until I find the cosy crafty home of future workshops, or until one day I can afford my own crafty tea house, complete with all my favourite British confectionary from back home- ah to dream!

Tunnock's Teacakes would feature heavily in my dream British Tea Shop!

My Crafternoons will be keeping me busy over the coming months; finishing the website, planning workshops, ordering supplies, costing materials, building Facebook and Pinterest followings- oh and actually practicing making the things I'd like to make!

This is all alongside my two other jobs- teaching dance classes and soon doing some freelance work for an online language learning tool (more on that later).

Wish me luck!

5.5 Points of Procrastination

So now I've handed in my dissertation (halle-freakin-lujah!) I have time to publicly procrastinate!

1) TOWIE (You should know what this is, if you don't, click here, you are missing out) is so unbelievably crap, yet is as addictive as Maltesers, if not more! One of the 'hunks' of the show, if you could call them that, is Kirk Norcross, who I've discovered features in a random music video, shirtless and mute, looking like a bit of a spare part, which you can watch HERE. I've got to admit, he does have a bit of a sexy smouldering thing going on here, but the singer (NY apparently) has some crazy schizophrenic hair going on which reminds me of the hilarious new Boots advert (watch it here).

2) Royal Wedding FEVER was wonderful, wasn't it? I attended a fab street party and helped decorate the lovely cakes below... (I did the cool ones by the way, the 'bejeweled' ones were my friends' creations!). Many glasses of Pimms and much BBQ food later, we came to the conclusion that Harry is much hotter than Wills, Kate's sister Pippa has a peachy bottom but is not prettier than Kate, and Princesses Beatrice and Eugene looked ridiculous. Also, hurrah to two kisses on the balcony, and to lip-readers interpretations of the Big Day Banter!

I only ate four of these I swear...

3) Someone please buy me these Jeffrey Campbell shoes? They're only £95, but alas! My meagre student budget must be spent of food/alcohol/train tickets instead. They're tapestry but I promise I won't ruin them?

In the style of Homer drooling over donuts... Mmmm... Shoooes...

4) HOW COOL is this wash basin (now there's a sentence I've never said before...)

5) Kind of like guerrilla gardening, but different and less messy; public embroidery. A nice idea, special if you see it or are involved in it, probably isn't going to change the world but nevertheless, I like it.

And finally, it was only a matter of time before even entry stamps at clubs and such places started trying to sell you stuff. I think having them printed in lickable ink would be just swell!

Rihanna's 'S&M' video... risque or OK?

So Rihanna's new viedo is stirring up something of a controversy... it's already been banned in 11 countries... but I don't see what all the fuss is about?

The song's called 'S & M' so obiously the video wasn't gonna be all rainbows and my little pony, but I think the creative director of the video could have upped the kink factor much more and really caused a stir if they'd wanted to!

The video is making a statement, but I think it's more about the pornification of culture on the whole and the bondage effect the media have on celebrities and public perception, rather than Rihanna just wanting to be a little Jezebel!

Watch the video HERE and make what you will of it!

Note: Look out for Perez Hilton lolling around as a human dog- classic!

An article I wrote for my student newspaper...

I recently carried out a linguistic study as part of my degree, in which I alanysed the language use in two similar news articles.

The were both about a bill in Utah that proposes to ban 'intentional miscarriages'.

It spawned me to write this Article (scroll to page 23) which got printed in the Birmingham University student newspaper; Redbrick.