The Pineneedle Collective

Sunday 8 September 2013

Pineapples! (and Watermelons)

sweater and bag c/o Choies, skirt is thrifted, socks are thrifted, necklace is thrifted and shoes are from Asos.

Well, I can't say much more about this outfit other than I'm wearing a heck load of pineapples.

I also want to point out that this is one of my last posts with sponsored clothes from the companies that I am discontinuing sponsorship with, and now I am endeavoring to make many more of my own clothes (see below)!

So I love pineapple and watermelon-printed-anything at the moment, and if you didn't see it on my facebook or instagram the other day, I'm currently in the process of making this:

Hand-drawing all those watermelons took a while but it was totally worth it! I can't wait to share the tutorial with you all really soon!

So this comic from the Oatmeal about why the Mantis Shrimp is the coolest animal in the world is both sciencey and hilarious - and you should have a read of it! Not only do mantis shrimp have 16 colour receptors (as opposed to our measly three which alone allow us to see some pretty amazing sunsets), but they're also insanely strong. I won't give away much more - you can have a read here. The Mantis Shrimp will either become your favourite animal or the animal of your nightmares.

Photo from The Oatmeal

What's your favourite animal and why?

I hope you're all having a lovely day,

Saturday 7 September 2013

Girl, Boy and Life from Mars

Skirt, necklace and shoes are thrifted. Cardigan is from Forever 21 and top is c/o Choies.

I was trying to pose next to a lemon tree in some of these photos to accentuate both the yellows and "spring-ness" of my outfit (it being the beginning of Spring in the southern hemisphere), buuuut you totally can't see the lemons, so that whole idea kind of failed. Still, isn't this thrifted necklace the cutest thing ever? My 2-year-old niece absolutely loves the necklace as well, and as she has just learnt how to talk, she kept pointing at it and saying "Agga!" (her name for me) "Look! Two girls!" I almost went to correct her and say "No, it's actually a boy and a girl", but then I paused. It almost made me feel like I was telling her that only boys and girls should kiss, which is obviously stupid and not something you should tell to any child. Even though this necklace was most likely made to be a stylised cartoon boy and girl, I was shocked that it took a 2-year-old's perspective to make me realise how ingrained gender roles and stereotypes are in my own brain, that I would immediately assume that this necklace could only be of a boy and a girl. Why not a girl with short hair and a boy with a ponytail? Or two girls? Or two boys? So now I like to think of it as my "two people kissing" necklace.

So I have been really excited to mention this for a couple of weeks, and now I finally can! I'm on the writing team for the Australian online magazine Birdee! It's quite like Rookie magazine, but for Australian readers the articles may seem a lot more relevant. It covers style, science, art, politics (both Australian and world), love, sex - and a bunch of other diverse topics. The articles written by my fellow writers are incredible and I hope that mine come even close to their standards! You can read my first article here.

Image source

Did life on Earth originate on Mars? This theory (which you might have learnt about in school as panspermia), while taken somewhat seriously as a possibility for the origins of life, has never really had too much evidence behind it. However, two separate studies very recently emerged suggesting that the conditions of Mars would have been much more suitable than Earth for "getting the ball rolling" on creating organic molecules (this includes carbon binding with hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, and is essentially what all living things are composed of). A meteorite from Mars would then have had to travel to Earth (which we know has happened at least once - it's how we know that Mars contains the element boron). In fact, it's boron that probably would have been needed to be around to allow RNA (similar to DNA, but not as stable) to form in the first place. It's certainly not conclusive proof that we're all technically martians, however it does make this possibility a lot more likely. Read more about the two separate discoveries here and here.

I hope you're all having a great day!

Tuesday 3 September 2013

Back to School & Barreleye Fish

Annika is wearing dress c/o Lashes of London, sweater from Japan, socks from Cotton On, Thrifted basket and shoes c/o Yeswalker. Ashley is wearing top c/o Romwe, sweater from Emoda, skirt from Valley Girl, shoes c/o Sammydress.

The number of times that I've walked through this glorious courtyard at Sydney University and wanted to take pictures... I was beyond delighted to finally do a photoshoot there with Ashley the other week! The only thing that would have made it better would be if we had been allowed to walk on the grass...but Sydney University has their gorgeous grass roped off 364 days of the year so that it remains immaculate. Silly prestigious university.

Today, I discovered that this fish exists, so I really wanted to share it with you all. This is a barreleye fish.
What looks like it's eyes (it's sad, sad eyes) are actually its nostrils. Its eyes exist within its transparent head, which protects its eyes and also helps them to collect more light. That green bit that looks like a plant inside its transparent head are in fact the fish's eyes.
Of course, this critter lives very deep within the ocean. Deep sea creatures are fantastically bizarre, and this guy is no exception to that rule.

Image via National Geographic

That's your weird animal fact for the day! And I hope you're all having a good day too :)

Saturday 31 August 2013

Matching Outfits & Living Photographs

Annika's is wearing top from Sportsgirl, bag c/o Jump From Paper, skirt c/o Faith & Lola, belt from Dotti, cardigan is thrifted and shoes from Yeswalker. Ashley is wearing shorts c/o Sheinside, earrings from Dotti, thrifted cardigan, bag from Italy and shoes c/o Sammydress.

One thing that I really loved about Ashley's visit (apart from the fact that she is just a super lovely person) was that we were able to dress up so that our outfits matched! In fact, Ashley's boyfriend even mistook me for her cousin. Our outfits are quite different here, but also very similar in subtle ways - we matched vertical black-and-white stripes, reds and baby-pinks, as well as both including something feline-themed into our outfits (my tiger belt and Ashley's cat shoes!)

I miss Ashley! ｡･ﾟﾟ･(>д<)･ﾟﾟ･｡ If you missed our other posts together, you can see them here!

This is super cool. Students from the University of Texas recently made a light-sensitive bacteria that can act as a photographic film! With it, they took the first "living photograph".

Image from University of Texas

The bacteria they used were engineered so that they would turn black if they were exposed to light, but stay clear if they didn't get exposed to light. They did this by adding a special sugar - that turns black when digested - to the petri dish, and modifying the bacteria so that if they saw light they would digest sugar, but if they didn't see light then they would not. Lastly, they grew their bacteria evenly over a dish, and projected light through a filter (with an image in it) onto the growing bacteria.
The process is actually very similar to how film photography is processed - just imagine swapping the silver nitrate on photo paper for some light-sensitive bacteria!

In addition to being a really cool thing, being able to manipulate bacteria in such a way will hopefully lead to building what are essentially "biological computers".

Friday 30 August 2013

Conscience about Clothes & Hacking Into Consciousness

Dress, bag, cardigan and belt are thrifted, shoes are c/o Yeswalker, socks are from Tutuanna and hat is c/o Wholesaledress (dress styled before here, although I didn't change too much because it goes so well with these shoes and hat).

I want to thank you all SO MUCH for the feedback on my last post. I have been so encouraged by all the thoughtful comments, suggestions of stores to check out, posts to read and emails I've been sent on the topic of ethical fashion. You've entirely convinced me that I've made the right decision. I'll admit that it's been difficult to eschew the desire to accept offers of sponsorship from cute clothing stores (who doesn't love free clothes?), especially as I would never have had the money to buy so many clothes for myself this past year. However, I am now really glad that I've come to the decision to cease sponsorship on my blog when I don't know where the clothes actually come from. The feedback from my last post that most got me over that line was actually from my mum (who is probably my biggest fan; and I know if I give her this shout out she'll be really excited - hi Mum!), because after reading my post she was inspired to buy fair trade chocolate and an etsy necklace as a gift for her friend.

So, my science news for today is that I was on one of my favourite science podcasts as a guest! I was so excited/nervous to have to speak on something that was being real-life recorded - I have never thought of myself as a good speaker and will always prefer to write my thoughts down where I can reread them a billion times over before making them public. But somehow, I managed to sound alright, especially considering everything was delayed over the Skype connection. If you guys want to listen to it you can find it here. *Note: before you listen, the clip that plays at the beginning is meant to be a joke. Don't worry.

We talk about hacking consciousness with the first human brain-to-brain interface (which is SO exciting, I'll probably do my own separate post on it), I explain a concept from the philosophy of science, and we also talk about an... interesting Australian political candidate who thinks the UN can control the weather.

If you're not up to listening to an hour-long podcast (although I promise that it's very entertaining), then you can find the article I wrote for their website in January here.

*Also note: "skeptic" as it's used here means "scientific skeptic", which is what all scientists should be. To be a scientific skeptic means using the scientific method to look at experiments in a rational and (hopefully) unbiased way. It means being open minded to all ideas, but labeling as "unscientific" those ideas that repeatedly fail to demonstrate evidence for their claims (as in astrology and fortune telling). In fact, the Scientific American just wrote up a good definition of the word skeptic, and other misused science terms, here.

I hope you're all having a really lovely day!

Tuesday 27 August 2013

Fashion More Slowly

Dress is handmade from Japan, clips are handmade (DIY here), hat is stolen from my boyfriend, shoes are c/o Yeswalker, picnic bag and jacket are thrifted, socks are from Tutuanna.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the choices I make and the influence it has on the world. For a few months now, I have wanted to get hair extensions - however I have been adamant that the hair has to come from an ethical source (as in, not from people living below the poverty line whose last chance to feed their family was to sell all their hair for a couple of dollars; or being conned into donating their hair for religious purposes) and have basically found that "ethical" hair extensions are an impossible thing to come across. Looks like I'll be growing my hair the hard way. But after questioning whether or not hair extensions were ethical, I started questioning whether anything I rely on - particularly my clothes - is indeed ethical.

When I heard about a clothing factory in Bangladesh collapsing a few months ago, where more than 1000 workers died, I was really upset. That event set into motion (although I'm embarrassed at how long it's taken) a realisation that I really can't justify my need to own the ridiculous amount of clothes that I own. Half of my wardrobe I have only worn once or twice. But what finally forced me to think about this issue was learning about the term "fast fashion" from Ragini's Rookie mag post, and then coming across this article on making ethical fashion choices. And I decided that for now, I'm only shopping at second-hand stores. I've also stopped working with the majority of clothes stores that I've worked with on my blog this past year. I don't know that their clothes come from factories that are as bad as the one that collapsed in Bangladesh, but it's exactly because *I don't know* that I've decided to stop.

This wasn't the easiest decision to come to, as I kind of rely on being sent clothes by my sponsors to keep the outfit posts on this blog going - I can't afford to buy myself new clothes to blog about all the time because I am a uni student. On the other hand, I also don't want to keep getting new clothes, because I already have more than enough. So what I'll be doing more of is re-wearing everything that I already own, in different ways (for example I've styled this dress before here and here). And if I really *need* that cropped shirt or pinafore dress, I'll make them myself, thrift something, or save up and buy something handmade from etsy or splurge on American Apparel. I feel a little bad about promoting fast fashion for the last couple of years and want to try and remedy some of the damage, so in a similar vein to my "30 days of dressing up" posts, I will try to do more posts on how to create multiple outfits out of a more limited wardrobe, as well as more DIY posts and vintage-shopping guides.

Congratulations if you're still reading this! Let me make clear that I certainly don't judge you if you choose to keep buying new clothes from stores - I admit that I've had a pretty extreme reaction by almost entirely cutting myself off - but if I can convince a couple of people to slightly limit their clothing intake, I hope that it might make a little bit of (positive) difference to the world.

*Note: I will still continue to wear all my old stuff from those companies whose sponsorship I am no longer continuing, because that would be a total waste of clothes if I decided I wasn't going to wear them anymore. So if you see them around here, don't freak out that I've abandoned everything I just said.