Pineneedle & Thread Issue 2

I am sporadically making these mini-magazines for my blog. Let me know what you think of them! I hope you all enjoy this second issue (it's a kind of best-of from my blog for the past month, plus some extra features like the Style Guide and Jennifer from Art in Our Blood.) Click here if you are unable to view the embedded version. And you can also view issue one here. Heaps of love,

I Really Am A Mermaid!

My mermaid membership arrived in the mail this morning, officially certified from the magical kingdom of the Merpeople. So it's indusputable now - I am a mermaid. See? My official-membership-necklace even says so. Are you guys totally jealous? Yeah, I thought so. I've heard that this shop called "I Love Crafty" is selling mermaid-membership necklaces too, although you won't have official certification from the magical Merpeople Kingdom (because obviously you guys aren't real mermaids like me). But I guess you could pretend you were a mermaid, if you had one of those necklaces, and were so inclined... necklace - c/o I Love Crafty skirt - c/o Faith & Lola tights - Yoshida (Japan) shoes - Japan t-shirt - Thank You Mart (Japan) bag - DIY (instructions here) Now this definitely falls into the realm of science fiction, but speculative biology is always a fun topic. This page features several awesome images that speculate on what the anatomy of a mermaid would look like. Below is the skeletal anatomy of a mermaid: Also, I found this pretty funny: did you guys know that last year, the US government had to make an official statement saying that "Mermaid's do not exist"? Come on guys, obviously they do exist... otherwise who would have sent me my official mermaid necklace...?

Monochrome / Tadpoles & Colour Vision

How cool are these tights? I'm a bit worried about wearing them about now I'm back in Australia - I've already had some "hilarious" comments from random seedy men about how I accidently put on odd tights HAHA (you're all so original) :| - as people seem to think they're a little bit odd. But then I remember that you should always dress for yourself, and if people find you strange or amusing, well, you're just making the world a more interesting place. blouse - c/o EFoxCity skirt - c/o Sheinside sweater - c/o Sheinside tights - tight store in Japan shoes - Asos necklace and headband - Claire's (Japan) In science news today, researchers in America were able to transplant eyes into tadpole's tails, and through nervous connection with the spinal cord, the tadpoles were able to see. Through their tails. The tadpoles were able to distinguish not only light and dark through their tail-eyes, but different colours as well. The researchers wanted to look at the ways that the brain can adapt to new signals, or signals coming from unexpected places. This is suuuper important stuff in designing prosthetic eyes for people who are blind, or types of blindness where the the eye functions fine but the brain "misreads" the information coming in from the eye. Read more about it here. I hope you're all very well!

Still In Love With Pastels

There was a point last year where every outfit I wore, especially when I had pink and lilac hair, was pastel-themed and super girly. I still adore the sugary sweet pastel palette. And I'm also still obsessed with my new clear rainboots - I've been trying them out with a different pair of socks every day and marvelling at how that little trick essentially provides me with a new pair of shoes. blouse - Vintage from Japan necklace - c/o Merrin & Gussy skirt - Vintage tights - Yoshida socks - Tutuanna shoes - Alibaba Remember my post from about a week ago about how incredible 3D Printing is? Just in case the use of 3D printing to make new organs, or the applications of 3D printing for chocolate technology didn't impress you, yesterday news of a man who had 75% of his skull replaced by a 3D-printed prosthetic was released. The new skull was made by scanning the man's head to generate an accurate 3D replica, and then printed out using a 3D printer. Not only is this new skull made from polyetherketoneketone, a super strong and resistant material, but special details were also added to the structure of the skull to encourage growth of the man's own bone and cells. We are living in the future. Read more about it here. Oh! And one more thing before I go today. This is what I woke up to when I switched on my phone this morning (a bad bad habit, checking my emails is the first thing I do every morning now): Isn't this illustration just incredible? I have to thank Maria Ramirez so much for drawing such a gorgeous portrait. Check out more pretty illustrations on her page here - she's only just started sharing her illustrations with the world, but I am so excited to see what she comes up with next!

A Handmade Dress

I'm a little obsessed with my new haircut and I just want to take a moment, again, to thank you all so much for all the lovely feedback and styling tips. I am going to have to bounciest, most voluminous hair after following all the tips you guys gave me ;) I am a little bit interested in getting something called a 'hit-and-miss' perm now thanks to Sunae (and if anyone has any horror stories/happy stories about hit-and-miss perms, now would be a good time to bring them up). I just realised, as I was looking through my clothes for something to wear, that I have never worn this beautiful, handmade Naughty Shorts dress on my blog before! Isn't it nice? It's even made from vintage fabric, and it goes perfectly with my new hair and these pretty vintage brogues. dress - (won in a competition) Naughty Shorts (shop) cat socks - Thank You Mart lace socks cuffs - DIY shoes - Vintage I'm just about to head off to a FIVE HOUR MOLECULAR BIOLOGY LAB SESSION (actually, I'm pretty excited about it) so I'll just leave you all with this pretty picture by Roberto Ziche of the solar system to scale. We're the third little speck from the left. We are so tiny.

DIY Stuffed Animal/Toy Handbag

Luci said to me the other day, "Annika, you really are a fan of things that are other things." Well put, I thought. My favourite things that I own are a pair of ear muffs that look like hamburgers (which you can see on my instagram here). So I was enviously viewing pictures from the 15th Harajuku Fashion Walk (envious because I just missed out on getting to join in! Ahh!) and loving the bags a lot of the lolita girls were holding, which looked just like stuffed toy animals (and probably were). And then I thought it would be pretty easy to make one myself! So here's a cute little DIY for you all :) If you have a loved childhood toy that just sits all lonely at the back of a cupboard, then why not perform a little surgery on them, so you can carry them around with you everywhere you go but not look like a (completely) mad person for doing so? Alright, so I have to admit that I could actually never do this to a loved childhood toy, either. I ended up finding the most unloved toy in our house, making absolutely sure that no one had any kind of sentimental attachments to it whatsoever, and I still felt really bad doing this. I felt properly evil. Like I was destroying happy childhood memories. I think the best option for this DIY - if you've got weird guilt-problems like me - is to visit a thrift store/op-shop and pick something up there. ANYWAY that's enough neuroticism - here is the DIY! A plush toy Fabric for bag lining A belt/matching fabric for your bag strap Scissors Thread and a needle A zipper An evil heart that makes you okay with cutting up plush animals that did NOTHING WRONG (alright, I need to stop anthropomorphising my toys now or this is never going to get off the ground) 1. Using a pair of scissors, cut down the back of the toy, the same length the your zipper is. I cut down the seam that was already there. You can also take this time to remove any tags on the toy. 2. Remove the stuffing. You might want to leave some stuffing in so the bag maintains it's shape - I left the stuffing that was in the seal's head, arms and tail. Then, if you're a hoarder like me, keep that stuffing somewhere safe to use in a future project sometime :) 3. Now you're going to make the lining for the bag. I just used a scrap of left-over fabric I had - but you could also use an old shopping bag or lining from an old coat, etc. All you need to do is cut the fabric to the width of the slit you made in the toy, fold it over, and sew down both sides like this: ...so that you have created a pouch. Then turn it inside out. 4. Match the lining up with the edges of the opening in the toy. If you've been using a sewing machine thus far, you'll probably want to hand-stitch the lining on, especially when you do the second side (you'll see why when you get up to this point yourself). Hopefully you will end up with something like this... Which you then just need to push down back into the toy... And your bag is now taking shape! 5. This is probably the most difficult part - adding the zipper. Make sure that your zipper is the same length as the opening you made in the toy. Un-zip the zipper, and place it upside-down on one edge of the opening, like this: And hand-stitch it onto the very edge of the opening, right where the lining meets the material of the toy. Repeat this on both sides. 6. You're almost there! You just need to add some kind of a bag strap. I'm using an old belt for this part - but you could use a strip of fabric, straps off an old bag or backpack, a piece of cord - anything that you think could work! This is the belt I used (I cut off the bow before sewing it on): You just need to insert the belt ends into each end of the opening in the toy - there should be a small hole at either end of the zipper you inserted. Then you just need to sew the belt to the bag, using a (thick) needle and thread. What you do next is pair your new bag with your favourite novelty pieces, and pretend you live in Harajuku. sweater - c/o Koogal (10% off use ANNIKAVICTORIA) skirt - c/o Sheinside shoes and suspenders - Body Line headband and necklace - Claire's If anyone tries this out, please send me pictures! Love love love,