1. I am paralysed by the amount of work I have to do
2. I am amazed at how young everyone is
3. I spent all my money on lunch

Perm Museum XXI

Designed by Valerio Olgiati. Read about it here.

fantastic

Little fox rings and necklaces, made by Odette and modelled by Jenny of Wiksten-made. I hardly ever fall in love with jewellery, but the little fox rings seem totemic and I want one to give me good luck. Photos from Odette and Jenny's blogs.

tip

Put a stem of early cheer in a vase right next to your bed and you'll fall asleep and wake up smelling springtime.

remember this?

Alexa Chung's Fall 2010 collection for Madewell, which previewed in February and was all over the internet for a while there, is finally launching this September. I imagine everything will sell out pretty quickly but am hoping I can work out some fancy shipping option and get my hands on the dress pictured above, the sheer polka dot blouse, and perhaps some aberdeen oxfords. There's a non-Alexa dress I'm a bit hung up on at the moment as well...

Alexa's collection is available online from September 9 in the states.

The words and images game, The misleading images game, and The classification game.

Immagini Della Realta' by Bruno Munari, Danese, Milan, 1977

From here. There's more information there, too.

Penny Davenport draws some eerie animals.

rodebjer

I would like to dress like this come summertime...I especially like the navy blue and stripy numbers. Oh, this is all Rodebjer  SS11, and the photos are from style bubble and Marcella Mravec.

hey LOU, also

I'm re-reading "BALLET!"* 

A breathless thriller of two lovers swept up in a mounting tide of passion and international terror.

*SHOCKINGLY BALLETIC

flarey mcflareson flarey flare flare

My new flares are all I dreamed of and more. The only problem is that my shoes and tops are all rather 70s anyway, so when I wear them I look like I'm in costume. But that's ok, s'no problem. 

I told our friend Nigel that I was wearing them with a grey marle t shirt and some tan leather platforms and he said:

First off, I think that if you ever happen to have some horrific accident and die, I would choose to dress you, in your coffin, for your journey to the underworld, in what you described below.

about time

It was just announced that Melbourne has elected the first ever Green candidate to the House of Representatives in Australia. While the overall results of the election are still up in the air (and looking pretty dire) I am quite proud to live in Melbourne right now. It also looks like Australia may have its first indigenous member in the House of Rep's as well.

Not being able to vote here has meant my interest in and knowledge of this Country's politics is rather abysmal, but despite this, and the television coverage being convoluted and boring, it's difficult not to get caught up in the midst of a national election.

'bric a brac'

Tomorrow we're having a yard sale.

It occurred to me as I started writing this that it may be redundant as I have no intention of publishing my address on this blog, but I've continued to type all the same.

If you happen to be having breakfast at Mitte you may come across one of the posters my lovely flatmates put up down the street, if that happens do come and say hello before you vote...

the look

See this? I made it. As Lou mentioned earlier, about two years ago I spent a year making it. My flatmate found the pattern in a magazine. It meant learning how to cross stitch but I did it. I was doing Honours at the time and would cross stitch on the bus, or while watching tv, or when I was meant to be writing essays. Once, I cross stitched it while watching Pride and Prejudice. I spent more money than is rational on embroidery thread. I found a pretty cushion cover in the Sallies, washed it, attached the cross stitch to it, made a black velvet border and tied bows on each corner. I gave it to one of my oldest friends (the one who the Mr Darcy obsession began with) for Christmas that year and when she opened it all she said was: "You win. YOU WIN". The bows have mostly fallen off because she hugs it so much. Notice the way I attempted to make him resemble a devotional icon with the golden rays emanating from his head. I have seen other Mr Darcy cross stitches on the internet but I have never seen this one's equal. 

in the dark

Do you guys know that I'm helping to organise an art event called Art in the Dark?

Its an amazing thing. We've challenged artists to create works that touch on the themes of community, environment and utopias, and they're going to be presented in Ponsonby's Western Park over two nights in October. The artworks will explore those themes while addressing more practical considerations: light, mobility, night, and conservation.

western park

There are five of us on the Art in the Dark team and we're all relative novices at organising light-art festivals (surprise!)But that isn't really a problem; people are generally happy to help us when we ask for advice or an expert eye. The Art in the Dark team are all friends. We're also all girls, and we're all about the same age. We meet after work, have a glass of wine and some chips in a cafe with our laptops out, plotting our next move. Or else we'll go to one of our houses for a shared dinner or brunch and work while we eat. We surreptitiously work on it while at our "real jobs". 

our pre-launch

Somehow, we've managed to create things like sponsor-packs, budgets, websites, artist workshops, and pop-up events; we've even given  interviews to magazines, newspapers and radio, presentations at community centres and at council meetings. We have actors, sculptors, cyclists, designers, poets, dancers, installations artists, musicians and film makers creating works for Art in the Dark, and all for free. We even have a (tiny) presence at Semi-Permanent. Art in the Dark has grown beyond our expectations, and it is so exciting.

that's us

If you're in Auckland on the 15th and 16th of October, you should come to Western Park and wander through the trees with a lantern in hand. 

The entry to our launch. Pretty, no?

Photos by Hans E Hammonds.

l'été

It feels as though the past couple of weeks have been the coldest of the winter so far. I've been walking to work wrapped head to toe and breathing little clouds but still I am quite certain spring is close. The magnolia trees are flowering, all the different varieties, and the flower shops are filled with hyacinths, jonquils, early cheer and fresias. I'm so ready for this change in seasons I've almost skipped forward a few months and am already anticipating the summer. I intend for this one to be filled with countryside picnics, river swims, beach roadtrips and sleeping in the sun. Nothing out of the ordinary really.

There must something in the air at the moment because I have been repeatedly, pleasantly, surprised with news and possibilities over the last 24 hours. My whole self is filled with anticipation and excitement. This optimism could be applied to anything right now, even the prospect of a far off summer on a freezing Melbourne night.


These photos come from Wild at Heart, Lolita and Heart in a Cage...

things i like, currently

A pile of things found on my new favourite website, stopping off place. It's wonderfully curated, and I totally went in the opposite direction by being too lazy to write about the images I've popped here. 

champ

This weekend I plan on getting things done. Furniture shopping and new-room setting up, some gardening if it's sunny and probably a bit of work too. Before all of that though I'm going to the launch of Champfest magazine's second issue, and a travelling exhibition along with it.

Champfest is produced by my lovely new friend Jo and her twin sister in London, and I've been lucky enough to flick through the latest bilingual edition already. It's filled with the work of some incredible international artists, some who will be there tonight and are showing this month at Gorker.

If you're in Melbourne, come along tonight, openings at Gorker tend to be the small, crowded, well-stocked with beer afair you'd hope for and this one will have some reasonably priced prints and a beautifully put together little magazine on offer too. If you're not in Melbourne, you can pick up a copy of Champfest at West Berlin Gallery, Hamburger Eyes in San Fran, ReedSpace in New York, and Colette in Paris. And a bunch of other places besides.

needle and threads

I have a small collection of embroidery thread gifted to me by my mother earlier this year (she is an amazing crafty woman, and has recently completed embroidering a mind blowing topographical scale model of Antarctica, by the way). Anyway I'm far less accomplished with a needle than she or Han, who once cross-stitched a cushion cover of Mr Darcy's face for a friend, and so put the thread in a box for the day it might eventually come in handy.

Inspiration struck this afternoon when I came across these bright and delightful abstract works of Japanese artist Takashi Iwasaki.

I think word-of-the-day calendars are strange. Do you ever use words you learn on them in conversation? Rankle was January 1 a few years ago, and I use it, on average, once a week.

via nerdboyfriend

men of a certain age

When Han and I were at university we had two classes together, one of them was a media paper called 'understanding popular music' or something to that effect. We sat next to each other and wrote notes back and forth, generally about one of three things:
1. A boy in the class who we hated. He found the music of Moby really profound.
2. A girl in the class who we dubbed 'indie girl' and who had a tendency to name-drop, which was kind of redundant living in Wellington, where everyone already knows everyone anyway. She's famous now though and probably earns quite a lot so I guess that serves us right.
3. How much we loved Roy, our lecturer, and wished he was our dad.

This was probably the beginning of my experience with dad-crushes. Roy had a bushy moustache and a uniform of jeans and sweatshirts. He told us in lectures about buying his daughter an iPod and he had great taste in music.

the young mr darcy

The dad-crush has since evolved and I would say now, at least for me, is not just about men whose daughters we wish we were; my current list of dad-crushes includes men who are certainly too old for me and who, in-person in 2010 would hold little or none of the appeal that their younger selves continue to carry on screen, but who I continue to swoon over while watching repeats of old tv shows and films made before I knew what a crush was. Men like Colin Firth, Emilio Estevez, Kyle McLaughlin, Jeremy Irons, Dustin Hoffman, heck even Patrick Swayze... Men whom my crushes on probably have as much to do with wanting to be like the girls who loved them as the man (or the character) themself.

The updated list still includes men who I could never crush on in such a way, but who I wish I knew in a dadly or uncley way, who I could hang out and drink beer or whiskey with and who I could introduce to my friends. Men like Roy. Bill Murray is a good example of this type of dad-crush, the original dad-crush.

Perhaps the strangest of the dad-crushes are those that we share with our mothers. Han is in love with Daniel Day Lewis*, which forever grosses me out having accompanied my mum to in the name of the father - aged 7 or thereabouts - and sat through repeated viewings of the last of the mohicans (around the same time) on VHS. John Cusack is an embarassing one for me: I gagged at my mother's girlish infatuation with Martin Q Blank but later fell head over heels in love with Lloyd Dobler.

*I s'pose I kind of am too, watching that video, sigh
That photo at the top is of Bill Murray and is one of my favourite portraits ever

take ivy

My flatmate and I are going to start dressing ivy league, but it all hinges on our pants arriving in the mail (she is apparently going to start "chimping out" if they don't arrive today). Its because we have plans, man. She's going to be Princeton, in little khaki capri-slacks, and I'm totally going to be Berkeley in my Wrangler teen-disco--flares. Anyway, she sent me her Princeton inspiration, a book called Take Ivy which was the product of a Japanese photographer T Hayashida documenting American universities in the sixties. Its just been republished and it looks, well, inspirational. Image scans from The Trad and A Continuous Lean.