The Pineneedle Collective

Tuesday 11 February 2014

Mermaids & Meetings

Dress is from Molly | shoes are from Juju shoes | necklace from a market stall

After announcing that I was selling my wardrobe the other day, I got a message asking if I'd like to meet up and do a swap with some of my clothes, instead. Well, even though the idea of the sale was to make space in my wardrobe, I'm never going to say no to cute new clothes ;) Up until recently I never would have said yes to such a request (hello, insane social anxiety!) but for the past year or so I've been forcing myself to step outside my comfort zone and do things that terrify me, like meeting up with a strangers (and, besides, it's turned out awesome before). Anyway, it turned out that this girl, Molly, is actually a really cool person (and not a stalker/murder which I admit I was 5% worried about), and I now have a new sewing friend and clothes-swap buddy in Sydney! I'm so thankful for this whole blogging thing for existing, and for letting me meet up with awesome, like-minded people, both online and offline! I love you all, whether or not you creep on here silently, or send me emails and leave me messages :)

Anyway, this dress from Molly fits me so perfectly, and made me feel like a mermaid with my newly-dyed curly red hair (which is finally growing!). Because it's been ridiculously hot and muggy, I simply wore it with a necklace and some clear jelly shoes.

That's it from me right now, because I'm making a pancake dress with this fabric and using this design, and I really want to get back to it! I hope that you're all having a really lovely day.

Sunday 9 February 2014

Ghosts and Witches

Shirt, skirt, hat and socks are all thrifted | Shoes are no longer for sale

When you decide to buy most of your clothes second-hand, you have to get over being grossed-out by unclean things first. Don't get me wrong, most of the op-shops that I visit are wonderful; everything has been super-dooper cleaned, though I still always give things a wash after bringing them home. This particular shirt, however, I bought from a market stall the other day and it had obviously been sitting around in someones closet - unclean - for a very long time. When I got home I decided to try it on to see how it fit. I plunged my arms in and a ridiculous volume of sand and lint shot out the other end. I was so shocked to have half a beach suddenly on my bedroom floor, and amazed that neither the seller nor I had realised the large amount of sand residing within the sleeves.

However, as surprising and sometimes gross as they can be, I think that second-hand clothes are more interesting than new clothes because of the questions they raise about the past owners, and what they were doing while they were wearing them. Why was the past owner wearing such a fancy blouse to the beach? Maybe they weren't dressed for the beach and ended up there by accident? And lastly, how on earth didn't they manage to shake all the sand out of the sleeves?

To finish my post today, the following is a quote from science and psychology writer Guy P. Harrison that I really liked, and made into a little image:

You can test just how bad your brain is at giving you an accurate representation of the world here and here.

Tuesday 4 February 2014

Pretty In Pinup / Pluripotency

Top is DIY | shorts are thrifted | headband is DIY | shoes are from Yeswalker

I've been in a heaps pin-uppy mood with all my outfits lately - especially after discovering that doing a beehive hairdo is basically the easiest thing ever (why have I always thought that it was so hard?) I'm also really looking forward to making a dress with this style of top in this fabric, which I am now justified in having bought, after I made so much money selling my clothes today ;)

SPEAKING OF WHICH, I am completely, totally overwhelmed by how well that went! At the moment, I've got 14 large packages to haul with me to the post office both tomorrow and on Friday. As luck would have it, the instant that I made my first sale this morning, it started to rain and has been doing so all day long :| which was fantastic, as I needed to give some of the clothes a final wash before sending them out! Grr. I honestly wasn't expecting to sell so much within 12 hours, and thought I'd have more time! (But really, I'm super happy with how well it went).

If you missed out, don't stress because I've got LOADS more to sell in the next few weeks. Just keep my store in your bookmarks and keep checking back ;)

So, has Annika got any amazing science news today? WELL. Now seriously, if I ruled the world, this would have been front-page, headlining news for several days straight. But unfortunately, that never seems to be the case when an amazing scientific discovery is made. Heck, even the Higgs Boson was largely relegated to puff-piece status.

The news is this: Scientists in Kobe were able to create pluripotent stem cells - which are cells that are able to turn into any other type of cell in the body, like bones, hair, brain or liver (read what a cell is in my introduction to biochemistry post) - from already-living white blood cells. The scientists achieved this merely by stressing the cells out and bringing them close to death. When the cells returned from the brink of death, they looked like embryonic cells without actually being from an embryo.

Now, this is absolutely amazing because it has never been done before. And if it works on human cells (it works in mice, so chances are looking pretty good for that!), then growing your own personalised organs, just in case your own happen to fail on you, is looking easier and easier all the time! Read more here, it's absolutely fascinating.

Update (June, 2014): Apparently these scientists are being done-in for fraud. *Sigh*. Which means that it's possible that cells can't be turned into pluripotent stem cells using this method. Too bad, it was some amazing-sounding stuff. Let's hope someone out there *can* replicate the study! *Fingers crossed*

I'm selling my clothes!

I've reopened my store in order to sell my wardrobe! Literally - I'm parting ways with the lot. (Well, almost. Well, not exactly. But I am parting ways with a lot). I'll be listing more and more in the next few days, but if you really like something I suggest you snap it up before someone else does.

But why are you selling all your clothes?? You all ask. (You totally did ask me. And it was a fine question!)

Well, I have way too many clothes and can probably stand to part with a few, plus I need to make some space in my wardrobe(s) for all my new handmade stuff! Another reason is that I'd really like the funds to be able to buy more fabric so that I can continue making clothes and sharing them with you all :)

I'm selling a lot of my favourites here - it's really hard to let go of them, but I keep telling myself that I can't hoard them all forever. Also, if you want to browse through my past outfits and you see something that catches your eye, and it's not listed in the store, email me (annikavictoria@gmail.com) and I might just sell it to you, as long as I'm not too attached to it!

Oh yeah, and all dresses are $10. Click here to shop!

Sunday 2 February 2014

DIY Heart Cutout Valentines Dress

Hooray! Another DIY video! I've spent a sizeable portion of the weekend working on this video (alongside going bike riding, cleaning the house, cuddling the neighbour's cat and visiting Glebe markets - it's been a pretty nice two days!) but when it finally came to uploading the thing, and then waiting 3 hours for the upload to happen, I realised that I'd stuffed up the ending! So, this video comes to you after many tears & angry text messages of frustration (well, no one was around for me to complain to, so I resorted to text messaging people about how annoyed I was. They totally cared.) Anyway... I hope you all enjoy it!

In this video, I teach you all how to draft a pattern for & sew your own heart cutout dress bodice! After you've made the top part, the connection of the bodice to the dress is just the same as in my DIY circle skirt dress tutorial. Anyway, all will be explained in the video. Have a watch, and let me know what you think!

Please tweet me a picture or tag me on instagram if you give this a go! Oh, and have a look at _robynesque_'s dress made using my DIY circle skirt dress tutorial - using thrifted dinosaur bedsheets, no less, which is basically the best thing ever.

I hope that you're all doing well,

Saturday 1 February 2014

CLOSED // Win $200 store credit at Sarsparilly!

Happy February, guys! This has got to be one of the most exciting giveaways I've ever had on the Pineneedle Collective!! The wonderful Sarsparilly, whose brand new online site launched today, is generously giving away $200 store credit to one very lucky reader of my blog. And it's open internationally for the whole of February! So get entering.

With dresses from Bernie Dexter, Hell Bunny, Lindybop, Lady V London and Sarsparilly's own handmade designs, stocking sizes (AU) 6-20, I can see Sarsparilly easily becoming one of my favourite online stores!

You may enter using the Rafflecopter widget below. You can complete as many entries as you like, and you don't have to complete them all the be entered in the draw, but remember that each entry you correctly complete will give you extra chances of winning this amazing prize!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Goooooooooood luck!

You can see me modelling a Sarsparilly dress here!

Wednesday 29 January 2014

DIY Heart Cutout Dress & How To Time Travel

Dress is DIY | shoes are from Golden Ponies | bolero is thrifted | cherries c/o Sarsparilly

I'm starting to get to a level of confidence in my sewing where I feel like I can just make whatever design pops into my head! It's awesome! And yes, I filmed the making of this dress and it'll be up on my youtube channel in a few days [update: it's up now], if you wanted to learn how to make a heart cut-out dress of your own from scratch (it's no harder than my DIY dress tutorial!)

These boots I'm wearing are new and are from Golden Ponies, a store that was recommended to me after I made my ethical fashion directory. I've gotta say, I'm super pleased with them, no less because I got them on sale for only $35! If I was going to choose another pair to get, I think I'd get these shiny, holographic flats (everyone needs at least one pair of shiny shoes in their wardrobe, right?).

Oh, and by the way I uploaded a new youtube video today! It shows a different method of making your own socks, without a middle seam. Click here to watch it!

Whenever the conversation of "if you could time travel, without coming back, when would you time travel to?" comes up - and yes, this is a surprisingly frequent conversation among my group of friends - I always say "100 years into the future!!" whereas most of my friends will say "the 60s, duh". I am so keen on travelling into the future to see what technological advancements humans have made - plus, it's also more possible than travelling backwards through time because all I'd need to do is find a super fast vehicle and special relativity would sort out the rest; my friends would need a wormhole in order to travel into the past, and that's much trickier.

Anyway, why am I going on about time travel? Because of this awesome minute physics video. Have a watch and learn how you too can travel through time:

What really blew my mind was the fact that if you stand up for a minute, your feet will age 10 femtoseconds less than your head. So unless you spend all your time upside-down, your head is actually older than your feet. Thanks gravitational time dilation, you crazy, crazy thing!

So I'm curious to know - if you could time travel, with little possibility of returning back to the present moment (and ignoring Back to the Future-esque paradoxes where your teenage parents fall in love with you and you were never born/taking a sports almanac back in time with you and making heaps of money from gambling), when would you travel to?

Monday 27 January 2014

Mermaids & Paper Boats

What was meant to be a quick trip to the lake between rainstorms escalated into an entire themed photoshoot, with me jumping into freezing lake water. I'm going to pretend that I jumped into the water because I really just got into the whole "theme" of boats and mermaids (because of the insanely cute print on this dress), but it's actually because I had to rescue the paper boat, which I very wisely only made one of, then promptly dropped upside-down into the water as soon as we began taking photos. Still, I actually really love how the photos of me in the water turned out - so good on you, clumsiness!

A little bit about this dress - about a week ago I was contacted by the owner of Sarsparilly, Maria, who is just beginning to sell her own handmade designs! She gave me a few to choose from, but there was absolutely no way that I could go past the mermaid print on this dress, and the super-full skirt. Her other designs include a toffee-apple 50s dress and a gorgeous blue gingham dress! At the moment, you can buy the first of Maria's new handmade designs as well as some other gorgeous brands, including Bernie Dexter, from her facebook page photo albums, however the brand new website is going to be up-and-running within the next few days so I suggest you like the page and keep an eye out for it, especially if you love 50s and 60s-inspired dresses [Update: Sarsparilly's new online store is now open]! Also, I'm also going to be hosting a little (actually, a somewhat huge) giveaway to coincide with the opening of Sarsparilly.com in the next few days - make sure that you don't miss out on it ;)

So I apologise if you've been a reader of this blog for a long time and have already seen this post - but I felt like it was a very appropriate time to bring it up again! Now, this is not exactly scientific per se, as mermaids (I am told) don't really exist. However, speculative biology is always fun! This page here features several awesome images that speculate about what the anatomy of a mermaid would look like. The picture below shows the (imaginary) skeletal anatomy of a mermaid:

Also, did you know that in 2012 the US government had to make an official statement saying that "Mermaid's do not exist" following a mermaid mockumentary on Animal Planet?
Way to be a killjoy, guys...

I hope that you all had a beautiful weekend, rain or shine!

Saturday 25 January 2014

5 Minute DIY Sock Tutorial

This project is a "5 minute fashion tutorial" collaboration with Aiko from Hapy Friends Shoppe, who is a crafting, upcycling and kawaii fashion genius. And I say genius, because she does things like make bear-shaped tote bags out of old towels. You absolutely have to check out her youtube and blog (after you watch my video, of course). Plus, she's basically the sweetest person that I've ever met! Go go go, visit her channel!

The video that I made is a really quick and easy tutorial that shows you how to make your own socks out of any stretchy fabric! (I just used some old t-shirts in this tutorial - because you can use the hemmed edge of the t-shirt as the sock's hem. But if you wanted to make snuggly bed socks, for instance, an old stretchy sweater would work great as well!) This tutorial was adapted from The Sewing Rabbit's tutorial for making kids socks.

Method 1: Middle Seam Method (easier and faster)

So this shows the absolute basics of making your own socks. What you could do next is to use fabric pens to draw a repeating polka-dot, heart-print or fruit-print pattern (I'm in the process of doing this with one of my pairs!), or you could add some pom-poms in a contrasting colour!

Method 2: Side Seam method (takes longer but is prettier)

Let me know what you think!