Flower Girls

 

These flower girl Star Heart Dolls were inspired by designs I first created for my WebFlowers web graphics project. The six designs were for a pink rose, a beige lilly, a yellow daisy, green chrysanthemum, blue pansy and purple tulip. When they became dolls their names and colours changed slightly. Rose was still pink, Lilly became orange, Daisy was still yellow, the green doll became Marigold, Pansy was still blue and the purple tulip doll was called Lavender.

 

Colouring Calm

I thought adult colouring books were a great idea, I bought myself one on typography. Inspired by this craze for colouring I adapted some of Amy's old drawings into pages of colouring art. One page is covered with interesting floral designs and the other is full of Amy's elegant ladies in evening dress. I tried colouring them in first in coloured pencil and then in coloured pen. I found colouring them in in pen much more enjoyable.

Landscapes for Lorna's Songs

I have been updating Lorna's songs on YouTube by collecting new pictures to accompany my songs. These two are used with permission of my daughter and my mother, the first one is by my daughter for Stargazing and the second one is by my mother for Jazz.

I also painted some more pictures myself, these two are for Island of Happiness and Scorpio Eyes.

My mum is hoping to produce a calendar of all her paintings for her 80th year, it is my 50th year next year, so I hope to get enough pictures from all three of us to use in a calendar for that.

Poe and Poetry on YouTube

I find there are wonderful short films and animation on YouTube produced by independent film makers and also gems from earlier in the twentieth century. I continue to use my AmiloFinn channel to create playlists of these works of art. As well as my 'At the piano' playlist you might also enjoy 'Poe's Tales'  and 'Illustrated Poems'.

'Poe's Tales' includes modern animations of Annabel Lee, Masque of the red death, The oval portrait and Eldorado and modern short films of Ligeia, The tell tale heart, The black cat and the Raven. There are also older films such as Vincent Price reading 'The pit and the pendulum' and a 1928 silent film version of 'The Fall of the house of Usher'.

Among the wonderful items collected in the 'Illustrated Poems' playlist are

Night by William Blake
Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
The Listeners by Walter de la Mare
The stolen child by WB Yeats
The Hollow Men by TS Eliot
Crow by Ted Hughes
Death and Co by Sylvia Plath

You can find the poetry play list here

The Shadow People

Like Omega, the Shadow People is about the power at the bottom of life and the way perseverance and patience can triumph over short term plans and spontaneity.

The Good Mothers Club

The Good Mothers Club was inspired by the Amacus portmanteau horror films of the 1970s. My harried heroine, Alice Plummer, stumbles upon the Good Mothers Club in the Chapel Cafe and spends a mysterious evening with six other mothers and the ghostly nun Sister Eleanor, sharing tales of motherhood, madness and sacrifice. These are two posters advertising my story.

Craft Stall at Eastcote URC

Saturday 16th April 2016 was quite a successful day for me and my craft stall. It was a great improvement on my November craft stall, firstly because I got the right day, the right place and the right time.

Throughout the morning I sold quite a lot of cards, including my first poppy brooch card. I now have about 52 basic greeting card designs and mum told people I have 'a card for every occasion', which is quite accurate, although maybe I could develop more specific 'Get well soon' and 'With sympathy' cards in the future.

I didn't sell any Star Heart Dolls but maybe I need to find a new venue if I am to find success in this area. I sold some lavender scenters and completely sold out of sleeping angels.

I sold a poetry book to a man who recommended another venue to me and also told me to 'keep up the good work', which was very encouraging. In the end I did well enough to give a generous donation to the cerebral palsy charity we were supporting, the CMSS Skills Development Centre in Northwood, who you can find here.

The successful day was completed by lunch with mum, piano teaching and tea with friends.

  

  

'At The Piano' playlist on YouTube

My 'At The Piano' playlist on 8tracks has been quite popular, but it is more difficult to listen to in the UK now, so I have added a new playlist on my YouTube channel also called 'At The Piano'. It features piano music I like listening to and playing. I think the pieces are not too difficult that you can't enjoy playing them, but difficult enough that they are both interesting and challenging. This is the complete list of the music I have chosen.

Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
I Giorni by Einaudi
La Valse d'Amelie by Yann Tiersen
River flows through you by Yiruma
The heart asks pleasure first from The Piano
Comptine d'Un Autre Ete from Amelie
The girl with the flaxen hair by Debussy
Satie's Gnossiennes 1,2 & 3
Reverie by Debussy
One summer's day by Joe Hisaishi
Le Onde by Einaudi
Road to Chicago by Thomas Newman
Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini by Rachmaninov
Satie's Trois Gymnopodie
Queste Notte by Einaudi
Chopin's Prelude no. 4
Passagio by Einaudi
Cavatina by Stanley Myers

Omega

When running SubVerse Writers I came up with a lot of poems to do with the powerful influences that lie at the bottom of existence; poems like Omega, The Shadow People and Lurkers. With Omega I was thinking about the way the real powerhouse of fungi is the mycelium that creeps under the earth and we only know something's been going on when we see the fairy ring of mushrooms above the ground.

Joy, Peace and Love

My interest in Christianity has inspired my work on virtues. These three virtuous Star Heart Dolls were created for a summer fair at St. Mary's Church, Northolt. Joy, Peace and Love are now three of the six star heart virtues, the others being Faith, Grace and Hope. Below are the three Joy, Peace and Love cards from my Sunday School matching game.

On human frailty

The book that changed the way I read was 'We need to talk about Kevin' by Lionel Shriver. Before this book I tried to read positive, feel-good books with strong, likable characters that I would often give up on before I was half way through. After reading about Kevin I realised that it was the negative books with the more unlikable, fallible and fragile characters that I really liked reading. These are the latest reads concerning human weakness that I have enjoyed in the last few months.

Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

I found this a sweet, deep story about an agoraphobic mother, Adele, her precocious young teenage son, Henry, and the unusual and close relationship that develops between them and an escaped convict, Frank, who hides with them over one long Labor Day weekend. The story is detailed and complicated. You could dismiss Adele as weak and Frank as bad, but I grew to have a soft spot for both of them and the love they manage to find for one another, despite the unlucky cards life has dealt them.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

This novel was certainly a puzzling mystery. It leads you down several different paths and I often found myself being confounded and surprised by the twists and turns the plot was taking. It is an immensely readable book and I found myself absorbed and swept along with it despite hardly liking any of the characters, excepting Nick's sister Go. Amazing Amy is a tremendously complex character who I found very difficult to relate to, but I was still deeply interested in how her story would unfold.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The girl on the train is Rachael. At the beginning of the book we have her thoughts and feelings in the morning on the way to work and in the evening on her way home. While she is doing her daily commute her thoughts and feelings drift to the house she used to share with her ex-husband, that she still sees twice a day, as the view of it has become part of her journey. However her main view is of another house nearby and the attractive couple who live there, who she is soon obsessing over. Rachael's life at first appears fairly humdrum but it doesn't take long for things to unravel. We are introduced to the voices of two other girls, not on the train, Anna and Megan, and soon everything has gone sideways, if not upside-down. I really enjoyed this book, even though I had worked out the ending about two thirds of the way through.

The Dinner by Herman Koch

What I loved about this book is that the different sections of it are named after the different parts of a dinner you would get in a fancy restaurant. The different sections are Aperitif, Appetizer, Main Course, Dessert and Digestif. I suppose you could think its quite boring to read about people eating, but there's much more to this story than that. Two couples have met in the fancy restaurant to discuss a terrible thing their sons have done. Over the course of the evening we find out that the couples themselves are not entirely blameless and the methods they are prepared to use to resolve the situation are quite shocking. The last time I encountered a couple having dinner in a fancy Dutch restaurant was in 'The Fault in our Stars', I found this book to be quite an unexpectedly nasty antidote to that romantic interlude.

To read more of my book reviews please visit my Goodreads reader page which you can find here.

Secret London Part Four (Blog Post 100)

A few places to visit had accumulated on my Secret London list and I chose a couple more from my book plus a couple from my own knowledge that I thought it would be good to have a look at. To start off mum and I met at Waterloo and after a trip on the Jubilee line arrived at St. John's Wood.

  

After a walk down 'the made famous by the Beatles' Abbey Road we came to The Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate

I've been wanting to visit this impressive housing estate for a few years. It's used a lot in films, as it is so unusual and eye-catching. Mum and I walked all the way through it admiring the symmetrical concrete forms and intricate well-designed shapes; taking photos of the striking angular houses and apartments.

We then took two short train rides from Swiss Cottage to Hoxton for The Geffrye Museum.

The museum is a bit like a real life version of the BBC 'Back in Time' series of programmes. It starts with displays of drawing rooms from the 1600s, moves on to rooms in the 18th and 19th centuries and then in the modern extension you can see displays of 20th century lounges. I definitely recognise some of this furniture from the decades I have lived through in my own life. I have visited this museum a number of times and it is definitely one of my favourites.

 

The main purpose of our trip was to try out the Geffrye Museum Cafe. It was very pleasant with elegant surroundings. I had a substantial ploughman's lunch and mum had a very tasty looking vegetarian hash.

From the Geffrye Museum we then took a bus down to the river to visit The Twinings Tea Museum.

I am a big tea fan and Twinings make fine tea, so I think I was expecting more from this experience than I actually received. There is not much to the museum, it is mostly a shop and is very narrow. The tea and what there is of its history were interesting but it was all a bit brief, so we quickly moved on.

The rest of the afternoon was spent visiting more popular sights in London, the Thames, Hungerford Bridge and the Royal Festival Hall. Over a coffee mum and I compiled a Secret London Top Ten list and I am now mulling over a follow up to our four Secret London day trips.

AmiloFinn on DeviantArt

I've long been interested in the DeviantArt website and have been admiring the fan art on there for quite some time. I needed a photosharing website for my story covers on Wattpad so decided to take the plunge and finally sign up for DeviantArt myself. Above is the painting I decided to use for my profile picture and below are the first four cover designs I have put into my gallery. The pictures are called Cheesecake, Magic, Underground and Bubbles. You can find my gallery here and my stories here.

Fate

Before I discovered or rediscovered Christianity I was more interested in superstition and the occult. This picture and song are more what I was inclined to believe before I began to become a more regular church goer.

Tube Tales on Wattpad

 

I am being more active on Wattpad in February and March. As well as developing my writing I am also developing my illustration and cover designs. The above two illustrations are for two stories called Magic and Underground. This is my blurb about the two stories.

Magic - While travelling home from work, one rainy afternoon, desolate Georgia finds that sometimes hope comes in small and surprising packages.

Underground - My new journey to work is great; ten stops on the tube and ten minutes walk at either end, I wonder what ten days of it will do to me?

I am posting my Underground story one day at a time for the next two weeks.

I also have two collections of poetry on Wattpad.

Teenage Troubles is a collection of five poems concerning various problems I encountered as a teenager from wayward youths, body issues, depressive thoughts, substance abuse and identity crises.

An Anatomy of Love features seven poems that represent decades of my thoughts and feelings about love and relationships.