The Pineneedle Collective

Monday, 24 February 2014

Clown College / The Four Percent

Dress is DIY | bag is vintage | hairclips from my friend Katie

I absolutely cannot wear my hair down while wearing this dress. If I do, I am 100% a clown. Red curly hair plus this very childish dress = a children's entertainer outfit (not that there's anything wrong with clowns or children's entertainers, but it's simply not the style that I aspire to).

This is the first dress in which I attempted my new circle-skirt-dress-plus-sleeves-plus-a-collar pattern (you can find the entire thing on my youtube channel), and I thought that this discounted Michael Miller fabric was as good a fabric as any to try it out on (it's still on sale for 2 more days if you want to buy some for yourself)! I did, however, sew right through my finger while making this dress. Sewing is just so wild. *Sew* wild, even. #YOLO. One of my fingernails has turned a lovely shade of black as a consequence, and shall probably fall off soon. Oh, the joys of sewing.

So this is absolutely crazy - did you know that 96% of the universe is made up of stuff that we have never, ever seen? We don't even know what it is. Everything that we do know about - matter and atoms and molecules, everything that makes up both our bodies and the Earth - only accounts for 4% of the "stuff" within our universe. The below video is part of a 60-second-lecture series from Penn University, and I highly recommend that you check it out!

Saturday, 22 February 2014

Before & After: A jumpsuit to a cute dress!

Just like in my post about those tricky skirt-shorts almost 2 years ago, I have been tricked once again by some strange item of clothing at an op-shop. I thought the thing below was a nice long floral vintage DRESS - until I got home, tried it on, and was thoroughly confused/disappointed:

Oh boy. Not my style, sorry.

I had bought the "dress" with the intention of shortening it into a cuter dress, anyway, so I figured that the sudden appearance of pant legs would just provide an additional challenge!

Dress is DIY (restyled) | necklace is thrifted | shoes are Naot Kedma's

It was actually really easy to turn this into a dress (and yes, I filmed the entire process for anyone who is interested, it'll be on my youtube channel within a couple of days!) So now I'm actually on the lookout for weird old jumpsuits in op-shops because it turns out that they actually make really great dresses!

How is your day going?

Friday, 21 February 2014

Musicality / Relativity

Top is thrifted | skirt c/o Sheinside (old) | socks and belt are thrifted | shoes c/o Chicwish (old)

Thank you very much to the girl who was selling all her clothes & old fabric at Glebe markets the other weekend! This scalloped blouse is absolute perfection, I love it so much! Not only can I layer it under dresses, but it looks cute with a simple skater skirt like this music-print one I'm wearing today.
I've never talked about music much on my blog before, but it is has been and still is, to some extent, a very large part of my life. While I was growing up, I learned how to play the drums (and bass and piano as well, but mainly drums) for several years. I learned when I was in my mid-teens when I was very into hard-punky-rock (haha) so I had a pretty full-on style of drumming at the time, though I did mellow out and learn how to do quieter, slower things like jazz drumming. Although I've stopped now, I still love playing the drums whenever I can get my hands on someone's kit. I'm also that annoying person who is constantly drumming on everything they can get their hands on, from tabletops to the seats on the bus. Are there any other lady drummers out there? Leave me a comment, let me know!

This is what I'm going to leave you with today:

This comic is by Calm Blue Oceans (check them out, they're pretty funny!)

I hope you're all having a great day,

Tuesday, 18 February 2014

Cherries & Blueberries & A Pile of Viruses

Dress is Forever 21 (years old) | bolero is thrifted | shoes are old | ring is DIY (made using this tutorial) | cherries c/o Sarsparilly

This ring is dangerous. Everytime I wear it, I get some intense cravings for apple-and-blueberry pie, which is completely full of sugar and not something one should be consuming on a daily basis. (My pancake stack ring is even worse). If I'm going to start wearing food clothes all the time, I'm definitely going to develop a terrible diet! Maybe I could remedy this by wearing solely health-food-themed clothes. E.g. a spinach-patterned shirt. A broccoli brooch. Quinoa-print pants. Kale socks. Sound like a good idea?

So if you haven't heard of XKCD's What If before, you're really missing out ;)

People send in psychics/biology/mathematics/general science questions featuring ridiculous hypotheticals (such as "Is there a way to fire a gun so the bullet can safely be caught by hand"?), and they're thoroughly and seriously answered, all necessary mathematics included. Anyway, I wanted to share this brilliant one with you all: "What if every virus in the world were collected into one area? How much volume would they take up and what would they look like?"

Viruses are tiny, tiny microscopic things. They're much smaller than the cells that make up your body, much smaller even than bacteria. In fact, your own body is home to 3000000000000 individual viruses (YES, INSIDE YOU RIGHT NOW), and this is actually fairly low compared to other environments. And even with all those viruses, all the human viruses in every 7 billion human bodies in the world would fit into 10 oil drums.

But the question was, how much space would all the viruses in the world take up?

Read the answer on What If!

Have a wonderful day, and try not to catch a virus.

Monday, 17 February 2014

And I'm Feline Good

Dress is c/o Romwe (old) | blouse is thrifted | tights from Daiso | Shoes from Asos

Hi guys! Hope you're all FELINE great! Do you these great puns will CATch on? I think so. They're pretty pawesome. Just like this dress! It's purrfect! I also figured out a way of wearing it without having a boob-CATastrophe (because of the mostly-sheer top) by layering a simple vintage blouse underneath it. I'd be lion if I said I wasn't a little bit proud of my innovativeness here.

Okay, okay, I'll stop with the cat puns now. Stopped.

Pawsibly.

I may have shared this before, but I think it's time to share it again. Thanks to AsapSCIENCE, you can now learn the science of cats. Do you know why cats always land on their feet?

Have a pawsitively great day,

I'm Selling My Clothes! (Round #2)

I have just listed 40 new items in my shop! Some items are reserved for people who asked for them, but these may become available again if those people decide they don't want them anymore (or I don't hear from them), so keep an eye on these things too ;)

Again, I'm selling a lot of my favourites here, that either don't fit me anymore, or that I think that I have hoarded for long enough and want to pass on to someone else! 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.

Click here to shop.