art in the dark v 2.0

We have a beautiful new website and beautiful new artists. Go have a look. 

i am a woman of vision

Do you remember when I talked about perfume?

Well, yesterday I sprayed some perfume on before leaving the office. My best pal in the office, an ageless gentleman named Donald who enjoys church organs, fine vintage auto-mobiles, whiskey and opera, smelt it in the air and asked about it. I told him that it was my perfume, Numero Uno, and that it was actually a man's cologne, and that I hope I hadn't sprayed too much. No! Not enough! He loved it, to the point that he asked if I'd mind if he bought some. Of course I wouldn't mind. So now, as of today, Donald and I are man-fume twins, connected for life, smelling similar, yet subtly different. 

I also had my nails done today - glittery sparkles - and Donald said "now there's a woman of vision!" Now he is listening to his recording of the Royal Wedding, again, because he loves the church organ bits. Kate and Wills are about to say "I do". 

These are not my nails. 

NZFW

I went to New Zealand Fashion Week (well, two shows, yesterday) and I wrote about it here. If you're interested, pop over to Always Sometimes Anytime to look at their very up-to-the minute coverage and photos of pretty much all of the shows. 

One of the most polarising articles of the week was What's up with Adrian Hailwood? Read that, and then read this and this. It is interesting to see the different perspectives, right? 
On the whole, I have learnt that I don't have the stamina for fashion week. I'm a spectator, not a participant, and I just can't buy into it - I can't afford to, and it's such an effort. I have horrible blisters. My brain is fizzing with  hare-brained schemes to obtain the boots from Ruby, the leather pants from Lonely Hearts. When I eventually made my way home, I cooked a steak and ate it in front of the TV, and could not imagine having the energy to haul myself to the show I was meant to go to later that evening.
But I do have an interest in nice things. These are photos of some nice things from Liam, Ruby, Lonely Hearts. Liam is taking over from Madame Hawke, in case you were confused, and is, apparently,Ruby's slightly more grown-up best friend. All images courtesy of the sweet and talented Claire Wolf via Always Sometimes Anytime.

book smarts, not street smarts

Lou and I have both gone back to school this year, and for me, at least, its been pretty fun. By "go back to school" I mean go to a "continuing education" Italian class. Apparently I have a good accent, for a beginner. I've noticed that a lot of the older people in the class just don't get the accent thing. Italian vowel sounds are rather different from New Zealand ones, but its like they're a little embarrassed to make Italian words sound Italian. They read them out phonetically, with decidedly New Zealand sounding vowels. For example, when you say: "mi chiamo Hannah" in Italian, it should sound a little like "me kiamo Hannah". My classmates might say it like "my chee(as in cheese)-ammo Hannah". I was paired up with a lady who didn't get the sounds and I tried to help her come to grips with them by saying that the vowels were a little similar to Maori vowels - "ahh eeeeh iii orr eww" - and she said "I wouldn't know, I've never heard Maori" and then made a joke about Asian drivers. Whatever. Pictures from T Magazine.

eighteen

Do you remember the first night we met? We had actually met a few times before, but I mean the first night we hung out, without any mutual friends as buffers. I came to your work after close with my workmates and must have been there until at least 4am, it can't have been too much later because it was still dark when we got to your apartment. Your friend Jase was there – he became my friend after that night – and someone else maybe but that I'm not sure of. I'm not sure of very much, considering the circumstances and all the years that have passed since, but there are things that have stayed with me. I tripped on the stairs, I remember protesting that I had not eaten that night, it's something you say when you are embarassed at showing how drunk you are, isn't it? I remember you, I think it was you – there was something there I thought, I hoped, eyes had been made earlier – putting a pill in my mouth. Actually I might not remember that, maybe it was handed to me and I swallowed it on my own. It was not my first but still new enough. I remember only a few minutes passing before I was throwing up all over the bathroom. Had you been showering, did I burst in? Maybe you came in and found me there. I imagine any glimmer of that something faded away while you cleaned up my puke, I don't really know now. I remember you found a hair tie somewhere, to tie my hair up. I remember that I fell asleep and you went out with the others, there were early morning 'hospo nights' then, surely there still are, and I remember when I woke up the next day I thought someone had come into my room and painted the wall while I was sleeping, before I remembered that I was in your bed. You were next to me then, and I remember that you kissed me when we were both only just awake, I remember you had been wearing blue underwear, not shorts but tight, y fronts, no boys I knew wore that sort of underwear then.

Though your blue underwear may have been another time, later on.

I heard a few years ago that you were living here, and we have talked once, on a bizarre trip out of town we both happened to be on. But I didn't think about that night then, I just thought of it today, when we passed each other on the street, without recognition. I remember we joked about the wastefulness of my purge, I remember being both flattered and repulsed that you had kissed me after the events of only a few hours earlier. I remember that I went to your apartment for a while after that, always so late at night that it was already the next morning, a few times staying until it was the next night again. You were tall, tall and skinny with a baby's face and curls. You wore underwear that was different from the boys' whose underwear I had seen before.

blerg

I am still alive! Just have been a bit uninspired of late. 
I'm saving, saving, saving for an adventure. It means that I've given up a more grown-up life of flatmates, dinners and extravagant laybys for parents, spending all my time with an ill tempered cat, and bringing leftovers in for lunch. On the plus side, I get to spend my spare time working through some very basic questions:
Should I live in Milan, Rome or Florence? Or somewhere else entirely?
Should I go full Eat Pray Love and stop in India and Bali, just to be facetious?
Should I buy the language book or just photocopy whole chapters out of it?

 Florence

 Milan

Rome

we're still here

just.

I spent a lot of last Friday morning booking tickets to the Melbourne International Film Festival later this month. I decided to do something I never do which is actually go to all (or a lot) of the movies I want to see. I bought one of those passes you can get which costs a lot but works out to be not so bad per ticket, I also got a bunch of tickets for my friends so that I only have to go to one or two alone. There is nothing wrong with going to a film by yourself, it's fun actually, liberating even, but more than ten in the space of only a few weeks could be more in the realm of depressing.

I booked tickets to a few much anticipated movies, The Future and Norwegian Wood among them, as well as Beats, Rhymes & Life and a few other music films. I got tickets to a couple I hadn't heard of at all before reading through the timetable last month, like The Matchmaker and some I had been looking forward to but it turns out no one else I've met has (Tiny Furniture for instance). 

I very rarely go to the movies any more, it feels like such a treat when I do. This actually feels a little excessive but if you knew how many I didn't get tickets to you would be impressed with my self-restraint. Or not.

Also, I finally got around to watching Catfish the other night and it was good, plus all of the guys who made it are dreamboats.

man decor

I really like this rug (via I'm Revolting).

I also really like and want this book (via Vena Cava), and would like to have it in my home which I would like to look something like these homes.

That's all.

i think i like you

This is relevant to my youth

Wild things is on television right now. I'm watching it and keep being reminded of Neve Campbell's skin peeling scene in The Craft. The acting in this movie is almost as bad as the shoes, but there's nothing not to love. Wtf Bill Murray?

mash up

Rittenhouse

Surface too deep

Jennie Ford for Marimekko

good for nothing

I am not of the best health at the moment. I have a vitamin b and possibly iron deficiency. I know this because I have angular cheilitis. This self-diagnosis has been informed by advice from various friends and colleagues, and at least an hour or so on the internet. Angular cheilitis, it turns out, is what they call the terribly annoying and persistent cuts that can develop in the corner of one's mouth. They are PAINFUL and DISGUSTING and do. not. heal. They aren't cold sores but they may as well be, they are equally as GROSS and render one equally as unlikely to ever be kissed again in their LIFE. They also make it difficult to laugh, yawn, brush one's teeth, and eat anything larger than a grape, or anything on a fork.

So there've been a range of suggestions about what might have caused the face wounds, and after two weeks of no apparent improvements (in fact it got worse, double bad) the common theme I'm hearing is vitamin b. I actually spoke to a real pharmacist about this, they're the free version of a doctor, or at least slightly more informed than me after a dr google consultation. Admittedly the pharmacist I spoke to was working at chemist warehouse (the only place I buy my drugs) but they agreed with my self assessment and the ego boost was enough to send me away with a bottle of some super ultra multi B complex pills. Never have been much of a supplement taker though, and I am now sitting here munching on salmon, broccoli, asparagus, mushrooms, leafy greens, beetroot, brussel sprouts and brown rice, trying to work out how I can possibly incorporate millet, wheat germ and beef livers into my diet as well... I am an easily sold hypochondriac.

dreamy

I've been having the strangest, most vivid dreams recently. It's probably the seasons changing or something. Unfortunately for most people around, I've been compelled to share them with whoever I can, in person, on facebook, and yay now with you. You're welcome.

Not really, it's too late in the evening to write anything compelling about something that occured in my own subconscious over 12 hours ago. But here are a bunch of pictures that somehow fit into the bizarreness and loveliness of this whole scenario, as I seem to have begun to mush all the recent dreams into an ongoing state of being that I'm having a hard time pulling myself out of when awake.

A few tidbits: model planes made of chickpeas and rainbow garlic // b grade celebrity look alikes mouthing silently along with gangster rap for hours // sleeping in a hat on a couch at a party // straw // forests // grey skies // warm hands, cold weather // that's all.

champ fest

Wa-hey, Champ Press Creators Supplement showed up in my mailbox last night and isn't it delightful!



A lovely little thing printed on a beautiful old press, here in Melbourne, this journal is full of pictures and words from some of the most inspirational people creating around the world. Editors from Apartamento and Monocle (my two actual favourite bits of print), designers from Tokyo, Berlin and London, I'm excited to actually sit down and read it all.

You can buy the supplement, and Ala Champfest the magazine at a bunch of shops around Melbourne and the world, and online, have a look at the website for stockists.


I took these photos on my phone.

knit picks

see what I did there?

I would be so happy if all of my friends wore these all of the time, including me.

I am obsessed with All Knitwear, ever since I saw it in a shop on Gertrude Street that was shut every time I walked past. Admittedly I only walked past at night, until about two months ago when I walked past in the middle of the day, and it was open. I went in and found that these sweaters and minis and scarves are even better in person than through the window/online. The shop is called Dagmar Rousset and is full of really great things. Please go there if you are in Melbourne. You could even get french lessons there if you wanted, which you should.

If you're in Auckland, which I think a few of you are, All Knitwear is stocked at Douglas + Bec in St Mary's Bay, a shop which I don't think existed when I lived there.

we are children of the nineties

This weekend I sat by a lake with eight others of roughly the same age, and turned 25 as we sang along to the smashing pumpkins, spice girls, ace of base and alanis morisette. We still remembered every word.

We communed with nature, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and red wine in the mud. Wearing polyester blankets patterned in leopard print. We made new friends and ate chinese takeaway in the middle of a tiny town, deserted at 10pm but for a few hangers on at the pokies.

We talked about Kurt Cobain, 2 Pac and Biggie. We rowed in Kayaks on another lake, our iPods and portable speakers splashed with water but continuing to play incredibly offensive gangster rap. (We turned it off when we realised how many children we were sharing the lake with).

We spent hundreds of dollars, on beer, breakfast, barbecue supplies. We feasted on sandwiches and easter eggs in the middle of the night and powerade and golden pash the next morning. We got lost on the way there and the way home, but we got back to the city in time for the unfortunate few who had to work.

quarter life crisis

 It's my birthday on Monday, dear rich friends and family (all of you) please note:

 I would like the fox dress

 This perfume

These sunglasses

Flowers, always

A cocktail ring or two, particularly this one, in smokey quartz

A timepiece that isn't my cell phone. Preferably a large-ish man-ish gold or silver watch with a big round face

And a new computer,

Thanks.