In the terrarium

Have you noticed? Can you have missed it? That’s right, a new blog design has landed! I distinctly recall saying I had no idea why I would ever want a change, but it turns out that seven months is long enough (updating the header wasn’t enough). I needed a change, for inspiration’s sake, if nothing else! The colours weren’t exactly uplifting – just really sombre, and moody and sort of murrelsome*. That is not in any sense of the word a word, but somehow it describes how that blog design felt to me. I loved it, and still do, but – HEY -- SKELETONS!

Enough of dwelling on the past! Hey! Skeletons! Skeletons, dried flowers, rocking chairs! Extinct  carnivorous marsupials, vintage dressing tables, bell jar terrariums! What more could you want?

This new blog mixes the macabre with some more vibrancy, which ain’t nothin’ bad. I decided against the first (middle) colour scheme (which you can see in action here on my blog design tester page) because I did want something less soporific. I’m interested in what you think of the result. Is the colour scheme too mixy-matchy? Is the eye attacked by the clashing designs? I like the clashing. It’s like listening to Minor Threat and Pearl & the Beard at the same time. Which is something I would like to do.

As you can see my new blog ‘subtitle’ is ‘in terra(rium) incognita’.

The reason I picked that name is probably way too complicated, but it draws on the old phrase ‘terra incognita’ which refers to uncharted parts of the world, though now that everything is charted, it refers to uncharted areas of other fields of research. To me, it refers to the fact that Thule (another world for Iceland, and the origin of my blog name) remained ‘incognita’ for a very long time, indeed that is one of the things which drew me there to that easily overlooked island. I sometimes feel like Iceland: remote, unlike anything else, sometimes overseen yet unexpectedly explosive and troubled, beautifully complex, ruled by nature, creative and full of impossible dreams,  always changing (literally), full of oddities and fucking awesome. So many parts of myself remain uncharted and this blog is a way of charting them.

The terrarium part stems from the fact that the blogosphere is a utopian microcosm of society, often prettied up and improved upon (which is not a bad thing – if you can present to the world your ideal self, you are constantly affirming to yourself that you can be and already are that ideal self), just as a terrarium is a little bit of a whimsical, idealised, tightly controlled natural environment. I record so much of my life here that it is like my own personal terrarium.

The image was taken in the same time and place as the previous banner:

Dancing on bouncy moss during 11am sunrise yoga in the peaks of Iceland. Probably one of the happiest moments of my life.

This font has remained because I love it so much. It’s called Two Turtle Doves.

The other font is a mixture of  two fonts called Rough Typewriter and Mom’s Typewriter.

 

I think a part of me want to justify this design because I spent the last four hours doing this. Life, who needs a life? Time management, what’s that? What do you mean, ‘prioritisation’? You can’t just invent words, you now. You’re not George Bush. I had a lot of fun doing it, and this is my paltry form of art. I can’ paint or draw, but I do one mean blog design. I’m also pretty awesome at photo collages. Anyway, the sleepiness is getting to me and I’m going to toddle off to bed now. Hope you like me blog.

 

*I found out after googling this word that murrel is a type of fish. Oh well, it’s still a nice word. And shag is a type of bird so not all homophones need to have the same meaning! And hey, it’s a Himalayan fish. Doesn’t that impress you? A fish from the Himalayas!