Public service announcement
I noticed my subscribers went UP on google reader and bloglovin’ for this blog and I wanted to say – GO TO MY NEW BLOG! Add it to your google reader! Put it on your bloglovin’! Go on, it’s nice there. Nothing happens in this one anymore. See you over there?
I don’t live here anymore! Go to missbeliver.com instead.
See you over there…….
5, 4, 3, 2, 1…Missbeliever.com is go!
That’s right, I have my own little bit of the web now! Go there, enjoy, point out all the bits I’ve got wrong so far and so on!
This means I now have a new email address: tamsin@missbeliever.com. Send me nice things!
Many, many thanks to my lovely boyfriend for his help and vague attempt at patience when his web knowledge is so much greater than mine (read: none. It’s a miracle I managed any of this at all)
xxx
Garden of England
everyone loves hipstermatic, yeah?
I’ve been lucky enough to find some amazing people since I’ve been in Canterbury, and one of them is the incredibly talented illustrator Kathryn. I found her blog on a bit of a blogspot hunt for people in Canterbury (I needed friends) and fell in love with her art, then noticed that she also had a blog dedicated to the transition town Canterbury allotment that she was part of. I’d just got into the idea of growing vegetables in Nottingham, but in my little appartment in Kent am sadly without a garden. So I fired off an e-mail asking if I could possible help out and got a very enthusiastic response back. I met up with Kathryn (and her beautiful sausage dog!) and after a bit of a busy first month or so in the city, I finally went along one sunny Sunday morning. The allotment site is only a short walk from my apartment, and it’s the most beautiful, serene place I can think of. I’ve been twice now and I still don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m happy to pull up weeds, talk to the frog in the pond and just sit and enjoy the surroundings. And there’s really nothing like pulling stuff out of the ground/off a branch and taking it home to cook straight away. I left the allotment on such a high and was like that for the rest of the day :it’s the biggest cliche ever, but gardening and outdoor time really is good for the soul! I’ve been twice now (had to miss last Sunday due to Ellie’s birthday party in London) and I’m really looking forward to going this Sunday & just pottering around, breathing in the scent of the herb bushes and enjoying the peace. One day I might even know what I’m doing….I’m not all about fashion, y’know.
(bit of a delayed Mid-Week round-up this week, but rest assured it’ll be with you tonight!)
A/W 10: my style
Fashion does not mean changing the entire way you look every 6 months (although we’ve all seen the girls in head to toe Topshop who seem to think it does). Nor does it mean spending a fortune, or giving up your own personal sense of style but rather supplementing and evolving your look with your interpretations of the seasons looks. As I’ve stated in a previous post, to me the way we dress is an extension of my personality and the way I want to present that to the world, so there’s always going to be key looks I keep to. Mostly, black dresses, opaque tights, headbands and a lot of vintage and if I wake up one morning and decide I want to dress like a goth ballerina (as a friend described a recent outfit) I will, whether this has anything to do with current trends or not. And for everyone who smugly tells me they have nothing to do with trends or fashion (see this for starters), they all tend to look remarkably similar to everyone else in whatever social group they’ve decided to fit in with. The point is, everyone has their look, whether they think they do or not. Insert Monty Python reference WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUAL etc. But you can ‘follow’ trends and still retain an individual look – there’s not really such a thing as trends anyway (as this post neatly demonstrates) and two people could wear two designers for a whole season and look completely different to each other. It’s about taking what you like & making it your own, not blindly going ‘Oh I will now wear this for 6 months and then get rid of it’.
There’s very little point wearing something you don’t like; you’re just going to look uncomfortable and vaguely ridiculous. Which is why I’ll be avoiding all the aviator jackets (am I the only person who doesn’t like them?), kitten heels and return of the boot flare (why. WHY) this season. However, I love the full skirts, capes (dahling, I’ve been wearing mine for seasons), maxi dresses and wedge heels and so will be adding them into my wardrobe whilst keeping hold of all the usual suspects that mostly make up my style. Of course, being a massive cheapskate (and getting my kicks out of this sort of thing) I will be mostly scouring charity shops, e-bay and my sewing pile to create these new looks. (It’s also considerably more ethical to re-use, and I’m trying to get rid of my reliance on the shoddy quality and ethics of the high street) So, over the next few weeks I’m going to produce a series of posts detailing each of my interpretations of the ‘key items’ for a/w 10, and where I managed to source them from. To me, seeing something in a magazine and going out and buying it is a bit boring. Where’s the fun in that? Oh my God, I’ve become my mother….
Ch ch ch changes
In the next month or so I will be overhauling my blog (keeping my lovely header by Katie of course!), adding new links, and generally trying to set it up to be a little better run than it currently is! As I’m sure those of you for whom blogging is merely a hobby are fully aware, finding the time to implement such changes is always an issue. But I remain hopeful!
I will of course continue blogging in the meantime, and I’d like to draw your attention to:
I’ve set up a twitter account for the blog here. My current twitter account (which was called missbeliever, but is no longer) was closed due to my tendancy to rant on about issues and then got lots of spammy tweets (and for privacy reasons!) and so now I have a public one, and a private one. Excessive? Probably. But I like whining and ranting my inner most thoughts too much to just have an open account 
Add me!
I now have a contact address for the blog (pretty obvious, huh?) so if you need/want to get in touch, you can do so via this address: missbelieverblog@googlemail.com. I love to get mail!
Hope you are all enjoying the various fashion weeks & autumny sunshine x
Mid-week round up
ADAM s/s 2011
Happy Wednesday! Only three and a half more days to the weekend, but don’t wish your life away, as my dad often said. Here’s some lovely links to while away your lunch hour/procrastinate from whatever you’re doing with:
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She’s literally only just posted this, but I loved it and wanted to share. Inspiration from Kirsteen
Sian has written an interesting article on how bloggers can improve their public relations. I myself have no contact with PR, with my limited readership and previous tendancy to abandon the blog at a minute’s notice (no more, I promise you!) but it’s been hard to avoid the blogger/PR tension that’s been mounting as blogging moves into the spotlight.
Google’s header today is in honour of what would have been the 120th birthday of Agatha Christie, one of my favorites. Poirot is second only to Sherlock Holmes in my list of favorite detectives.
China bangles from Splash of Milk (yeah, totally pimpin’ my other blog). Would you wear them? I like the look of them, but as Ellie pointed out, what if they broke? Eep.
As per last season, I’m tumbling (?) my favorite looks from fashion month. If you’re doing a similar thing, I’d love to see.
Lovely pictures of record collections at Design is Mine. How do your store yours? Ours are in those handy Ikea Expedit shelves.
I’ve definitely mentioned Missed Connections before, but it definitely deserves another mention. Sophie Blackall illustrates the posts from Missed Connections websites with gorgeous, sometimes heartbreaking results. I love the idea of these little snippets of a strangers life getting made into a story that may have no relation to what really happened, but then I’m a big romantic.
I’m a bit obsessed with home decor inspiration, especially as I’m still trying to get our flat to look like the one in my head. These stunningly simple bedrooms at Decor8 are making me want to get rid of everything I own. I won’t, though.
This post from Kingdom of Style really resonated with me. I feel like I’ve seen this seasons trends a hundred times already and am getting excited about s/s 11 without having ever actually worn a/w 10! I’m preparing my own post on this season as we speak, if I ever manage to get time to finish it…
We’re closer to this weekend than last.
(belated) Sunday Spotlight
I’m behind with everything right now, aren’t I? I’ve decided I really need a PA to run my life so if anyone’s willing to do that in exchange for cakes and tea, drop me a line.
Today’s crafty fella is the lovely Sunshine Jo, who I found via the Nottingham Craft Mafia Store when I lived there, and then had the pleasure of working with whilst I was at my last job (which was totally non craft related, I should add!).
The first thing I bought from Jo was a gorgeous little wooden laser cut squirrel brooch for my bestie, and although that’s not available through either her Folksy or Etsy shops right now, you can see some examples of her work above. I can personally vouch for the quality of her handiwork, and I definitely think you should pop into one of her stockists if you’re lucky enough to be a Nottingham local. Twee and quirky without being annoyingly so & remaining wearable, Jo’s pieces are also ridiculously good value considering their uniqueness & quality. What are you waiting for? Buy buy buy!
As always, if you make lovely things or know somebody who does, let me know in the comments or drop me a line
‘Tis the season
No, not Christmas (although I’ve seen a frightening amount of Xmas stuff hitting the shops already – I’m looking at you, Debenhams) but New York Fashion Week has started and so the whole cycle starts again. I am prepared to get all excited about next years collections and forget about this seasons, as per usual. It’s difficult, keeping up with this fashion lark. I haven’t even finished my post about A/W 10 yet.
Anyway, as per usual I’ll be tumbling (is that a verb yet?) my favorites from each show as I don’t feel fully qualified to comment on everything here. Being a complete fashion outsider means that I do have a tendency to just go ‘NO DON’T LIKE’ at anything that doesn’t immediately take my fancy, which is probably a terrible thing to admit to. But anyway, if you care it’s all here.
The Final Frontier
These photographs, entries into the 2010 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, are incredible. I can’t even really begin to describe them – go and look for yourselves. I’ve long held an obsession with space – my dad’s into astronomy, I’m obsessed with sci-fi and I’m a scientist by trade so I guess it was inevitable. But even if you couldn’t care less about astrophysics, I fail to see how you would not be moved by these images. As Douglas Adams said:
“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
It’s so big, so incredible and so unknown that it almost hurts my brain to think about it. Obviously though, because I’m massively shallow, it all comes back to clothes with me and so I’ve picked out some of the best space inspired items I could find.
Acne silk blend t-shirt £100 at Net-A-Porter; Christopher Kane resort 2011; Orion Nedbula glass pendant $8, etsy.com; Nebula pendant from Drown Jewellery; Sass & Bide Midnight Runners tank dress £118.30 at Net-a-Porter.com; Lela Rose asymmetric galaxy print dress £1,130 at Net-A-Porter.com; Galaxy distressed top £44 by Your Eyes Lie at Topshop
I’m really hoping that Christopher Kane’s amazing 2011 resort collection ‘inspires’ the high street in the coming months – and I say this as someone who usually hates Christopher Kane. This collection, however, makes me want to weep with joy; imagine wearing a piece of the heavens on your body. And it’s as close as I’m ever going to get to seeing it for myself. Unless the Tardis stops by *crosses fingers, waits patiently*
