An almost bracelet but not quite yeti

How to make an almost bracelet

It’s getting pretty chilly outside again and the Mr Met Office man is telling us we might reach -5° next week. I should probably be explaining how to make something delightfully cosy, perhaps a yeti inspired outfit to keep us warm, but instead I shall stick with the bracelet theme. We may be cold, but heck we’ll be cold AND stylish.

So on Saturday I found myself wandering through Castle Arcade in Cardiff and came to a fantastic bead shop. I cannot for the life of me remember what it was called, which is completely useless and I promise to look next time I’m there, but it’s near Madame Fromage, which I must say has the most delicious food and mightily quaffable beverages too. It’s definitely worth a visit.

Before I digress into a cheese filled wonderland (flourished with dreams of their pork/stuffing/apple sauce baguette, it is amazing! ) back to the matter in hand.

In the bead shop I found a fantastic selection of beads and buttons of all varieties. We’re talking glass beads (around £1 each), wooden beads (£3 for a reasonably sized packet), painted beads (40p each), and buttons in every shape and colour you could image. It was like Aladdins cave, just without the monkey and the magic carpet.

Going for a slightly vintage theme, I went for beads that looked like this:

Wooden beads, painted beads and some beads recycled off a broken bracelet

The really great thing though is you can also buy elastic off the reel, so instead of having to invest £8-£10 in a whole feast of elastic you can ask for just a metre, which was 60p.

Making the bracelet itself was simple, choose beads, cut elastic, thread beads on elastic. Done.  And it looks like this:

Finished bracelet...almost

Here, however, the big warning alarm went off and the sirens started flashing. I’d forgotten the hypo cement. As you can see the knot is just far too loose without it and slips out of place as soon as I try and put the darn thing on.

Knot a problem

So until I jolly into town and track me down some hypo cement (it may have to be John Lewis for this one after all) my bracelet is in bracelet jail, being reprimanded by two very important paper clips. Let’s hope the cold weather can hold off just a little longer, so I can finish the project and start researching yeti outfits.

Just a little bit of luck…

I just spilt a dollop of petit filous on my keyboard, which although messy is not quite enough of a distraction from the fact that I haven’t blogged in ages.  I can only blame a myriad of excuses; revision, exam, five stories, back and forth to Llandaff, auditioning for Big Brother (kind of), back and forth to Llandaff again, calling up people, interviewing people, going on a ghost walk, lots of typing, note taking and our very first production day.

It’s a bit of a speedy blur really but it all got me thinking about the whole journalism thing (naturally, that is after all why I am here), and how journalists actually find their stories.

Goldsmiths Journalist Rhiannon Bury praises Twitter as a source of interviewees and she’s right. It’s fantastic, people are often so willing to talk and it opens up a whole pool of sources you wouldn’t have access to otherwise. Although I’m sure many professional journalists with expansive careers may shudder to hear this, it makes me wonder how journalists coped in the pre-Twitter age.

I’m sure I may get a few despairing shakes of the head at this, as a trusty contact book is placed in my hands. Since being assigned our news patches for the year, mine of course being the lovely Llandaff, we’ve been gradually building up contacts to get to know the area and keep in touch with what’s going on. To quote Uncle Bryn from Gavin and Stacey, I’m not gonna lie to you, at times it’s been tough. Talking to strangers is daunting but its something we have to get over as journalists. It’s improving by leaps and bounds already after just a week of running round the patch knowing we have to get stories so hopefully soon we won’t think twice about saying Um excuse me, I’m a trainee journalist from Cardiff School of Journalism….

If the last week has taught me one thing about finding stories though, it is that it’s about…. somewhere around……35% luck. It’s about being in the right place at the right time and crossing your fingers desperately for something more than a parking issue.

A little luck comes in very useful particularly because, as my colleague Fiona and I discovered, you can spend a whole day in your patch, searching for stories in the quietest village in Cardiff, but it’s only when you leave that 6 police cars and a helicopter turn up chasing a stolen quad bike.

Calling my Hand Twin….

Everybody loves Friends. The TV show, that is, rather than actual people, although they are splendid too. The reason, however, that I draw your attention to friends is the very important matter of Joey’s hand twin. I myself do not have a hand twin, sad times ahoy for me. However, below, is exhibit A, Joey’s Hand Twin.

Now I hear you cry, ‘where can I get my very own twin of hand?’  Well alas they are not something one can make from fabrics and cotton. Well you probably could, but that’d be creepy. Instead, we shall go for a bracelet.

I was wracking my brains to think of something I could make without a sewing machine, and came across this fantastic video. It’s annoying how much Karla Kam says elasticity (does she mean elastic?) and the bracelet isn’t exactly in vogue, but nonetheless it’s a great video to show how to make a simple elastic (elasticity?!!?) bracelet.

You’d think it’d be straightforward enough – beads go on string, string gets tied, bracelet is made – but I wanted to find out the details of making it a little more professional. That’s why Karla’s video is great, it recommends hypo-cement for sealing the knots and tells you to tuck the end of the elastic into one of the beads so it can’t be seen.

So far I’ve found hypo cement for £8 in John Lewis, together with elastic (elasticity, hoorah!) for £7.50. It will make more than one bracelet, so it will probably work out economical in the end. I’m yet to find some good vintage beads so I shall have to go on the hunt for them after the dreaded PA exam is sent packing with its tail between its legs, and by that I mean thoroughly booted out the door.

Bracelets come in all shapes and sizes, from the dainty to the extravagant. I’ve got a bit of a thing for chunky bead bracelets at the moment, although all I seem to have in my little Cardiff bubble are more skinny items like these:

I’m thinking of some bronze coloured vintage flowers or circular beads with some pink glass beads, but not garish, something tasteful but very pretty.

Alas, for now my bracelet hangs in limbo until I find what I’m looking for. If you do happen to give it a go though, be sure to make two in case you meet your identical hand twin along the way.

Will good journalism be the first casualty of the digital revolution in the media?

Far too long for a blog post? Agreed. But for those interested in Journalism , the digital revolution, or the future of media in general it’s worth sticking with me on this one. Along with fellow CJS students I’m blogging my Reporters and the Reported Essay. Follow the others on Twitter at #randr , enjoy!

It is the 22^nd November 1963, 12.30pm. The sun is shining as a black motorcade slowly pulls its way through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. In New York, CBS news anchor, Walter Cronkite is sitting at his desk, drinking coffee and making notes on some copy. As the motorcade’s wheels crunch their way down the road, the noise of the red, white and blue crowd is so loud that the smiling faces barely hear the first shot.

Nine minutes later the first radio bulletin went out on a local Dallas radio. “KLIF bulletin from Dallas: three shots reportedly were fired at President Kennedy.” 13 minutes later the first television bulletin went out by Walter Cronkite at CBS.

If the same situation happened today the whole world would know within seconds.

In a world where a digital revolution has swept across the media, and continues to change and adapt the way we work as journalists, news reaches the audience faster than ever. It is likely that almost every person in the crowd today would have a mobile phone, each capable of capturing that news and sending it directly to Twitter. But does that make everyone a journalist?

Richard Tait, director of the centre for journalism studies at Cardiff University, said: “When I started in journalism a journalist was the first person at an event, journalists were the first to file. They’re not anymore.” Today the presence of digital technology means anyone at the scene is capable of reporting the event and of therefore being labelled a citizen journalist.

For many the citizen journalist is rogue, a threat to the trained professionals, and little more than a hap-hazard mouth piece. Richard Tait said: “The blogosphere is unregulated, an open city…the bloggers have no rules, they don’t have an ethical code.” When Tiger Woods crashed his car outside his home on 27^th November 2009, it wasn’t long before there were Twitter reports saying that he was dead, which was entirely untrue.

The digital revolution, and particularly the internet, has created an open forum and people do not have to check their sources before they put out a piece of ‘news.’ Blogs and tweets can be misinformed, they can offer poorly researched pieces or inaccuracy, but these are the flaws we have to accept in order to progress. It is only by accepting these flaws and being aware of them that we can make use of the advantages created by the digital revolution to support good journalism.

Speaking at the memorial service for Walter Cronkite on 9^th September 2009, President Barack Obama questioned what place good journalism can have in such a world of digital noise.  He said: “Naturally we find ourselves wondering how [Walter] would’ve covered the stories of our time. In an era where the news that city hall is on fire can sweep around the world at the speed of the internet, would he still have called to double check? Would he have been able to cut through the murky noise of the blogs and the tweets and the sound bites?”

The crucial point however is not to cut through the blogs and the tweets, but to utilise them. Ian Hargreaves, former director of Cardiff University’s Centre for Journalism Studies, said: “User-generated content has an opportunity to emerge unmediated through professional journalists. I think that’s a good thing, and I think journalists, professional journalists, still have a place in that.”

‘User-generated content’ and ‘citizen journalist’ are newly coined terms, often sparking fear into the heart of the professional journalist, but their value has been shown in the past. When President Kennedy sat in his motorcade waving at the Dallas crowds, a 58-year-old American clothes manufacturer was standing on his tip-toes at the side of the road, his Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series movie camera balanced on his arm, trying desperately to capture a shot of the President. Little did he know it would be a very different kind of shot that he would capture.

No broadcast crews were at the Dealey Plaza that day. They had decided it wasn’t an important location and the unknown American became the only person to have clear, moving footage of the assassination of President John F Kennedy at close range. The Zapruda Film, as the footage later became known, was perhaps the first piece of user-generated content, and Abraham Zapruda, the first citizen journalist.

Without the citizen journalist, the public may miss out on the crucial moment of the news event. The citizen journalist is a tool to be cultivated, to be used to support good journalism rather than to replace it.

Mark Byford, deputy director general and head of BBC journalism, considers the notion of good journalism when he says: “What is best journalism? It is certainly around excellence, a strive for excellence in all you do.” He listed ambition, creativity, originality, curiosity and integrity as the organs which allow a good journalist to breathe.

It is this integrity and truth which underpins good journalism. When Walter Cronkite was reporting the assassination, sitting before the camera in just a shirt and tie, his jacket left behind in the urgency to reach the audience, he received rumoured reports that the President had died. KRLD, a CBS affiliate reporting from Dallas, went ahead and reported the death of the president without any official confirmation. Cronkite waited until he was certain of the truth.

To some extent the digital revolution, instead of making a casualty of good journalism has bandaged it and revived it through the policing of this truth. Charles Reiss, former political editor of the Evening Standard, said: “You can fool some of the people some of the time but the number of people you can fool and the time you can fool them is ever shrinking because we have an ever more educated readership and bunch of viewers and we have ever more alternative sources of information thanks largely, but not entirely, to the net.”

The digital revolution has created a global scrutiny network; readers and viewers can speak out against what they perceive to be bad journalism. The screen between the journalist and the viewer has been smashed, they are more engaged and communicative than ever, and this can only be a good thing. In Journalism Truth or Dare, Ian Hargreaves says: “Journalism today is a two-way street, or rather a multi-directional process in a boundaryless space, rather than the one-way street of the traditional newspaper or television news bulletin.”

Good journalism does not need to be a casualty of the digital revolution, instead it must be enhanced by new technology. However, this is not to say there will be no casualties of such dramatic changes to the industry. Ian Hargreaves said: “I’m not sure that physical newspapers will still exist in 20 or 30 years, I think it’s possible that they won’t.”

A report on Media Guardian on 15^th January 2010 by Roy Greenslade supports this view as Greenslade described how Greg Hadfield, head of the Telegraph Media Group’s digital development, “stood up at the news rewired conference at City University to make a keynote speech, told a questioner that newspapers had no future and as a consequence, he was leaving his job.”

It would appear that it will not be the quality of content that becomes the casualty of digital journalism but the format, and, regrettably, the days of hands mucky with print, and newspapers on trains will become a casualty long forgotten.

Dress Love Lasts a Lifetime

Every now and again, just occasionally, you fall in love with a dress. Sometimes it’s one you buy, even though you probably shouldn’t. Sometimes it’s one you realise you should’ve bought only when it’s too late. And sometimes it’s one you see on the big screen.

If only I could own the Antonement dress....or draw hands.

As far as dress-love goes, Keira Knightley’s Antonement dress is probably the love of my life. Designed by the film’s costume designer, Jacqueline Durran, it rustles with 1930s glamour and untimely elegance. For those of you who were frolicking about with your eyes shut when Antonement came out, this is it. Isn’t she a beauty? The dress I mean, not the stick insect.

Whilst the rest of this post could turn into a drool-fest about the silk, the way the material falls when Keira is kneeling by the pond, and the overall perfection of said dress, it is actually about how you can make one.

It would appear I am not the only one to fall for the dress, Durran did after all win a BAFTA for it, so I can understand a bit of dress-love rivalry. At Craftimes back in 2008, they gave a detailed deconstruction of the dress, and a little insight into the way it was made. Durran used three different shades of green dontchaknow.

The Glam Guide, references a Vogue pattern, which is very similar to the cut and shape of the dress. I’m guessing it would be difficult, if not like trying-to-make- Keira –eat- a -Big – Mac impossible, to get the material to cling at the right places.

Katheriney on BurdaStyle offers a similar creation, although in ivory, giving a wedding dress feel to the garment. Unfortunately there is no pattern available, but it is beautiful.

Whilst my sewing fingers are itching to get started on another project, I have the slight problem that my sewing machine is 122 miles away. I wonder how easy it is to get a fully sized sewing machine on the train? That could be a blog and a half.

Anyway, if all else fails, (and with a project that ambitious, it could well do – see Garry the hole) there’s always this as a summery variation on ASOS or this as a slightly, for want of a better word, ‘bling’ dress (apologies) at Debenhams. I’d quite like the real one though to flounce about dramatically in. James McAvoy wouldn’t be a bad accessory either.

There’s snow thing like it…

Its all about the jumper

I’ve been trying to avoid mentioning the cold fluffy white stuff which has been causing mischief up and down the country, but now we have what looks like a blizzard outside in Cardiff, I guess my ‘don’t mention the snow campaign’ is officially rained off. Or snowed off. Anyway to get to the point, eventually, the snow has made my hibernation instinct kick in, which means implementing a comfort plan.

The obvious one is comfort food, see Horseradish on Toast for the wonders of soup, (and while we’re on the subject there’s also Chicken Soup for the Soul, which I remember reading years ago). There’s also literal comfort as in duvets, which I hear are quite nice to snuggle up and watch movies in while watching the snow. I, of course, wouldn’t know. I’ve been revising PA.

Now to really get to the point (it’s taken a while, but I’m getting there), I am a firm believer in comfort clothing. What I mean is the kind of thing you wouldn’t wear out of the house – I said comfortable, not fashionable – but that you put on to feel, for want of a better word, cosy. Take Exhibit A, my favourite jumper:

Stripey and delightful.

 This is a jumper my Gran knitted for me, (we love the homemade here at Broadsheet Boutique!), about 4 years ago. I count myself lucky that she had an eye for fashion and I didn’t end up with a pony or dog on the front.

It might not be quite the sort of thing I’d wear to Tesco, or to an appearance on Come Dine with Me,(unless I was trying to be the weird one, there’s usually a weird one) or generally out of the house, but it is warm and comforting, and that is what we want in our comfort plan on these snowy days. It’s a bit like a hug in a mug:

Which takes us back to the soup. Ah the comfort plan is fool proof.

Buried Treasure

I’ve just been on something of a treasure hunt, and all good treasure hunts need a map like this:

ARrrrghhh me hearties

Actually, whilst the tea-staining became a highly elaborate form of public admin revision escapism, I did find a treasure trove of fashion and DIY clothes blogs and merrily skipped from one to another.

 I started at Style Bytes, “the fashion blog for budget living” complete with DIY tips. It’s run by agathe bjørnsdatter and has the most beautiful selection of fashion photographs dotted throughout the site. Particularly loving the safety pin bracelet as a little nostalgic detour.

Next I took the stepping stones across to Just Another Fashion Student, who deserves a mention just for this snake dress, which is entirely kooky in a daring-but-bizarrely-quite-cool kind of way. That’s not something you’re going to find in Topshop.

Then I got a bit lost in the jungle for a while….. It seems broken links and re-launching blogs a confusing treasure hunt make.

Nevertheless, I continued on my merry little way, fell down a rabbit hole and struck gold. Enjoy!

• Please don’t feed the models (It’s all in the name)
• The Uniform Project (1 dress, 365 days, great project)
• Monikapolitan (Lovely Big Bold Bright Pictures – so much colour!)
• Threadbanger (Gloriously creative)
• 21^st Century Dressmakers (Homemade accessories from a satin hairband to a pincushion in a pot – delightfully twee)
• Confessions of a Fashion Addict (Talented up and coming designer with his own collection!)
• Copy Me (Fashion Blog of Becky Rutt, Cardiff Newspaper Journalism Student)
• Ribbon and Rope (Fashion Blog of Ella Walker, Cardiff Magazine Journalism Student)

How Much is too Much?

Every now and again when flicking through a newspaper, I find a picture that makes me stop. They say a picture speaks a thousand words, but I don’t agree. I think it’s the fact that it doesn’t speak which says it all.

I remember a picture my friend tore out of a newspaper during the aftermath of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami to use in an art project. The subject was grief.

The picture showed an old man, dusty with rubble, chaos in the background, tears dried and crusted, pain etched across his face, clutching his dead daughter’s hand. It was haunting and tragic…and splashed right across the media.

The issue of how graphic we can be as reporters extends to both writing and images, and this article, at Indiana University’s School of Journalism website, really got me thinking. The online editor explains the situation:

“After a shooting spree at Standard Gravure by one of the printing company’s former employees, The Courier-Journal published a front-page photograph of one of the victims. The photograph showed the dead victim lying on his back at the bottom of the stairs, his arms spread out and his body partially resting on a track used to move large rolls of paper. The photograph prompted more than 500 complaints and a lawsuit – won by The Courier-Journal – that went all the way to the Supreme Court.”

How do we juggle the representation of news and truth and exactly what happened, with compassion and respect and consideration? The Cournier-Journal’s editor, David Hawpe, defended the use of the photograph, saying it was not just to sell newspapers but to “confront readers in our community with the full consequences of gun violence.”

I think the use of a graphic image is something which has to be carefully considered in Journalism, but it is often the more startling images, such as the tragic scene of an old man clutching his child’s hand, which have the greatest impact and remain engraved in our memories years later.

 However I’m not sure how much I would change my mind if the images were close to home and that old man was my friend or my relative. Would I really want to see his pain sketched in print on my desk, or as I eat my breakfast, or on a commuter’s reading material on the way to work?

Phase 6: Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you leggings

So its taken 16 days, copious cups of tea, a snippet of a Christmas poem, 4 blog posts, 1 tantrum and approximately 10 mince pies, but the legging project is complete!

And they actually fit, hoorah!

They are a little bit Simon Cowell in the waist, and perhaps can double as a belly warmer, but I figure that will be covered by a top or dress anyway so it doesn’t really matter. They are also a little bit tight, but hopefully with a bit of wear they will stretch.

So as the christmas holidays come to an end, I pack my bags, grab my coat and dance my way down the street, clicking my ruby slippers and returning to Oz in a pair of these:

Leggings and different shoes - oh how versatile they are!

Leggings - how will you wear yours?

Phase 5: It’s the Final Countdown

With the days of Gary the hole far behind us (along with 2009) and the imminent approach of a return to Cardiff (which will mean saying a hankie-waving goodbye to the sewing machine) I figured I’d best pull up those proverbial socks and get a move on.

So the next step was to put the legs together. Despite facing this with the same enthusiasm as I’d face the dentist, it was surprisingly straight forward, if not a little bit like magic.

You see you turn one leg inside out, pop it inside the other and sew them together along the crotch line, right sides facing. Then when it’s all sewn you pull the leg out like a rabbit from a hat and voila, you’ve got two legs joined together.

Sewing the crotch together with one leg inside the other

Honestly, I have no idea how it works. One minute you’ve got a leg inside another and the next minute they’re next to each other and looking like leggings. Magic! Perhaps I should tweet Paul Daniels or someone and ask how it’s done.

Nonetheless, golden rule here is follow the pattern, especially if written by Harry Potter. Oh and maybe tack it first before sewing, which is what I did, so I could check it did work without having to unpick sewing machine stitches.

And so  with legs sewn together all that was left was to sew the waistband on. Taking a bit of elastic, bought from the classy establishment that is Bracknell market, I measured my waist, very technically, like this:

Measuring elastic for the waistband

Then I sewed the ends of the elastic together to form a loop and welcomed back the friendly Russian chap Serge who delightfully helped serge the top of the leggings for me. Top of leggings was then folded over elastic and tacked before sewing it down with a single machine line of stitching, being careful not to catch the elastic.

Tacking the top of the leggings over the elastic ready to machine stitch

And so with a wave of the hand and a mad-scientist cry of ‘Eureka I’ve done it!’ the leggings were complete. All that’s left is to try them on…Final leggings blog and pictures to follow very soon!