The Pineneedle Collective

Sunday, 4 August 2013

Space Age Children & Stardust

I think this is easily the coolest piece of clothing that I have ever owned. In my mind, kitsch clothes are the absolute best - which is why this skirt and my teapot dress are now my most treasured items of clothing. The print on the skirt is a 1956 illustration for biscuits, done in the space-age style (source of image - and check this link out because there is some great 1950s art to enjoy). Choies, where this skirt comes from, has got a whole bunch of wonderfully bizarre, kitsch clothes (LIKE THESE) which I am extremely appreciative of!

top - c/o Sheinside

skirt - c/o Choies

cardigan - Thrifted

necklace - c/o Les Folles Marquises

hat - c/o Wholesale

I absolutely love it when science merges with art. Spanish artist Sergio Albiac uses computer programs to generate his works, and his most recent project "Stardust" uses images from the Hubble space telescope to piece together portraits. For the portraits, he uses images that people from all over the world send to him. Naturally, as soon as I saw this - on IFLS, where else? - I jumped at the chance to have portraits of myself made. This is the result! You can still get your own ones done, and both help contribute to this art project and get your own space portraits - just follow the instructions on the website!

"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff."

- Carl Sagan, Cosmos

I hope you're all having a marvellous day!

Friday, 2 August 2013

Do We Miss Summer Yet?

Meanwhile, it's winter back in Sydney. And it is damn cold. I wish I had had this cropped camisole with me while I was facing the European summer heatwave just a couple of days ago - it would have been perfect! It's actually part of a two-piece suit and it's ridiculously cool. I can't wait for the weather to warm up, and to wear it with a very wide-brim hat/floral wreath and a pair of jellies.

cropped top - c/o Choies

shorts - c/o Choies

tights - Kmart

necklace - Claire's

hat - c/o Wholesale

This is slightly old news by now, but on the 19th of July NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which is currently orbiting Saturn and touring its moons (including ones which might have life like Titan) took this beautiful photo.

The arrow in the photo is not a massive arrow-shaped alien spaceship orbiting Earth, but rather indicates Earth and our moon, which together make up that tiny blue dot in the photo. That's what Earth looks like from 1.5 billion kilometres away!

(Image from NASA)

Everyone who reported on this image in the news focused on Earth (gosh, we're egocentric), but I think the really really amazing thing about the photo is Saturn (hello! It takes up a good two-thirds of the image!), how it is eclipsing the sun, and the shot of its rings! The photo will end up being stitched together with many other photos taken of Saturn, and released in a few weeks time. I'm pretty excited for it! If I could be any type of photographer, I think I'd most like to be a spacecraft ;)

Thursday, 1 August 2013

Covergirl!

As much as I enjoyed the amazing adventure I had in Italy and Croatia, I was pretty excited to come back to Sydney. I missed my family, my housemates, and my house in the city. I'm also really excited to get back into studying science - this semester I get to work on some pretty awesome genetic research - and for the month that lies ahead, which includes a visit from my good blogger friend Ashley Dy! But one of the things that I was really excited about getting back home for was seeing myself on the cover of Young Vagabond magazine!

Having done a short interview with Young Vagabond and sending them a couple of pictures, I was already super excited for my first-ever magazine appearance (unless you count this). Then, when I was in Italy, I got an email from Young Vagabond asking if they could also use my photo as the cover image for their magazine! I almost immediately sent back a reply saying "ARE YOU CRAZY OF COURSE YOU CAN!!!!!?!!!@$*&@" until I remembered to be (semi) professional. Anyway, of course I said that it was okay, and this was the result!

I decided that doing the same pose in the same place and wearing a pink wig like in the cover photo was appropriate for this post (I'm a dork and you all know it).

So not only was this my first cover appearance (yes, first - I'm hoping for more ;) ), but Young Vagabond is exactly the type of magazine that I would have wanted to have my face on, if I had had the choice. The magazine is aimed at high-school-aged girls, but has none of the vacuous vapidness of magazines like Girlfriend, which is aimed at a similar audience (sorry, but, well, this) and celebrates the achievements of women in every kind of field (for example in their first issue they interviewed an astrophysicist!) On their "pledge", they encourage readers to think critically about the world they live in, which is a statement I couldn't agree more with. I'm honoured to be on the cover of Young Vagabond.

hat - c/o Wholesale
shirt - c/o Sheinside

skirt - Paper Hearts

tights - Kmart

cardigan - Thrifted

necklace - c/o Merrin & Gussy

And if you want to get yourself (or a teenage girl that you know) a copy of Young Vagabond magazine, you can pick it up from the Body Shop and I think Mag Nation in Australia, or order it online here. If you don't live in Australia, you can still get your hands (or eyes) on an online version here!

I hope that you're all very well! There will be many more regular posts again (as soon as I get over my jetlag! And probably before then, too.) Much love,

Sunday, 28 July 2013

Istria

These photos were taken in Istria, in Croatia, on my last day there. I am now back in Venice for two days before heading home again :'( Though I'm sad about going back, I'm fantasising about winter weather and layering, and with being reunited with my wardrobe! I am getting pretty sick of the very small amount of clothes that I brought with me - if I were to pack again, I probably would have just brought two suitcases with me and a tonne more dresses, rather than a trying to do a "capsule wardrobe".

These photos are from the tiny town we stayed in. While wandering, we found an old crumbling building, right near the farm that we trespassed to take backlit photos on. It was like an old castle, and too pretty not to explore. Only later did we realise that it wasn't as abandoned as we thought - people were actually living inside, the front of the building having been restored. I hope that they leave the back of the building as it is, though - it's pretty gorgeous in its dilapidated state.

top - Sportsgirl

dungarees - "Internet Shop" in Haymarket, Sydney

shoes - Yeswalker

socks - Tutuanna

I'll leave you all with that. See you when I'm back in Sydney! Ashley Dy is coming to visit me and I'm very excited - hopefully we'll have some sweet collaborative posts for you guys :D

Thursday, 25 July 2013

There Are Real Life Unicorns in Croatia!

See? Two of them, right there!

Oh ho ho. I'm pretty funny. I hope I got you all with my hilarious title. There are a lot of goats here though. Really big goats - and some of the them have quite large horns on their heads and they just wander around the streets casually. I tried to get some pictures of them, but there was this big alpha-male goat who was walking towards me more quickly than I felt comfortable with, so I jumped on my bike and rode madly away, imagining the whole way that it was chasing me (are goats even that dangerous? I don't know. I didn't want to stick around to find out.)

bodysuit - Asos (sold out - but here's another unicorn shirt)

belt - Thrifted

skirt - Paper Hearts

shoes - c/o Yeswalker

And here are some photos taken just a short time afterwards, on an Istrian marina. Sunset in Europe lasts for about 3 hours - bizarre for me, because in Sydney the sun sets extremely quickly! I love Croatia more than I can even describe. The night ended with cocktails at what is possibly the coolest bar I have ever been to, sitting on cushions on rocks right next to the crystal-clear sea water.

It's pretty mad to think that I only learnt last year why the sky is blue (light of the entire visible spectrum - white light - comes to us from the sun, and the atmosphere of Earth scatters the blue light - the light with the shortest wavelengths - more than the other colours. And that's why the whole sky appears blue).

But I never even questioned why the sky turns orange or red at sunset.

Thanks to this fantastic video by "It's Okay to be Smart", I now know why sunsets are so pretty!

Have a great day,

p.s. I'm having an ad sale to help fund a slightly expensive hair-style change that I'll be getting in the next month ;) If you'd like a Large Ad Spot for August to promote your store or blog, use the promo code AUGUSTADSALE at the checkout for $5 off all Large Ad spaces. Use the promo code ANNIKANEEDSNEWHAIR for $1 off all Small Ad spaces.

Tuesday, 23 July 2013

Miniature Annika

Hello all! Yesterday Luci's family was having a day of "recovery" after meeting about 10348 Istrian relatives, so we didn't get up to much. I didn't want to spend the entire day merely relaxing beside the pool (I hate wasting my days, even on a holiday), so after reading one of my favourite photography/fashion blogs "Introvert's Introduction" (and in particular, this post) I was inspired to do a "miniature composite" outfit shoot. It was my first attempt ever at doing one of these so some of the shadows and lighting probably looks a little bit off, but you get the idea! I would like to try and do some more outfit posts in miniature version - I think they'll go well with my more doll-like outfits.