Favourite Words in January ’12

1. highfalutin’. Flashpots are shootin’ bright as the sun, I’m one highfalutin’ son-of-a-gun! Don’t ask me how, fortune found me, fate just crowned me, now I’m king of New York. (Newsies, “King of New York”, 1992). An adjective for someone who’s a show-off.
2. serendipity. I tend to trip and scuttle over that word, although it’s a happy accident or pleasant surprise.
3. gonfalon. Banners is a nice word, too, but gonfalon just sounds so elvish.
4. shenanigans. It sounds a bit old-fashioned, like lace doilies and ruffled gingham curtains, but I like it.
5. conundrum. A great word for riddle. I especially like the -drum at the end. It makes the word roll even more.

10 Adorables in January

1. Checklists. I make one for every three days or so, in big, bold, colourful letters. It’s red right now, and I love to tick them off.
2. Vintagedudes, another favourite tumblr of mine featuring pictures of handsome men (well, mostly handsome and mostly men) in period clothing, mainly out of period movies.
3. The Mast Brothers, chocolatiers from Brooklyn. A friend of mine shared the link to their video on facebook with the comment ” In case the whole teaching thing doesn’t work out I’ll just do this!”. I’d happily join him.
4. Newsies. Quite unknown, Newsies is a 1992 Disney musical starring Christian Bale (yes, that Christian Bale) as the leader of the newsboys’ strike of 1899. Even though is wasn’t too well received when it first went to the silver screen it has quite a fan base today. What I like about it? 19th century working class boys (The caps and hats! The longjohns! The braces!) on the barricades, singing and dancing, faint folk tunes every time we turn to the characters from Brooklyn, wonderfully bad slang accents (take a look at the quotes from the original leader of the strike on Wikipedia), leading of poor-but-righteous masses and that certain feeling of Disney music-induced euphoria, what could I want more?
5. Botanical Illustrations. I’ve got a few prints of these on my walls and rejoice every time I see some. IRis even sent me a letter written on the sheets of a calendar with botanical illustrations. As soon as I find them (yes, chaos, I know, you won’t let me that easily) I’ll pin them on to my wall, too.
6. The way my favourite red Chapati jumper and sneakers match in colour. I guess that’s the reason why I love to wear them together… well, I love both items anyway, but isn’t it fabulous when items match in colour? My other pair of everyday trainers go quite well with my teal bodice, by the way.
7. Clockworker Buttons. AyraLeona from Ruffles and Steam had them made for the community of Clockworker, Germany’s probably largest Steampunk blog (which happens to be a blog I write for rarely, and record a podcast for – more regularly, though -, too). They really pretty and one of the two I ordered immediately went to my derby hat’s ribbon.
8. Dendrochronology. Get a core sample of a newly-chopped tree and  be able date back wood as far as the early neolithic! Isn’t that wonderful? While I’m not so very much intrigued with radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology is closer to crafts and botany than to chemistry and physics (which I’m horrible at), which makes it pretty much my favourite scientific dating method.
9. Booty Swing by Parov Stelar. It’s kind of the theme music of the podcast mentioned above and one of the songs for Jules’ upcoming fashion show. Oh, and of course it’s awesome.
10. Parcels. One of the reasons why I love ordering things via the aethernet is that I love unwrapping and unpacking packages. I also love packing parcels, so if someone is in for a selfmade-things-trade…