London Array 'It's a trifle!'

The theme for the month is... desserts!

This is a dessert, with a theme - renewable energy. I've cheated because I volunteered to enter a bake-off at work in honour of the company's 10th anniversary so I had a creative dessert in the pipeline already.

London Array, the world's largest consented offshore wind farm, is the inspiration for the trifle. The recipe is tasty but pretty standard - Stephanie Alexander's Genoese Sponge sprinkled with apricot brandy, followed by peach slices then powdered custard to create the geotechnical strata that wind farm is built on. Finally elderflower jelly + blue food colouring for the water. The yellow monopile foundations are banana cable sweets and the fish are... gummi fish :)

London Array inspired trifles

Parts of the wind farm sit in water c. 20m deep but in other places it is much shallower, even exposed at low tide. 175 wind turbines are in the first phase of the wind farm, which is still under construction. Once finished (early 2013) it will have a capacity of 630MW - enough to power over 450,000 British homes. The second phase would bring capacity up to 1GW and is still being deliberated. Energy nerds can get more info here: www.londonarray.com.

'Aerial' view of wind farm trifles

My initial ambitions plans to create a massive array of trifles were quickly abandoned for a more manageable 5 x 5 array. Competition was ferocious and my trifles came second to a hydroelectric dam.

Installation of a foundation at London Array (image source www.londonarray.com) The likeness is unmistakeable!

Enlightenment

Sun rises. Beams of golden glow along the branches
Heat of the day begins to take shape as the insect calls her mate
Green leaves, heart shaped, take up the light and give life
A man. Waits patiently?

Time blurs between each breath a meditation, contemplation
Of things surrendered, given up, lost
In the search of a vast eternity of nothingness.
Then rain comes and the sky empties herself of all thought.

Mucalinda opens a lazy eye to see a man, waiting, rain falling
He coils, coils and coils raising his head above the mind, the heart, the soul.
Above all that is to be remembered as forgotten.
Naga, forevermore entwined in a moment of bliss beyond sight.

Sun rises. Beams of golden glow along the branches.

New Topic

Argghh.. I wanted to try to get my Inspirazzi in before posting the next topic, but just can't seem to get it in... so.. the next topic is....

THERE BE DRAGONS

I like to ride my bicycle

She's crafty... (and shiny)

OK, so I've really been getting into this ride-around-all-over-the-place thing. For me, it makes London a much more liveable, and lovely city. It's just the best feeling of having control over my day. The downer is having nothing to wear. Well, there is - lots of sporty, flashy, flourescent, heath and safety road warrior wear. I just don't like it. I just want to be me, going about my day (or night), but with wheels. So I got crafty...

The first experiment came after my mum visited in July. We went for some nice rides and she observed (as any good mum should) that with my black backpack, dark helmet and dark shorts, that cars behind might not see me and I'd inevitably be squished etc. So to keep mum happy I made this

backpack cover (modelled here by a my most classy chair) using hot pink silk and reflective thread. The roses (one reflectly and one from an inner tube) I added a few weeks later.

The next project was to create something that would masquerade as regular accessories and then at night reveal themselves as fab cycle bling. And so some humble pedal reflectors became cutting edge cycle couture. And now that I can be me and be seen I can ride my bicycle happily ever after.

NOTE TO INSPIRAZZI PURISTS: The backpack cover is cheating because I made it months ago and then strategically chose a bike theme to fit around it. But I really truly only made the other stuff last week, so that's OK, right?

only a few clouds on the horizon

I like to ride my bicycle in the sun when i can laugh at anything and when i am completely myself.
When nothing phases me and when all pettiness is below me.

Thats a good time when i ride my bike my bike in the sun
Its just like wow. i love it.

But sometimes when i go for a ride in the rain and i get wet through it is not fun
when i fall off its really disheartening. all i can think about is how my socks are wet and how my mascara is probably running down my face. thats when it feels like everything is coming down on top of me. as hard as the rain.
Luckily i always wear a helmet so even when i fall off its not too difficult for me to get back on.
Usually its sunny with only a slight chance of rain anyways. :)

Next theme...

Cheers luvvie! So a quick recap

Kenji: Weather

Calypso: A diary entry

Jailo: “Everybody dies but only some people truly live” What is truly living for to you?

Ruben: hittin' the dance floor

Emzski: green
me (for Oct 1): I like to ride my bicycle...


and next chooser, Berni

x

Helloo!

Sorry for my slow announcing of next theme chooser - a timely reminder Bron :)
So on that note I choose - Bronsoir of course!
xx
Emski

Next theme chooser?

Green greets Emski, the hungry hoards wanna know who's up next... x bron

New Post and Comment feeds

Hey all,

Country Squire asked me how we can alerted when a new post or comment is added.
We can do this by subscribing to a 'feed'. There is a feed for posts and one for comments. For those in the know, the URLs are;
For Posts
http://inspirazzi.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

For Comments
http://inspirazzi.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

I only have Thunderbird on my machine, so I'll run through how to subscribe to a feed on that. I think you can subscribe from within Gmail itself, but haven't looked into it. If you use Mail or any other Application to check your mail, there will probably be a way to check from there.

In Thunderbird go to the Tools menu -> Account Settings.
Press the button on the bottom left Account Actions -> Add Other Account
Select Blog & News Feeds -> Next
Rename the account or leave it as Default (Note this name is for ALL feeds, not just Inspirazzi) -> Next -> Finish
Select Blog & News Feeds (or whatever you called it) from the window on the left of the Account settings Window. Click Manage Subscriptions -> Add.
Under Feed URL: put one of the URL's I've suggested above -> Ok
Close the Feed Subscriptions Window and press OK on the Account Settings Window

You should now have that feed show up as an account in Thunderbird and will be alerted when new content is posted. Note you'll have to repeat the Subscription Process for both Posts and Comments if you want them