yes, it's a horse hat

it would appear that I am on an anti-crochet headwear bandwagon today. Particularly if that bandwagon was being towed by HORSES IN HATS.

WHY DOES THE HORSE NEED A HAT?!

WHY?!

It's not as if it's wearing a hilarious costume or anything. It's just a freaking hat.

Odd.

In other news, here is a dog in a pirate hat.



avast ye mateys! this be thar link

 And, if I wasn't mistaken, I'm pretty sure that long john snowy would like you to walk the plank.

On how to be unproductive and procrastinate lots...

Feeling unmotivated and generally irritable. Possibly hormones, possibly because I've been unproductive and am shitty with myself for procrastinating via very important things like twitter, facebook, and msn chats with my cousin. Because, you know, that's how I roll.

And here I am writing a blog post. Constructive, no?

Recently, I professed my dislike for cupcakes on twitter, and the 'muffin revival'. Hence, I have been scouring the interwebs looking for tasty bran muffin recipes. Bran muffins, you say? How can these possibly be tasty?!
Isn't tasty and bran muffins kind of the same as:

from Huffington Post

Cooking with Poo(h)?

No shit, (pun not intended!) I'd really think twice about a book titled - somewhat unfortunately - "Cooking with Pooh". I mean, it really means something completely different to me than it might to a three year old (not that mine ever had a fecal food fetish, but, you know, still. Kids these days...)

Also on my journeys around the interwebs, I found this (actually, I was emailed it via Huffington Post but that sounds so boring and much less intrepid):

A question that no doubt many cold hearted (and perhaps...dare I say, pro-private/anti-public health care) people have echoed:

from Amazon, via Huffington Post.

Because I often ask this question - who cares about disabled peopled!

...actually, on a much more serious note, I can't help but notice that my sister, who is eleven and has Down Syndrome, is being failed at some level by the state's education system, where she is in a class with other special needs children whose needs are...very different to her own. Her class consists of other kids of varying levels of global delay, including some that are autism spectrum, and others with more generalised (and less easily defined) delayed. These kids stress my sister out - often. Many are noisy, violent, and generally in my sister's personal space too much of the time. Which isn't to say that the teacher isn't doing a bang up job with the resources and class that he has, but rather, that this environment, as it currently stands, is not appropriate for my sister, and not conducive to warm-fuzzy-I-had-a-great-day-at-school-Mum stories, let alone actual learning.

While my parents try to enrol her in another school (a private school, or another state school that is not walking distance away -fail again education system) my sister has received at-home support from my mother, so that my sister's education isn't as compromised as it could be. Basically, my mother keeps my sister home if the teacher isn't going to be there, or if the other kids are particularly rowdy. Substitute teachers are nice and helpful, but nice and helpful doesn't always cut through the enduring bullying that my sister often endures. This is fine... but only in the respect that my sister does actually receive at-home education, but not in so much that she is denied the social experience of school, an important aspect of her developing as an adult, and becoming a productive member of society.

All of which are just as important for my sister-with Downs Syndrome- as it is for any other person.

So there.

Not what I intended to blog about, but c'est la vie.

Also, dress is being sewn, cousins are booking flights, and N has been busy sewing bunting. This particular string of bunting he's sewing strips of cotton between some cute vintage (? Are they vintage? At least vintage looking) that I bought in an op-shop. It looks similar to this:

from Craft Gossip

So cute!

I didn't get my idea from here- rather, I got my idea while looking at the hankies in the op shop. This picture I found just now - because every awesome idea I have, someone, somewhere else has had it too. And posted pictures on the internet! Awesome!

Wedding plans, ahoy!

Man, this would all be so much easier if I was like, the seventh wife, or something

Because then no one would expect anything of me. You know.


Of course, I jest.


So, an almost completely fruitless day of op-shopping made me realise that for the money I spend on a second hand dress, and altering it to suit, I could just make a freaking new dress. Turns out that, as usual, my mum was right all along. Ergh. I hate it when she does that.
The trouble is, I'm not finding anything in the pattern books (well, websites, but you know, same diff) that particularly inspires me. And that's kind of the whole point of making your own dress, right? Of doing something completely off-the-wall in it's uniquely you kind of way. (Or doing something really boring and normal, should that be what you were hoping to achieve...)


So, here are some images for inspiration. Credits are below.


I dig the style of this one. But needs sleeves. And more length. And a model that isn't practising her best farrah fawcett (and therefore making me want to punch her in her stupid perky little nose)

from here

The dress below is cute. Not sure about the second layer of lace, but I deffo dig the sleeves. Flower can go though. Model's cutesy looks are option, ie piss off and go do your homework or something.

from Bridal Bliss Designs on Etsy

And this one, without the hippy flower shit:

from hippiebride on Etsy

So then, if all these dresses were to like, do naughty dress things to each other, and then make a demented, but curiously beautiful and appealing dress baby, it'd look like this:

from English Dept on Etsy

Except without the price tag, which was like, $650, and poss with a symmetrical hem. Not sure about the layers, either. Still figuring that out.

I pinched this off a private forum, the OffBeat Bride tribe. No linkies, sorry, but it was someone's inspiration board, so NFI who the originals are from.

Finally, the dress in the top left corner - without all it's disgusting lace overlay on the skirt, minus the train and sans the length, well, I love it.


I really am a bit in love with the empire waist line thing, in spite of its sappy Jane Austen "Mister Daaaarcyyy" implications. I tend to think of it as having more, erm, Bronte sister inspirations - only, shorter, thus making it more suitable for wandering through those moors. Or whatever it was people did in moors, I don't know.




(Just quietly, Austen novels have their place, you know, and while it belongs NOWHERE near a film containing Keira Knightly, I have enjoyed the odd J. Austen - ie, all- novel. However, you simply CANNOT tell Oscar Wilde that).


Last dress picture -- love the beaded gold bit, but I can't imagine it'd look nearly as nice on me. I'm much too short, it'd just chop me in half. Plus, who wants to draw attention away from my fabourly sequinned drag queen shoes?

from pink galoshes

And it's late and I'm nearly asleep on account of it being 2 a-freaking-m. Night peeps. Or myself, as I am the one reading this.

Dad! There's an evil monkey in my closet!

Many, many things to say, but not quite the cohesiveness to make my brain say them.
First and foremost, I wandered in to the American Apparel store on rundle st today. That place is strange. Suffice it to say, I felt no overwhelming urge to purchase high waisted lurex leggings, teeny acid denim look running shorts, or erm, puffy knickers.

Their regular tshirts were not as cheap as I had imagined, either. In fact, the whole store was expensive (overpriced?)  and thus, not really worth a great deal of deliberation. I have no money, and what little I do have, I *should* be saving.

Otherwise, I have little interesting to report. So here is a funny picture:

Hover dogs. Oh yes. Miniature pinschers floating above the ground, because they're clearly evil. From here.