The Pineneedle Collective

Sunday, 6 July 2014

Checker Boards & Ridiculous Good Luck

Post preface (I promise that this will all make sense in a moment): You know when you have those vivid dreams where you go out and buy a really perfect dress/your parents get you a puppy/you discover the perfect food, etc etc... and because the dream was so vivid and perfect and happy, you wake up really excited - but then after a few blissful moments you sadly realise it was all just a dream?

Alright, keeping that in mind - the most amazing thing happened to me the other day and I'm still pinching myself!

For some reason nobody in my family told me about this until now, but my uncle used to run a business which manufactured patterned tights (this was about 10 years ago now) and supplied them to department stores, including stores in Japan. Anyway, there were still a fair few of these tights that were never ever sold, that were just laying around all boxed and packaged up in a basement. And they are -- AH-MAZING -- and still in perfect condition, and, well, they need to be worn and seen by the world (and saved from landfill) rather than being all boxed up! Needless to say, I took them off his hands! While I have selfishly kept for myself all the tights that there were only one design left of (like the ones I am wearing above), there were also quite a few duplicates of some really cool designs - which I'm going to start selling in my store to help support me through uni this year!

Believe it or not, that wasn't the end of my good luck. The business also made cute accessories like scarves and scrunchies. For this, they required a lot of cute fabric. Fabric which was also still sitting in large, industrial-sized bolts next to the boxes of tights. Fabrics like tartan, velveteen and paisley, to name a few. And my amazingly generous uncle just let me have them all. I nearly fainted.

I now have my own private little fabric shop in my shed.

CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE THIS? I STILL CAN'T! Please tell me that I am not dreaming!

Ahhhh *such excitement* and hooray for family! I don't think I have any excuses not to start up a little store selling my own designs, now ;) I'm thinking that some cute tartan pinafores are in order. Please do let me know if you'd be interested in me making stuff to sell! This was the start I needed to get my designs out into the world.

And you know what, if I am dreaming, actually don't wake me up - I'm way too happy right now! :)

Friday, 4 July 2014

DIY Lace Waist Dress

Look! I made a thing!

Dress is DIY | necklace is c/o Ginger Pickle (Eclectic Eccentricity piece)

I am really happy with this DIY that I came up with the other night to revive a couple of old stretchy tank dresses that I had lying around! I made a few failed attempts before getting it right - let me just say that when I say to use stretchy lace, USE STRETCHY LACE. Otherwise you'll make something that looks really nice, but you'll be massively disappointed when you can't actually get it on over your shoulders.

Enjoy :)

p.s. if you missed it earlier today, I'm selling my wardrobe ;)

I'm selling my clothes!

It's that time of the year again where I freak out and realise that I have far too many clothes!

My wardrobe situation is currently somewhere between bursting-at-the-seams and clothes-explosion - I have taken over two built-ins and all the underneath-the-bed space and there is currently nowhere for Luci to store his clothing. Since I have promised to make room for him by the time he returns from overseas, I am doing a MASSIVE wardrobe clear-out.

Many of my favourite pieces are going because I simply can't house them anymore. There's even some Black Milk and Wheels & Dollbaby pieces in there, going for muuuuch less than their recommended retail prices! You can browse through everything that I'm selling here!

This time, I have some larger-sized (by which I simply mean too big for me) things as well! I keep picking things up from stores thinking "Yeah, I'll resize this to Annika size..." nope. Never happens. But that's lucky for you guys who were disappointed about the limited size-diversity of my previous wardrobe sales, because those things also happen to be super cute!

Oh yeah, and all the dresses (apart from the Wheels & Dollbaby one) are $10! Click here to shop.

Wednesday, 2 July 2014

Thrifted Transformations (Apron to a Pinafore) & Water All Over Mars

I made this pinafore out of an apron that I found at the op-shop! The apron had enough material that I could wrap it all the way around my booty, so I simply inserted a zipper where the material joined up at the back - and BAM, cute pinafore!

It also had these cutie-patootie buttons on the shoulders, so there was no way that I could leave it as an apron! While Katie has successfully rocked an apron over the top of a cute blouse and skirt (not only while cooking, but as an actual outfit) I preferred making mine into a pinafore dress.

Now I'm on the lookout for cute aprons everywhere...

Also, me and Katie are massive dorks, but our outfits match! Check us out:

Pinafore is thrifted/DIY | cardigan and blouse are thrifted | tights from Japan | boots are from Golden Ponies

I love speculative science almost as much as real science! And while we can never know for sure what happened billions of years ago (at least without a time machine), this video from NASA is based on real calculations and observations as well. From the NASA, this is what Mars probably looked like 4 billion years ago:

A thick atmosphere once allowed water to cover the surface of Mars, which may have disappeared over time either because of asteroids or solar wind (which is a stream of electricity, blown out of the sun). The video above shows the passage of time, from 4 billion years ago to how we know the planet today - an icy red rock with a thin atmosphere and no liquid water.

But how do we have any idea of what Mars used to look like?? NASA explains the evidence here. You should definitely have a read if you have the time, it's super fascinating!

Monday, 30 June 2014

Eggs, Oranges and Billion Story Buildings

Annika: everything is thrifted except shirt (c/o Sheinside (ages ago) and shoes (Naot)) and handmade egg brooch
Katie: Everything is thrifted except for handmade egg brooch and earrings (made by us!)

Hi all! I am posting this with a very heavy heart because Katie is just about to hop on a plane to Scandinavia for the whole of July, and I'm at a complete loss as to what I'm going to do without her! Over the last 6 months we've grown incredibly close, spending much of our spare time hanging out, making crafts, talking about feminism, anthropology and science and dressing up like weirdos together. I cried even more after we said goodbye than when my boyfriend left the other day (also for a month-long holiday in Europe *grumble jealousy grumble*).

So we spent all of yesterday hanging out and taking photos, our outfits becoming progressively more ridiculous as the day went on. I styled both of our outfits here - for some reason I was feeling Autumnal even though it isn't Autumn anywhere in the world right now. Autumn and... eggs. Because eggs are awesome. Yep.

I also forced Katie to buy these cute chilli suspenders the other day because I thought they suited her perfectly - what do you guys think?

So I've posted about What If before (a website where a physicist takes ridiculous questions completely seriously), and I really liked this particular one so I wanted to share it!

This question actually comes from a 4-year-old, so it's also super cute. If you were to build a skyscraper with one billion stories.... just how big would it be? This is also happens to help you get your head around the concept of a "billion" - it's just so large!

The illustration above (by XKCD's What If) shows a skyscraper that's only 10,000 floors high. Still much smaller than a billion! Click here to see what a billion-story building would look like!

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

Friday, 27 June 2014

A Picnic in my Backyard & Spellbound by Space

If you gave someone the task of creating "Annika's dream jewelry store", and this person knew me well, they would make it 1. Science-themed 2. Vintage-inspired 3. Handmade 4. Kitschy/novelty and 5. An alliterative brand name (pun optional, but highly recommended).

So when I visited Eclectic Eccentricity for the first time, I was fairly sure that I had made their store up in my head - because they are all of these things.

And then! - I found out that they wanted to work. with. me. And send me all the cute stuff. Eeeep! Yep, I thought, I have definitely dreamt this all up. So can you all please do me a favour - visit their website, and tell me if they really do exist? It still seems a little too good to be true!

The two space-themed necklaces that I'm wearing are pieces from Eclectic Eccentricity, though I actually got the astronaut necklace from Ginger Pickle a few months ago. I always wear the two necklaces together so I can pretend that the astronaut is Sandra Bullock, and the intense scenes from Gravity are playing out on my chest.
Yeah. I have way too much fun with my clothes.

Image credit - European Space Agency via NASA TV

So this seems appropriate considering my outfit - did you know that you can live-stream the Earth from space, from a camera mounted on the international space station (ISS)?
The ISS is a station (in space, as you may have guessed) where astronauts go to hang out, 410 kilometres above our heads, in orbit around the Earth. While there, the astronauts are usually involved in different biology, physics and chemistry experiments and observations.

Anyway, you can watch a live HD stream of the Earth below! If you just see a black screen, that means that it's currently night time for the ISS because the sun is on the other side of the Earth - but don't worry about waiting a whole 12 hours for it to get light again, because the ISS goes all the way around the earth in just 90 minutes!
So if the screen is blank, come back in about 45 minutes, and you'll see some amazing footage. I just watched the sun set behind the Earth and IT WAS AMAZING.

Hey, you're down there, somewhere. Wave for the camera!

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

This page shows exactly where the ISS is at any particular time of the day (so you can see if it's just about to pass over you!)