Take a walk on the wild side

Today (now 4 days ago, I write this now on Wednesday, originally on Saturday) was my birthday party, one month overdue, but it was basically a food gathering/tie dye extravaganza/ in a field that I invited all of my friends to before we go off to do two weeks work experience, in the end there were about 20 people. We listened to a whole load of random songs from a whole load of random iPods meaning Katy Perry was within the track listing amongst the Tammys. We climbed trees and ran down to the lake and it was the cooliest.

I wore my flower crown (It must seem I wear it daily, but honestly its like less than once a fortnight), a lace dress from Camden Market almost two years ago for £8, 3 necklaces from a car boot sale for £1 and a black floral skirt from the Salvation Army for 75p.

I also bought a new camera, so I can now blog more because I won't get all depressed thinking my pictures are awful and only negligibly acceptable, It's a Pentax K100D and wah it is fantastic, and it only cost me £140 from Ebay.

Mary-Ann took this.

Ellen may also have taken this.

It was a great day and I felt like I was in a movie. For the next two weeks I'm doing work experience and won't be in school, I'm doing it in London I would say where but STRANGER DANGER. I'm staying with my auntie, uncle and cousins though, and their house is really cool like 50's windows, doors and aaaaah.

I started a dairy about 3 weeks ago, to document ~life~. I just think I'll regret it if I don't keep one, and I have a journal for other stuff. It's made of a book called Garden Shrubs from the Salvation Army for 10p or something.

This is the invitation I wrote (to my diary) for my party, I bought a pad of them from the salvation army for 10p and aimed to send them to my friends, I only distributed 3 in the end (in some letters I sent to Becky, Lauren and Paige) but I have them for next year. I can't decide whether the chef is transgender with a moustache, a man in drag including fake eyelashes and blusher for make up, or just a woman with facial hair. Nothing wrong with being liberal. There was a guy walking in Covent Garden yesterday wearing hooker boots who was carrying a Lady Gaga bag. Preach it.

The three letters I sent.

                                       

 Have a good Week, and sorry for the image heavy post, now I have a new camera I hope I will be able to post more often!

Awkward alliances

Some of the first 'old' things I bought, like, 3 years ago towards the end of year 7 were sewing patterns, stemming from the discovery of well, sewing. I made a strawberry bag in textiles that didn't fall apart and thought I was some sort of seamstress oracle. I have built up quite a collection of them and despite three being destroyed last year when I made a shift dress for a fashion project in History and left them at the bottom of my bag with some rotten sandwiches so then they went all mouldy and shrivelled (bye 60s shift dress patterns) *holds head in shame* I am relatively protective and in awe of them.

Fashion and that sort of stuff is all about perfectionism, some of it is anyway and that's how the media portrays what is somewhat make-believe and that is why models are seemingly super humanly grown in laboratories (tall and skinny) and I am led to believe pop stars have make up tattooed on their faces because they're rarely seen without it. I don't know what it is about the illustrations on the front of sewing patterns but the use of drawing instead of pictures is kinda refreshing. Maybe it's their imperfect nature, the sketchy lines and stuff, one of my favourite quotes is "Imperfection is underrated" - Helena Bonham Carter, I write that from memory because I use it so much but it truly is. The awkward intricacies of people and nooks and crannies of language and pop culture and other wondrous things that aren't widely known of are what I (as I am sure others do to) relish in.  I'm not saying that popular things aren't good too, they are, but I just want others to recognise what's great about the imperfect and the unknown.

Knitting patterns, furthermore, share the same nature, people take things at face value but I for one have recently been trying to take everything in life with aesthetic value, trying to pay attention to the world a bit more I suppose, and while on study leave a couple of months ago I cycled to a charity shop and sifted through the knitting patterns and took pictures of the girls striking such gawky poses, their jutting elbows to show the full design of a garment or bending so unnaturally to show some embellishment. It's hilarious in part but beautiful in another.

  

I don't really know what I'm going on about and my head is crammed with chemistry and other inane knowledge, I can't wait to not feel guilty when spending time poring over blogs and being somewhat creative. I want to make a cropped tie dye top and it's my birthday party in a few weeks, I'm going to try and invite most of my class and friends to have a picnic in a flowery field near my house and tie dye and paddle in the river there. Should be fun, and I really want to see moonrise kingdom but it only seems to be being played in the 'cool' cinemas like Brighton and Camden in the UK (odeon anyway), and be an explorer in general. It's 1:51 in the morning and my brain is in a conundrum as to whether I should watch Pretty in Pink or not, I lost Ghost World otherwise I would be watching that but I did re organised my shelves so it may be suffocating under all of the junk there. There are doilies with revision notes on them round my room and my nail varnish is chipping off. My room is becoming a bit of a hovel and I have a four foot pile of books and clothes adjacent to me. Paul McCartney was good at the jubilee concert and I wished I had a 40s Union Jack flag from the war to take pictures of because I have become a monarchist and feel this requires me to be patriotic, I am about to read books about feminism because I agree with what I have heard about the movement but don't want to declare myself one until I know I am one because it's what I truly believe in and not because a lot of other people on the internet are feminists, or because it's seems to be becoming 'fashionable' to be a feminist, but the Rookie article about street harassment really angered me and it's opened my eyes to a lot of things that before I just accepted as how society is, going to an all girls school I probably don't see a lot of it and this is why I don't know a lot about why it is 'required' to be a feminist, or why I need feminism. This paragraph is way to long and really not chronological but I'm reading Adrian Mole and think I'm secretly an intellectual, no I joke, I joke. 

Sorry if you painfully read all of the above, I'm a bit befuddled.

The Swinging Sixties

I mentioned last Thursday my recent obsession with the Beatles, yep. Well I've also been marginally obsessed with the 60s in general, I have even bought two pairs of Mary Quant tights and I have my eyes on a third.

I have been wearing my hair is milkmaid braids but you can't really even see my hair is plaited really because It's a really boring mousey colour so I was just going for cropped hair really, Twiggy, Peggy Moffitt style, but I have been called all of the following names:

•Grettel (of hansel and grettel)
•Heidi (who this is I have no idea but it's a common one, a teacher even called me this)
•Jane Austen
•Maria from the sound of music
•A 1940's filmstar (a different teacher called me this)
•Rapunzel (which I don't understand because she has long hair but I'll go with it)

I'm sure there was more but I can't recall. I got such filthy looks and I wore fantabulous barrettes the majority of the days from Ebay too, I think they look like the flower of the Mary Quant logo, if they can't pass for that I'll go with FLOWER POWER. They were £1.60 including shipping so go and buy yourself some, I'm trying to source many more barrettes to add to my childhood collection from Etsy with my birthday money.

Here are some 1960's inspired pictures, The coloured ones are taken on a camera with the lens obscured by old film negatives, it's not some repro effect. (no srsly i'm dying without picnik tho).

I have also attempted cat eye make-up which you can't even tell but it's fun to apply.

My 60s cape.

I'm doing the Swinging sixties for my textiles coursework at the moment too, I had to choose between this topic and 'The age of punk'. It was like picking a favourite child, I hope I don't get sick of the project because I've immersed myself in it so much already but it's unlikely! I took some photocopies out of a book called 'In Vogue' that was in the library, I would have gotten it out but It was bigger than my school bag so sat lonesomely flicking through the pages, taking note of things I liked, but I did get the Fashion Sketchbook 1920-1960 book which is AMAZING. This morning, a charity shop gave me the Adrian Mole book for free and I'll finish it later, and the Fashion Drawing book my mum bought me is also fantastic.

It has a foreword by Mary Quant seen below which was interesting to read. It's a really good book to see how fashion evolved and the illustrations are really intricate themselves.

The illustrations in the 'Fashion Sketchbook' one.

This other book, I've been trying to find for ages, I couldn't bring myself to spend the £9 Amazon are asking for it so when I was scanning the spines of the books in the fashion section of the library that Is largely neglected by 99.2% of the school I was ecstatic to uncover it. To top it off the first designer featured is Rodarte, which always makes things better. I admit, yes, It is produced by Teen Vogue, a teen magazine I'm not really an advocate of because of the complete focus and emphasis of the importance of beauty and perfectionism when they have a platform to deliver strong, effeminate knowledge to young, impressionable girls BUT with a wealth of knowledge available to me about what I want to possibly do in the future it seemed totally stooopid not to take it out, for educational purposes, yano?

Said book.

The hands are my obliging sisters, to whom I thank for the co-operation. The curtain behind all the books is something I made with lots of paper ephemera including year 7 school merits, a rabbit postcard with a vintage stamp on it, a Marwell zoo badge, a noughts and crosses game from my year 6 notebook and various other things, I've hung it in front of my window which are ugly 21st century made things.

Good day guurl, thanks for reading!