Ailyex vs. Dogboyo

:: top from Topshop :: skirt, boots and tights from Primark :: scarf from Lokaah :: bandage from Tesco :: necklaces from Topshop and charity shops ::

I wore this out for a friend’s birthday/party yesterday, after yet another week of physical fuck-ups. My resolutions to play my ukulele and sort my old clothes out were squashed when I managed to fall over in the middle of the road, and am still sporting a wrist support tubigrip thingumyjig. But the sun is finally out, so perhaps I’ll have a non-broken week after all.

Today, after an all night Guitar Hero/Gran Turismo session with friends, Jan and I ventured out to Camden Market to enjoy a spot of sunshine. Seeing the damage from the fire was quite sad really, but the sun was out and the perfect tonic to our bleary-eyed selves. We feasted on Wagamama noodles and I alloted myself £10 with which to find treats. Here’s what I got:

The shades were from a generic Camden stall. I like their Back to the Future styling, although I might have to go back for a Ray-Ban Wayfarer-style pair in tomato red . . . The bone earrings and scarf are both from Lokaah, a cheap import shop in the Stables Market where I get far too many of my everyday earrings and bangles - guarantee, if there’s a hippy/trendy/Indian-style scarf in Topshop etc. they’ll have the exact same one in Lokaah for £2. Speaking of Back to the Future styling, when Jan and I were watching Back to the Future II recently, I couldn’t help but think that Maison Martin Margiela must have watched said film before creating their wonderful L’Incognito sunglasses, especially the mirror ones. To illustrate - the designer version:

Doc Brown’s version:

To me, that makes them all the more ridiculous and covetable. If only I had an inexaustable bank account and the ability not to sit on all my sunglasses . . .

As there had been very little sleep the night before, I wrapped up in two of my favourite everyday scarves and my new shades.

Red pashmina & sunglasses - random Camden stalls [the former bought 2 years ago, the former, today]
Khaki scarf, black bone earrings & wooden bracelets - Lokaah, a cheap import shop in Camden
Skinny jeans - New Look
Black cardigan & green canvas flats - Topshop
Grey tee - H&M

All in all I had a wicked hangover day with the Mr. and my temperature seems to have normalised. Here’s hoping for a great week ahead . . . x

As promised, here’s the Purl Bee hat I mentioned in Things I love Thursday. I finished it on said Thursday, the 1st of what is now 2 days off sick [not fun]. Thankfully it’s nice and cosy, so it’s been keeping me warm whilst I ride out my not-quite-’flu- just-ridiculously-high-temperature illness.

It’s the Purl Bee’s Rochefort Chapeau pattern and I’m rather pleased with it. I’m a bit of a wonky knitter but this is a great little basic hat pattern and a great introduction to stripy knitting in the round. Previously when I’ve knitted anything with stripes it has involved lots of cutting and tying of yarn, so the Purl Bee’s little Tute was most helpful.

I used half Debbie Bliss Cashmerino (the dark teal) and half charity shop wool (the black) - which sounds horrid but actually ended up being really soft in a Half Luxury/Half Budget sort of way. I already had both, so yay for the budget crafting! I’d really like to make another hat like this - red and white stripes would be just too cute - so I feel the weekend will somehow include a hunt for red yarn . . .

Right now I’m crawling back under the covers with a cup of tea. Happy Weekend y’all!

I wore this little lot for Easter Sunday lunch at mother’s and was well impressed with Le New Shoes. They were totally comfortable all day - even to trip up to the mini mart for vino - , plus, I didn’t look like a twit.

What I Wore:

Black H&M tee

Gold heart pendant from Matalan

Skull & rose Get Cutie skirt

Grey Primark tights

Lovely new red heels from Faith.

Come 11pm though, I slipped into something a little more geeky, i.e. black tracksuit bottoms and my old faithful Joe Ninety specs. Oh yes.

In view of the bipolar weather we’ve been having, ’tis appropriate that my daffodils opened on the 1st snow day of the year. Outside it was like this:

I especially liked next door’s snow-covered palm trees.

While inside it was like this:

Daffodils have got to be my favourite flower, they’re so springy and Welsh and colourful. I mean, just look:

Lovely. And speaking of colour, I splashed out on these beauties from Faith:

their up-turned witchiness completely slays me.

I started today with an appropriately purple-hued breakfast you’ll be glad to know

By rights, I should not like blue. I attended the same all-girls school from the age four to eighteen, and what colour was I forced to wear until the age of sixteen? Blue. Navy bloody blue. In smock, pinafore, rank tablecloth-print summer dress, sock, tie, alice band, swimming costume, netball-skirt, stripy shirt, P.E. knicker, blazer, mac and boxy skirt form. And it’s the official colour of my erstwhile university. But perhaps the uniform-designers were just trying to look our best - navy is often said to be the colour most flattering to pasty English complexions, and as a result turns up on everyone from nurses and city bankers to the Queen - rather like the frequent occurrence of pale pink in Indian culture.

Either way, I have somehow acquired no less than four blue dresses and skirts -

two of them navy, plus this lovely peasant-girl purple one -

This photo is a very un-me white-balance test shot for a uni project - I look so mean!

I don’t really wear much purple, but I love its otherworldly association with royalty and deities - due to the skill and expense of creating tyrian purple dye from the mucus of the Spiny dye-murex snail. Blue shares this association - from the blue skin of divine or transcendental persons in Hinduism to a similar pigment rarity in European culture. Rich blue pigments had to be obtained from the hilazon snail, leading the Virgin Mary’s iconography to include blue robes, after artists chose their most expensive paint to clothe her in religious paintings.

One of my favourite blue/purple paintings is Rossetti’s Proserpine

the treatment of the drapery and hair is so beautiful, like waves in water. Also Van Gogh’s Starry Night -

after copying its moon and cyprus trees many times at school.

But most of all I love blue for the sky, and the endless beauty of cloudscapes, of which we get so many here. My sister snapped this sunset, on a shisha picnic, on the front of Harrow Hill a couple of weeks ago -

In J.P. Genet’s magical Amelie, a character speaks of wishing for an ‘orange-coloured day’ as the perfect day when he is reunited with his wife. I love this evocation of a glowing, happy homecoming day - I picture returning from some far-flung place to a windy, autumnal England, where I am welcomed home by beaming loved ones around a roaring fire with hot welsh cakes and mulled wine. Given the damp, drippy July we’re having en Angleterre it’s hardly surprising that this colour makes me unseasonabley nostalgic. So continuing the unseasonality [is that a word? I'm pretty sure it isn't!], I give you my 1st orange image, a cheerful jack o’ lantern from last Hallowe’en:

a Primark purse - I wanted the blue version but I’m so glad they only had orange left.

An old Miss Selfridge orange sequined skirt

which was part of today’s unseasonal outfit. My efforts to photograph it weren’t traditionally successful, but I really like the resulting overexposed orange halo:

even my mousy hair seems lit from within by an orange glow! Here’s to an orange-coloured day dudes . . .

Now we all know that I like buying pretty things, but feel oh so guilty about shelling out from my ever-dwindling student loan . . .

But, today I had the pleasure of guilt-free prettyness with birthday H&M vouchers, courtesy of my lovely, forward-thinking aunt. This cutey refused to be photographed nicely, but does redeem itself in the Really Neat Prints And Covered Buttons Dept.:

While I got this jersey dress because it looks a bit like it might be a souvenir from a fun but horribley tacky ’80s package holiday to ‘Flamingo Island’. Of course this is only appreciable because I haven’t actually been forced to endure such a resort, but hey.

Okay, so I have a confession to make: I’m a massive whimp. Bass Face and I have lived here for six months and I have not once used the garden. The reason: the upstairs neighbours’ spitting on delivery-men, squalling, lets use our twelve-stone-at-age-eleven bulk to barge past you in the hall, obnoxious kids. Now, bearing in mind that once May comes around Hbert, The Alien and I can generally be found sitting somewhere grassy with a shisha, vodka, smokage and boyswithguitars in tow; it’s ludicrous that I’m sitting inside. So . . . yesterday I set up shop with laundry to hang, Orlando and orange juice, and you know what? Nothing happened. I read and lay in the mini amount of sun out. ‘Twas bliss. And who knew our garden contained so many actual not-dead plants:

AND, continuing Show and Tell Saturday, here’s the booty from thursday’s Camden trip mit la petite soeur:

This cute pocket belongs to a £10 turquoise skirt that reminds me of my Grandpa’s old cinefilms of family holidays. Doesn’t it look like it should really be worn on a sixties holiday to Spain? The Munchkin snapped up an american boyscout shirt and a quilted handbag, Chanel stylee. Not bad at all.