sew-tastic

i've just started this art project for my A level which is all about personal identity.

basically it's anything to do with yourself, but i've been a bit uninspired lately for the preliminary sketches we're meant to be doing, so today i did some sewing instead.

here it is, my little CND sewing project.

i'm actually quite proud of it, although it did take me aaaages to do.
i've never posted any of my art stuff before, so i thought this may be a good time a time as any to start :)
last night i went to see ed byrne, an irish comedian, with two very good friends of mine. it was sososo funny & i had an awesome night, except my throat is now raw from laughing. he said so many funny things that i wish i could remember & quote here, but i really can't! his dvd is going straight on my christmas list!
oh my, it's my grade two guitar exam tomorrow, eeeek!
must go do some practise now, byeeeeee.

an education

gosh, it's been a while since my last post.

it was children in need on friday so our school had a non uniform day with a spotty theme. a few people dressed up in costumes, as you can see above, to raise money.

i've just realised it must look like i always wear that skirt on here, but i assure you i do have other clothes.

yesterday, myself & a few friends went out to the cinema to watch an education.

it was a pretty good film, although it did get a bit weird in places, partly because the older man wasn't really hot enough & it just ended up getting a liiiiittle bit odd.

the sixties wardrobe was amazing, these were my two favourite outfits of the film.

see what i mean? he just wasn't hot enough to pull off the role.
this dress was my absolute favourite, apparently all the clothes in the film were genuine vintage clothes.
the dad was the funniest thing in the film though, he had some absolute classic quotes!
it was quite an eventful day, first i went into town myself to do a bit of art shopping but i was very disappointed with the things i found so i stormed off to h&m because i had money burning a hole in my pocket. i bought some pretty fingerless gloves (which i will post pictures of some time) so i can work my ipod on the way to school but still with warm hands.

then, when i met up with my friends, we discovered that the film was an hour earlier than we thought so we had no time to eat - which resulted in the buying of all sorts of unhealthy things & the sneaking of chinese food into the cinema.

it was all in all a very amusing day, as we got the giggles at various inappropriate moments in the film.

i also got very excited when the trailer for the new john lennon film came on screen - i just cannot wait for that to come out!

these autumn leaves are yours tonight

the colder weather is drawing in, and although i quite like crisp & frosty autumn days, cold nights really are not my bag.

obviously i need to buy one of these lovelies from topshop.

*sigh*

what sheer cuteness.

a day in the life.

my name in punjabi:

today was a pretty fun day, i converted a friend of mine to laura marling, discovered i love kate rusby's music & watched a frankly jaw-dropping video of bruce springsteen.

let them eat cake.

there appear to be birthdays all round this weekend.

it's my mum's birthday tomorrow (and i still need to get her present, eek! i'm so unorganised it's actually not even funny) & it's a friends of mine's birthday on sunday so we clubbed together & bought her a cake.

how awesome do the candles look?

in the shape of a 17, oh we are just so artistic!

we were a bit too scared to light all the candles in case the fire alarm went off!

i had an extra free period today because my spanish teacher wasn't in so i had quite a chilled hour just sitting talking & listening to music. it was rather lovely.

we were in a bit of a daft mood too, & my art sketchbook was hijacked by jess & rhiannon who drew many silly things in it - photos of which i may post later after i've, erm, censored them somewhat.
also people kept writing things on me & by the end of the day we all had fetishisms written on our arms.

clockwise from the top left: charlotte, rhiannon, becca & meeeee.

i'd just like to point out these are totally made up! we were just in a slightly weird mood, that's what you get from too much cake i guess.

*
it was also john lennon's birthday today, that guy is totally my idol.
happy birthdaaaaay john!

tangerine trees & marmalade skies.

one of my favourite beatles songs is lucy in the sky with diamonds because of its wonderfully weird imagery.

sadly, the girl who inspired the song, julian lennon's friend lucy o'donnell, died last week from lupus.

she was only 46 which i think is a bit of a tragedy.

that's julian's drawing which inspired john to write the song, i think the star's are quite cute.

RIP lucy.

yes, i am a mop-top.

so i got my hair cut on friday & i'm not entirrrrely sure i like it.

it's not really that different to how i normally have it cut, but it's all one length instead of being angular & shorter at the back, which is what my hair used to be like. i don't think it's got enough layers in it either, & i don't have a fringe any more so to me it just feels a bit strange.

i was really really reaaaaally tempted to go for a crop, a bit like laura marling's hair, but i want to be totally sure before i get that done.

i feel like being really drastic & spontaneous at the moment, just to break the monotony of my life. even if a crop looks rubbish, i don't care because i just want something wildly different to happen, i just feel so dull & mundane sometimes i want to scream.

as it happens, i didn't go for a crop.

see?

tedious beyond belief.

i'm so sick of my hair it's unreal.

it looks better now it's curly though, they always blowdry it straight at the hairdressers which makes my hair completely devoid of volume & life.

seriously, why is it so difficult for hairdressers to grasp the fact that i like my hair messy & unruly? it's just so much more me that way

i do hope i grow to like it =/

girl from the north county

those among you who are fans of bob dylan (or bobby d, the bobster, his bobness - those are just a few of the nicknames i like to give him on occasion) will have recognised the title of this post as one of his most well-known songs.

i am a pretty huge bob dylan fan, so much so that i refer to him only as bob, like he's an old friend slash mentor of mine that i have sadly never met.

i have been searching for a bob dylan tshirt for a while all over the place, i tried his website & other specialist music tshirt websites, and although they all looked good, they were all a bit too expensive (and on top of that had a huge p&p charge) or just not my taste.

i went on to scouring ebay rather obsessively for quite a long time, and i must say it is one of my favourite places to buy tshirts, they're so original either being handmade or vintage - definitely not something you can just walk in to a shop & buy!

after a great deal of searching & deliberating, i chose a men's XL tshirt with a silhouette of the bobster on it. the picture is from the cover of his the times they are a-changing album.

i was so excited when it arrived, it took a while to get here so i had forgotten all about it until a package arrived for me.

it's a lot wider & not quite as long as i imagined so i'm not entirely sure how i'll wear it.

this was yesterday's outfit, i decided to wear it as a dress with lilac tights (river island) & my flamingo cardigan (dorothy perkins). i think it may have been a little short so i'll team it with a high-waisted skirt in future.

don't ask what my leg is doing in that picture, but i thought a full-frontal shot would be good too.
i'm hoping i can get away with wearing it for school, it goes really rather well tucked into my pencil skirt & i'm running out of outfit ideas for the conformityness of the sixth form dress code.

in my first outing in the bobby d tee, i went out shopping with my friend joanna for art supplies & ended up spending quite a bit more money than i probably should've done on clothes etc.

i bought a wonderfully oversized pink & white stripey shirt from primark; a sailoresque purple & white striped tshirt, some fantastically vintagey-looking turquoise flower hair clips, a pure white bow hairband, some lovely & warm blue gloves with bows all from h&m. photos will probably have to wait a while as my camera has decided to go on the fritz.

*

on another note, i'd just like to say thank you to my followers :)

7 really is a magical number.

it means so much to me to know that there are people out there who have an interest in my bizarre (yet hopefully endearing) outlook on life, thank you so much for reading.

i read the news today, oh boy.

happy beatles day everybody!

in case you haven't seen the many documentaries or the many, many articles in many, many, many papers, you may have missed the fact that today, on 09/09/09 (because 9 was john lennon's lucky number don't you know), the beatles' remastered albums & the beatles rock band game - which i soooo want to play! come out!

can i get a woop woop?

oh, look at them.

how sweet those moptops are.

champagne all round methinks.

*this post is dedicated to john lennon (RIP), paul mccartney, george harrison (RIP), ringo starr & the excellent george martin, without whom the beatles may never have acheived such incredible success. also to yoko ono, dhani & olivia harrison, giles martin & all the people at harmonix*

cornwall

gosh it's been ages since my last post!

this isn't through lack of things to post about (in fact there have been loads), just a total lack of internet access!

we had a really long drive down to cornwall, it took us 8 hours in fact!

glastonbury, my spiritual home!

the, erm, entertainment at the local bar.

port isaac, where they film doc martin!

the doctor's surgery in doc martin; if you don't know the show you won't really get this, but this was a huge moment for me!

we also went to westward ho!
this was all down to me, basically i just wanted a picture of the sign because it is the only place in britain with an exclamation mark in its name.

we also went to land's end.

after that lighthouse, there's nothing but sea until america. pretty cool i thought.

the cherry parking zone at the eden project.
they were all named after fruit, very cool indeed.

the eden project, so spectacular.

how cute are the lantern hanging things?
i really wanted to buy some of these in the gift shop, but i couldn't find any :(

this was a display thing in the wall in the mediterranean biome which i though was amazing!
it's just some white flowers in a clear tube, but the effect is really pretty.

my attempt at doing a bit of cool photographyness.

major fail!

the groovy rainforest pond thing

i love this quote, ever since i read it in about a boy (by nick hornby).

cool fountain thing.

these flowers are beyond pretty, in a weird way they remind me of some floaty blouses i've seen in topshop.

the secret bamboo maze that me & my brother found.

the other passage we found, this one was really beautiful, like something out of a fairytale. sadly my picture doesn't really do it justice.

apologies for the long post about nothing in particular, things will return to normal soon, i just had to get all the cornwall stuff out of my system!

lady of the blue rose

at 4am on saturday, i set off for my holidays in cornwall and for the past 3 hours i've been packing - which i hate. i've pretty much packed everything from my wardrobe, including quite a large pile of books i chose specially for the occasion.

the top three are books i've borrowed from my dad, and the rest are brand new
from the top:
setting free the bears by john irving
one flew over the cuckoo's nest by ken kesy
high fidelity by nick hornby
the unbearable lightness of being by milan kundera
nineteen eighty-four by george orwell
catch 22 by joseph heller
the bell jar by sylvia plath
trainspotting by irvine welsh
i tried to go for quite famous reads, as generally on holiday i read a lot of crap books that take about 3 seconds to read and are utterly predictable.

i also bought some shorts from topshop today for my holiday.
they were in the sale for £15 (although i actually thought the tag said £5 so there was a bit of a scramble at the till)

they have the cuuuutest liberty print; the blue roses are just darling.

*

i shall be taking my laptop to cornwall, but i'm not sure if there will be any internet access where we're staying, i shall try to do some posting but it's a bit unlikely that will happen.

gravity is working against me

today i had an extraordinarily terrifying experience today at go ape - an outdoorsy, up-in-the-trees exploration thingy.

i hadn't realised just how scared of heights i was until i got up there :

in fact, at the end i actually broke down in tears. i don't know whether that was from relief or sheer terror, or perhaps some mixture of the two.

anyway, here are some of the obstacles i managed to take pictures of when i'd stopped shaking.

the barrels which we had to crawl through

steps.

see? look how high up we were!
and this wasn't even the highest point!

that's my brother clinging to the net after the "tarzan swing" - which was the scariest part, except for all the rickety ladders.

i took this photo after my go on the tarzan swing (which is basically just a rope which you attach yourself onto, let go & swing across with no visible means of support).

i cannot tell you how happy i was to see this sign!

my certificate :)

when i got home, i was still shaking quite a lot (and literally could not stop weeping) so i had a nice long hot shower & i listened to gravity by john mayer - which has never felt more appropriate!

i got soul.

it's been absolutely dreadful weather today, so i thought i'd stay inside & take some photos of my lovely records.

i'm not really the greatest as photography, it's not really my thing if truth be told. i love looking at photos that other people have taken but i just can't take particularly nice ones myself.

anywaaaaaay.

this is me looking rather pleased with myself avec the rubber soul record. well, i think that's what the expression on my face is. i was trying to take a good picture & i think my face got a bit screwed up with the concentration of it all, which explains the grimace. see what i mean about the crap picture taking? also, i cut a bit of paul off, which is a shame.
i love this record so much. i haven't had a chance to play it yet because my record player lives at my dad's house (and i haven't been there in a while) but i really cannot wait. i'm pretty sure it's an original one from 1965, that's when it says it was printed anyways.

my records!
from left to right it's; bob dylan, buddy holly, eric clapton & the kinks with the beatles in the middle.
i have to say, i have a bit of a weird addiction to smelling record sleeves. i know that sounds unbelieveably odd but it's just the old papery smell, kind of like second hand books.
the eric one was unbelievably cheap, it was only £1! the man on the stall said he had to get rid of all his records really quickly because he had a baby on the way and needed the space.
frankly, that made me wonder how many records he actually had.

this message was on the back of the kinks record.
i think it's really sweet, and it kind of makes me feel like i'm sharing some part of their history now, it makes me wonder why linda got rid of the record & whether her & alistair are still together.
or maybe i'm over-thinking things too much.

am i blue?

yes.

i wasn't really feeling down today until about 20 minutes ago.

while trying to sort a (silly) argument out, i seem to have made it worse, although i'm not really sure how, sometimes people can just be a bit difficult & not willing to admit their wrongness. it is frustrating when people are like that though, & get angry for no reason, it's just daft & no one should have to put up with it. it's just plain rude not to reply when somebody makes the effort to sort an issue out.

*

things to cheer myself up with:

1) music. i'm thinking eddie cochran, buddy holly, jack johnson, maybe a bit of jimi hendrix. something with an upbeat cheery guitar anyways.

2) a bit of online browsing. seeing nice clothes always makes me happy, shallow as that may seem, and at the moment i'm quite addicted to ebay.

3) food. i can't really be bothered to get up at the moment, but when i can i will go & get some chocolatey sustenance.

4) positive thinking. quite an obvious solution really, but it's quite hard to do. it can be so easy to just get lost in a bad situation & get upset & angry, but it's good to remember that things won't always be this way & they will get better.

5) laughing. it's thursday, which means it's comedy night. mock the week followed by a bit of reaper, & then possibly the loop (i've seen it advertised, & it looks rather hilarious) should get rid of unhappiness.

sorry, for such a blue post but - in the words of eddie - i'm having a bit of a nervous breakdown.

bon voyage

i am, i have to say, more than slightly addicted to gilmore girls.
the last ever episode was on tv today & i had a really nice time watching that, it was sad but it made me feel all happy & stuff.

i know i know, i'm such a dork B)

but seriously, if you've never watched it, you should! or at least imdb it.

it started off my day pretty well actually.

after gilmore girls, my mum & i made some houmous which actually turned out pretty good!

and i learnt a few things too, like always put the lid on the blender before you turn it on.

a photo of our lovely houmous:

yes alright, it doesn't look all that appetising. but it was really nice! made me feel all healthy too, which i really need to feel more as i didn't really pay much attention to the doctor's orders =S

also, the weather perked up a little bit before (and then it rained buckets!) so i decided, briefly, to break out the summer clothes.

vest: h&m. i love this top, you can't really see on the photo, but it has little black hearts on it.

skirt: topshop. i looooove this skirt! had my eye on it for ages but it was too expensive, then i finally bought it last week in the sales. the zip is a bit dodgy, but i love the floaty sticky-outyness of it.