The Pineneedle Collective: Katie Buddle

Showing posts with label Katie Buddle. Show all posts

Friday, 22 January 2016

Meet My Best Friend (in Video Form!)

Katie has been on my blog before plenty of times, but now she also makes a proper appearance on my youtube channel! I also attempted to vlog. It kinda went alright, haha. I hope you enjoy the video!

Saturday, 14 March 2015

Not Dressed Up For You: An Open Letter To Creepy Men

"Ok, I'm wearing my long figure-hugging blue dress, and I've been yelled at 3 times in the 5 minutes I've been waiting for the bus *thumbs down emoji*"

This was the message that I got from Katie as she was making her way over to my house to take outfit photos together in our current favourite clothes.

This, and the fact that we look super don't-fuck-with-me in the above photo, prompted me to write a short open letter to all the creepy men out there (and yeah yeah, #notallmen and all that - but cis-gendered men, you really do overrepresent yourselves in this domain, so I don't wanna hear it).

Dear creepy men:

We are not your property.

We do not exist for your eyes and your amusement.

And we will not put up with your judgements on our outfits and your comments on our bodies.

Believe it or not, but we're actually not dressing up for you.

Sure, every woman's reason for dressing the way she does is different. But we dress up because we love fashion. We dress up because it feels good. We dress up for the sake of dressing up. Our outfits are an expression of our feelings and personalities. And we dress up because we want other cute, well-dressed women to admire our outfits.

Not for one second, while we were deciding what to wear this morning, did we think "golly I hope some creep screams at me out of their car! That'll validate my outfit choices/attractiveness/appearance and totally boost my self-confidence!"

Sorry, but it is NOT a compliment. In fact, it's the complete opposite. It's creepy, it's unwelcome, and it makes us extremely uncomfortable.

Why?

Because societally, historically, culturally - men hold power over women. Because structural misogyny is a thing and what a woman chooses to wear is still grounds for abuse and discrimination.

Because a woman's, and NOT a man's outfit choices are still used as grounds to dismiss her authority, experience and intelligence.

Because female victims of abuse are still blamed for their own assaults because of what they wear.

Because "boys will be boys" is still used as a legitimate excuse for aggressive behaviour.

Because most women still don't feel safe walking home alone at night.

Our choice to wear a tight skirt doesn't give you an invitation to beep at us with your car horn. Choosing not to wear a bra isn't an excuse to call obscenities at us out your car window.

And yes, when we all live in a totally equal, utopian, sex-positive society where pay is equal, women have beards and men wear make up, then maybe, maybe screaming your approval of a woman's outfit out of your car window will be a completely acceptable form of admiration. But that world doesn't exist. So for the time being, creepy men: will you please shut your mouths. And if you witness this behaviour, please open your mouths and tell that person that what they're doing is wrong. And why.

Because one day, we want to be able to wear whatever we want, and not feel unsafe or discriminated against because of that.

Outfit details:

Top is DIY

Necklace is c/o Eclectic Eccentricity

Skirt is c/o Choies (super old, and altered by me)

Shoes are Naot (Kedma)

Socks are from Japan

See Katie's blog for what she is wearing.

p.s. Katie has turned her whole cat-calling experience into a kickass post, I highly recommend that you read it!

Much love,

Monday, 15 December 2014

Life's a Beach

I'm feeling super lucky because I got to spend the weekend with these two gorgeous ladies, at my boyfriend's brother's wedding party, and we have had the loveliest couple of days eating food, going for walks and brief dips in the ocean (brief because the water has been freezing). It's the first time in many months that I have finally been able to relax, and not have the constant worry about assessment deadlines and health issues hanging over everything I do. It's really, really nice.

I was asked to take wedding photos, and as I am a very shy person, being able to approach people from behind the lens of the camera under the guise of taking pictures was a liberating experience for me. As the sun began to set and the light hit "golden hour", I also convinced Katie and Tilde to be their cute selves and take photos with me, and what resulted was one of my favourite photo shoots ever.

Annika's swimsuit - Glebe Markets | Tilde's swimsuit - Seafolly | Katie's swimsuit - Venderstore

Aren't Tilde and Katie the absolute cutest? (Katie just posted more pictures, so click over to her blog to see them!) I'm spending the remainder of the week with Katie and a few of my closest friends down at the beach, and I also have my sewing machine and looooots of fabric with me (I am not one for packing light when going on holidays), which means that hopefully I will also have lots of cute crafty things and pictures to show you over the next couple of days!

Love love,

Wednesday, 22 October 2014

Fighting Evil By Moonlight & Organic Molecules in Space

Annika - shirt is thrifted, skirt c/o Faith & Lola, shoes c/o Chicwish (old), tights from Japan, earrings are handmade.

Katie - dress is thrifted, shoes are mine (thrifted), socks from Clear It and brooch is vintage.

I'm glad I'm friends with someone who also gets the urge to go out on a freezing night, dressed up like a nightmarish barbie doll and take photos next to dumpsters. These photos were taken way-back-when in June, but I thought they would be a good set to pull out of the vault just in time for Halloween (I tell myself every year that I'm not going to jump on that bandwagon, but it inevitably happens).

Anyway, these shots did end up being fairly appropriate for a Halloween-themed shoot - mainly because of these shots I got of Katie looking throughly possessed (which I turned into an even creepier gif):

What... even. The funny thing is that we weren't even attempting any kind of demon-possession shots; Katie just happened to be jumping around, trying to stay warm, while I was trying to focus my camera on her. So we were SUPER freaked when we were later reviewing the photos and these shots popped up, because we couldn't even remember taking them!

I also want to bring attention to how cool this vintage (and Sailor Moon-esque) brooch of Katie's is:

You may also notice that I have a brand new blog banner! It's by the incredible Em Somerville whose art I have loved FOREVER. I'm so beyond pleased with it. While I loved my old header, this one is a much more accurate representation of what this blog is about - vintage-inspired fashion with a side of sewing and science. If you haven't checked out Em Somerville's artwork before, this is her website, and she also posts some pretty fantastic stuff on her instagram account.

Today I will leave you all with an awesome bit of science: A complex carbon-based molecule was found floating around in space, 27,000 light years away from Earth. I'm so blown away by the fact that astronomers are able to detect such a tiny thing (a molecule! You can't even see those with a light-microscope, let alone the naked eye) from such a long distance. But the researchers are pretty confident that it's out there. Furthermore, it's an organic molecule - which lends support to the theory that life-forming molecules may come from outer-space rather than being created on planets. Read more here, it's amazing.

I hope that you're all having a lovely day,

Sunday, 31 August 2014

When Life Gives You Lemons (or Locks You Outdoors)

Me and Katie accidentally locked ourselves out of her house for over an hour this morning. But rather than get annoyed at this less-than-optimal situation, we had a mini iphone photoshoot in her front garden instead, planning to blog the photos later in the day.

I had been obsessing over Katie's outfit all morning, and I think my repeated "oh my god Katie you look so amazing" was starting to get a bit creepy - so I was pretty happy that I got the perfect excuse to further obsess over her outfit from behind the lens of a camera. Click on over to her blog to see the photos that I took of her, and her amaaaaazing outfit! We actually both thrifted our dresses yesterday (on a trip to the op-shop where we were only meant to be dropping off old clothes we didn't want anymore - oops!)

Making the best out of a bad situation. That's something I'm proud to say that I excel in. Certain events in my early adulthood have taught me to be really good at making lemonade out of lemons. Certainly, one of the most positive things about having a chronic illness has been learning who my real friends are.

Before I became sick I would have told you that I had tonnes of friends - people who I would see every weekend and get drunk, dance and have deep-and-meaningful 4am conversations with. All but a handful of these people completely disappeared when I got sick and could no longer live that lifestyle. From most, even people who I considered to be close friends, I didn't even get a "hey, how are you going?", and that was really, really hard. But this isn't a negative story - I am grateful that I have been able to sort through the people in my life in this way, and make much better connections with the ones who stuck around.

So I feel really lucky. I feel like it can often take people until late in their 20s or even their 30s (if ever) to recognise who their real friends are - to work out who is going to stick by them when the going gets tough. I may only have a handful of close friends now, but they're the most wonderful, meaningful friendships I could have asked for. They're there for me on not only the good days, but the bad ones too.

And that brings me to my point - when life gives you some lemons, juice the heck out of that lemon and make the most delicious lemonade in the world! If I hadn't gotten sick, I still don't think I'd know who my true friends are. And this morning, if we hadn't got locked out of the house, we wouldn't have taken these photos and you wouldn't be reading this post. Lemons are totally delicious!

I hope that you're having a really lovely day,

Saturday, 23 August 2014

A Post of Outtakes

In the age of the internet, instagram, blogs and selfies, it's fairly easy to compose a carefully-crafted version of yourself for the wider world to see. My world appears through a select composite of angles and arrangements, positions and poses, faces and filters.

To the unaware, this can lead to the impression that my life is perfect - that I live in an eternal picnic-world of cute patterns and prints and perfect lipstick; that I never have struggles or stresses; that I never wake up with bed hair or panda-eyes because I've forgotten to take off my makeup the night before.

But life isn't perfect, and it's good to be reminded now and again that everyone else doesn't just roll out of bed at 6am rocking perfect hair and eyeliner.

Besides, some of these photos are just way too hilarious not to share. So, enjoy this post of less-than-perfect outtakes (quickly, before I decide that this is the worst mistake of my life and I take this post down!)

When taking photos, I will inevitably get an unstoppable urge to pull a ridiculous face and completely ruin the photo. Me and Katie didn't even realise that both of us had done this at the same time (in the above photo) until looking at the photos afterwards. And here I am ruining the nice photo below:

Oh Annika... gosh... might I say that you are looking stunning today? Did you do something to your hair? (I didn't even know that my face was capable of doing this; thank goodness for cameras!)

I'm not quite sure what was going through my head when I decided to pose like this...

Again, not the best pose I've ever thought of (...robot girl?):

And, frankly, the next photo just terrifies me a little bit. This outfit clearly brought out the top model in me.

Hi, Annika. That is a good... face... you've got there.

Now I'll share with you guys a few photography tips and tricks. This is how I get all my flawless outfit shots.

There's the flawless hair-flick photos:

The "this is going to look AWESOME" spinning shot:

Then there's the classic "hang on, I can't tell if the camera is working" pose:

Apparently, I also pull a LOT of grumpy faces:

And I am thinking that I might use this as part of my modelling portfolio:

"Oh! This will be a cute pose!" *FAIL*

"The sun has suddenly come out and blinded me" pose:

And the "I'm just looking at this teeeeeny ant" pose:

Good one Annika, that'll make a great photo: because normal people often walk around holding all their hair out at the sides of their head.

Classic vintage pose (aka going to the toilet in the lake):

Elegance:

Okay, I think I have sufficiently destroyed my carefully-crafted internet persona now. Just remember, next time you start comparing your life to seemingly-perfect blogs and instagram accounts - they don't often post the outtakes of life.

I hope that you've all had a lovely week,