What you know you know

Thought I should probably start blogging about serious things again, and today I found a book that really caught my interest.  It's called 'The Politics Book' and I found it in my school library, and I've been using it to support everything that I've been learning in politics.  Amongst all of the political thinkers that I've been studying at school: Marx, Hegel, Burke, Locke, Rawls, etc, I found a quote from an ancient philosopher called Confucius.

"What you know, you know, what you don't know, you don't know, this is wisdom."

For a minute I didn't know where I heard this before, but I realised that although we didn't look that far back in politics, we did look at a speech by Donald Rumsfeld (who was the US Secretary of Defense at the time of 9/11).

"There are known knowns.  There are things that we know that we know.  There are known unknowns.  That is to say, there are things that we know that we don't know.  But there are also unknown unknowns.  There are things that we don't know that we don't know."

I found this particularly interesting for two reasons: first, it occurred to me how principles and thoughts, even as early as 500 BC, echo through speeches and thought throughout history.  Second, I find the concept of unknown unknowns fairly ominous.  The idea that there are things that weren't even considered as options is understandable in retrospect, but if you look at the example of 9/11, arguably there were signs that could have been taken into account.  Does this mean that we're missing real signals of things that might happen in the future every day?  Probably.  And doesn't that make you just a little bit paranoid?

I think Confucius had it right, it's the knowing that makes us wise, whether this is knowing that we're safe in our knowledge, or knowing that we don't know and being able to prepare for it.  This is wisdom.  But the unknown unknowns...

Lord of the Rings Birthday Party

A couple of days ago, all of my hard work from the last month cultimated in my 18th birthday party!  I thought I'd share some of the pictures and experience with you :)

Upon arrival, my guests entered through a hobbit size door which I had made out of a huge piece of cardboard and mounted just inside my front door (to keep it dry!)

 

I also made some little wine glass charms out of FIMO clay, each representative of one of my guests dressed up as their assigned character!

 

 

Upon arrival, we all had afternoon tea (the first of our hobbit meals) made up of tea and scones with cream and jam - whilst watching the Fellowship of the Ring (all films were in special extended edition).  After the film ended, at about 7pm, we went into the dining room for dinner.

 

Dinner Menu

 

Starter

A choice of roasted red pepper or leek and potato soup, served with freshly baked lembas bread

Main

Roast chicken dinner with all the trimmings

Dessert

Tarte au citron and summer fruit and apple pie

 

After dinner, we brought through the cake (though we were too full to eat it straight away!)  I had made a checkerboard cake (chocolate and vanilla sponge) and decorated it as a hobbit house, this took in total about 4 hours.  To create the 'wooden' effect, I marbled brown food colouring paste through fondant, and I textured the door using a cocktail stick, using a gold sugar ball for the handle.  I used small ivy leaf cutters for the leaves, and coloured buttercream green and piped using a no. 233 icing nozzle. 

 

 

After dinner, we watched the second film and got really tired, so decided to head downstairs to sleep.  The intention had been to stay up to watch the first half of Return of the King, so that everybody could be in the mood to face Shelob (my paper mache spider) when we got downstairs into my bedroom.  However, this was not before playing the 'ring doughnut game,' tying ring doughnuts from string and hanging them from the curtain rail, and having to eat them without using our hands - my friend Aggie was named 'Lord of the Rings.'

 

 

 

In the morning, we woke up and had first and second breakfast, cereal and tea for first breakfast, and a warm fruit drink and blueberry pancakes for second breakfast.  We then moved back into the living room and watched the final film before everybody left at 11am.

 

And so ends the chronicle of my 18th birthday!  Subscribe, +1 and comment!



Lord of the Rings Invitations

This evening I've been working on the invitations.  I've taken inspiration from MentaDesigns on deviantart, but am making a few changes to make these invitations really my own.  If you want copies of any of the borders or anything, message me and let me know.

  Including me, there are going to be 9 people at my party.  This means 3 hobbits, 3 elves and 3 (wo)men.  I've decided to do slightly different invitations for each race, so different colour schemes and different embellishments on each border.  I've tried to go for something that symbolises each race: an Evenstar for Elves, a Tree of Gondor for Men, and I was going to do a smial (hobbit house) door for the Hobbit invitation, but I ended up doing the Tolkien signature instead because it looked really cool.

Step One: Cut card to size!  I've used card by Core'dinations in 'Leapfrog' (Green), 'Ming' (Dark Blue), and 'Dream of Wheat' (Beige/Peach)

Step Two: Fold.  You can do this however you like, but I folded a small panel, followed by two larger equally sized panels.  These split into 1 x 6cm and 2 x 11.5cm.

Step Three: The computer editing stage.  I used PowerPoint, it was fairly basic to do.  I basically intertwined 'curve' lines that went around the border of my page in different shades of silver, gold or bronze.  I used silver for the "elf" invitation, gold for the "man" invitation, and bronze for the "hobbit" invitation.  At the top of each page within the border is an icon which represents each race, i.e. a Tolkien signature, an Evenstar or a Tree of Gondor.  Contact me if you want me to send you the templates that I used.

Step Four: print and stick everything on!  

Step 5: I made mini envelopes so that I could put some Polaroid style pictures of LoTR characters within for costume inspiration, I made this out of a cream coloured weighted paper and stuck it onto the envelope.

Step 6: Seal - (see my Wax Seal post for more details of this).

Et voila!

Wax Seal Stamp

I needed to make a wax seal for my invitations.  I used some 'FIMO Effect' modelling clay by #Staedtler in Glitter Green (though the colour doesn't matter for this particular part of the project).

I cut a small section of it off and rolled it into a ball (about the size of a conker - slightly smaller than a table tennis ball)

I then rolled it flat, allowing 1cm height

Using an ivy leaf fondant cutter, I embossed the pattern onto the FIMO, using a cocktail stick to emphasise the main lines and to add texture.

I made the edges of the stamp slightly cleaner with the edge of a knife, and my stamp is complete, ready to bake.  I did this on some tinfoil in the oven at 110 degrees centigrade for 20 - 30 minutes.

The next stage was attaching a handle to make stamping easier, I had a short length of doweling rod that I stuck on using super glue.  I then melted my sealing wax, which I bought here, stamped my design into it, and allowed it to cool.

Tauriel Costume

<< The premiere of The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug is this Friday, and tonight I finished my costume!

Tauriel (as I've explained in my 'Plan' post) is an elf of Mirkwood (aka Greenwood).  She's unique to Peter Jackson's films, as she did not appear in the book - in fact, very few/no female characters appeared in the book, so I guess this is a nod to diversity.

This costume took me about a week to make!  Really worth it - it's not just for the premiere, as my birthday party (1st-2nd Feb) is going to be Tolkein themed.  Hopefully I won't break it between now and then!

Making the Breast-Plate (and other armour)

I decided to make my armour out of papier mâché.  I forgot to take pictures (except of the final product) but here is just about how I did it (this is how I did the breast-plate, but I also used this method to make greaves and bracers).  

1. Put on an old, form fitting T-shirt that you don't mind cutting to bits.

2. Cover yourself in duct tape, the whole area that you want to be 'armour' - it should look like you have duct tape armour at this point.  Don't worry about going too tight, just remember that it will need to fit you when you put the final product on.

3. Get a pair of heavy duty scissors and get a friend to cut you out of your duct tape prison - this should be in a straight line from the top of your back, to the bottom - more or less following your spine downwards.

4. Duct tape the back together again.

5. Stuff your T-shirt with sheets, cushions, etc, until it looks the same shape as you when you're in it

6. Papier mâché the form with old newspaper and a PVA glue/water mix - I did about 50/50 measures, but you could get away with less PVA if you don't have much.  Do about 10 layers, and make sure you do them evenly.  Let it dry.

7.  Cut the back as you did before when trying to remove yourself from it, and peel the T-shirt and duct tape from the inside of the shell.  Don't worry if your first layer of papier mâché catches on it, if you have enough layers, this shouldn't be a problem.

8. Paint!  I wanted mine to look like leather, so used a dark brown acrylic paint, but you could make it look like metal if you wanted.  I added a design to it that I saw on Tauriel's greaves on an official Hobbit toy, as I wasn't convinced that I could copy the design of her breast-plate with the materials I have.  I used the same design on my bracers and greaves to tie it all in together.

9. Once dry, use a stanley knife and a knitting needle to punch through holes for laces.  Your armour will be able to be tied onto you corset-style.

10.  I covered it with another layer of PVA glue to make a more leathery effect.

11.  Add laces/string and enjoy!
 

 Making the Dress:

I can't really talk you through exactly how I went about making my dress, as I forgot to take pictures (sorry), but to sum up, I used tailor's chalk to mark out my template for my dress and left room for seams.  I sewed the different panels of the dress together, using a dark green fabric and dark green thread.  (Sorry again that I can't go into more detail).

Tauriel Costume: Plan

Who is Tauriel?  Well, she's an elf of Mirkwood, and one that didn't appear in Tolkien's the Hobbit.  More importantly, she's ginger and female - making her an ideal character for me to dress up as for the premier of the Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug on Friday 13th!

My costume isn't going to be exact, by any stretch of the imagination - in fact, I'm just using it as an influence on what I'm going to end up with.  Also - on a budget!  Armour will be made of Papier Mâché and not any sort of leather; and the dress will be made of scraps of material that I find around my house. 

Jane Eyre Cake

Last month, I was asked by my English teacher to make a cake for her book club.  She wanted a lemon sponge with a lemon buttercream, to feed 12 people, and she wanted it to look like an open book with pages of a classic book such as Jane Eyre or something by Dickens.

The concept:

The flavour of the cake would be as requested, on a silver board with holly and ivy made out of modelling paste in order to give it a festive feel.  I would have got the pages printed onto icing, but after being quoted £8 per sheet in the shop, and not trusting online sellers, I hand wrote the pages onto rice paper with an edible ink pen.  This took me about 2 hours, but only cost me about £2 total for all of the components!  (Preferable to the £16 that I would have had to pay otherwise).

I made my sponges about a week in advance and froze them.  This had the benefit that they were much easier to carve and buttercream once frozen as crumbs weren't flying everywhere.  I carved it into a book shape, added a liberal amount of buttercream, and then rolled on my ready-to-roll icing sheet (which I had coloured so that it was slightly ivory).

Tada!