More cafepress stuff

Following some great feedback from folks about birdinabox, I've also opened oiseauxmignons - a kind of french birdinabox, and sunflowergems with a smaller number of cracking images. Links are also under my profile photo on the right. Some sheep stuff to come soon.

Birdinabox

I've been producing little (mostly) square cartoons that I've referred to as birdinabox for a while now. Al started by having some redundant business cards that I'd cut the address off after I moved, combined with an idle afternoon making finger blobs with my daughter. A set of them is on my flickr pages. Now I've just started to make them available through a cafepress shop too. Have a look. Let me know what you think. There are more images and more formats for other products to come.

More on sustainable consumerism

Some very interesting ideas, but ...

Mole hills at minus 7

The chilly start this morning didn't encourage me to leap out into the great outdoors, and indeed quashed my plans to hit the trails on the mountain bike. But it did have one unexpected benefit, which is that the mole hills stick together in convenient lumps, making it much easier to pick up and move. Half an hour of pottering about like that and I'm back indoors for a hot lunch in front of the log fire with a tolerable sense of merit.

Winter Fields

A recent posting to my flickr photos.

Local singular art

Well, it's not (very) local, and 'singulier' doesn't usefully translate as singular; but never mind all that, here's a couple of links that were available at the opening just now. What do you think?

Evelyne Postic

Bernard le NeN

And Galerie La Rage

the facebook phenomenon

Twitter, facebook, myspace etc. etc. etc. What's it all about? This struck me as one answer from
quotesoftheday " The easiest kind of relationship is with ten thousand people, the hardest is with one." -Baez, Joan

Perspective

If you have food in the fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep... you are richer than 75% of the world's population.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, or spare change in a dish someplace... you are among the wealthiest 8% of the world's population.

If you woke up with more health than illness... you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week...

Source unknown, via Evelyn Rodriguez

More photos from the woods

In the woods

After a heavy weekend with my better half's family it's taken a couple of days to repay the sleep overdraft, but a good blast on the mountain bike and exploring on foot got rid of a few more cobwebs just before lunch. There's a ruined abandoned hamlet in the woods that i went to have another look at with fewer leaves on the trees. The owner might be persuaded to sell, but I wasn't sure about its siting on the hill when I first found it this summer, so I went for another look. It would need a lot of plantation trees cut down around it, but after that it could sit quite nicely, although it would get little morning sun.

Later on I passed a track that I seemed to remember headed down to a ruined mill complex alongside the Doulon. I was a bit out in my mental map, but found it anyway. It's more complex and fascinating than I first thought, and seems to have several layers of development and the remains of a small footbridge, maybe big enough for a horse but not a cart. I don't know what information I can find out about it (or water mills generally) locally or on the web. Worth a try. It reminds me of neighbours who have built their own house having failed to find a water mill in anything like restorable condition. It would be ambitious, but ...