And maybe they will you, too? Let's see:

• Victorian Blood Book - extraordinary decoupage project, made in 1854. You really have to view the slideshow to get the full majesty and oddity of it all. Not many people's idea of a wedding present for one's daughter.
• Your Paintings - this BBC site has gathered together all 200-and-odd thousand oil paintings ( Read more... )

We were up in Edinburgh recently, and apart from seeing local features of interest such as ginger_ratbag, ubiquitous_cat and coffee_lifeform (thanks all), we managed to get into the Mansfield Traquair CentreWe'd heard about this place last time we were up about three years ago, but it's only open one afternoon a month, and we'd missed it. But this time we caught it! (More thanks to luck ( Read more... )

How do you pronounce the surname of that artist who liked sunflowers and starry nights? I suspect I say it wrongly… but not sure. Crowdsourcing will have the answer!

Poll Vincent van what now?

(And did you know he lived at various times in Brixton, Ramsgate and Isleworth? I didn't until recently.)

I had a very early start to today, so need to restore some sanity by closing a few tabs on things that have interested me lately.

• Million Dollar Babies -- art made by collaging cut-up dollar bills. But much better than that description sounds -- you can click through the several pieces using the discreet Next button.
  "I love all the process. For ( Read more... )

• "It was only when he did not get up to take a bow that anyone realised something had gone wrong."
  This is the sort of story that if you put it in a murder mystery game, it would be dismissed as too absurd. Well done, Mr Hoevels, especially for coming back on the following night.

• "Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently ( Read more... )

What it says. Many are familiar buildings, but there were quite a few here that I hadn't seen before. THere's three pages of 'em, and you can vote for your favourites should you so wish.

Would you like some delicious tasty vinegar in your beer? Don't knock it until you've tried it! Interesting experiment. The first result -- people liked the blind taste more than the idea -- is not surprising these days, we know people are prejudiced against such bizarre-sounding concepts. And the second result, that people liked the taste less if ( Read more... )

Don't stare at it for too long!
( cut to spare your sanity )

Various things that have caught my eye just lately:

• Map of blondeness across Europe -- from strange_maps. Nothing very surprising revealed, but I think this is a really nice presentation of the information. Notable that eg. the division in England more or less follows the Danelaw boundary. I suspect some of this is guesswork though, I don't suppose all these ( Read more... )

Not (as you might think) a lesser-known story by H P Lovecraft, but a medieval art treasure, here in Suffolk. We had no idea of its existence, but my mum and stepdad were here on a visit and they mentioned it. Wenhaston is just across the A12 from Southwold, so you can combine it with a visit there (to be honest, the Doom's probably only worth half ( Read more... )