CherishvilleIn my First Life for a little over thirteen years I lived and worked in the city of Oxford. Well known for its university, the city also boats a number of world-class museums, art galleries and public collections, one of which is the Ashmolean Museum, the oldest public museum in Britain. The "Ashmo" has a fine collection of nineteenth century art and one of my abiding favourites is Camille Pissarro's "Tuileries Gardens, Rainy Weather". It doesn't look much on the screen (you can see it HERE) but in reality it is one of the most effective evocations of a rainy day I have ever seen. Cherishville has the same quality, but this time in an SL sim. I came across Cherishville entirely by chance, browsing through Flickr. To my regret I can't even remember who posted the picture that got my attention. On my first visit I arrived in my usual printed jeans and tie-top, to be confronted by the most convincing combination of weather effects and WindlightI I have ever seen! I HAD to find an umbrella in my Inventory before I could go on! Subsequent visits were better prepared. The sim is a delight of cleverly selected buildings and the most extraordinary attention to detail. Topographically the impression is of an island on a lake, bisected by a deep channel and surrounded by mountains. After exploring the waterside townscape, I made my way through a beautifully presented autumnal wood to a large and welcoming house on the South side of the sim. Cherishville offers so many opportunities for reflection, for photography or simply experiencing the place that I cannot recommend it enough. However, my understanign is that it is only accessible for a limited time so please get your raincoat on and go visit... Visit Cherishville I so enjoyed this location that I've included all the pictures I took in this week's slideshow!
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FrogmoreOne of my close friends with whom I often share Landmarks once asked my how I find new and interesting places to visit. Aside from the odd teleport offer from other friends equally keen to share their discoveries, the best source I find is the Destination Guide. I know this sounds trite, but when you consider the locations listed there belong to people who want you to visit, want to drive up their traffic and share what they have achieved it actually makes a great deal of sense...and it is where I found Frogmore. My first visit was right in the middle of Lockdown and consequently all the more affecting. At that time travel was severely restricted to no more than 5 miles, so the opportunity to "visit" somewhere, even virtually was doubly appealing. (It was about this time I began walking round SL shopping centres just to be "out", but more of that another time.) Frogmore's charm is that it has been inspired by a real location, the county of Cornwall in the far South-West of the UK. The landing point on the sim delivers you to the jetty of a small harbour. A nice touch as it offers a sense of "arrival" - stepping from a boat onto what might easily be a tiny coastal island. Another nice touch is the selection of easels. South-facing coasts seem to hold a particular fascination for artists, the light is considered to be particularly "vivid" and Cornwall has significant centres for the visual arts at Falmouth and Newquay. The sim is a no-fly zone, so from this point you have a choice, stop for an ice-cream or walk over the creek and into the village. Once you are past the watermill and the pavilion, you are on your own though. There are pathways, there are vistas and places to explore, but none of them is marked, it is all there to be discovered. The sim is owned by Tolla Crisp and I bumped into her as I was taking the pictures for this Blog. Tolla takes an active interest in the sim and was busy adding some small details and a few Autumnal touches. It's things like this that keep a sim alive, small changes and as has been said so often before "the Devil is in the detail". Tolla owns and maintains the sim, but the design is the work of Terry Fotherington. Terry describes himself a Scenographer and showcases many of his projects through his Facebook linked above.. I have yet to see any of Terry's other builds, but what I admire about his Frogmore design is the observation and brilliantly inventive use of textures and planting. The beaches look like the beaches round a fishing village, littered with bladder-wrack, thorny bushes and discarded fishing gear. Plantings are restrained and completely convincing. The thing that impresses me most about the sim though is the sense of authenticity. A lot of designers in SL deliberately imbue their objects with a kind of studied shabbiness, "shabby-chic" in spades. What makes Terry Fotherigton's treatment at Frogmore is that the shabbiness looks real. It is the shabbiness of age, of continued use and exposure. As well as offering this amazingly authentic landscape to explore, Frogmore is also the home of the Beehive, a performance venue and dance-club that maintains the unique style of the rest of the Frogmore sim. The Club hosts regular DJ sessions and I would strongly recommend joining the local Group to stay informed of developments and events. For me Frogmore is about being in a landscape, I live my SL in mouselook and the sense of place here is undeniable. Each time I return I have found something new, some new vista, hidden path or little vignette of items. If you do nothing else you should visit Frogmore at least once. Finally another slideshow this time of Frogmore for you to enjoy!
Spoonful of Sugar...OK so I had this idea. I enjoy exploring locations in SL, and often end up handing out Landmarks to my friends and family, so why not go a step further and start a Blog? Brilliant, right? Except I've been agonising over how to start the thing... Inspiration came in the form of something that combine two of my pan-SL passions, well-crafted environments and SHOPPING! The Spoonful of Sugar Festival takes its name from a song in the original Disney production of Mary Poppins. Now those of you with long memories or an eye for trivia may remember that "a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down", the "medicine" in this case being "Medecines sans Frontieres/Doctors without Borders". This event is a fundraiser for an organisation that provides much-needed international medical intervention, a service which is even more pertinent in the current time of COVID-19. So not only do we have a beautifully crafted desert environment, we also have 5 shopping sims and up to 100% percent of the makers proceeds go to an extremely good cause! A Teleport board at the base sim will take you to each of the five shopping sims, four of which follow the same pattern of a small walled town, somewhere in the North African desert.... Within the walls, the streets are shaded with draped textiles, lined with potted plants and filled with a whimsical menagerie of animals from domestic cats, through stoic camels to amiable-looking lions. The are also lined with shops... Almost 200 (I stopped counting at 180) makers have shops in the towns, ranging from big name fashion houses to individuals, - I found some wonderful craft pottery in one shop which I'd never have known about otherwise. You can read a full lit of retailers HERE Each retail space has been crafted by the makers themselves, but the town spaces are the work of Hatris Panacek of Ex Machina. Hatris is just one of a team of twelve dedicated SL residents who have brought together an extraordinary experience for the rest of us. In addition to the retail sims, there's a Gacha desert for those who like a little risk with their purchases and an extensive program of performances, again featuring many of headliners from SL entertainment community. I've already been back three times to the Festival which runs until the 20th September. Full details of the event can be found HERE Teleport to Spoonful of Sugar Finally a little Slideshow for you to enjoy...
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AuthorI love well-crafted regions, and have spent many years wandering SL, avoiding yards of plywood and looking for the best places to spend my time... Archives
September 2023
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