I really like these small face masks, they are very creative. They are made, using the standard four-inch toilet paper roll tubes, by French artist Junior Fritz Jacquet http://www.juniorfritzjacquet.com
He describes himself as a creator and sculptor in paper.
After moulding his paper creations he mounts them on to steel stands before selling them.

Junior Fritz Jacquet, 30, said his interest in paper art started with school origami classes, and that he now gets his inspiration from the unique characteristics of card.
He said, “I first concentrate on the construction of the eyes, then the nose, then the mouth, and then the entire expression.
“I am trying to create funny and jovial expressions and will keep working on my technique because there is no limit to experimentation.
“I started to get interested in origami techniques when I was 14. At school the teacher gave us origami models to build ourselves.
“My connection with origami was immediate and I quickly understood that you could take it a long way from a single sheet of paper.
“I have perfected my technique since then. I work with every sort of paper and believe every type has its own personality.
“In the end, every mask is unique.”

Monsieur Jacquet says he is influenced by the bronze figures of Swiss surrealist sculptor Alberto Giacometti, and also the clay figures of Senegalese artist Ousmane Sow.

Masks made from loo roll paper tubes are not Monsieur Jacquet’s only work, he also creates fun folded card figurines, and illuminated paper sculptures.
He said, “Paper is surprising in its fragility but also complex in its texture, elasticity, capacity to absorb light and its memory of being folded or crumpled.
“It is also an immediate material. That’s to say, unlike earth or metal or wood it does not need treating or time to dry.
“I treat paper like a living material. It has a memory in that it holds or forgets folds or the pressure of a finger.
“It also contains a resin which changes with time by interacting with humidity, light and colour.”

Junior Fritz Jacquet’s loo roll card, steel mounted masks, sell at €60 each and must be ordered in a minimum batch of five.

Life in France

I’m not particularly interested in gardens or gardening, but I do like this Formula 1 car shaped hedges.

Not surprisingly this hedge isn’t in a private garden, it’s at the Williams F1 headquarters, where the gardeners spend several hours every month trimming their topiary to keep the fantastic shape of the Formula 1 car and mechanics.
The Formula 1 car is 11ft long and consists of six plants, and the 6ft mechanics are each made from two plants. They all sit on top of gravel.
The Williams F1 headquarters is in Grove, near Didcot, Oxfordshire, England, and visitors are usually pretty impressed by the topiary which shows a couple of mechanics changing the cars wheels during a pit stop.
Apparently an Italian nursery originally made the model for Ferrari, but Williams purchased it and then changed the shape of the car to reflect their car design.
It wasn’t a quick chnage as the plants took two and a half years to weave round the metal frames which are now completely covered.
Tim Lightfoot, facilities manager at Williams, said visitors are impressed by the detail of the work.
He said, “Our gardeners trim the plants into shape by hand and take a great deal of care doing it.
“It is hard work but the result is really impressive.
“The topiary has pride of place outside our conference centre and is popular with the many people who visit us each year.
“Many guests are shocked by the size of it.
“We often have people trying to sit in it but it’s not a very comfortable drive. It doesn’t go very fast either.”

Williams-Toyota are currently sixth in the Formula 1 constructors’ championship on 30.5 points.
Driver Nico Rosberg has secured all their points, and lies in sixth place in the drivers’ championship. Kazuki Nakajima is yet to score this season.

I love everything about cars, and if I ever had more money than sense, I think I’d get my gardener to make me something similar to this. Maybe I’d have a Bugatti Veyron shaped hedge?
Who am I kidding - I’d have chocolate shaped hedges!

LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE

The worst dust storm in 70 years swept across eastern Australia on Wednesday blanketing Sydney in a cloud of red outback grit.

The swirling crimson cloud forced people indoors and stripped thousands of tonnes of valuable farmland topsoil. Landmarks in Sydney including the harbour bridge and opera house were bathed in an eerie orange mist.
The storm hit the city at dawn, carrying an estimated 5 million tonnes of dust, sending pollution levels up to 1,500 times their normal levels. Ambulance services reported an increase in emergency calls from people suffering with breathing difficulties.
The fire brigade was also kept busy by a stream of alerts from alarms triggered by the dust particles.
The orange mist caused problems everywhere; divers were advised to stay off the roads, harbour ferries were cancelled, public transport systems were crippled by the dust, and international flights were diverted to Melbourne and Brisbane as visibility was reduced to a couple of hundred metres.

A talk radio station received a call from one of its listeners who said, “It’s just red, red, red as far as you can see. It’s like I’ve woke up on Mars.”

At sunrise the dust was a spectacular crimson colour, which then turned orange, yellow, and eventually grey as the hours went by.
The cloak was caused when 45mph winds with gusts to 65mph lifted up loose topsoil in the ]centre of Australia, which then blasted half of New South Wales.
Weather forecaster Jane Golding said, “We had some really strong winds in the inland areas for a sustained period yesterday.
“That’s lifted a whole lot of dust off the ground because it’s quite dry out there, many of those areas are still drought affected.”

Dr John Leys, a climate change research scientist, said the dust plume stretched 400 miles along the coast and was dumping 75,000 tons of dust per hour into the Tasman Sea.
Dr John Leys’ colleague, atmosphere boffin Chris Eiser, said the air normally contained 10 micrograms of particles per cubic metre of air, but those levels had soared to 15,400.
Chris Eiser said, “This is the highest we’ve measured in Sydney.”

Guy Marks, a Respiratory medicine professor, advised people with breathing problems to remain indoors behind closed windows, or to wear a face mask if they had to venture outside.
He said, “It’s quite extraordinary. I’ve lived in Sydney for 53 years and never seen anything like this before.”

Many of the residents in Sydney braved the conditions to get to work, coughing their way through their morning commute. Some of them wore face masks, others wrapped scarves round their faces.

Nigel Tapper, an environmental scientist at Monash University, said, “These dust storms are some of the largest in the last 70 years.
“Ten very dry years over inland southern Australia and very strong westerlies have conspired to produce these storms.”

Yesterday Australia’s capital Canberra was also hit by the red storms.
Health authorities urged people to stay indoors, saying they expected the storm would continue into tomorrow.
Wayne Smith from the New South Wales state health department said, “People at risk are children, elderly, pregnant women, people with heart and lung diseases.
“Dust particles can increase the risk of people with these conditions becoming unwell.”

Conditions were expected to return to normal tomorrow.
Normal, but with a lot of cleaning up to do.

While I appreciate that going outside in these conditions must be uncomfortable, I can’t help but love the photographs that have been printed in the media - they are very beautiful.
No doubt this perfectly normal weather event will give the ‘climate change’ nutters something new to bang on about!
I love the Oz spirit - there may be dust everywhere but it won’t stop them exercising.

The Wine Connoisseur

Monica Vinader sterling silver bracelet with hand woven red plaited cord. The bracelet has a designer-stamped charm which enables you to pull and fasten the bracelet to your wrist.
€67.50

I love it! I want it!

The Wine Connoisseur

Vivienne Westwood Anglomania ribbed square grey cardigan. This cardigan is made from a wool blend with an oversized cowl neckline, concealed button detail, matching tie belt at the waistline, full length sleeves with a slight flare on the cuffs, and an asymmetric hemline.
25% Alpaca, 25% wool, 50% acrylic.
£370

I like this cardigan, and as I’m always cold I’m sure it would keep me nice and snug, it’s just a shame it’s 50% acrylic - Yuk!
Nothing is perfect.

LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE

Having a wee while pretending to do some stretching exercises ~
Priceless.

RICHARDS REALM

Amazing interactive 360 degree panoramic view of the entire night sky has been unveiled online today.
A new 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky was constructed from 1,200 photos by snapped by astronomers at the European Southern Observatory from viewing sites in Chile.
Stargazers can explore and experience the Universe as it is seen with the unaided eye from the darkest and best viewing locations in the world.
The image of the celestial sphere is the first of three high-resolution images featured in the GigaGalaxy Zoom project from ESO.
The project seeks to link the sky we can all see with the deep, ‘hidden’ cosmos that astronomers study daily.
It features include a web tool that allows users to delve into our Milky Way. Users are also able to learn about features including multi-coloured nebulae, and exploding stars, all at the click of a button.
The projection places the viewer in front of our Galaxy with the Galactic Plane running horizontally through the image, so it’s almost as if we were viewing the Milky Way from the outside.
From this vantage point, the general components of our spiral galaxy come clearly into view, including its disc, marbled with both dark and glowing nebulae, which harbours bright, young stars, as well as the Galaxy’s central bulge and its satellite galaxies.
The production of this image is the result of a collaboration between ESO, the French writer and astrophotographer Serge Brunier, and his fellow Frenchman Frédéric Tapissier.
Serge Brunier spent several weeks capturing the sky, during the period between August 2008 and February 2009, mostly from ESO observatories at La Silla and Paranal in Chile.
To cover the full Milky Way, Serge Brunier also made a week-long trip to La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, to photograph the northern skies. The image, now available on GigaGalaxy Zoom, is composed of almost 300 fields each individually captured by Brunier four times, adding up to almost 1,200 photos that encompass the entire night sky.
Serge Brunier said, “I wanted to show a sky that everyone can relate to, with its constellations, its thousands of stars, with names familiar since childhood, its myths shared by all civilisations since Homo became Sapiens.
“The image was therefore made as man sees it, with a regular digital camera under the dark skies in the Atacama Desert and on La Palma.”
The creators of the GigaGalaxy Zoom project hope that these latest efforts in bringing the night sky as observed under the best conditions on the planet to stargazers everywhere will inspire awe for the beautiful, immense Universe that we live in.
Henri Boffin said, “The vision of the IYA2009 is to help people rediscover their place in the Universe through the day, and night-time sky, and this is exactly what the GigaGalaxy Zoom project is all about.”
The second dramatic GigaGalaxy Zoom image will be revealed next week, on 21 September 2009.

800 Megapixel Panorama of Milky Way

This photo is too small to really show the amazing image in any great detail, but it is pretty impressive. The video gives a much clearer example of the images Serge Brunier and Frédéric Tapissier captured.
I love it - it’s so beautiful, breathtaking.

Life in France

A person, who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.

I couldn’t agree with this more! I have always had a soft spot for waiters; anyone who brings me food and drink will always have a place in my heart.

The Wine Connoisseur

Bill Guffey, a keen artist, says he can’t go globetrotting so he uses Google Street View to find inspiration for his paintings.
Bill Guffey has ‘virtually’ travelled round the world without leaving his studio in Kentucky, USA.
Bill, 45, said, “Family and holding down a job means my travelling days are numbered. But Street View changed everything for me.”

Amsterdam canal scene

Taxi on 8th Avenue Manhattan ~ Tram in Portugal

Lemon tree, Auvers, France

I guess Bill Guffey is one person who won’t be complaining about Google Street View invading privacy!

LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE

A enlightened Chinese farmer is growing Buddha shaped pears!
The farmer, Gao Xianzhang, has created 10,000 of the miniature pears this season, and he intends to export the novelty pears to the UK and Europe.
Gao Xianzhang reportedly spent six years trying to perfect the Buddha shaped pears by carefully crafting each pear as it grows inside an individual mould.
The Buddha pears cost £5 each, but that doesn’t seem to have discouraged locals in his home village of Hexia, in Hebia, northern China, buying them as they have reportedly been snapping them up.
Gao Xianzhang said, “People seem to think they are cute or lucky and will buy them as soon as they’re off the tree.”

In July EU officials returned wonky shaped fruit and vegetables to supermarket shelves, after EU rules had restricted the sale of 36 varieties of odd sized and shaped fruit and vegetables for the last 20 years, with marketing standards encouraging only the sale of the best looking produce for sale in shops.
So Gao Xianzhang should have no problems getting UK and Eurpoean supermarkets to stock his Buddha shaped pears, although I’m not sure how many people will be willing to pay £5 for one though.

This story reminds me of the April Fools Day ‘Spaghetti growing on trees’ hoax.

Lottery Scams