The aftermath of the Scottish Style Awards was one very unstylish bump on the head when I took a box of the top of a cupboard and a roll of steel-reinforced kevlar fell from it. The edge caught me and I ended up scuffed:
Fortunately, it healed rapidly and I could get to work again. Most of the time has been spent working on my commission from Poppy Porter for a piece of jewellery based on the song "Futurism" by Muse, which you can read about in my previous blog post here. I finally finished this commission this week and I'm very pleased with it.
More importantly, Poppy is pleased with it!
As last Saturday saw my birthday, I went through to Edinburgh to a @scotstreetstyle event at Harvey Nichols in Edinburgh, run by the man behind "ScotStreetStyle", Gordon.
I met him indirectly through the Scottish Style Awards and as I mentioned in my last post, we met up a couple of weeks ago to discuss Scottish fashion, style, humour and politics. The Harvey Nichols event was more of a social for the "Movember" charity but also a networking meeting and it was good to be able to connect with some of the other people who are making and shaking Scottish street culture; it was also delightful to be able to say that the people who are making and shaking Scottish street culture is broadly mixed in age and that as I was celebrating my 49th birthday, I was NOT the oldest person there!
As you would expect at a "Movember" event, there was a lot of facial hair and it was touching to see that even the chic women got in on the act:
Kirstin modelling a paper moustache, earlier in the week.
My friend, Simon, was there, looking out for interesting people to photograph:
And I met another guy who uses Voigtländer legacy lenses on Micro-FourThirds Cameras!
The excellent Lewis of the Glasgow Beard and Moustache club, of which I will soon be a member. (Gary, to his left, is not laughing at a suit jacket, rather at someone small who is obscured by the jacket and being photographed by Lewis.)
After this, I headed off with my friends Mark and Jeff to my favourite Malaysian restaurant in Edinburgh, Kampung Ali where Mark drank "bubble tea" for the first time!
He also pointed out this bad graphic on the way:
Now, I know it is meant to be "cute" but to me - and Mark - this just looks like Santa's head melted!
This week has ben workshop week for the students and they've been making loads of great things. I will post pictures the week after next when their Christmas sale opens in the college. Although this should be a time when I can get a bit of time at the bench, they've been super-busy this year and I've not managed to get much done, about which I cannot complain.
Now that "Futurism" has finished, I can move down the list and find that the next project to complete is one of those which I started and abandoned and which I determined in August I would complete before allowing myself the luxury of starting completely new projects, my fantasy piece which imagines what might have happened if Chanel had designed costumes for Maria in Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"...
Taking on board Chanel's 1932 fine-jewellery collection - which featured many pieces which could be reconfigured into different types of jewellery - as well as the themes of decadence, robotics and the occult from the film, I decided to re-invent the "sautoir" necklace:
This uses some cog-type elements I found during my 2012 visit to Pittsburgh, as well as - naturally - sewing-machine needles. I am especially pleased with the brooch-pendant element:
Set with a very oddly-coloured amethyst and deep raspberry-pink spinels.
The piece will re-configure in many different ways and still has to have one more chain and a pair of earclips added.
