PinDippy

So once again I am writing this post filled with shame and groveling. Math midterms are nothing to sneeze at, however, and since I was suffering a repeat of that dreadful experience (I am terrible at math and must take every extra credit opportunity I can), I hope you will all forgive me whilst imagining the pain I was going through instead of blogging (which I would have much preferred to be doing.)

At any rate. It is now Spring Break, and although it is not really spring, the break is quite enjoyable. I have spent it eating delicacies like Yorkshire pudding and restaurant dim-sum, shopping for clothing at lovely cheap outlet stores, and playing terrible pranks on my best high school friends. I have also spent much-too-much of it reading Amelie Nothomb novels and watching Youtube videos. As you do.

Which Youtube videos, you ask? Well, that’s what today’s blog post is about, of course!

Jessie Cave isn’t one of those actresses who is instantly recognizable to the general public, but she did manage to acquire some fame and fortune through her role as Lavender Brown in the last couple of Harry Potter movies. Harry Potter obsessee though I am, she was just a tiny speck on my radar until recently.

(This “recently” is when I got Twitter a couple of months ago. I love Twitter to bits — much more than Facebook, actually, but that’s another post. The point is, famous people I liked were following Jessie Cave, and so eventually I followed her too. I’m boring that way. Perhaps I should follow utterly random people sometime, just to be different…)

But here’s the thing: she’s really cool.

Last summer, she started a (website? business? organization?) thing called PinDippy. I do not know where the title came from, but I appreciate it. In fact, I appreciate almost everything about PinDippy, and it pains me just a little bit to realize that very few other people do too. But it also pains me to share it, because it would be quite nice to be part of the elite few who do know and love it. Oh, I’m not making sense, but I think my point is made…

PinDippy is… well, it is what it is. Jessie Cave says:

• I have collected buttons, stickers and random bits of felt (my favourite material) for a while now, and wanted to do something with them, give them a showcase. 
• I love colour, I love clothes – I love clothing with animals, polka-dots, big collars, small collars, shoulder-pads, socks, long socks, short socks, coloured tights, big dresses, small dresses… I could go on and on – but I wanted to use all of my clothes for something.   
• I am an actress in my not-so-daily-day-job, (some of you may know me from playing Lavender Brown in Harry Potter), but I wanted to release some of the characters that have been in my head and put them in front of a camera.
• I have written little scenes, inadequate chunks of attempted screenplays, overheard conversations in coffee shops and a diary for a long time, but this time I wanted to try and write a series of short scenes, or comedy sketches, with an aim to filming them.
• And I love drawing, and have always doodled. 
• All of these things combined amounted to something called Pindippy.

She has a Youtube channel which is absolutely fantastic. She has enlisted fellow Harry Potter actors to be in her video, including Evanna Lynch, Alfie Enoch, and Scarlett Byrne, and their presence is always a plus. She has a ridiculous collection of cardigans, pinafores, hair accessories, baggy dresses and more, which feature in almost every video. She doodles and dances and does accents. She has recurring character roles — she plays Will n’ Kate’s official cake decorator, a snobbish Australian coffee-addict, and an awkward bookworm, just to name a few. There is such an enormous variety of people in her videos that I keep imagining her going out into London, talking the ear off every actor and actress she finds and convincing them into appearing in them. And the thing is, I don’t think a single one of them regrets it.

It’s just such a glorious confection of artsy wonderful. I’ve become an enormous fan overnight. My family doesn’t agree — my mother laughed politely at the video I showed her, and my sister now believes I have an utterly bizarre sense of humor (and I probably do) — but I really think it’s worth checking out. I’ll leave you with my favorite PinDippy video. It’s a perfect mix of wise whimsy and wackiness, and I don’t know how many times I’ve listened to it so far.

Oh, and here are some more good links!