“A woman’s perfume tells more about her than her handwriting.” –Christian Dior  

    

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Etsy Review – Marshmallow Unicorn shop

I had came across this shop because of their adorable alpaca and wooden cat necklaces, and it was love at first sight immediately! Sadly their other wooden cats had sold out but I managed to get the last one 🙂 I love the candy cookie unicorn and the nice day bottle necklace the most in the order! The items were nicely packed in pink boxes with ribbon and I would definitely recommend this shop to other girls looking for something sweet 🙂

Link : Marshmallow Shop

let em’ laugh

“ Solitude devastates me; company oppresses me. The presence of another person derails my thoughts; I dream of the other’s presence with a strange absent-mindedness that no amount of my analytical scrutiny can define. ” – Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Woke up derailed on thoughts of another city, another place. Consumed with strange desires and longing, memories of old paths and Belgian mussels in restaurants and dreaming of things to come, all in the 5am cotton wool lightness of my mind. I never want to have any conception of time and place in the morning – I want to live madly – as Walt Whitman declared – sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world – take off and live in another city – linger in night streets – snow angels – old friends like bookends – we’re sentimental so we walk in the rain, I go to the corner and end up in Spain –  stardust clowns, you and I.

So let people wonder

Let ’em laugh

Let ’em frown 

You know I’ll love you 

Till the moon’s upside down

typewriters

I’ve been testing out my new Royal 1920s typewriter, (yes I have a new one, delightful photograph below), and its been settling in nicely. Testing and typing is therapeutic. I set up my cup of tea, lean back, type a thing, evitably make a mistake and try to backspace, end up making a mark that looks like a distressed bird, scrap it, retype, get lost, and as it turns dark. I’ve been penning strange letters to no one in particular as a result. I still can’t resolve the margin issues and now all my lines still look like they are free-flying. The ‘b’ key fails to work and so I venture to do a little skipping continuous click to keep up with the momentum. Faster and faster it is a race that I must catch – I am a little shopmistress in a cloth boutique handling the cash register – cling-ding!

The shop owner’s wife collects typewriters. She has a pretty one called ‘Princess’ that I love. My mind strays to an amusing anecdote that H had told me, about a little girl he met in Philippines during a work trip who told him that her name was Princess. H cannot stand princesses. He has high expectations of girls to be proper and independent and not whimsical and spoilt. I think otherwise, and that a Princess typewriter sounds enchanting! I had asked the shopowner if he had a typewriter in pink, or mint. He had laughed and said that those would definitely cost upwards of a thousand dollars, because of their rarity. For me, I feel my typing soul feels black and old. So the one I got is just right. Though sometimes I am charmed by a little bit of cursive, or a straying musical note. Imagine a typewriter that types music – Like the Olympia modified manual typewriters! Function or nostalgia?

“According to the History of Music Printing website, the MusicWriter was invented by Cecil Effinger, a noted choral composer and music professor who created his first prototype in 1946. His company, Music Print Corporation, worked with various manufacturers (including Olympia and Smith Corona, the creators of this particular model) to produce more than 5,000 MusicWriters from 1956 to 1990.

The keyboard was used to put musical characters on any page. You could work on manuscript paper or use the MusicWriter to create even the staff lines. Unlike a typewriter, the MusicWriter carriage does not advance after striking a key: the user has to very carefully position the paper wherever they want to add any character. Many items, including slurs, ties, and beams had to be drawn by hand. Details of how music was created with the MusicWriter can be seen here.

While ingenious for its time, the MusicWriter didn’t handle transpositions, apply music spacing, or do any of the countless things we take for granted with software today — even in the $10 Finale NotePad. A Boulder History Museum webpage acknowledges this disparity: “Unfortunately, due to the advent of computers, MusicWriters quickly became obsolete.” – finale blog

Some of my favourites that the shopowner has owned/owns:

   

Authors and their typewriters…

The shopowner told me that they sometimes have gatherings at the Penny University cafe where all the typewriter-struck folks in Singapore gather, set up their typewriters and type their thoughts – a decidedly hipster affair. Lugging the box itself (my typewriter claims to be portable) is fatal. However, I still think it sounds enchanting! They also gather to do typewriter related craft activities and watch old documentaries on vintage typewriters. Somehow it sounds like something that you, Irving, would love to do too.

The story of how I came to get a typewriter- how and when did it start? But I had been flipping back on this blog’s archives one of those days and I had found that actually I had mused on wanting a typewriter AND a recordplayer in 2011. H’s declaration that I have been struck by G.A.D (gear acquisition syndrome) would be right. I think I am satisfied with these (for now, he claims), and dream on typing and playing a Carla Bruni record on a rooftop sometimes.

I’m thinking of taking custom orders for quotes, letters and such, but thats for another day…

Anna Karina – Jamais je ne t’ai dit que je t’aimerai toujour

I love this song so much and it describes the female psyche so much. Especially the delightful ending!

So fun!! Although my fate-line is short…at least it is a little point on my hand.

Irving, when you come, we have to dance like this all around the island! You have to do the twirl with me! Please watch and MASTER the video VERY carefully. Haha!

And if you complain, please note that at least I did not tell you to learn this one:

Ce Soir ou Jamais!

Juliette on Tombstones;

It’s been a passage of time since the last entry – I use ‘passage’ as it seems as though so much has happened, romping through the good times like a little joyous foal! It is my country’s National Day and so I hear little children singing songs in the background, and I remember my childhood days swinging little flags.

I met up with S and A last week in Arab Street- and fell in love with the stranger streets, the way we could slip up to a random restaurant and find Morrocan lamb dishes with all sorts of tea that taste like the same apple concoction. A rendered us with beautiful stories of Nepal and trekking. She also introduced me to Yasunori Kawabata, a Nobel prize winner in literature pretty much unknown to me, but the poignant titles stir a little something in me of many things said in very little words. S’s conception of beauty is newly bound up in a mermaid, and we talked about living in Japan and hiding away. These are two of the people I love the most in the world – and listening to the soft curls of A’s laughter (”kikikiki”) and the clip of her bangles (Scottish, even if they are ethnic, she says) seems to stir something magical. It feels sometimes that the time spent in between meeting such people as A and S is sleeping time – and the secret part of me awakes again in a dream. There is a little of the past – Celine Dion plays in the background as I dabble in some source and observe the little plate of dates and the shopowner seems to have emerged from an Asterix/Obelix comic / and yet the feeling is modern familiarity, things have changed but I am not able to discuss how and in what manner, and all we can do is share a hint of stories that have shaped who we have came to be.

A says I follow her like le’ detective and I seem more curious about people moving through streets. But I love the soft warm orange highlights of the night and the streets which I do not know. The shadows mimic a little film noir adventure. So many things are closed at night and yet they run their own stories in the morning, and it has been this way for years.

J drove me past his old home, a little shophouse, recently. I imagined him as a boy, climbing up and down the stairs, and looking down from the window, of him running away from the vacumn cleaner. He has always told me that he felt that he had lost his childhood, and when I look up the window, I think of years passed with that impish face pressing against the window.

We trooped into a little shophouse because the shopowner told us to. There were little Aladdin-esque corners with rainbow cushions and elaborate carpets, and people smoking shisha in a decadent sort of way. You take off your shoes and lose yourself.

Angora and lace;

from seaofshoes

Dior

The photographs from the Dior boutique simply took my breath away.

Photographs from cherryblossomgal

The Purple Rose of Cairo

“At the depth of the Great Depression, downtrodden waitress Cecilia (Mia Farrow) finds solace from an abusive husband and financial woes by loosing herself at her local movie theater. She soon found herself spellbound by The Purple Rose of Cairo, a brittle pre-Code comedy set in Art Deco penthouses and nightclubs populated by slick Manhattan-ites in fur coats, tuxedos and tails. The film’s ingenious self-reflexivity materializes when one character, pith-helmeted explorer Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), glances out from the screen and addresses Cecilia directly. He proceeds to climb down from the silver screen, and leaves with her, as the stranded performers question their existence and the movie patrons rebuke them for allowing the plot to fall apart. Wooed by Baxter’s charm, Cecilia finds herself falling for him – until she meets Gil Shepherd (also Jeff Daniels), the real actor who plays him. Romanced by both a fictional character and a famous star, Cecilia struggles to locate the shifting line between fantasy and reality, only to discover that sometimes it’s just a heartbeat away.”

Did you or did you not like Mia Farrow in The Great Gatsby? I’m off to see this movie tonight at the open air cinema/ National Museum, and am gorgeously excited! I think the plot sounds brilliant. I bet you have already watched it, Irving, but if you haven’t, here’s a little slaver of temptation.

The film noir play I spoke about, which I am scriptwriting/co-directing/acting for will show tomorrow! We have tried to keep it slick, but in the end added a little camp given the nature of the audience. Just been so terribly busy outside work! But I am thrilled everything is coming together!

Also kudos to B.C for helping me to get Natsu Matsuri tickets. I am looking forward to it so much, and will dance around in my yukuta and squeal with little Japanese children and do the Bondori!

Lace Lovely

Reminiscient of Audrey Hepburn’s lace mask. Photographs from Chanel.

I’m just crazy over the nails and I’m going blue satin next. Had this cute moment at work when YN came up to me and identified the colour I was wearing pat-down! I do hers as well, right down to the strange names they give polishes. But I do so much with my hands, its getting harder to justify the expense, except that each time I get pretty lacquer…

Givenchy 2011

My favourite fall collection this year, actually belongs to Givenchy, which actually did something notverydifferent. Who would have known, something so alienesque could so capture my heart. Not every piece, but some of them are just breathtaking. Exclusivity and obsession.

Calacas long dress in bone white tulle embroidered with a lace design in silk thread; worn with a jacket in matching cotton double duchess embroidered with three dimensional ‘porcelain’ coated lace motifs. Below, Calavera gown in bone white tulle embroidered with hand-cut lace motifs and cornelli work in silk chiffon, ribbon and thread. Worn with a jacket in matching cotton double duchess embroidered with alabaster stones, silk thread and three dimensional ‘porcelain’ coated lace motifs and a body suit in fine knitted silk.

 Veladoras: corseted dress hand-embroidered in an open lace design in golden thread, fine gold chain and crystals;  worn with a tail coat embroidered with hand cut gold metallic sequins and crystals; Coronos: corseted gown embroidered with hand-cut gold metallic sequins and crystals.

Inspired by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, the human skeleton is a running theme in the collection, with gowns featuring motifs running symmetrically along the length of the spine and zippers adorned with skulls. Below, Flor de Muerto dress in bone white tulle embroidered with three dimensional porcelain-coated lace motifs, alabaster stones, crystals and pearls trapped in tulle worn with a bodysuit in fine ribbed knitted silk