Elaine Massung – Page 13

Elaine Massung June 28, 2016

Beyond MissElaineous: Part 1

Over the past several years, I have found myself collecting domain names like stamps (which I also used to collect, but that’s a different story). This one, www.miss-elaineous.com, was the first. It was originally divided in two: one side to share my PhD research and the other for my freelance proofreading business. Now, it’s been turned into a launching pad for nine different sites, some… View Post

Elaine Massung June 24, 2016

London Town: Part 3

The final surprise during our recent trip to London was on the last day: my husband had squeezed in a booking to a photography exhibition for the morning before we were to head back to Chippenham. It seemed very straightforward: leave our hotel, hop on the Circle Line to Barbican, enjoy the exhibit, back on the Circle Line to Paddington. Simple. Except that the Circle… View Post

Elaine Massung June 21, 2016

London Town: Part 2

The second day of my surprise London adventure was just as grey as the first, so I’m afraid there are very few photos from our explorations. There are plenty of words, however, and I hope that will suffice for the time being. A few years ago, my lovely mother-in-law got me membership to the British Museum as a Christmas gift, and this has become… View Post

Elaine Massung June 17, 2016

London Town: Part 1

Those of you reading this who know me, probably also know that I like to be in control. I like to know what’s going on, have things planned, and be aware of every last detail whenever possible. So it may come as a slight shock that I recently went on a surprise trip to London that my lovely husband had put together. The only thing I… View Post

Elaine Massung June 14, 2016

Paradise Found

Last week I wrote about a weekend getaway to Bournemouth. The only thing we had planned was the Hans Zimmer concert on Saturday night, so after an early morning walk along the seafront and a hearty breakfast at our hotel, we hit the road for the return journey north. However, a few things caught our eye and those two hours of travel… View Post

Elaine Massung June 10, 2016

Bournemouth Bound

Before I managed to distract myself with musings about roads, I was going to write about a visit to Bournemouth on a recent Bank Holiday weekend. This was a trip that had been in the works for a few months—not to visit the beach but to attend a concert. But with a perfect blue sky, bright sun, and a few hours to kill… View Post

Elaine Massung June 7, 2016

Hither and Yon

As I am reminded on a regular basis—so much so that it will be a blog entry of its own one of these days—I still have an American accent despite over a decade of living in the UK. While this is unlikely to ever change, my time as an expat has affected how I perceive time and distance. The US is a big country. Driving… View Post

Elaine Massung June 3, 2016

Craftiness

On the 6th of January I had dinner with friends and we discussed some of the things I was working on for Indian River by Air. I really wanted to get a set of greeting cards off the ground but was having trouble gaining traction with it, a complication of being 4000 miles away from the centre of the business. They posed a question I… View Post

Elaine Massung May 31, 2016

Of Head Injuries and Help

To avoid any concern, I am going to start this by stating that I am absolutely fine, so there is no need to worry. But last week I won the anti-lottery: a moment of spectacularly bad luck that saw me in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was on my way home from work and feeling very pleased with myself. It had… View Post

Elaine Massung May 27, 2016

When inspiration strikes …

I’ve written previously about how my MissElaineous designs grew from my work on Indian River by Air, and this organic crossover is something that I enjoy cultivating in everything I do. Indeed, it’s the meaning behind the MissElaineous logo, with different parts of my life running into each other to form new and different shades of colour. And it explains the “little bit of everything”… View Post

Elaine Massung May 24, 2016

Blooming Marvellous

Spring is a wonderful time of year: the days get longer, the weather warmer (well, usually – frost well into April was unexpected this year), and new life abounds in the garden. I’ve written previously about the frog spawn and garden birds, but now turn my attention today to an area that is causing some consternation: the flowers. First, I should state that I… View Post

Elaine Massung May 20, 2016

An ode to …

I have written and re-written this blog entry several times, at least in my head. Its original aim was to write in praise of Good Tickle Brain, a mostly Shakespeare webcomic that keeps me in stitches. And I will write about that in just a moment. But my thinking has gone off in many directions over the past several weeks, so please bear with me—this may be… View Post

Elaine Massung May 17, 2016

Follow the butterfly

Earlier this year while having a mini-meltdown about my job, the phrase “Follow the butterfly” popped into my head. It’s not the first time that a random snippet just appeared that, in theory, I could apply to my present situation like some sort of fortune cookie from my subconscious. But, unlike those other times, I had no idea what this meant. It was not… View Post

Elaine Massung May 13, 2016

An Ode to Woodpigeons

A lot of people don’t like woodpigeons. Knowing that I had a half dozen feeders scattered around my garden, a colleague once asked for tips and tricks on how to keep them away when he was setting up his own feeding station. Other friends have gone to elaborate lengths to prevent pigeons from perching on their feeders, preferring to allow only the small garden birds grab… View Post

Elaine Massung May 10, 2016

Rockin’ Robins

Since March, the garden has started to come back to life. First, spring flowers like daisies and daffodils made an appearance. The frogs returned to the pond to spawn, and the tadpoles have been getting bigger and doing whatever it is that tadpoles do as they go about their metamorphosis. More recently, the constant to-ing and fro-ing of small garden birds has been added into the… View Post

Elaine Massung May 5, 2016

Wiltshire Wonderland

I wrote on Tuesday about how the hedgehog silhouette was inspired by a visit to the Wiltshire countryside last year, and this is a good opportunity to share a few (or maybe slightly more!) photos from that evening, when a chance hunt for bluebells turned into the opportunity to see a local area in a whole new light. [Insert your… View Post

Elaine Massung May 3, 2016

Sharing the Hedge

The last, but certainly not least of the Magnificent Mammal collection is the hedgehog. It is such an iconic British animal that its absence in the collection would have been noticeable—much like it is in reality: hedgehog numbers are down at least 25% over the past decade, and they’ve been plummeting for the past 30-40 years. Needing a decent-sized territory in which to roam, these… View Post

Elaine Massung May 1, 2016

Wiltshire Wanderings

I am not a morning person. A late night of reading, writing, or working on a current project, followed by long, luxurious lie in the next day is the height of bliss for me. However, there is one thing that will get me out of bed even before the crack of dawn: bluebells. Every year, the woods near Marlborough gain a carpet of… View Post

Elaine Massung April 28, 2016

Observing History

A key part of my PhD dissertation involved creating a working prototype of a location-based guide for a heritage site. Bristol doesn’t have a shortage of these: from Civil War defences on Brandon Hill to the eponymous castle of Castle Park, the difficulty is in just choosing one! In the end, my supervisor and I agreed on the Clifton Suspension… View Post