Dianne Tanner

All of the books on my 'to read' pile are blue.

Total Babe.
[S&C]

I day-dream of quitting the rat race and farming reindeer fairly regularly, actually.

I took these photos on Christmas Day 2009. Finsbury Park boating lake was frozen over and everyone was feeding the ice skating geese. I shot on film more then.

Can anyone recommend a not overpriced place I can get a camera fixed in London please?

Books, Coffee, Planning, Tattoos, Trips to the Natural History Museum, and a beautiful cabbage.

In a past life I was a bookseller. I feel at home in bookstores, I can't walk past one without popping in and having a nosey, I habitually reorganise and tidy shelves while browsing as if its some kind of default setting.

So, unsurprisingly, I leapt with joy at this compilation of the worlds most beautiful bookshops when Debbie posted it on Facebook earlier today.

I miss being a bookseller sometimes. I do not miss that one customer every day who would ask for the blue book with the white writing on the cover. Every. Day. 

Who is your favourite dinosaur? (mine is Triceratops)

Blood Oranges.
Where have you been all of my life.

I'm one of those weird people that isn't religious at all but really loves churchs and chapels. I find them beautiful, peaceful spaces and generally find any space in which people spend time believing in whatever the believe in quite a beautiful thing.

The chapel at the Royal Naval College is a beautiful space. Obvious seafaring related connotations aside, its a simple quiet space that I enjoyed taking a few moments respite from the cold in when I visited last weekend. The monument to the men of Erebus and Terror upon entry hold obvious relevance, those great ships and their men remembered in some epic stone sculpture is happening right there you guys.

Some beautiful photos on display at Proud Chelsea at the moment - Ragnar Axelsson's Last Days of the Arctic. These don't do the exhibition justice - I recomend it if you are nearby.  While I am genuinely upset by the site of dead Narwhals in kayaks, I am nevertheless endlessly in love with the people of the Arctic.
(couple of cheeky instagrams I took)

Betweeen this and the book I'm reading at the moment (Sarah Wheeler's 'Terra Incognita' since you asked) I have have started 2012 with a strange feeling which I think is generally described as 'wanderlust'.

Lauren and I got to check out the new Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum this weekend. While everyone else oohed and ahhed over the fancy ship plan viewer and some nice old books they got out for us, we made full use of the Cook and Antarctic sections of the books they have out for every-day use and totally nerded out.
Ooh look a colour co-ordinated shelf of books about Antarctica that isn't in my house!

Dark Times at the Royal Naval College.

I know, I know. I have blogged about this before. But I really do love the ornithology section of the Natural History Museum, and can't stop myself taking photographs of these guys everytime I visit. Its like visiting old friends at this point.

I was lucky enough to be invited to spend Pole Day morning checking out Scott's Last Expedition - the new Exhibition opening on Friday at the Natural History Museum here in London. If you follow me on the twitter you will know I've been waiting for it for ages so was obviously chomping at the bit for this one.

Its well good you guys. The exhibit is laid out in roughly the shape of the Expeditions winter quarters at Cape Evans, which gave a wonderful sense of scale that's generally lost when looking at pictures or reading about the cramped close quarters they all lived in. Frankly, it made me realised, potentially not that cramped? The biggest revelation was that old Ponco had a darkroom bigger than my kitchen! I was a little disappointed that it wasn't heaving with pieces from the hut like I had pictured in my mind (I think I may have been harking back to my trips to Kelly Tarlton's as a wayward 10 year old back in New Zealand where they have an excellent replica of the hut that you can visit) but the huge blown up Ponting photos of life in the hut were fantastic - I noticed all kinds of things I'd never noticed before (Cherry stashing chocolate under his bed?!) when looking at them on a smaller scale.

The highlights for me were of course Cherry's egg, lit up like the holy grail, a tiny NZ flag that Dr Wilson flew at the pole and Levick's Adelie notebook

(and the giant blown up photograph of my favourite picture of the dreamy Dr Aitch on the wall obviously)

We also spent a while marvelling at Scott's tiny waist and admiring his broad shoulders. I mean, epaulettes.

I also think I am dangerously close to getting the emblem on Scott's sledging flag tattooed upon my person on Friday? Its amazing!
Great pieces for avid fans and a fantastic introduction for people who aren't familiar with anything that happened in the South Pole 100 years ago at all. Its only £9 to get in which is reasonable and totally worth every penny.

Fantastic exhibition and well worth checking out. I know I'm biased, but it really is, I'm going again on Friday!

[more pictures // buy tickets]

[sources]

Do you know, I'm enjoying getting older. It seems like a strange thing to suddenly realise at 2:45pm on a wintery Sunday, but its true, I really am. I'm enjoying finding that I enjoy silly little things like cooking epic meals and reading my book at home instead of trying to 'go out' and 'do things'. I'm enjoying having a stressful day job that takes it out of me during the week (but I must find satisfying because I find myself unconciously working on Saturday mornings) and balancing this with nice weekends. I was thinking about this and realised it must be part of getting older, and I'm enjoying it.

I love weekends, famously. Often we joke that having no day job would be vastly superior because we could do what we want, all of the time, but right now I am enjoying the balance I have in life of working hard in the week, and enjoying what weekend time I have to live my life. I think the balance is important. If I won lottery tomorrow and quit my job I would be bored, all of the time. I wouldn't love weekends anymore because I wouldn't have them. Right?

This weekend I went on an epic walk around Alexandra Park with Suzi and shot a roll of 35mm. I finally got boyfriend to come down to the garden centre to help me choose herbs for our up until now empty window box, baked soda bread and made an incredible lentil spread. You can find the recipe for the spread over here at A Merry Mishap. I adapted it slightly, using walnuts instead of almonds (because I had them in!) and adding lemon juice at the end. Also please note that 1 cup of cooked lentils is NOT the same as 1 cup of lentils, cooked - we're going to be eating this until the cows come home, I now have several jars of the stuff. Its especially good on the aformentioned soda bread with tomatoes tossed in olive oil and parmesan cheese with some watercress and lots of salt & pepper.

I wandered through the churchyard this lovely frosty morning. Everyone I walked past said hello as they walked their dogs, happy to see winter finally arrive. It was bright, crisp, and beautiful.

Lots of new bits hitting the store in the next week... keep your eyes peeled.

I miss these guys. We should play more.

I'm going to be a bit frank here.

I never have any luck at craft fairs. I did a whole bunch of them in 2011 and I can only think of one or two that went really well. I generally really enjoy myself, its a great place to meet people and hang out having a chat, particularly when I team up with the wife so I have company, but I am always a bit gutted afterwards when they really, do not go as well as I had hoped.
I feel strange admitting that here, because it feels like you are supposed to always be positive about this kind of thing and put up some kind of 'gung ho' happiness front at times when it comes to being an 'Etsy' type. I try and look on the bright side, and hey yeah I have a good time. But I feel like I spend days before the event making stock, planning table layouts (I missed my calling as a shop merchandiser, by the way) and promoting the event online - it takes a lot more effort then just sitting about all day waiting for people to come in. And then you get there, and its nice and you meet some nice people, but you struggle to make back the cost of the table and about 50% of the people are a bit up their own arses (thats the frank talking) and hard to talk to. One event in particular a woman actually recoiled in horror when I just said hello to her (Stoke Newington dare I say it) - totally unessecary when you just want to have a chat and be - god forbid - polite.
I think going forward I might cut back the amount of craft fairs I take part in, for my own sanity, and focus my energy on promoting my store online. 2011 saw Dear oh Deer come along in leaps and bounds online, and I plan to carry that over in 2012. I think I'll keep doing the odd local craft fair here and there, but for the most part. I am just not sure they are for me. I never feel like my stock "fits in". Maybe I don't put enough brass bird charms or teapots on my necklaces, but I'm not ready to compromise my work just to try and be 'on trend' make a few bob.
In saying all of that I had a really nice day at WonderHill just before Christmas, met lots of lovely people and did some trades for knitwear! WonderHill is a really great market and KiKi does such a great job with it, I'll definitley be back for more Wonder!
[more photos]

This morning I've mostly been planning what Scott & Co Centenary events I'm going to pop along to this year. There are so many great ones I thought I'd share with you my highlights.

THESE ROUGH NOTES @ Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge.
I've already been to this one and its unmissable. Great collection from the SPRI archives, diaries, notes, photographs.


SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION @ Natural History Museum - 20th Jan - 2nd Sept.
This is going to be immense. I have tickets for 10am on opening day, oh yes.

WITH SCOTT TO THE POLE @ Royal Geographical Society - 16th Jan - 30th March
Bit annoyed this is only open Mon - Fri (why!!) so I'll have to take a day off work, but on 27th Feb there is a lecture with Dr Wilson's Great-Nephew on his book The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott, so I'm going to make it worth while and go to that I think.

CONQUERING THE ANTARCTIC - 3rd March @ Cadogan Hall
Alas Ben Fogle is no longer going to be reading at this (the man on the phone was VERY sad to about this) but a nice evening of music, images and readings are in store. Fnarr!

I'm sure there will be any number of other little events popping up along the way - although I'm a bit vexed that they seem to think that the only people who might be interested don't have day jobs as a lot of the lectures I'd like to go to are during weekdays - I guess they think only retired folk are interested? I wish I was retired, sigh. I really want to get tickets to the memorial at St Pauls but I can't seem to work out how one acquires tickets. If anyone knows, do let me know.

Check out www.scott.100.org for more events all over the world that are happening.

Things I love about Dinosaur Toes:
1. Flamingo Pink Feather Earrings - I have been pining over these for-everrr
2. Dinosaur. Toes. Its a shop called Dinosaur Toes after a parrot whose toes are like those of a dinosaur!
3. Danielle and I have the same surname and everytime she tweets I'm like 'WORD SISTER'
4. Everything.

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