CROSS STITCHING: Angel of the North

So I thought I'd end the week on a crafty note, seeing the weekend is right upon us. You would think having stitched for so long (it's going on twenty plus years) I might have turned my hand to designing, messing around and creating my own patterns, but in, fact aside from stitching this blackstitch sampler, I never have. While I'm more then happy at adjusting colors and picking out my own threads, changing fabrics to backing and framing my own pieces, the thought of designing I felt was always beyond me.

But with stitching both the Mackinac and Forty Mile Point Michigan lighthouses, I thought there needed to be a bit of more English input. While it's pretty easy to find charts featuring American places, British ones are a little trickier. Over a couple of days I played around a lot of websites where you can upload your photographs and they'll chart out a cross stitch version you can stitch you can alter how many colours, the style, it's kind of addictive seeing all your photographs stitching. The result now being I have a couple of Yorkshire lighthouses all charted out and ready to roll. 

Rather than throwing myself fully into the deep end I thought a test run with a much smaller and simpler pattern would be in order. So I came up with this little 3"ish Angel of the North design - it's pretty simplistic, but I like the result. It's certainly given me the confidence to mess around and design my own - working out a design around VW bugs will be how I'm spending this weekend!



Why the Angel of the North? Well heading back to Newcastle for the four years I lived there, seeing the Angel as we passed by on the train, I always knew my Geordie home was close, it always was my homing beacon.

Have you every designed anything crafty yourself? 

LIFE: Newcastle and My One University Regret

Eight years ago this week my life was packed into a car and I headed north to spend the next four years as a student at Newcastle University. Coming from a rural, back end of beyond kind of childhood, moving to the city was a big deal - it was exciting, a new start and certainly changed me for the better in many ways. Newcastle was really the only city, and only university I ever wanted to study at mainly due to family history of the north east, the culture and just loving the city in general. While I don't regret much in life and hindsight in a marvelous thing, but there is one thing I regret that I didn't do more of while in Newcastle - nope not the hangovers, missing seminars or cheap drinks, it was not making myself find the time to explore the city and the region more. 

If you've been reading this blog for a while you'll know I love exploring my local area - be it around my hometown, York, Yorkshire and now Detroit and Michigan. This love for exploration in my locality only really started once I really got into taking photographs and more so through blogging. As I only started blogging in the last couple of months of completing my Masters in 2009, Newcastle and blogging never really crossed each other and I often wish it had. 

View towards the Tyne Bridge when the Tuxedo Princess floating nightclub (a hot spot for students on a Monday nights) with it's revolving dance floor but horrid smell of vomit - it closed in 2008 and by 2011 was sinking in the River Tees. The Monument which they decorated in the Toon colours.

I have no real excuse - after the fun of freshers I became a bit of a geek. Through being the first in my family, being working class and receiving a fair few bursaries and funding to even go to university I felt I had to prove myself and my worth at even being there, so I became a book worm and I'd feel guilty when I wasn't reading and researching. In hindsight I wish i'd taken then time at weekends to hop on the metro - visited Tynemouth and Whitley Bay, popped down to Wallsend to visit the eastern end of Hadrain's Wall to actually visiting the castle in Newcastle rather then merely walk pass it a couple of times. I somewhat kick myself when I think how Newcastle would have been a great base to pop up north to Edinburgh or Durham on the train. Oh hindsight how marvelous you are! Granted I often visited the Laing and the Baltic art galleries, but I could of done more, I wish i'd of breathed in more of the history, the life of Newcastle.

Granted I did go and visit things and many of my favorites include;

• Quayside Market - Sundays 9.30 am - 4 pm along the River Tyne under the Tyne Bridge
• Hancock Museum 
• Laing Art Gallery
• Jesmond Dene 
• Grainger Market - great fruit and veg stalls
• Walk along Gray Street - often voted as one of the finest streets in Britain
• Baltic Art Gallery
• The Sage Gateshead - even if your not seeing a music concert there, just going inside is awesome!
• Severn Stories - over in Ouseburn valley is the National Center for Children's Books, they often have some great meet and greets with authors there. 
• Heaton Park and it's castle
• St James' Park - a must if you're a football fan, our freshers flat had a view looking out to the stadium on one side. 

While i'm proud of my Geordie family roots and of being alumni of Newcastle University, I sadly took the city for granted, it was only a little over an hour on the train from York and I had imagined living and working there after university so exploring was always put off for another day. But as I have learnt all too well, life doesn't always work out how you ever dreamed it might and still I miss that city. 

The view from my attic bedroom window in my fourth year in looking south towards Byker. I spent three years after living in Newcastle itself living in Heaton. I miss a view of hills! 

So forgive me if I rattle on about Detroit or Michigan too much, i'm just documenting the places for myself to remember everything on my doorstep before life changes again. Reflecting and remembering my university city certainly makes me see that any place - a village to a city, even a country should never be taken for granted, it needs to be explored, enjoyed and lived in.

Did you explore your university city much? Where did you go to university? And if you've ever been to Newcastle i'd love to hear your favorite places to visit!

Insideout

As an ex gradate of Newcastle University I get their Arches publication which gives you a random round up of old more successful graduates then myself. In this years summer addition in a tiny paragraph in the book section a photographical documentary is reviewed. Insideout: the Bigg Market is Pierfrancesco Celda's photographic encounter of one of Newcastles nortious drinking and party areas. Captured across three years whilst undertaking a PhD, Celda describes his project about the frality of the human condition;

The Bigg Market is a small area in Newcastle city centre that comes alive at weekends. Here, people from all around the country, gather together to organise hen, stag and birthday parties. The project soon became an interesting way to analyse how I personally perceive and visualise the idea of "socialisation” and "entertainment”.Sometimes entertaining ourselves is a necessity. It is a mechanism used to try to forget the complications of daily routine, especially during the last few years of financial difficulty.

To me, after spending four years in the city it captures the party heart of Newcastle, while it may capture the sterotypical imagery of wearing hardly anything when it's snowing, kissing with strangers, throwing up, getting lost, partying hard - half of that makes Newcastle memorable for what it is. But what I love more is being able to see the city through someone elses eyes.

You can see more about the book on Celds's website and on the assocated facebook page.

Memories

Last week I read an interesting post on Melanie's blog about accumulating general stuff and what you could possibly do with it. This "stuff" is the items that make up the memories of your life - the tickets, cards and letters we might happen to keep in memory of your past. I started properly collecting/hoarding when I started university in 2005. In my first year room in halls I covered my pin board, then for the rest of university experience the walls or attic ceilings with gig tickets, club adverts, train tickets and cards recording my memories week by week. When I moved home I shoved everything into two huge boxes and left it at that. Now, with planning on moving the time came to think what should I do with it all. They were importance each once to warrant being shown and then being kept, they were my happy times, do they warrant enough important to move with me?

This sums up my memory box and all it is, is a sample peek inside. It's mostly filled with gig tickets, cinema stubs, train tickets, photographs - often spare passport or identity ones, old birthday cards, letters, postcards and newspaper clippings some of which I wrote myself when I did work experience at my local newspaper.

When I was 4 we were all asked to draw a picture of our face at school. These faces from the entire school were complied and transferred onto a tea towel to go on sale to our families. The towel my parents brought they actually used but my gran kept hers in mint condition and I grabbed it after she died. I can remember sitting down and being asked to draw my face - I also did it wrong and drew more then one version of me. I've never done well listening to instructions!

And this is just a sample of me from my old senior school tie - a delightful green and yellow the cottons of which I use to sit and pull out. Once more its filled with old photographs from me giggling in my paddling pool, to a photograph from one Christmas with me wearing a natural mass of curls, to my adventures being blonde and my BA graduation photograph. I guess you can still see Newcastle and University still means a lot to me - it does its just a shame I seem to have wasted both of my degrees currently.

I'm still not overly sure what i'm doing with them all, most of the photographs, university things and gig tickets will be moving with me. I've thrown them all into my "I heart KR" [as in Krakow] bag and i'll throw that into my suitcase. I was contemplating doing a scrapbook but I don't have the attention span to pull it off and the idea of sticking them all down and trapping them doesn't appeal. I have an wanting to find an old suitcase and make that mine and Joe's memory case - morph our individual collections from our childhood and add to the memories already complied there with our joint ones as we start out life together. 

Image from Weheatit

What do you all do with your old things?

Brb

As of tomorrow I shall be MIA from blogger a while. It's a shame really after getting totally back into blogging and refinding old blogs and meeting new people but the boy's over for our holidays and we're off away. Luckily we have a night in Newcastle sorted and a whole week in Edinburgh to enjoy and be like a normal couple for once. We have six months of coupley things to catch on and I can't wait!

Fingers crossed for the weather and i'll update you with numerous pictures when i'm back! There are some compact, happy list posts scheduled just to keep this alive.

See you all very soon x

The only difference ...

I must have been driven past this tattooist numerous times but never noticed its signs when its closed. The little notices of words makes it something different;

"The only difference between tattooed people & non-tattooed people is ... tattooed people don't care if your not tattooed".

Sadly its true, I've been subjected to continuous "why would you" questions about my tattoos. Sometimes I like to think tattoos are more expected, but then again maybe tattooed skin is too far from the norm to be ever properly accepted by the masses. It's too challenging, too out there in your face.

Who knows.

Graduation

Tuesday was my graduation for my Masters [finally!] it seems ages ago since finishing my course and handing in my dissertation. Weirdly as the way of the world goes the date my dissertation needed to be handed in was the day my gran died. With my job at another university being up in the air and me realising that that city isn't Newcastle I had mixed feelings about graduating.

I know I'm lucky to have an undergraduate degree and to have been able to undertake and pass an MA has been a dream come true. Yet I'm slightly miffed about universities and the world afterwards - or just the lack of jobs.

So I went back to Newcastle with totally mixed feelings. Yet every time I return I get the strong yearning, a need to go back for good. Its weird how one place can make you, and add something to your life.

The ceremony itself was held in the Kings Hall inside the universities oldest building - that of the Armstrong building. With organs playing, gowns and hoods being worn there is always a historical and grounded atmosphere in the room. Its like you're really making history. And with the hall only able to hold up to 500 people in anyone go, the affair is always very intimate.

Stood by the Quad and the pretty Christmas tree with hood in hand before the graduation ceremony and while there was still some kinda light.

Out into the darkness after the graduation wearing my gown and hood standing under a carving of the Newcastle University sign featuring the Durham Cross showing the universities link back to the ancient city just a few miles away. The MA Sociology hood

So there we go, I'm now able to stick the old letters behind her name and correctly trying to work out if going back to do a PhD is the wise thing to do - time for a pro's and con list me thinks.

Oh and as you can tell I didn't go with the dress in the end - I was having a bit of a down [I feel ugly and fat kinda days that you sometimes get] and went with the good old reliable clothes - not that you can really see under the gowns that seem to be designed to make you look obese.

Graduation pressie ...

... come early Christmas present. On Tuesday I will graduate properly from my Masters back in Newcastle and as a [lovely and so very sweet] "well done" my parents brought and surprised me as I sat down for tea with this so so very gorgeous set of bracelets and card hidden upon my chair.

Its additionally and early Christmas present but they thought I'd love to wear it [I had noticed the bracelets in a gorgeous little shop called Sliverado in York] for my graduation along with my silver Celtic heart locket I was given for my 21st birthday. They'll hear me jangling a mile off!

Imma just hoping it doesn't pour down with rain ...

I Miss Newcastle!!

There I've said it ... I'm missing Newcastle, I don't know if its because I'm hating the change of moving to the countryside and back "home" but I miss the city, its buzz and its life. Its oh so quiet in the countryside. Its the place where I feel I belong. So I'm reminiscing by looking through old photographs of the city, but mostly focusing on the people - the Geordies.


I need to get back up there, somehow, some way, its the only place I seem to feel settled.

Capturing the launching of the World Unicorn ship in 1973, this image is part of the "river project" collection by Sirkka Liisa Konitten. Looking back now it recalls and documents a city and way of life built around the River Tyne which made the cities fortunes. It was a city of industry, of power and community. I first saw the launching of this ship in a film by Amber, it all seemed out of a movie as the massive hulk of the ship towered over the terraced streets of the east end of the city. I just adore how this little moggy is sat in the middle of the quiet street, the only signs of life to be found at the far end.

Peaceable Kingdoms additionally taken from the online collection of Amber. In this picture taken by Peter Fryer a young, what appears a girl sits up on a chair looking over the ricky wooden fence at the neighbouring allotment owner. His expression shows a happy, cheerful situation and atmosphere between these two characters.

Taken in 1959 along Park Road in the west end of Newcastle down in Scotswood, I just love the happy stance, the friendly, loving hold between the girls. Maybe they are friends? Or sisters standing for a family portrait. Are they wearing their Sunday best? Their shiny clean shoes and their happy smiling faces as a seagull circles above them. Again from the Amber collection of Newcastle based images.

Far from seeing line upon line of yellow buses and taxis now outside the Theatre Royal along Grey Street, a line of elephants are paraded down the street, perhaps down to the quayside.

A group of young children play with junk in front of the looming Byker Bridge taken in 1971 by the Swedish photographer then living in the area - Sirkka Liisa Konttien. With the Ouseburn [now a site of major redevelopment] hidden away in the valley below, the looming towers of the city centre hide in the hazy background.

Back in Scotswood this picture looks down what was once Clara Street towards Dustan Power Station over the River Tyne. Capturing a soggy, drizzly [and often typical Newcastle day] a child strides up the steep road, a dog rushing out of the frame, perhaps her mother looking, encouraging her tired child on. Row upon row of these terraced streets where demolished through large scale regeneration plans, often plans that never saw the light of day, at the expense of ruining many communities. 

******

Update - all the pictures that were used in this blog when it was first written have since been taken offline from whatever sources they were taken from.

Byker Reinvented

In 1983 photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, one of the key founders of the Amber collective documenting Newcastle past and present, published an now infamous collection of one of the poor marked areas of the east end of Newcastle - that of, and entitled Byker. Documenting the terraced streets which she lived among for seven years, her work captures the hazy lines of row upon row of working class homes, the people and the faces, three of which can be seen below.

Twenty years on Konttinen has returned to the ground which created and marked her fortune, yet Byker has changed in her absence. Living across the street in Heaton as a student, Byker was always on my doorstop, while the streets showed is downturn, its marginalisation away from the city centre and the reinvestment provided to other areas of the city Byker is a melting pot for cultures.

Many of the original streets documented in 1983 no longer exist, redevelopers bulldozed the terraced streets, the communities pushed apart to make way for intended redevelopment and building of the Byker Wall. Now her works focuses upon this "wall" of flats. While granted the dedication upon UNESCO's list of outstanding 20th century buildings, Byker Wall is credited with poor living conditions and lacking a sustainable community. Konttinen herself states she was drawn to the hard to let flats, ones often let out to refugee families.

The aim of this revisit to Byker is clearly noted, and in sharp contrast to the former black and white images these pictures and people are documented in vivid sharp colours.

"I wanted to give the people living in these flats a photograph they would be proud to present to the world, something to introduce themselves to their neighbours. People don't often know the people who live next door. It's my little fantasy, creating a virtual community through these portraits."

Konttinen 2009

[Lee Hill, a teacher, and Betty Hill, an artist Byker 2006]

"The man ... at first he seemed a typical Byker lad, but he had a Lebanese grandmother. They were about to move out, and the whole place was in boxes. ... his dog, a bull terrier, appeared from the kitchen and leapt up onto the seat; the father started blowing soap bubbles. The dog got so excited – snapping, trying to catch the bubbles" (Cited from The Guardian)

[Gerel Galbadrah with son Tengis, 2005]

[Colin 2009]

[Gnana and her daughter Kavi from Sri Lanka, 2003]

These pictures capture the vibrancy and stages of life and of families within an area that is discredited as poor, failing and working class. It is an area hybrid, a melting pot of races, cultures and ages, from the male Geordie with his team tattooed upon this stomach stood in his kitchen to the mother and daughter from Sri Lanka. They are all families and they are all linked through association with Byker.

Viewing such images in colour, rather then the normal black and white adds something but then again in the same instance takes things away. Perhaps to remain in the formal black and white would perhaps maintain the perception of the limited and bleak appearance this east-end area has. And in turn by using colour the space and the community is reinvented as alive and in colour.

But which has more power to influence our views, our assumptions and interpretations? The black and the white or its opposition of colour?

Images taken from The Journal, The Guardian and The Late Show.

A life on the rails

Central Station, Newcastle Valentine's Series 1907 - the hanging clock in this postcard still hangs over the concourse

The last week has seen me spending going on fourteen hours waiting or travelling upon the historic preserve of Britain - its railway system one often narrated as either slow, packed and delayed. A system apparently reaching full capacity. As a British invention with its origins in 1804 and Richard Trevithick's locomotive hauling iron and men, to the Rocket and the Flying Scotsman, as a nation our industrious nature and cities were created and built around the railways.

Being one of the few people of my age who doesn't or can't drive, since moving to University four years ago, trains have become my key mode of getting home, getting to University, seeing friends and at the moment going for interviews. On the fun side however, watching and journeying upon the trains gives me, (a slightly nosey person at heart - my excuse as a sociologists) the perfect chance and opportunity to do some first hand ethnographic study - otherwise known as good old fashioned moment of people watching.

I was stuck (and perhaps bored) enough to write all my observations and thoughts down, from the informed "signalling problems" between Derby and Leicester in the East Midlands which made us somehow miss the station and then reverse backwards into Derby for 15 minutes - how that worked or even occurred I'll never know. Informed over the crackly intercom, a knowing glum acknowledgement of the delights of the rail system seemed to pass through and between unfamiliar strangers, their only connection being in the same carriage going to the same station. This first journey of the week is one where I left my railcard at home and had to re-shell out on tickets - don't get me started on ticket prices or I'll never stop typing.

Suited and booted business men, most of which on their return from it seems a working day in London, always seem to spend most of their journey asleep or messing and sighing at their failed workings of their qwerty phones. While shouting their business deals over the phone they battle to be heard against the shouts of eager children playing upon their Nintendo Wii's their loosing-patience mothers trying to keep them seated and quiet as the food and drink trolley wobbles its way between out reaching feet along the narrow, bag covered aisle.

Another of the so called pleasures of rail travelling is the time spent in the waiting rooms. Unfortunately never having the money enough to wait in the First Class Lounge, my time has always been spent in the either overly cold or overly warm waiting rooms - temperature difference also always echoed within the coffee. Before this it always seems funny to watch the caning necks of travellers trying to comprehend the neon yellow lettering of the Departures board, their looks confused as if all the destinations were written in another language. Moreover competitions seem to occur between who can get the most into their hand luggage, who has the most annoying suitcase which can run over the most feet and which carriage can fill up its luggage rack the quickest - the latter most often the one I'm in.

The historicity of the railway system is most important perhaps within the North East. Newcastle itself was the site of the first working tram lines with the worlds primary rail track running between Darlington and Stockton. Compared to all three train stations (York, Sheffield and Leicester) that I'd used this week - it is Newcastle which seems to be bursting with the life, the most noise and the most activities. At the others people just wait, just watch and look glum at the passing trains. Maybe because it was a Friday afternoon, its a bank holiday weekend and Newcastle is the party city of the UK, yesterday afternoon Newcastle seemed to be attracting all the drunken male hordes. Waiting for my train back I was met with hordes of drunk Scottish Geordie impersonating men, some dressed as women some wearing ginger wigs. Their impersonations only to be met with disapproving Geordie stares and shaking heads.

While the British transport system does have its faults (yet I have to say none of my trains where even late), and most often costs the earth, its the best excuse for a good old nosey of watching the emotions of life - of meeting and leaving people and places behind, of new beginnings and the ending of stories, of the passing of time and of being together.