The Pineneedle Collective

Monday 3 June 2013

$100 Giftcard Giveaway from Sheinside // CLOSED

I have an exciting giveaway to bring you all today by a long-time sponsor of my blog, Sheinside! You may have seen me wearing Sheinside items in the past (see here, here, here and here). They're one of my favourite online stores, because they sell really eye-catching and often quite unusual pieces. So I'm super excited to offer one $100 giftcard to the store, to spend on whatever you would like!

Here's how to enter:
1. Register on Sheinside
2. Like Sheinside's Facebook page
3. Leave a comment on this post with your name and email address (the same one you used to register on Sheinside)

That's all you need to do!

Extra entries *leave a separate comment for each one or they won't be counted!*
4. Like The Pineneedle Collective on Facebook
5. Follow me on Twitter
6. Follow me on GFC or Bloglovin' (and leave the account name you follow with in the comments!)

And that's it, good luck! Giveaway will finish on the 18th of June and it is open internationally.

Sunday 2 June 2013

Cherry Bomb & Chemistry

I adore this cherry-coloured dress sent to me by Koogal. After Kailey from Mermaiden's post in a similar dress, I couldn't imagine dressing up as anything other than a mermaid, especially with the fish-scale fabric and sneaky cutouts featured in this dress! I went for mermaid hair and, completing the mermaid ensemble, this "I'm Really A Mermaid" necklace.

This new Milanoo wig is awesome. I think it is definitely going to become my new favourite. A sign of a good wig is when people you haven't seen in years come up to you and say "Wow. I love your hair - it's so different now!" I had a few warnings about Milanoo's lolita dresses after posting about a bag from the site, so I chose to review a wig instead (can't say no to free stuff, right?). Anyway, from what I can tell from this admittedly small sample size, their wigs are great - they remind me of Japan's "Bodyline" wigs because the quality is just as good. I also got this lolita-style headband to go with the wig, and I think it was a really good choice - it's not over-the-top but it gives the outfit hints of lolita elements (I wish I were brave/dedicated enough to dress in a full lolita get-up. One day!)

dress - c/o Koogal
wig - c/o Milanoo
headband - c/o Milanoo
tights - Claire's (Japan)
necklace - c/o I Love Crafty

Something reaaaaally exciting happened in science the other day! You know how chemists draw images like this:

Which are meant to represent the chemical bonds between carbon and other atoms? (If you didn't know that, well, now you do.)

Well, those structures were only ever conceptual representations of the chemical bonding occurring in a reaction - up until now, scientists could only infer the structure of these molecules through spectroscopic analysis, which looks like this:

But the other day, scientists at the University of California, using an "atomic force microscope", have managed to take pictures like this:

What was so exciting about this? The images taken actually look like those stick-structures! Basically, what you would have learnt in highschool science - that atoms and small molecules are too small to ever see - is now wrong. And I love that the stick-structures actually look like that, even though the stick-structure drawings were, at first, just a theoretical representations of molecules. Yay science!

Read more here.

Friday 31 May 2013

Stripes and Mosaics

What an adorable pinafore dress I received in the mail this morning! Simple and stripey, all it needed to be dressed up (in my opinion) was this vintage Mickey Mouse club badge and a simple cropped top. And I'm totally embracing the last day of "non-winter" by sitting in the sunshine while studying and (sneakily) blogging. I am pretty jealous of all of you in the Northern Hemisphere who are going to be starting summer tomorrow :'(

Just to let you know, my posts are going to become a little bit less frequent over the next month as I head into my final university exams for the semester, but I'll endeavour to keep posting at least 2 or 3 times a week! Having something else to focus on other than studying keeps me somewhat sane, so I'm not going to do what I did last year and abandon you guys while my exams are going. It was good for my grades, but not so much for my sanity.

striped pinafore dress - c/o She Likes | socks - c/o Oasap | shoes - Bodyline | shirt - c/o Sheinside | badge - gift from my friend (thrifted)

Continuing on this little genetics theme I've got going on... I'm going to talk about something quite related to genetic chimerism, which is known as mosaicism. In chimeras (which I talked about last week), the organism ends up with two different sets of DNA within their body because of the fusion of two zygotes (the stage before becoming an embryo) in the womb. This means that a chimera's non-identical twin is alive inside them. Pretty sci-fi stuff, right?

Well, organisms with mosaicism came from a single zygote (meaning they didn't absorb their own twin), but still have more than one set of DNA within the cells in their bodies. How does this happen?

Similar to chimeras, the process begins very early in development while the baby is still in the womb. When dividing (as cells do very rapidly at the beginning of development), some cells get confused and don't replicate their DNA correctly. A mutation occurs in one of the cells which goes unnoticed, and continues to happily divide. Cells with different sets of DNA continue to grow within the baby, and if the mutation isn't really serious, the baby will be born with a mutant trait which is seen in some cells, but not others. Mosaicism can affect any type of cell, including skin cells (see above). Do you have a tortiseshell cat? This is a really great (and easy to see) example of mosaicism!

I hope you're all having a great last day of autumn or spring, depending on where you are!

Wednesday 29 May 2013

More unicorns! / Space sleep

I now have two pieces of unicorn-themed clothing in my wardrobe (see my unicorn sweater here) and I'm hoping to build up a small collection! Lashes of London sent me this unicorn patterned dress to try out, and I have to say that it's pretty incredible! Unfortunately for me, it's more of a summer dress as it has a gorgeous open-back thing going on, but it's now a bit too cold to wear it backless! So I paired it with this new cropped purple blouse from Romwe, added some heart-shaped collar clips, and got a whole pastel-themed thing going on.

dress - c/o Lashes of London | belt - Thrifted | shirt - c/o Romwe | hat - c/o Wholesale | collar clips - DIY

I've mentioned before how much I admire Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. If you haven't done so already, go and check out his videos about how everyday things are done in microgravity. They're endlessly fascinating. From brushing your teeth, to crying, to eating, to going to the toilet and cutting your hair, everything has to be done a little differently when the physics of your world change, and you have to adapt to a new kind of world. In this video, Chris Hadfield shows how you sleep in space - and what a bedroom looks like on board the International Space Station.

How are you all today?

Sunday 26 May 2013

DIY Red Cape

It felt really good to get my sewing machine out for the first time in months and make something! This cape coat DIY has been on my to-do list for ages now. I thrifted this red corduroy coat the other day for $8 (then found $7 worth of coins in the pockets, so the coat basically paid for itself!) then took to it with some scissors, cutting up the arms and attaching them to the body of the coat before cutting the whole thing to this cape-sized length. It's basically the easiest DIY you will ever do (and hopefully I can put some instructions up soon!) I got all these free men's coats from the side of the road the other day - a church was giving away a whole heap of clothing and oh boy it was exciting. I took everything that looked like it could be even a little bit useful. But anyway, I've got a whole lot of coats that I'm planning on turning into little cape coats now!

Also, I've turned 21 since I last wrote a blog post. You are now looking at a super wise, worldly old lady. Well... not exactly, but I dyed my hair a darker colour since my last post and so... well... I look a bit different...? Older? Wiser? Although wearing a giant velvet bow and a cutesy red cape probably doesn't help things.

I hope you're all having an amazing day.

p.s. you can use the code "HAPPYBIRTHDAY" for $5 off all ad spots on my blog until the end of May.
p.p.s. want to help me win a $1000 asos wardrobe? Click here and vote for my look (in the "style feed", click on NSW... you should be able to find me there ^^)

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Thursday 23 May 2013

Fast As Lightning

It's my birthday tomorrow! The big 21. I am actually pretty unhappy about getting older, I have to admit, and have not really been looking forward to my birthday. However, my amazing aunty gave me some money to buy this dress for my 21st, so things aren't all that bad ;)

This pastel purple sweater was such a good find (yep, another one from the op shop that's just a stroll from my house. That store is totally going to empty my bank account...) and I've also been into wearing kitsch badges as brooches lately, after my friend found all these awesome 90s badges for me (like my Peter Pan and Science Museum ones). This hedgehog one is still pretty kitsch, but also suits the pastel colours of my outfit.

sweater - Thrifted
blouse - Forever 21
shorts - c/o Sheinside

socks - c/o Oasap
tights - c/o Oasap

boots - Asos (similar)

See how my shorts have got lightening bolts on them? Well that's convenient, because today I'm going to talk about a new idea of what causes lightning strikes!

Running against the most accepted idea for what causes lightning - collisions between ice crystals in clouds and hail stones - a new scientific paper released the other day suggests that it's actually cosmic rays, from far off in the universe, that cause lighting strikes.

So we know what lightning is - an electrostatic discharge between clouds and the surface of the Earth (like a 1000x bigger version of taking off a static-y jumper and zapping yourself), but are not entirely sure what causes the build up of electricity in the clouds to occur.

Firstly what are cosmic rays? They are streams of high energy particles travelling through space nearly at the speed of light, which come from far away in the galaxy, probably from supernova explosions (when massive stars explode and die).

And how can cosmic rays cause lighting? Well, these high energy particles get inside our atmosphere and become ionised (they lose or gain electrons). This leads to a lot of free electrons floating around. When these collide with water atoms in clouds, more electrons are released, which sets off an "avalanche" of high-energy particles that builds up until it discharges into the Earth (read more here).

So firstly, I had no idea that we weren't sure what caused lightning. And now it's even more uncertain. It's really cool that we are still investigating the cause of something that seems as everyday as a lightning storm, when we can also make computers and flying cars (yes really) and print organs from machines, and although it can sometimes seem like we are living in the future, we still have so much to learn.