Coco & Stravinsky sitting on a tree......!?!?!

Dayumm. I never know Coco Chanel and Stravinsky had a thing together. Thanks to Suzie Bubble (and thanks to the great fashion guru Evevon who recommended that blog), now I know. I've watched both the Coco movies (thanks to Jess-- hmm this is starting to sound like an award acceptance speech), and yes I would want to watch Coco & Igor too.

I had to study composers like Igor Stravinsky when I was doing music theory (I really hated it-- I kinda hate studying in general heh heh). There were four main periods of music; Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th Century.

Basically Baroque pieces make your left hand and right hand work out really crazily on the piano, kinda like making both hands run a race to see who can go fastest and has the highest stamina. It was insane.

Classical pieces are a bit easier, where your left hand is mostly playing accompaniment and not fighting with your right hand to be the g-kwok. Maybe people learned to relax a bit more then.

Romantic pieces are... hou romance loh. HAHA. They'd have a lot of emotive chords and make you feel a lot of warm emotions and also make you feel like you want to do lyrical dance in So You Think You Can Dance. Hmm.

20th Century pieces are a nightmare to play (for me). Not only do the composers come up with their own unknown chords that make you go o_O, their piano notations are written for people with 13 fingers instead of 10. Pure torture. And they'll change tempo and keys every 2 seconds just for fun. Stravinsky was one of them.

But now when I listen back to those pieces especially from the 20th Century era, I appreciate them so much more for their avant garde psychotrocity. Those composers were doing what artists like The Knife is doing today-- making music a form of art and sometimes, telling a story and taking you on a journey without even saying a word.

Here's one of Stravinsky's famous pieces. It's MAD.

I would like to study music again one day (by studying I mean reading Wiki hahahha). Learn all those songs I learned before in theory classes last time and understand them again.

Anyhoots, here's the trailer of Coco & Igor. Kinda NSFW.

I miss sewing.

Darnit darnit darnit :-(

This year in music: Fembots!

Everyone's paying some kinda sci-fi homage in their music. I love Janelle Monae's and Kelis' albums. Unfortunately I can't say the same for Christina Aguilera's robotic mishap :-S

I'm gonna kidnap you with the help of my family...

... you just wait and see, you'll belong to me me me me me meeeee

Beeyotchmode

Sometimes people are talking but all I hear is bla bla blaaaaa

I just want to stud the whole world and then get octagon and subway tiles and have the happiest bathroom in the land.

In other news.... I love my brothers and sisters at work. We're one noisy idiotic bunch of bradies.

Wedding schmeddings

To be honest? I'm not big on weddings with cultural customs-- the big extravagant lavish Chinese wedding where they play The Final Countdown when the waiters serve the first dish, and the bride doing 3 wardrobe changes during the dinner (this is a bummer because I doubt the bride gets to eat much of the food and in my book this isn't really fun).

If we could elope, we would. I always joke when people ask where will our wedding dinner will be held, saying that we're eloping to Vegas and getting married in a fake Elvis church. Only that I'm serious :P OKAAAYYY, half serious.

I'm not a fan of big extravagant poofy expensive wedding dresses where the bride has to make extra effort to walk one step and how much $$$ they cost, because I just want a dress that I can shimmy comfortably in and be able to do the robot dance without causing an unnecessary tear that reveals your rear (in granny underwear).

And, I'm not going to learn any proper ballroom dances just so that my husband and me can WOW the crowd by dancing the "first dance" (as if we never danced together before). We're just going to to do the robot dance, if anything.

And if my hair pins fall out and my mane looks crazy like a mad chewbacca in heat, then all the better for the pictures! You only get married to your beloved once, so let your hair down, have fun, and make monkey faces. One day you'll get so saggy nobody will notice you're making a monkey face even when you're making one.

Picture via Snippet & Ink

Make it golden

Some nuttery happened with the gold spray a few weeks back. It was 1AM and I had a calling to finally do it! I have been looking all over for a pair of high tops to spray gold since last year. I searched in Bata and was told their largest size did not fit me because their high tops were made for guys (ptui!), in Kamdar's school shoes section too (no hep), and in Converse (ok got size but so expensive kns).

Then suddenly for my birthday my husband bought these Converse shoes for me to play with. My first reaction was "Acckkk why you go and spend so much money!?!?!?!" and I was so afraid to do anything to them because they were pretty expensive (probably the most expensive pair of shoes I've ever had)... 

-_____-"

Long story short (too late for that, hah!), I finally did it. I also replaced the laces with bright cyan ones, coz you know, the gold ain't attention-grabbin' enuff, numsayin?

Now where's my rap soundtrack in the background...

Escape room

I hope one of the rooms in our home will be a hobby room where we can do all the creative things that we like-- RC cars, a mini home studio, sewing, etc.

A home studio like Pomplamoose's would be awesome. Fill the place up with all sorts of instruments. But then again we might need a whole room for this. Hmmmmm...

A star is a star and you'll shine regardless





Exile you are my hero.

Saved by the seam ripper

After a disastrous start with the famous Coffee Date Dress, I was hesitant to try another Burdastyle pattern. I say disastrous because everyone else seemed to be breezing through the pattern, but mine never came to life and it was chucked aside eventually. Hrmph.

I was staring at the lowest rack in my wardrobe where I keep my finds from weekend thriftings, and dug out a vintage frumpy dress-- it had a classic pussybow, long puffy sleeves, droopy elastic waist, was probably several sizes too large, and the skirt was reaching to my ankles. Yes so I'm short, kill me.

BUT the saving grace of the dress was the print. Oooh I have no idea whether they were birds or trees or birds on trees or some marijuana leaf but the print was fun! So heck, I decided to try another Burdastyle pattern-- ripped the dress apart and cut out the sections according to the new pattern. After many mistakes and ripping out seams with the seam ripper and sewing again and again, I finally finished a dress using Miasu's Contour Bust pattern. Yay!

After finishing the dress, I spray painted my sneakers gold. I know it's not really logical but it was some kinda mad chain reaction.

A wise man once said...

"Contrary to what most people think, your wedding day is not the most important day of your life. It's what comes after the wedding day that matters the most."

Amen, you wise, farty man you. (Yes you Audi)

Project runaway

Finally got some time to spend with the sewing machine! :-D It's kinda therapeutic for me, watching the needle go through the fabric and joining pieces of cloth together. I just oiled the machine a week or 2 back, and it's sooo smooth now, wooot!

Here's a simple tube dress (gah, with that darned belt again! ~_~"), made from a thrifted skirt from Amcorp's Weekend Flea Market. It has a wide 2.5 cm elastic at the top (safer for boobage security I suppose), and a thinner 0.5cm elastic in the middle for the waist to help hold its shape. 

I promise myself I'll make some new belts after this post. Grrr.

And here's a skirt, which is a slightly modified version of anywho's tutorial :-) The jersey fabric was from Kamdar SS2 (again), at RM2.50 per meter. It's not the greatest jersey (in fact I bought it thinking I'd use it for craft/fun/experiments), but it serves well :-)

I've been watching Project Runway Season 5, but Jess was right-- it wasn't as interesting as 4 or 6. Most of the time the garments made you think "Oh yea that's kinda nice I guess, but in a whatever way..." Season 4's Christian's designs would make you go "WOW, SHIEETTTT". and of course Season 1's amazing Austin still blows my mind with his immaculate tailoring. Season 4's Rami's draping is of course, CRAZY #$*&^#*&@^ amazing. Season 6's Carol Hannah is still my favourite and I am *still* rooting for her haha.

Dayumm, I must really like this show.

I am so, so tireddddddddddd.


zzzz... Lord please help us get through this week... zzzzzzZZzzzZZzzzzzz

Oh mai.

I think my dear friend Picibel might like this. All you need is a hammer and some metal scraps!

Bilbobibs

Our dear friend Emelyn just had her 3rd baby, so I told the husband "Let's make her some bibs!!!"

Here he is, slaving away tracing the pattern. Hard at work ayeee. Heheheh. Spycam picture by my brother-in-law.

I modified the pattern from an existing bib pattern, and now I'm kinda wondering if the neck hole is a bit small. The husband said "Don't worry, babies have small heads anyway." -_-

The bib is reversible, so it can be used both ways.

This fabric was picked out by the husband btw. I was kinda dubious about it at first, but I think it goes great with the yellow that I picked out heeheheheh ;-)

Never Never Land

Here are some pictures of the slightly-wonky-but-it's-ok Peter Pan collar long top thingy. I KNOW, I wear that belt so much right? I need to make more of these slim elastic belts since I like wearing this one so much -_-"

Here's a close-up of the fabric, it's a stretch lace fabric from Kamdar SS2 (again haha), it was from the clearance bin. I love it, it's really pretty against the light. Btw, Kamdar SS2's having a sale right now woohoo!

I had to take in the sides of the top a few times, because I had followed a pattern for the collar and sleeves that, unbeknownst to me, was a wee bit big for me ehehehehe. (Idiot).

Anyhoo, it can also be worn with skirts! Excuse the un-ironed skirt HAHA. The skirt was thrifted from Amcorp Mall's flea market at about RM5 or so. It's cream coloured, full-circled, and has pretty eyelet details all over it. And... pockets!!! WHEEEEE. It was originally really long, so I just chopped off a few inches from it.

This rocks even harder than the OK Go video

Almost done!

Am finally almost done with the Peter Pan collar experiment! All it needs is some ironing and some sunlight to take a decent picture I guess.

This tutorial was a great help in understanding the construction of a Peter Pan collar to fit a garment, and yes it does kinda make you want to put Peter Pan collars on every darn thing. Hehe.

Erm. Why do people still think Macs don't have right clicks??

On another sorta related note, this song made us laugh hard today. Naiiise.

Sonic accidents

Old article, but still an interesting read on the production for M.I.A's Kala album. Sometimes we get so caught up in glossy, perfect audio production that we forget accidents may be the best thing that ever happened!

"Taylor stayed especially alert for sonic accidents ..... we got interesting results, even finding accidental loops when someone dropped their drumstick. It’s having an open mind”."