St Ives & Penzance

Hello! My reasons for not blogging pertain to the same 'crisis' thing I had back in summer. I consciously took a break from sharing stuff instantaneously, and consequently, I've allowed myself to think and make things and go places without the nagging thought that I may only be doing so to have something to blog about. I've done this blogging thing for so long now (all of my _____teen years) that it began to feel innate to share stuff and trace all of my references. I think I found myself questioning how much of myself was real any more. I found I wasn't allowing myself or my blog to evolve naturally due to this now instinctive consciousness and analysis. Around this time I watched an interview with Simon Amstell where he stated that he began to look for comedy in situations almost before living them. He said he sought out comedy in everyday life to be able to use in his shows 'scarily quickly'. This kind of precedent is mirrored in my blog (but obviously not with comedy (instead with fashion and colours etc)).  I began to wonder if I was forcing things, and the notion that I may have become dependent on validation scared me a lot. 

Many people have written before about the fact that seldom things are original (some Tumblr quote says that striving for authenticity is the more important alternative) and apparently this is heightened with the prevalence of the internet now, which is culpable for the relative dissolution of subcultures (things change too fast) eg Courtney Love on Miley Cyrus. Again this legitimacy archetype applies. Too many things to question. This all came to a hilt with a passing comment someone made to me over the summer about me looking young. It made me question my entire existence and by the end of the following week I'd cut half of my hair off and had begun purging one bag of rubbish from my room each few days. I have also restricted myself to wearing only black clothes for the past 3 months, partially for practicality (sixth form blah hate not being able to match clothes blah money blah) but also to rouse the expulsion of what I felt was somewhat fake from my life. In this time I feel I've grown up a lot and it's been a sort of a long awaited detox.

Anyway; I'm planning on returning slowly to blogging now but my posts may be different WE'LL SEE.

 One of the things that I did keep constant was keeping my camera on me, though it did take me about two and a half months to use up one roll of film (despite having used 1 roll a month for the past few months), again to counteract this am i taking my camera to take photos to ultimately share online mentality. Nonetheless, I now don't feel any particular rush to post in real time and I've had the photos below for over a month without the compulsion to share. I think of it as more of a choice to put this here now rather than more of a mandatory obligation.

SO, I went on a trip to Cornwall from the 7th - 9th of November. It was an art trip with school so I was with my art class and I had to take photos for my sketchbook anyway, hence why some of them are quite random. If so it's because I drew something that's in them or whatever. Also don't fret I am not transitioning into becoming a plant blogger. It just so happened that a lot of Cornwall is green. One of the three plants I bought at the Eden Project is already dead so I'm definitely not cut out for that life.

Barbara Hepworth Museum and Gardens

• 1, 2, 3.  Where there was a room full of botanical miscellanies that even I fawned over despite being my lowly un-plant blogger self.
• 9, 14, 15, 18.

Newlyn Transition 10

• 4, 27. This was an open space for artists so we were able to talk to them as they worked. 
• 12. Mary-Ann with an artist who was forging copper wire bulb sorts of structures.

Beach/St. Michael's mount

• 5, 8. Collecting things from the beach to draw later on at the hostel (writing this out feels like annotating my sketchbook for the 100th time).
• 17. Ellen and Mary-Ann drawing St. Michael's mount.

In/around St. Ives

• 6, 7, 10, 13, 16, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 28.

Eden Project

• 11. The ceiling of one of the biomes. 
• 19. Cacti in the temperate biome.
• 23. Ellen drawing.

The main point of this trip was to visit galleries and make copies of pieces we liked and to generally make our ideas cohesive by the end of it to form the basis of a project. I didn't really fill many pages/get much done compared to others but I can actually tolerate what I did manage to get done for once (this is rare). The Hostel we stayed in, which was a huge old Georgian house, was supposedly haunted, and the food wasn't too bad either, so it was a generally good trip for one partially spent on a cramped coach or out sketching in miserable windy weather. 

- Hollie

CRISSCROSS

HOWWWWWWWW do you people make your photos portrait sized to fit your blog without making the quality x100 worse? (I try to resize them then put them in as original size but as you can see from the photo below and the one above the difference is insane). Anyway, finally an outfit post! Variations of this outfit have been my uniform for the past 6 weeks. I wore these exact things last Thursday though. 

Sweater - eBay £9

Shirt - eBay £7

Skirt - eBay £15

Tights - American Apparel £22

Shoes - Etsy £26

I've been buying geometrically patterned/grid prints a lot lately and I think it was spurred on from keeping a tag for anything along these lines on my tumblr (photos from the tag below).

From visiting the local art museum in summer, also in a grid print shirt from Primark for £12. I cut the hem off so it's cropped now. I've had my hair cut since then and also these photos are for my sketchbook for school so theyre posed (who takes photos without squinting yet i have my eye WIDE open).

1. Hel Looks 2. Photo by Rosa Rendi 3. Rodarte SS14 4. Jo See Paris 2013 5. Narciso Rodriguez SS14 6. Source 7. killingiteveryday 8. Source

The Rodarte SS14 and Narciso Rodriguez SS14 collection pictures here are quite random additions but the looks I have posted are very much what I'm into wearing at the moment (well it would be, if i could afford designer clothes ha h  a ha). However, I wasn't very enamored with the Rodarte collection as a whole despite the two looks above offering a slight fraction of a redemption. The polar contrasting blocks and strict tailoring of the Narciso Rodriguez looks (and entire collection) are completely my new object of adulation, though. 

-Hollie

the type-writered beat

I go back to school tomorrow so summer is over really. It's been good on the whole but it's been so long that it's merged into one huge void of time - I haven't had a lesson since the first few days of May because of study leave and my GCSE exams so it may take a while to get used to when I go back. I'm starting sixth form and I'm positively bricking it. I don't think I'll blog any less than I am at the moment, which is just sort of when I have anything to put here because it doesn't take long to upload things I would have anyway, if that makes any sense? Like we wear our own clothes in sixth form so I can post more outfits (if I don't resort to literally wearing jeans and a shirt everyday which is probable) and I carry my film camera everywhere too so I'll post random photos. I'll most likely post more than I have done over the summer too because I've spent the past few weeks wearing black and white only (on the whole) which wasn't very interesting; and I threw most of my clothes out/changed my room throughout July and August because I needed to purge things out of my life that I felt were stagnant. However I replaced all this stuff with more basic clothing for school so I had nothing to blog about outfits wise. I have a job now though so I'm slowly finding things on Etsy that are more interesting and for once I can afford this stuff.

These are some photos from a couple of weeks ago when we went to play tennis at the local rec.

Ellen.

My feet, Pam.

Pam.

Ellen.

Top: Pam, Frankie Ellen, Bottom: Pam, Ellen.

Pam, Pam, Ellen, Frankie.

Lizzie.

Pam, Ellen, Pam.

These photos were taken throughout the day hence why it's sunny in some and grainy in others. The photos below here are from a day where I visited a place in my county called the Blue Pool (I thought I'd include them in this post because they're blue/green such as the above). It was really awesome there and it didn't look like England whatsoever but my camera seems to be really bad quality wise at taking photos from a long distance away (I'm looking for different lenses/film) so I didn't have any from a wide angle to do it justice. 

Random vintage store we went into on the way back.

Also, I was in this article on Sunday which was quite cool. I definitely didn't say some of it so I take it that it's paraphrased (bear that in mind) also I look like a serial killer with a chucky smile and eyes like daggers (they asked for a photo in which I am smiling) I hate my smile) for now obvious reasons))).

It was in print too so it's immortalized forever.

-Hollie

every photograph and story trickled through the lengthy web of friend

Photos from when I met up with Ophelia, Ellie, Ibe and Rachel in London on the 7th. As you can see from Ellie's blog post, we went to Brick Lane, met Zachary Robinson (i even TOOK my journal with me in case I saw someone famous (for an autograph) but upon seeing him I forgot all about it), and to The East End Thrift Store. We were also photographed for Rokit's blog which may or may not be uploaded by them soon (I'll probably add the photo here).

Ophelia by Shoreditch Highstreet Station.

Rachel in a bagel shop.

Ellie outside Shoreditch Highstreet Station.

Rachel outside Shoreditch Highstreet Station.

Rachel in a vintage shop.

Ophelia in a vintage shop.

Ibe in a vintage shop.

Ophelia in the backroom of an ice cream shop. We were herded out by the owner when they saw us in there.

Portrait //heavily cropped// version of the top photo. 

Vintage Jumper - eBay £4

Black suede vintage skirt - eBay £12

Vintage tights - eBay £3 or something

80s bowling bag - Rokit £6 but from forever ago in year 8

Black/White bag - Charity shop £1

Feather barrette - Car boot sale 10p

I didn't buy anything other than American Apparel socks to replace an American Apparel sock I had lost. But I had only lost one and I had to buy them in a two so now I have three. I also bought LOVE magazine with a mysterious stain on it from an underground confectionery vendor. He conspicuously brandished a wet wipe before I ran off. I have never encountered a stall that offers gratuitous wet wipes with your purchases before. I also queued for a Krispy Kreme at 6:28 with my train leaving at 6:35, therefore abandoning any chance of purchasing dinner (priorities). However, I sat between the carriages on the floor from Waterloo to Winchester on the way back anyway to avoid anyone peering into my journal (as happened on the journey up) so eating dinner may have proved a challenge. 

- Hollie

mary-ann

I have been absent for ages! It feels as if I've forgotten how to blog. From my journal about two weeks ago: 

 "I don't remember doing anything particularly poignant to make this summer terrifically good or horrendously bad. Everything is very subdued which bothers me because everyone else seems to find events so profound. My spectrum of emotion doesn't seem to ever venture too far out of melancholy indifference to content gratification, and I have no prominent feeling to write about as a result of this. I'm not doing anything and feel sort of desensitized to the world/things."

Things that have happened since I've blogged: We had a heatwave for two weeks and I went to the beach quite a lot over this time. Bus fares and Mcdonalds has bled me dry of any money I had left in my bank account from my paper round last year. I went to Mary-Anns who lives in the middle of no where in a very cool cottage. When I arrived, her horse was in their garden. I went to an Antiques warehouse. I saw the Great Gatsby and Monsters University and ate Pizza in the gardens in town. I have had four sleepovers and I am re-reading the Harry Potter series (I'm on the Order of the Pheonix). I did work experience for a week at a photographic studio which was really good. I've been to Boscombe a few times, to a cafe in town for the afternoon. I saw a show, had two picnics, went to a party, have tried to look for a job and have visited the Harry Potter studios. Butterbeer is my new favourite drink. I met up with some internet friends in London (and caught the train there and back alone which was daunting and I felt prematurely mature). I went to a beach gathering at night and we went in the sea in the pitch black. My parents are in Poland at the moment so I stayed with my aunt this weekend. I cut 7 inches off my hair and it's now a bob (it's shorter than in the photo below because I cut it again today). I like it and I'm going to keep cutting more off inch by inch.

We went to Molly's den with my Grandma yesterday. I've been before but I didn't take my camera. This dress reminds me of the one Luna Lovegood wears to Slughorn's party (which I saw in real life two weeks ago). But this was £85.

My August project is to redecorate my room. I have gotten rid of all of my clothes/things in my room because I had an existential crisis in July. I have 2 skirts, 4 shirts, 1 top, 1 dress, a jumper and 2 pairs of jeans (all of which are new except for one skirt and the one top) left and my walls are completely bare. I want one of my walls to have psychedelic posters plastering it but the ones in the first photo were all £30+.

I wanted this bike but it is child size! I have two bikes but both are broken.

I got these shoes from Molly's den in the middle of July - they were only £5! They're a size too big but I couldn't leave them so I'll stumble around instead.

I got this mirror yesterday - I would have got it the last time I went but we cycled there and being ceramic it's really heavy so I left it. It was £10. I have needed a mirror because my old green rimmed one smashed. The 60s vase and pastel pencil pot were stolen from my mother but they're probably originally from charity shops. The tin and alarm clock were car boot sales. The painting is also my mum's and also probably from a charity shop. Fringing from a haberdashery and green bottle from the SA. This wont be like this for much longer because I'm changing most things in my room.

These two photos are the beginnings of redoing my room. I posted them on tumblr a while ago. The focus of the bottom picture is on the blind cord which is really really really annoying.

-Hollie