skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Because they are like educational toys. I learn new things about/from them and I like that very much.
I bought this 300+ years old crotal bell from the Surry Hills Markets in January. The lady who was selling a whole cigar box of them told me that her 80-year-old mother combs her field in England everyday with a metal detector looking for "treasures" and the old bells are only a small part of her finds.
Besides their age and source, she didn't know much else about them so I hit good ol' Google the moment I got home and found this very interesting article. I don't know why but it always makes me feel good to know a little about the history and manufacturing process, or even a cute little story, of something that I use or wear. In this case, around my neck. "Like a goat!", the lady said when I told her my plan for her ware. Haha. Bleat! Bleat!
This is what the boyfriend will be eating when he breaks for lunch today.
I started making him lunches to take to work not long after we moved to Sydney and my pals back home in Singapore, when they find out, go "Wow! What a wifey-poo thing to do!"..."You're not the girl we know!"...Haha. Nobody in Singapore packs their own lunch to work. There's no need for that when there are hawker centres and kopitiams at every corner serving a huge variety of delicious food for cheap. Places where we take just as long deciding what to order each day as we take to eat our lunch. Lunch breaks in Singapore are fun times! I'm still the same girl but living in a different city.
This morning. Tried "art-directing" this picture by gently coaxing my #1 puppy-pal to lie within the chalk outline of himself. The result would be hilarious, I thought, but Dasher refused to cooperate. And I don't love him any less for not wanting to play silly human games!
Edit-to-add (Monday 20 February):
Like these cute kids in the super-sweet movie we watched over the weekend!
Checks-on-checks on the boyfriend. I like!
Meet my new denim pal! I've owned quite a few pairs of dungarees in my time but this is the most perfect pair to my fussypot eye. The right wash of blue (with no ugly factory-made faded "whiskers" at all the wrong places!). Straight legs. And of utmost importance, no "hippage"! Cut ramrod-straight at the hips like men's shorts/jeans/trousers! Woo! You would think that all manufacturers would have the sense to not round off the hips bit when dungarees already create a silhouette that is not always flattering!
And the best thing was I found it buried deep in a bin of yet-to-be-priced new donations at our friendly neighbourhood charity shop! At a time when I was about to scratch (the elusive pair of perfect) "denim dungarees" off my wish-list. For a few dollars! Woooo!
If we take cost per wear into account, the figure is now in the good negative region because these dungarees are all that I've been wearing since I brought them home three weekends ago. With my collection of Western shirts, white ruffly shirts (my favourite so far - a little Huckleberry Finn + a little Little House on the Prairie!) and some happy-print ones borrowed from the boyfriend. Most of the time with Converses on my feet, occasionally my Birkenstocks, Douglases, clogs or Melissas. I can generate as many winning combos with my new denim pal as a slot machine can make non-winning ones. And we're only talking about Summer wear! Think about the possible Winter combos! Toasty sweaters under...big fat cardigans over...with lace-up boots...loafers and low-heeled girly shoes + socks..."Wheeeeeeeee!" for dungaweeees!
That's me! Made my Cheese Platter Tart again. The pretty figs at our local greengrocer were calling out to be eaten. With added cheese this time - a goat's at the bottom and the usual blue on top. And I think I'll be making them again in a few weeks' time because Ms Carpet has put in a special request for me to take some to a party we're both going to. (Missy Carpie, this is the tart you were talking about, right?)
We walked by Max Berry's bit of whimsy in a back-alley yesterday at what I thought was the right time of the day. Yay!
First came Helvetica in 2007. Then Objectified in 2009. Now, Urbanized - the final installment of Gary Hustwit's trilogy of documentary films about design. Typography + Product Design + Urban Design/Architecture! He couldn't have picked a better trio of subjects to endear himself to us design and documentary nerds forever.
We watched the long-awaited Urbanized a few nights ago (with computer hooked to TV, of course! Always!) and loved how easily we could rent and stream the film, for just a few dollars, directly off the website. And we're hoping to get our hands on one of the 250 limited-edition box sets of the trilogy when they are up for sale tomorrow! Wish us nerds luck!
(clockwise from top left) Cassis, White Sesame, Green Tea, Bamboo Ash + Black Sesame
We picked this set of macarons at Cafe Cre Asion (we've been in quite often but I'm still not one of those girls!) last weekend because of their flavours and did not pay much attention to their colour until I came home to find that they make quite a good "mood board" for combos that I'd like to wear this Autumn.
It's still a month away but with the kind of weather (crappily un-Summer-like!) that we've had since the official start of Summer, I might as well start pulling out my toasty clothes from storage. Today is another wet and grey day and I was whinging to Ms Carpet about how we've been cheated of a proper Summer this year, and how I feel so...so...victimised! Yes! Vic-tim-mised! Give me my favourite season back! Now!
It pays to have a skinny-ass boyfriend who likes happy patterned/printed shirts as much as I do. I've always borrowed a few of his but more so lately with the brutal culling of my section of the wardrobe. I like how his slimmer-cut shirts sit on me - just a little bit over-size, comfortable but not sloppy. I also like how men's shirts, with their longer shirt-tails, work better for the way that I like wearing them - a messy-on-purpose half-tuck or a neat full-tuck. My shorter made-for-women shirts never stay put!
I wear shirts more often than I show-and-tell them on this blog. They have slowly replaced t-shirts (except stripey ones!) in my life and the boyfriend's over the last ten years. With age, we've come to appreciate the crispy-ness, the very thing that we used to hate about our school uniforms, of a good shirt. We've realised that wearing a shirt doesn't make us "stuffy" and less "cool". That we get more wear out of shirts of a good make and fabric than a t-shirt. So, I'm beginning to wonder if we'll have more room in our wardrobe and more money in our pockets if I stopped buying women's shirts* and start buying men's shirts (in his size...he can't fit in mine) that we can both wear?
* But not if the women's shirt in question is as cute as this blue-and red tiny-hearts-in-box-print Resteröds shirt! Half western/cowboy shirt (which I wear a lot of), half pyjama shirt with cute piping (I've been looking for one, to wear out, since I saw a Steven Alan number), in an A-line cut and long asymmetrical shirt-tails!
A likkle picture of mine in The Big Issue!
Their art director wrote me to ask for permission + I've always liked their "Helping People Help Themselves" ethos = a big fat "YES!" from a very flattered me
Added bonus: They used the picture to illustrate an article about how boring Summer TV programming is in Australia. A major grouse* in this household! All year round. How apt! Tee hee hee.
* Before we discovered "internet TV", which, in light of recent events, is a source of entertainment that might not last.
"For most of the last century, America’s cultural landscape—its fashion, art, music, design, entertainment—changed dramatically every 20 years or so. But these days, even as technological and scientific leaps have continued to revolutionize life, popular style has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the new."
I've been meaning to share this Vanity Fair article by Kurt Andersen since December. And then things that were more frivolous in nature popped up along the way and jumped the to-be-blogged queue...you know what it's like.
And, of course, I had to add my 5-cents' worth of thoughts which soon became rambling 100-dollar paragraphs. You know economy-of-words is not my forte if you've been reading this blog long enough and add my laziness on top of that, I decided to delete the paragraphs instead of trying to cut them down.
But...I've since found a few more articles on a new-to-me site, The Genteel, which make good supplementary reading if you liked the Kurt Andersen one...
~ Ghosts Of Generations Past by Preetma Singh (I discovered The Genteel via Preetma's personal style blog which I've been reading for quite some time now. She has a real knack for combo-ing some of the most unexpected pieces. Plus her highly-entertaining and thoughtful posts were much-needed breaths of fresh air in a world polluted by style blogs mostly written, or should I say "curated" or "edited", by airhead label-whores all cut from the same mould.)
~ The Plight Of Personal Style and The Identity Crisis?, both by Paul Aguirre Livingston
Enjoy!
Because they are like educational toys. I learn new things about/from them and I like that very much.
