Sea life month #1: Tenbo! (And a general update)

With the whole taking over the Salford Zine Library thing, the exhausting hot weather and being on holiday in Tenby, we haven't had much chance to update the blog for a while. Please forgive us! As a result of our incompetence, woodland month is going to be extended! But it's also going to be overlapped by SEA LIFE MONTH. The reasons for this will become clearer later. In fact, these two 'months' are not so much monthly themes any more, they're probably more like non time-specific series of posts.

Tenby

The diehard fans amongst you may remember that we went on holiday to Tenby last year. Well this year we went again! We really like Tenby, although phone signal is hard to come by and some bits of it are plagued by horseflies. Despite that, the weather was amazing, we got to do loads of swimming in the sea (remember, this is sea life month, this is not a coincidence) and eat loads of ice cream.

The main thing we wanted to do while we were in Tenby was go to Fecci's Ice Cream Parlour, as featured in the third issue of the Young Explorer Zine (Buy here or here). We like its slightly faded charm and the amount of novelty ice cream sundaes they have on offer. This time Liz went for something called a 'Crinoline Lady' which looks like this:

Let me talk you through what you're looking at here. Yes, that is a plastic doll stuck in the middle of the ice cream. The doll was actually only a (naked) torso with a stick at the bottom to poke into the ice cream. As Liz was eating, the doll was being undressed and, to be honest, it was a little bit creepy.

Anyway, there's lashings of ice cream and whipped cream (the white ball gown) complete with black cherry, sugar paper flower and hundreds and thousand adornments. And a fan shaped wafer at the back. Very tasteful. Liz wasn't able to finish it - she might have been attempting to save the young lady's modesty or she might have just been suffering from a dairy overdose.

Ice cream isn't the only thing that Tenby has going for it. Check out this view! Cor! I spent the first 18 years of my life living by the sea and I never really took advantage of it. I find being by the sea very relaxing so I'm going to try and spend as much time at the seaside as possible from now on. There's something about the sound of waves crashing against the shore that never fails to slow my heartbeat down a bit. In a good way, not in a cardiac arrest/dying way.

There is nothing we like better than a boat trip. While we were in Tenby we got to go on two! The first was a seal safari around Caldey Island, where we were *guaranteed* to see some seals. And we weren't disappointed! On the way around the island we also got to see some lovely rocks/cliffs (see above) and a couple of puffins (we weren't quick enough to get a photo of the puffins but we instantly fell in love with them). Then came the stars of the show.

This is the best photo we got of a seal. We saw about twenty of them altogether, dotted around the rocks and in the water. Apparently they like to lie on the rocks and sleep while their food digests, which I think we would both have enjoyed after our massive ice creams. That one is a male, or a 'bull' ^^^

The second boat trip actually landed on Caldey Island, where there is a monastery, a little village, a lighthouse and some lovely coastal paths. We'd been warned against taking the trip due to the earlier mentioned plague of horseflies, but we thoroughly sprayed ourselves with insect repellant and went for it anyway. There were loads of them! Everywhere you went, horseflies. Gross. Thankfully we didn't get bitten though.

Caldey Island is beautiful. It reminds me a bit of an island we visited when we went to Oslo, except it's a bit smaller and is more Welsh. I'll leave you to look at some photos of Caldey Island while we go away and think about other things to blog about. See yer!

Salford Zine Library

Hey! Guess what! We are now officially in charge of running Salford Zine Library, which is based at Nexus Art Cafe on Dale Street, Manchester. Salford Zine Library exists as a repository for self-published publications about anything, by anyone, from anywhere. There's so much good stuff to read on the shelves (Including Young Explorer!) and we're really excited about being able to help make the library even more inspiring and ace than it is now.

We've got loads of plans spinning around our heads, but we want YOU to get involved too! If you make zines, or are thinking about making a zine, please submit a copy. We can't give you any money for it but we can give you a mention on the blog and on our Twitter account. And you can feel pleased that your zine is sitting amongst another 1400 or so amazing zines from around the world. How cool is that?

See the Salford Zine Library blog for more information about submitting your zine, follow us on Twitter and spread the word! The more zines we have the better.

S

Woodland Month Part Three: Wildflower Zine

We have been commissioned to produce a zine about wild flowers for Stockbridge Village in Bloom. We're just waiting for it to come back from the printers, but we're pretty pleased with how it's turned out. We've seen some of these flowers and plants while we've been visiting different forests, woods and otherwise green public spaces.

Each page has an illustration of a different plant/flower and some basic information about growing them or just spotting them while you're out and about.

If you own or are involved in running a massive multinational organisation, we will happily do you some kind of zine for mega $$$$. Get in touch!

S + L

x

Coo & Co's Landbaby Exhibition

We never actually got to see Stef Bradley's Today Zine exhibition at Landbaby, partly because we seem to be stupidly busy all the time at the moment and also because we tried to go and look on a Sunday when Landbaby is closed. Duh!

When we heard that Coo & Co were doing an exhibition there we pulled ourselves together and managed to get down to the shop when it was actually open. Jenny McCabe is super talented! We met her at a craft fair in Lancaster ages ago and her lovely stall, as part of the Make District collective, was definitely the best thing there. She makes loads of lovely textile things, including some 'make your own bird/moth' kits that I really want to have a go at.

You can see for yourself anyway - the exhibition is on until July 20th. And while you're there, Landbaby have a couple of our brooches left for sale too! Here's some photos: try and see if you can guess which ones we took and which ones have been lifted from Landbaby's Facebook page!

Bye!

S

Blog and Buy Sale Summer Wish List

Apparently it is supposed to be summer, although looking out of the window of our flat you wouldn't know it. While we may not actually get any prolonged periods of nice weather this year, the super excellent Blog and Buy Sale website have featured two of our things (Our owl tattoos and our mountain cushion) in their Summer Wish List. We're very excited about this! Here is some pictorial evidence, just in case you think we're making stuff up:

We are extremely excited about this because we are featured with loads of dead talented designer/makers. Here are our top five things on there that haven't been made by us:

What Ever the Weather brooch set
Chunky Knit Hair Band
Book Stack Illustrations
Dog and Fox Ceramic Mug
'Diane' Twin Peaks Brooch

There's plenty more ace things on there too. Go and have a look!

x

Woodland Month Part Two: Etsy Treasury List

As part of Woodland Month on the Young Explorer blog, we've curated a list of our favourite woodland themed stuff on Etsy. Have a look!

Woodland Month Part One: Blackley Forest and Boggart Hole Clough

June 9th - July 9th is Woodland Month on the Young Explorer blog! Over the next few weeks we'll be posting a series of bits and bobs about our favourite type of geographical feature. Basically, anything we can think of that is even slightly related to woods or forests or trees or the kind of animals that live in woods or forests or trees.

This first post is going to be about a couple of super beautiful wooded areas that you can visit in Manchester. We'd love to hear about where you like to go and pretend you're in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, or where you take your dog for a walk or whatever it is that you do in the woods. 

We are going to be utilising every single one of our 'social media channels' for this, so feel free to: Tweet us, talk to us on Facebook and tag us on Instagram with your top tips. And you can follow our Woodland Pinterest board here. Phew!

Blackley Forest

We very rarely venture into North Manchester, but I'd heard people mention Blackley Forest before as they sometimes do mushroom foraging days there. It isn't, however, marked on Google Maps. Perhaps this is why, on a lovely warm Saturday afternoon, we were the only people in there.

According to its very informative website, Blackley Forest was planted in 1953 and was Manchester's 'first true community forest'. It was made into a local nature reserve in 2005 and it is a lovely hidden treasure that you should definitely go and visit. It's extremely easy to get to as well. Just get the Metrolink to Bowker Vale and it is about a five minute walk from there.

After leaving the forest, we made the short walk over to Heaton Park to eat our picnic. As it was a hot day, the park was absolutely packed with people. They should have gone to Blackley Forest instead! Although our visit to the forest might not have been so nice if it had been full of people. We'd prefer to keep it as our little tree-filled secret.

Boggart Hole Clough

Also in Blackley (North Manchester has it pretty good when it comes to woods and forests), the bizarrely named Boggart Hole Clough is the larger, more mainstream sister to Blackley Forest. It even has a café and a boating lake. If Heaton Park is the One Direction of urban green spaces, I reckon Boggart Hole Clough would be, uh, The Wanted? I don't know which boy band Blackley Forest would be in this ill advised, not-really-making-sense metaphor.

It's a little bit harder to get to from Central Manchester and we had to get the bus (!). It was worth the effort, though. It's got loads of lovely paths running through the trees, up fairly steep banks and there are even bridges going over brooks and streams and things. 

You can buy stuff to feed the ducks that live on the boating lake from the café, so we did. They went a bit mad and didn't seem to understand when the bag had been emptied so we had to make a run for it. Greedy geese are terrifying, with all their flapping and hissing and what have you.

Boggart Hole Clough  is undoubtedly 'better' than Blackley Forest. It's much bigger and there's loads of different paths you can explore. But it's not as cosy, and there were actual people there too, so our picnic kept getting interrupted by nosey dogs. Worth a visit though, and you could probably do both forests in the same day if you wanted to have double forest fun!

More forest related stuff to come over the next few weeks! Remember, get in touch with all your tree related tips, please! Maybe we'll do a little blog post with all our favourite suggestions at some point?

See yer!

S