Sea life month #2: Whale of a Time!

Remember way back in August when we were going on about it being 'sea life month'? Well, here's the second in the series. The 'month' part of the title is redundant, really, as it's been over a month, so just ignore that bit.

Anyway, I have always been a big fan of sea mammals. Dolphins? Amazing (Although Liz thinks they have an attitude problem). Seals? Brilliant. Manatees? So good I even recorded a naff song about them. My favourite TV show as a child was Sharky and George! Aside from Liz's aversion to dolphins, which she attributes to them being "attention seekers", we're both agreed on how cool they all are.

We both think whales are great, too. So we've done a mini zine about them that you'll be able to buy soon! It's called 'Whale of a time!' and contains some nice illustrations of whales that Liz did and a bit of vaguely amusing/informative writing that I did. Here's some sneaky preview images for you to have a look at:

Always keen to develop any merchandising opportunities, we've done some temporary tattoos too! Whales tend to be quite large, so we thought it'd be appropriate if the tattoos were too. They'll be available soon and they look like this:

 

And we're doing some shrink plastic whale brooches that followers of our Instagram will have caught a glimpse of recently. Keep an eye on our Twitter and our Etsy page to find out when all these neat things are available! Speaking of Etsy, we've curated a list of really nice whale related things that have nothing to do with us. You can have a look at it by clicking here. 

Tell us about your favourite sea based mammals, please! Do you agree with Liz? Are dolphins "attention seekers?". Answers on a postcard, (Or in the comments section or on Twitter) please.

See yer

S

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!