New Old Books

My room is pretty small. And I know this. Nevertheless, as soon as the bookstore across the street gets out the boxes and boxes of really old books, I’m there, ready to clutter my chamber even more.

These are the beauties I found today:

1. Moerikes Werke (The Works of Eduard Mörike, 1906)
2. Geschichte der Englischen Literatur (The History of English Literature, also 1906)
3. Les Anglais Chez Eux (1859)

I love it how old books are also pieces of art. Especially the Mörike book has such a pretty cover!

The best thing about these books? I only spent 22 € on them. Perfect.
I just have to find a good place for them…

Today I will draw… My Favourite Food

Scanner and structured paper seemed not to like each other, but I’m sill quite pleased with how this came out (I especially like the butter, Welsh onion and feather). The original picture is a little more vibrant, maybe I’m trying another scan tonight and update this again.
I love working with water colours and had something very calm and un-comic-like in mind when I thought about this picture, maybe ’cause I’ve been reading so many Mori Girl tumblrs lately.

The “recipe” is the Scoundrel’s, and at the moment I’m thinking about illustrating more recipes to make some sort of cook book out of them. I actually had this idea before, but only with singe recipes. I know several things to go in there…

Sartorial Saturday: Sometimes You Don’t

You don’t find the right outfit, you don’t get the right location, you don’t have the nerve to search the whole town for a quiet place to use your self-timer, you don’t like how you look anyway.

But then, just when you’re tired and want to simply use the blurry pictures you took in a hurry, a little bit of fairy tale happens and you find that wonderful old armchair right in front of your house at the edge of the world.
This may not be a perfect Sartorial Saturday, but it has heart and soul and captures my life in a fairy tale town quite perfectly. It should be like this more often.

Outfit Rundown:

- T-Shirt: C&A
- longsleeve: H&M
- skirt: self-made
- tights: drugstore
- shoes: Danish Duckfeet
- scarf (not pictured): C&A
- fingerless gloves: sheep farm nearby

Accessoires Rundown:

- flower hairclip: self-made by Teli
- ring necklace: vintage (from my mother)
- earrings (bug and creole): H&M and Bijou Brigitte

Thanks to Scoundrel for turning up when I was about to give up and for taking these wonderfully whimsical pictures.

Sadly my small chamber is already stuffed so I couldn’t take this pretty piece of furniture in, but as I know my town it’ll give me another one when the time and space is right.

Anybody need a new chair?

Favourite Words in September ’11

1. Resound. Can you hear it echoing?
2. Inkwell. I like well anyway, but the contrast in sound with ink – which is also great, but has such a different shape – makes it so much lovelier!
3. Adorable. Nothing more to say.
4. Enthroned. It’s rather close to crown in its sound and spelling somehow, isn’t that fitting?
5. Créateur. During the last year I’ve grown rather fond of french… I guess it started with my Breton lessons.

Birthdays are great

I know this because Monday was my birthday, and as a good lifestyle blogger I’ll show you some pictures (and maybe even give you some notes on them. Oh well, of course I’ll comment them.).

Birthday Breakfast

This is the birthday present I got from Scoundrel, a book on fungi from 1919, including coloured illustration cards. I had been staring at this through the window of the used bookstore for month and not dared to go inside. When the book wasn’t there anymore one day, I got a little suspicious, but Scoundrel assured me quite believably that he had nothing to do with it… And now there it is!
He usually hides my presents somewhere in my room and I’ve got to find them. This time he only replaced one of the flower illustrations over my drawing table with one of the mushroom pictures, and I was incredibly happy when I found it!

I got two of the accompanying books for the Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black and Toni DiTerlizzi from my mother and grandparents, Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You and Care and Feeding of Sprites. They are wonderfully illustrated (the main reason why I wished for them as I haven’t read the actual books yet) and the latter even came with a large glow-in-the-dark poster.
The other book is the Steampunk Bible, a compendium that just came out this year. Nocker gave it to me wrapped in prints of a Steampunk Uncle Sam poster, and he also acted as a proxy for Constantine who couldn’t come as he’s in Ireland for the next Semester.

The felted flower hair clip is from Teli (self made, of course) who also made a blog post with better pictures about it. The wonderful leather pencil case with its contents is from my father and meant to accompany me for at least the rest of my university life, but probably longer.

The wrapping paper my father used.

In the evening Bertie turned up, too, and we went to the African place just around the corner. Sadly I took no pictures, but they placed us in the tent-like part of the restaurant which is lit by torch-like lamps and has a thick layer of fine sand instead of usual flooring. We’ve been there before, but we didn’t even know of this part! And of course, the food was great, too.

I’d actually say it was one of the best birthdays I ever had.

Closing picture from left to right: Bertie, Nocker, me, Scoundrel, Teli.

Matching Monday: Jump onto the Catbus

My second Studio Ghibli coordinate! I mostly held onto Satsuki’s outfits for the inspiration as Totoro doesn’t wear clothes at all.

1. Dress: Satsuki wears a light yellow sundress at a point in the movie, and I tried to find something plain and simple. This isn’t a dress one wouldn’t be too concerned about to go for a long walk or even a little hike (well, if it wasn’t by BtSsb, that is).
2. Blouse: The dress in the film is worn without one as the summer the story takes place in is quite hot. But once again this isn’t a cosplay, so I threw in a simple-but-cute blouse with a small black ribbon, to add another colour. It’s still short-sleeved to keep the summer feeling.
3. Shoes: I just noticed that I forgot the socks, but I imagine somthing frilly in yellow or white that goes just above the boots. The shoes are in no way related to the movie in their design or colours, but I thought they’d match the blouse and add something unexpected to the outfit.
4. Hat: The whole famili wears broad-rimmed straw hats during the film. This one is made of felt but has the right shape and colour, so I didn’t mind.
5. Jewelery: To go in the Totoro-themed jewelery box, too. The earrings show a Totoro picture and the hairclips have little Totoros, too. I thing one could also find necklaces with this cute creature or make some, but I went for a leather strap with leaf-shaped pendants on it to capture the nature theme of Miyazaki’s masterpiece.
6. Backpack: I didn’t want a handbag here but instead chose a backpack for the aforementioned hike. The green matches the yellow of the dress very well and alos fits into the nature theme, too.

Porcelain Sunday: My Neighbor Totoro

All pictures in this post belong to Studio Ghibli

My Neighbor Totoro is probably my favourite Studio Ghibli film ever. It also the most widely known and the one that gave the studio its mascot.

For those of you who don’t know this masterpiece yet, here’s the story:

Satsuki, her father and her little sister Mei move to the country to be closer to their mother (or wife, respectively) who is recovering from a serious illness in a hospital not far away. It’s said that their new old house is haunted so the family drives away the ghosts – which are actually just susuwatari – little dust sprites – with laughter.
While their father is working on his studies and Satsuki is at school, Mei is bored and starts following a small white animal with rabbit-like features. It keeps loosing nuts that it seems to carry somewhere. In the attempt to collect them the little girl falls down a hole between the roots of an old tree. Deep down below she meets Totoro, a friendly woodland spirit who starts to brighten up the girls’ days until their mother’s return.
But when Mei runs off after a fight with Satsuki over their mother’s well-being, the older sister needs Totoro’s help in a different way…

Of course the similarity to the beginning of Alice in Wonderland is quite obvious

As always in Miyazaki’s movies, the details of the backgrounds and scenery are astounding. As are the animations at the beginning (sorry it’s in English, but I couldn’t find one in Japanese with the right video, too) and the end, there’s so much effort put into these little things!

From the ending

I also happened to stumble upon a piano version of the movie’s opening theme, it’s really worth listening.

I guess it's a clock. Adorable, isn't it?

The inspiration that comes from My Neighbor Totoro is more of a Mori Girl kind than of a Lolita one. I myself especially like the acorns and nuts motive and the smallest woodland spirit, but I would love any of the animation pieces from the opening or pictures from the ending as a print.

Sartorial Saturday: Boston Steampunk

Boston because the flat cap reminds me of my favourite folk punk bands, and Steampunk because I think this is quite a nice step in the right direction for an everyday look of this style.

Again it’s a “real” Sartorial Saturday, but not really a planned outfit but simply what happened to be there when I got dressed. Actually, that’s pretty much what I want to achieve with this challenge, not having to plan out every detail of an outfit but just find it by looking into the closet!
The waistcoat and braces also share the houndstooth pattern, coincidentally.

Outfit Rundown:
- T-Shirt: Ann Christine
- Waistcoat: vintage (from some person related to me)
- Hoodie (pictured below): Coppelius merchandise
- Trousers: Orsay
- Shoes: cropped-off Undercover steel toes once again

Accessoires Rundown:
- Bag: thrifted
- Braces: H&M
- Earrings (club stud and silver creole): Bijou Brigitte
- Rocking Horse pendant: I am
- Flat cap: H&M
- Velvet hair ribbon (not pictured): handicraft shop

Location: An empty warehouse next to the end of the world.

10 Adorables in September

1. The Silmarillion Deluxe Edition by Benjamin Harff. You can find pictures and an interview here.
2. Telling the Bees, a darkly-crafted folk band from Oxford, UK. The artwork on their page is done by Rima Staines, by the way.
3. Pirate Pad, my EtherPad of choice (What’s an EtherPad?) which I find incredibly useful. It’s used for the planning of two projects I’m doing with others and I even use it to keep an eye on my 10 Pleasures list to avoid reruns.
4. The Importance of being Ernest by Oscar Wilde. It’s a wonderful comedy, not such a dull, tragical scenery porn like most of his other works. The 2002 picture is also great, featuring Colin Firth and Reese Witherspoon (of whom I was most pleasantly surprised, I must admit).
5. The Beginning of Autumn. The air is getting crisp and I need to take some sort of jacket outside. I love autumn in our fairy tale town!
6. Windy by The Association. I first stumbled upon this song thanks to a Kiki’s Delivery Service fan video.
7. 100 Years of Fashion (and Dance). And this is actually a commercial! I can’t decide which era I like best, but  it’s rather at the beginning than at the end.
8. Ratatouille, both dish and Disney movie.
9. Our new flat mate. The Satyr is moving to Wales for one semester and his room will be taken by a girl for this while. I’
   ve only seen her for ten minutes so far and don’t really know her yet (as she will move in in October), but I’m sure she’s nice!
10. Mushrooms. I just bought a book to collect and classify mushrooms that grow here in Germany, less because I really want to go on a hunt but more because I simply like them in looks and concept. Of course they taste awesome, too!

Autumn Lights

A week ago was my mothers birthday and I gave her something I had started as a project a year ago.

Fairy lights made from egg cardboard! I painted the “flowers” with my pigment aquarelles after I pretty much drowned them, as the water allows the colours to flow down the structure of the paper like little veins.

My mother loved her gift! I had already feared it was too useless for her, but it was just right.

The flowers look a little bit like nasturtium or field bindweed blossoms, both flowers that I really like.

It’s a little bit like I’m brightening up her rainy, dark autumn evenings even though I’m not there myself.