Ski Sunday

Oakley's Crowbar goggles looked to be the coolest shades in Snow and Rock the other day, but were a tad pricey. So I went for a slightly cheaper verison which has a similar lens, if not the ultra-cool carbon fibre look I wanted.
Off skiing tomorrow in La Tania, so 'blog will be dead for a while (as if anyone actually reads this stuff anyway...)

Categories: Gear

T-shirt round up

Still no word from preshrunk as to when they're relaunching with the new design. In the meantime, here's a musubi from Moongirl.com. I'm not sure if it's meant to be a sort of penguin but whatever it is, it's as cute as a bag of kittens...
It's been a good week for the boys too, with a few good T-shirts available from Hardboiled Inc, including this Wolf shirt (I prefer it in Asphalt, but there we are).

The latter is priced at £16.95...

Categories: Style, Fun

Fluffy filo

The guys over at GIANTmicrobes have a groovy range of plush toys in the shape of various nasties, including Ebola, Giardia and Mad Cow...
Available in the UK for about £6.95 each, they'll make the ideal gift for Valentine's Day for your doctor / virologist / microbiologist / travelling friends...
I'm still not convinced about their selection - it'd be nice to see a pair of Schistosomes, for example. And you can never have too many malaria plasmodia...

Category: Life

Fancy an old master?

Christies is having a sale of Old Masters tomorrow in the Rockefeller Plaza, New York, and although I'd love to place a bid or two, I really don't hink I can afford it at the moment. The Michelangelo (pictured) doesn't even have an estimate (it's available on request), but pre-sales hype is already running at fever pitch with estimates ranging from $2m to $4m.
Of course, there are plenty of other beautiful drawings in the catalogue, including a large number of Pissarro's drawings, and this slightly miscatalogued drawing of a peasant family observing a dog chasing chickens before a farmouse / ship [delete as appropriate].

Categories: Art

The perfect shirt?

I've mentioned Thomas Mahon (bespoke tailor) before, and was interested to read about his proposed new line of English Cut shirts. While bespoke clothing is probably going to remain out of my price range for the foreseeable future, he also mentions a few other shirtmakers, namely Coles, Turnbull & Asser and Budd of Piccadilly.
I must admit that I normally buy shirts from Charles Thrwhitt, and am particularly fond of their non-iron shirts (ideal for travelling) and their Superfine 180s which are fantastically comfortable.
However, following Thomas' recommendation, I've just ordered a blue herringbone shirt from Coles with a cut-away collar, a navy and orange spotted tie, and some orange / navy silk knotted cufflinks.
It may be a departure from my normal "style", but this is 2006, after all...

Categories: Style

London Art Fair

We got free tickets to the opening night of the London Art Fair last night, as the Business Design Centre in Islington, North London, from City am. There were some amazing pieces on display from some of London's top art galleries:

From the last century the Fair encompasses Modern British artists such as L S Lowry, Ben Nicholson and William Scott through to Terry Frost and Henry Moore. Contemporary work bridges Peter Blake, Bridget Riley and Anish Kapoor to Gavin Turk, Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread.

But the overall effect was slightly disappointing, with none of th quirkiness that other Art Fairs, such as the Olympia Fine Arts & Antiques Fair, seem to have. Of course, it might actually have been due to the fact that I couldn't afford to buy anything at the fair which put me off a bit...

Categories: Art

More raku

Antonia Salmon specialises in smoke-fired ceramic and bronze sculpture. She's been working in Sheffield for over 20 years and has exhibited widely.
The piece on the left is called Mollusc, and is available from Paddon and Paddon in Eastbourne, or online at Studio Pottery.
Keen-eyed readers will no doubt notice the slight similarity between this piece, and other piece about which I recently 'blogged by Helen Rondell. The more I see of these works, the more I want to understand the techniques that are used... and maybe even learn how to throw (and fire) a pot.

Categories: Art

You too can OwnArt

The Arts Council is expanding its OwnArt initiative into London from January this year. The scheme aims to encourage the public to buy art by offering interest free loans to cover the price of purchase.

The Own Art scheme is designed to make it easy and affordable for everyone to buy contemporary works of art and craft including paintings, photography, sculpture, glassware and furniture.
You can borrow up to £2,000, or as little as £100, and pay back the loan in 10 monthly instalments - interest free*. The scheme is available through a network of over 250 participating venues across the country.
Arts Council England aims to put the arts at the heart of national life. One of the ways we do this is to encourage people to live with art they love. We also want to help artists live by their creative output and support galleries who sell high quality contemporary art.

I must admit that I'd never heard of the initative before - but will be looking into it closely as more new galleries sign up.

Categories: Art, Life

You can't make an Omlet...

Omlet is a company which provides the opportunity for ordinary, non-farming-types to own a chicken or two... and therefore to get freshly laid eggs every day (or as often as the little hens can lay them I suppose). The Eglu is "a coop for the 21st century, featuring spacious open plan living for 2 - 4 medium size chickens or up to 5 bantams, it is a stylish and practical addition to any garden. Designed to be comfortable for the chickens and effortless for you, the eglu makes keeping chickens rewarding and fun."
Sounds ideal. I just hope Haringey Council will let me have one...

Categories: Life, Gear

Off the cuff...

Let's get this out in the open. I'm a snob. There. Said it. So I tend to buy clothes from retailers other than Marks & Spencers, BHS or the like. However, there comes a time when even a snob like me has to admit that things appear to be changing at M&S.
While their business performance might not be stellar, their newish Collezione and Luxury ranges contain a few stars. Before Christmas I bought a rather nice 100% cashmere v-necked jumper for under £70, and have recently been admiring their new suits.
Cream of the crop would appear to be this three-button single breasted affair in a charcoal stripe. It's not cheap (jacket £220.00 and trousers £129.00) and there appears to be no stock left online, but the details look good, and it might even fool your boss.

By the way, if you ever want good tailoring advice, read the English Cut. Thomas's blog is fantastic, and even includes an article on what to do if you really can only afford a couple of hundred quid on a suit...

Categories: Style

A Place to...

Kevin McCloud is best known for presenting Channel 4's Grand Designs. But he's also set up a website, Place, which

"brings great design back to earth: giving you an easy, affordable way to enrich your personal space with brilliantly designed, beautiful objects."

Place is cuurently on sale and the pick of the bunch for me so far, are the rather haunting ceramic platters and vases from Contra (see picture) and the achingly beautiful and equally expensive Tangleweb platter (below) by Timea Sido.

The latter is a limited edition piece and retails at £250 (not reduced in the sale), while the Contra bowls (also designed by Sido) range from a more affordable £7.50 to £15.00

Categories: Life, Style

Shurely not...

As some of you may remember, I went a little dolally over the summer, and spent a ludicrous amount of money on some Shure e4c earphones.
At the CES this week, Shure launched their new e500 range, which promises a "new paradigm" in personal listening. The earphones have a "push to hear" option, which allows them to switch from noise-cancelling to act as a microphone, muting the sound and allowing wearers to interact with the outside world...
It's a great idea, as the noise cancelling aspects of the Shure range can be a little isolating at times.
They'll apparently be available in May 2006 and will retail for a little under $500...

Categories: Gear, Music

Dem bones...

On the way back from the station the other day, I was pleasantly surprised to see a cyclist wearing a rather cool top - the Foska Bones Training Jacket.
Not only is it highly reflective, but it's also highly individual. And might be a useful guide for the Accident and Emergency crew who are first on hand to crack your ribs open to give you cardiac massage when you get knocked off your bike by a passing car / taxi (or to allow the coroner to put the pieces back together in the right order...)

Categories: Gear

A Bridge too far?

I currently use a Canon S60 (a replacement for the S50 which was stolen last year). It's a pretty good, 5mp digicam, with a 3.6x optical zoom and enough manual freedom to be able to do the majority of the things I want. In addition, there's a very reasonably priced underwater housing (the WPC-40) which performs well underwater, especially in the crystal clear, well-lit waters of the Indian Ocean [now if I could just stop re-formatting the memory cards before I've transferred them to my computer...]

However, I'm increasingly finding that I'm not able to get enough control over the depth of field, nor able to force it to focus on the desired subject. It's great for point-and-shoot, but...
So, being a gadetty sort of guy, I was very interested in the release of Sony's new(ish) DSC R1 - a "bridge" camera, somewhere between a digital SLR and a point-and-shoot. Plus, it's pretty cool to look at...
To quote from the fantastic DPReview.com:

However it's not the body design which makes this camera unique (many have copied the DSC-D700), it is the camera's sensor and lens. This is the first all-in-one digital camera to utilize a large (APS size) sensor, to be precise a 10.3 megapixel CMOS unit measuring 21.5 x 14.4 mm which is essentially a slightly smaller version of the sensor used in the Nikon D2X. It's also the first APS size sensor to provide full time live preview to the camera's LCD monitor or EVF (electronic viewfinder). This means that there's no mirror box or prism making the camera more compact and allowing the lens to be positioned much closer to the sensor. Equally as important and interesting is the lens which provides a 24 - 120 mm (equivalent) five times zoom with a maximum aperture of F2.8 - F4.8.

Worth the £550? Maybe... just maybe...

Categories: Gear