Last week I set out on a mission to buy a garment that I confess not to have worn for about two years: jeans. I found some really nice green ones in Urban Outfitters but it just wasn't right. There's something about jeans where they unify everyone sure & some people look proper amazing effortlessly in them, I am not one of those people. So, having given up on jeans & partly trousers as a whole I've turned to a new obsession planted a few months ago when I saw an absolutely lovely 60s white linen skirt suit on eBay.

Jonathan Saunders' skirt suit is probably the epitome of how you can wear it smartly in evening or to work (depending where you work) but I think it would be nice to take the skirt suit into everyday as the chick from Loves Getting Dressed has done, or they used to back in the day. I like the elegance of it. But worn with a scruffy t-shirt and creepers, all in the same colour perhaps, I think it would look fucking ace. My new mission is to find the perfect one, even though with the dawning of a new season tomorrow I'm sure this will be over before it's even begun.

I'd settle for these skirts from Monki teemed with a top in the same colour (even though they don't sell them) for now though. Or that lovely pink Jil Sander esque one. Tomorrow also, Monki opens in Selfridges. Now considering at one point I wanted to ask someone Swedish to buy me Monki underwear & post it over, or that also I was willing to fly out there just to shop there, & to see Scandinavia of course! I should be excited, but part of me knows it'll all be double the price & half the selection, so what's the point? Why don't they just open an online store or open here full stop!?

No?

Sorry for the image overload, but they were all so pretty I just couldn't resist. A post by Mat reminded me about this guy I knew who was an insomniac and used to go for walks at dawn around the city. He got obsessed by spotting odd signs, mainly ghostly painted ones on the sides of buildings & he took me for a tour once which was so beautiful. I don't actually know what happened to him but when I read this article at work on Saturday the mention of Project Neon brought it all back. If you haven't heard of it basically she roams New York looking for lovely neon signs. & it's neon's 100th birthday so the endlessly wonderful Chris Bracey made a sign to accompany the article & it set me on an internet trail. Neon - don't you know - is also my favorite element in the periodic table.

What's yours?

It's been 44 years since the Abortion Act was passed in the UK, 4 decades since my mum defended that same act against threats to change it & today on the front page of the paper is yet another threat against one of the most basic women's right we have in this country. An evil, spiteful & unfortunately powerful woman by the name of Nadine Dorries got elected as an MP in 2005, since then she has twice made ludicrous attempts to undermine basic rights by being the driving force behind the Conservatives obsession with shortening the abortion limit & teaching abstinence alongside sex education to girls - not boys - the clear misunderstanding there obviously being that ideologies are more important than arming our young vulnerable people with the tools they need to protect themselves, whatever promises they make.

But this isn't about Dorries, however much of a despicable character she may be, this is about the fact that the government is listening to people like this & that today, with the strategic words from a lawyer or two, they are proposing to change the decision making process of women considering abortions. A small change means it doesn't have to go through Parliament & so on the grounds that those evil, selfish (note: sarcasm) people who go into the British Pregnancy Advisory Service are money hungry emotionless baby-killers; proposes to replace them with softly spoken heavily biased towards religion, pro-life & supposedly "independent" advisors. Advisors who will go onto softly, religiously whisper words of encouragement into ill-prepared vulnerable women's ears about the fact that the cluster of cells is in fact already a human being.

They can say they are "independent" because they keep their religious funders in hushed whispers & out of the limelight. No doubt it's a man, whom I'm afraid has absolutely no authority over anyone's womb & has no idea at all about what a heart wrenching decision it is for anyone to go through an abortion. & an even more sinister thought that was niggling at me until John Healey said it, was that this highly controversial & oddly timed announcement comes just before the Commons debate on the Health Bill as a whole. I wonder how much of that two day debate they will happily hand over to suitably angry opposition MPs who they will accuse of living in the past, when in fact they simply can't believe we're still having this conversation.

Full Article. Picture Source.

Uhr yeah. So someone sent me a link to this video & the song wouldn't leave my head, but more than that were the girls in the video. More specifically, Lil Debbie. So I got my google on & discovered the White Girl Mob & I'm pretty much in awe of them, if that's the right word. Nah, probably not. Basically they just seem like a load of normal, very American, nicely tattooed girls. I'm not totally on board with Kreayshawn's music, but this song... I can't not sing the chorus. & who else would get away with the line, "I've got the swag, it's pumping out my ovaries"? Seriously watch this video. & then look at pretty pictures of Lil Debbie or visit Kreayshawn or V Nasty's blogs. Picture source.

Sweet.

Big pictures of wool in perfect colour order mmm... My idea of OCD heaven was lying all my mums wool out & making it into a giant colour chart. I have issues. I spent my 2 days at Oxfam ordering all the cloths by the rainbow, *ahem*. Anyway this is The Room as we've dubbed it for now. Basically it's full of all the art & craft stuff me & my dearest mother have lived with strewn throughout the house. Except now it's all in one room, in a nice labelled drawer or on display. There's just a couple of things left to do like put up some hooks for me to hang my french curves & pattern master on & also find some vases for mum's knitting needles because the wine rack was an ace idea but all the short needles fall out so... That wasn't fun.

My material looks rubbish in that out of focus photo but I honestly have some nice stuff! Lots of silk & awesome prints from Paris last year. Things printed with carrots & uhr, moose. The drawers were an absolute nightmare. After unearthing them from somewhere else in the house I resolved to spray paint them orange from the murky brown they once were. Unfortunately apart from turning my legs orange & intoxicating the neighbors, the spray metal paint didn't really spray evenly or in the right colour. So I just bought some paint. Although it meant I had to squeeze the labels through the excess. Oh well, lesson learned. I'll take more detail photos & some of where I have actually been working once I tidy it up a little!

Timed post so I don't fall behind, but I'm off to see the J-ster today whose just got back from some random tattoo conventions somewhere in vague Europe. The less questions the better huh.

Love love.

Man it's been a while. I've been MIA, or living off grid, depending what way you look at it. Basically I went underground to avoid all the hectic madness of results day last week. I've had friends making phone calls to the effect of "I don't care which shit hole I end up at as long as I get on X course this year". It's so sad. & has just perpetuated all my homicidal feelings around the university process. I hope you guys all did as well as you'd hoped & got in somewhere to do something you actually want to do. I did alright. A B C. Kind of perfectly. So now I have 2 A's 1 B & a C in physics. Which makes me pretty fucking chuffed.

I've also been obsessively embroidering because I want to sell some stuff online & hopefully at a Christmas market which would be fun! Once I've taken the photos I'll show you my efforts. I also keep meaning to put up photos of the new Craft Room, or Work Room. We're not sure what to call it because either way it alludes to images of yesteryear. Anyway, it's my new sanctuary after aimless nights spent at weird parties in the countryside. I have to hide there because evidently I have lost my dressing mojo, wondering around in spotty cut offs, torn up t-shirts scrawled with Arctic Monkeys lyrics of albums ago & multi coloured nails. Weird fact, at work on Saturday these nails got comments from three males who I see regularly but have never before commented on my nails... very odd. Anyway, let's get reacquainted.

I've missed you!

For a while I've wanted to take pictures of what I wear everyday & then make an awesome gif of them at the end of every week. I kept forgetting, but finally this week I pretty much remembered! Although when I put them all together the crappy quality made it a little more headache inducing than even I can handle. So here it is in picture form & once I remember to scout out a new camera lens on eBay maybe the images will be of good enough quality for gif making!

Monday: old oversized top from H&M & some vintage culottes I got in Paris last year because after reading Elle Collections, Vogue & Bazaar last weekend I had an overwhelming need for polka dots. Looks pretty nicely like a dress as well.

Tuesday: Cat & mad face plus vintage skirt from Berlin. Got it as part of the €15 a kilo thing at Garage & although it's made of pretty horrific fabric, it has this cute little flower print & comes with a wonderfully clashing spotted belt. As you can see Holly cat was still not impressed.

Thursday: I forgot on Wednesday because I woke up late for my 9.30 train to London, even though that was probably my nicest outfit all week! Sods law. This is a (probably meant for nightwear) playsuit from Oysho where I made myself go to on the brief visit to Paris, so I could stock up on underwear & technically breaks my new years resolution, but maybe it doesn't extend to other countries? It's like this nice toile du jour print & I got the matching shorts too... I also wore it without a cardigan or tights to John Lewis last week to buy a hoover & when I carried the giant box back through the shop from the front it looked like I was naked. Amused the lovely John Lewis staff, so at least my sartorial mistakes make people smile!

Friday: As I'm spending the day making pattern blocks, embroidering & listening to Josh's amazing mix tapes, I'm pretty basic today with one of my favorite dresses with the amazing flashing pin ups print & cut off kimono. That sentence makes my new *adult* life sound pretty good, but actually I'm feeling pretty pressed up a giant brick wall at the moment.

Anyway, yes. London was shit. I dislike London & sort of forget how much whenever I'm away or I settle into a bit outside of the center. But going up for a day to loads of galleries & shops in the center is not fun. Having to perch on a flower bed to eat a sandwich because there are no benches in Kensington is not fun. & the guy at Morplan was a dick.

I also spent the day yesterday watching BBC Parliament & getting more & more angry. This shouldn't be a debate about police cuts Ed Miliband. I'm suspending my membership to the Labour party - I know, I cringe every time I admit it - because he didn't speak for me yesterday & so I can't allow him to think that he does. I'm glad to see from the wonderful comments on the post below though, that there are other people out there with their heads screwed on & their eyes open. There have been some really good articles in the Guardian all week as well, but nothing in the words of all the MPs rushing to condemn it so what are we meant to do?

Hope your weeks better!

Finally. If your gonna fight, fight for something. Proving stereotypes... Targeting the wrong people... Showing that if you call generations stupid they'll start acting like they are... Did it occur ironic to anyone else that The Smiths are the perfect soundtrack to this so called riot?

Anyway, I'm off up to London tomorrow to buy some pattern cutting supplies. Might stay on & uhr...loiter about Parliament on Thursday though. What do you guys think of this mess? I thought they were justified up to the people's housing & independent businesses. I mean the enemy is police, government & capitalism right? Or maybe this is the riot for capitalism. Anarchy for free stuff. Oh my, the debates we could have in our ivory tours... I sound like a dick. Time to bow out.

2 posts in one day!?

Whilst sat in the airport last week (man only last week), wondering why it is that people insist on queuing up an hour before the flight is due, I picked up the airport magazine & aimlessly flicked through. I came across a story (now I realize, about 6 months out of date) about Kodak's Colorama photos that adorned Grand Central Station for four decades.

They were hailed as the largest ever photographs and printed at 18"x60", which is pretty fucking huge. But it's the weirdly idyllic (*ahem* white middle class) America that they portray that really interests me. From packing up the holiday home in the 50s (top photo) to the election of 1960 (4th photo) they show an amazing amount of detail just because they're so big I guess. They also remind me of Gregory Crewdson, whose giant images are staged to the extreme to produce well thought out dialogues in an image. I actually got to see some of his photographs at the C/O gallery in Berlin & I've never been a huge fan of his work because the women always look so abused, but I have to say the detail is breathtaking.

Anyway before this starts sounding like a photography lesson, you can view the full archive online as well as more information about the photographers & the actual equipment used. It's nice flicking through the images & seeing so many weird scenes that feel staged & yet are trying so hard to look real.

Good morning!

Berlin photos! So these are the only from the one's I took on my phone (hence the often shitty qaulity), but it's a start. This is why I am a rubbish blogger, not with the quickness of the internet. Anyway, so the one's of the ferris wheel, creepy boarded up candy coloured housing, broken dinosaurs & swan boats is from our (including my mum!) spurt of breaking & entering. I know I know, but it was into Spreepark. I've already shared by slight obsession with Coney Island & this for me has the same sort of eerie, fake happy sheen that I love about there. A few months ago some Berliners put on a gig here, becaue it's in the heart of the East, which is now like the cool bit... So there was an abandoned stage at one point, plus a cafe that looked like it could be open with some dinosaurs that weren't missing limbs.

But around the rest of the park (dodging through the security tape & caravans that have pitched up on the vacant plot) there were rusting rides, with all the trains & tracks overgrown with weeds. There were broken bridges, falling into the rivers & of course, the most beautifully abandoned ferris wheel. I'm sure the lomo shots I took (about 2 films worth) will look fucking amazing, so I'm holding out for that. But honestly, if you're in Berlin for a while you can get the S-Bahn to Treptower Park & walk round to it in about 20 minutes. There's a little board that lifted up for you to crawl under the fence. We followed some people who looked like they were trying to break in too, but we never saw them again & they carried on round the fence so we think they bottled it. It was such an odd thing to explore & I'm so glad we actually made it over there!

The clothes are in the best vintage shop in Berlin (fact.) Tony Durante of Surezstrasse. I can't remember how we got there, but it's in the West district of Charlottenburg. West Berlin still feels extremely different, in contrast to Treptower Park & Spreepark, they have the Tiergarten that has memorials all over it & proper flower beds etc. It's next to the Reichstag, but once you head into it there were like no tourists. & it was a nice way to get the the Bauhaus Archiv which was so fantastic. But anyway, on Surezstasse there's a collection on antique & vintage shops, a lot of them are just decor, but we found at least three or four with clothes. One with a scary lady who was impressed I could pronounce Yohji Yamamoto...

But Tony Durante's was simply everything an amazing vintage shop should be. He was really enthusiastic about the clothes (less so about Berlin & the rent prices in London) & my mum liked him because he actually talked to her rather than ignoring her whilst trying to get me to try on as many clothes as possible like most other shops. Although when I told him she'd thrown away all her vintage Ossie Clarke, Biba etc from the 60s he said I should kill her. All jokes though! He also showed us this amazing house coat by the guy who makes tweed for the queen, & lots of pieces he said he didn't put out because he didn't want to sell them, just because we showed an interest & actually knew a little what we were talking about. Unfortunately I didn't buy anything, the one dress I wanted to he wouldn't let me because it was slightly too tight around the shoulders. Very upsetting, but he was right. There was also amazing jewellry. & in September (I think) they're having a Surezstrasse street party where all the shops will have stalls. Kind of want to go back for it... oh if only I was a jetsetter. But yes, if you like vintage clothing, even if you can't afford the higher (but totally justified) prices, he is an absolutely lovely man just to talk too. He also has an accessories stall in London (from which he told us a funny story about Kate Moss) for something a little closer to home!

& finally the smiley face and the big mud circle are from the Hamburger Bahnhof museum. The first was from the toilets... but there was much better stuff to see too! The mud circle is by Richard Long who brought over mud from Bristol's very own river Severn to make the Berlin Circle, how weirdly awesome is that? Travel all the way to Germany to see an artist from my home town. Or mud from my home town! This was an interesting museum, because it was stupidly hard to get to from the S-Bahn, with barely any signs for pedestrians. Then when inside it was like a microcosm for hipsters. Literally. Outside there were none, on the way there, on the way home, we saw no hipsters. & yet walk through the door & it was crawling with them. Very weird. We actually found this with quite a lot of museums, or maybe that was just me. So yes, even if you're not into modernist art, or Richard Long, there was some very good people watching to participate in!

Oh & plus a waffle from our very first day (almost forgot about that) I don't think I took a picture of Currywurst, but we had the whole range. From upmarket in the biggest foodhall I've ever seen at KaDeWa to proper rank in Treptower park where the sausage was covered in ketchup & then sprinkled with curry powder. Nice. Anyway, I brought some curry-ketchup back with me from the super market so maybe I can recreate it!

I miss Berlin.

Yesterday settling back into the routine of work rather uncomfortably after holiday, a bright ray of sunshine struck right through my reorganizing of the 3 for 2's. Commissioned by Penguin Ink - whose rather awesome logo of I took a shoddy photo of for the first picture - 6 of the worlds great tattooists have re-imagined 6 - well, in my humble opinion 3 or 4 - equally great books. They're also on 3 for 2 in Blackwell's, so despite trying to have some constraint, I opted for Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, which a friend confessed was his all time favorite book recently (fate?) The Rotter's Club by Jonathan Coe because I've just read The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim & it was billiant, & The Book of Dave by Will Self because fate (again) aligned as for about a year now people have been recommending me to read Will Self & this is the cover done by one of my favorite artists of the bunch, & the profession, Duncan X.

Sorry for lack of posts, my Berlin films are being developed by the very slow Jessops as we speak. But I do have some photos on my phone for posts, as well as having finally remembered to start something I've been meaning too for about 10 weeks now & haven't. Ooo cryptic. It'll all be clear by Friday, probably, promise.

Out.