Of Cats and Haunted Houses

In my last post I showed you a necklace which was inspired by the colours of the outfit I was wearing, this time the inspiration came the other way round!

I made this adorable sock cat a couple of weeks ago for my Etsy shop, I call him Pumpkin. I've only just got round to taking good photographs of him though, just in time for Halloween!

A few days later I spotted this hat in the children's section in a local high-street shop. Finally a cat ear bowler which fits my tiny head! Age 7-10...
For this outfit I wore it with a bow made from bat ribbon and striped Halloween stockings to match the colour scheme of Pumpkin the Sock Cat.

Do excuse the rather silly, poor quality photo!
What I'm wearing:
Dress H&M
Skirt New Look
Stockings Co-op Supermarket £2
Hat Peacocks, I think it was £9.99
Familiar: Pumpkin the Sock Cat available here

I love to wear little touches of Halloween inspiration all throughout October. I've been using my haunted house tote bag a lot, but I noticed yesterday that it's got a hole in it! I'm going to need to patch it I think, but I can't decide whether to try to hide the patch as much as possible or to make a feature of it. Star shaped maybe? Or bat shaped? Contrasting colour + add matching lace and/or additional patches? What do you guys think?

I'm also going to use bleach to try and get the stain out from where my apple juice leaked onto my pencil case and stained the bottom of the bag with apple juice and ink. I did wash the bag since then so it is clean, but it looks so grubby with the stain!

I may have the Halloween inspiration flowing strongly in my daily wardrobe but I'm still undecided about my costume for the night itself! I'm sure I'll think of something... How about you, got it all planned?

Goth blog challenge: Corsets or no?

I'm answering another Goth blog challenge because I've started late and this is already the 3rd week of January.

Once again I used a random number generator to decide what to answer next:

28. Corsets or no?

Hell Yeah! 

I love corsets. 

I think they are beautiful and I love how they give me extra back support when I'm dancing the night away!

Here's a silly picture of me in my black and white pleather under-bust corset. The hat belongs to a guy I know called Rory, his name is Chester the Trilby lol!

These pictures were taken on my friend Beth's birthday a couple of years ago, I picked them because they show how much I like dancing in a corset!

Yup I was quite tipsy. You can tell by the colour of my face - I only go pink when I drink =P

I dance in the exact same way sober though, because if I close my eyes I don't have to see people stare at my idiocy!

Thanks to Meera for the pictures =]

Do you like corsets? If not, why not?

An overdue post about a wonderful evening

I'm not sure how I forgot to post this; drafted it on the 1st November...

After my visit to Highgate Cemetery to do research and take pretty pictures I went to the theatre for a very special event (don't worry I did at least attempt to scrape the grave-dirt off my shoes first).

I went to Grimm Tales: Telling Stories to see Phillip Pullman and Neil Gaiman talk about fairytales. When I found out there would be a signing after the event I very nearly fainted! I have been a fan of Phillip Pullman since I was a kid; His Dark Materials is one of my favourite trilogies of all time and the character of Lyra was my role model, inspiration and best friend when I was 11 and had no real-life friends to help me be brave. I couldn't wait to meet him and say thank you; thank you for Lyra, thank you for writing big, important stories for children, thank you for everything. I was equally excited to meet Neil Gaiman; who I'm sure you all know I also love, although didn't discover until more recently.

I was horribly dismayed upon arriving at the theatre to find that Phillip Pullman had been taken ill and couldn't make it to the event. Instead Neil Gaiman would be speaking to Meg Rosoff; the author of How I Live Now (which I haven't read, but I should do).

The first thing to make me smile again after that dreadful news was this sign:

(The Cambridge Theatre where the event was held is where the Musical of Matilda is playing at the moment; the stage set for it looks so wonderful).

Despite the lack of Mr Pullman, the event was delightful, with Audrey Niffenegger reading one of the stories from Pullman's new adaptation of Grimm's tales and Neil and Meg talking about stories, the importance of fairy tales, why heroes in fairy tales aren't heroic and many other things (including James Bond!). It ended with Neil reading us his All Hallow's Read story; Click Clack the Rattle-Bag. It was a genuinely chilling tale!

Then we queued up for the signing; me slightly nervously clutching my copy of Coraline, purchased at the event for signing, (I was a bit disappointed there were no copies of the Graveyard book, which would have given me an excuse to say 'I am doing research at Highgate, thank you for putting the Egyptian walk into your book'). I was a little worried that I'd go all silly fan-girl and not be able to talk when I finally stood in front of Neil Gaiman.

In front of us in the queue were a couple with their little daughter, who must have been about 8 and could have easily played Matilda herself. It made me smile to see her earnestly reading her copy of Coraline, which her dad proclaimed she 'would prefer to the film, it's a bit less scary'.

When we got into the room where the signing was, when there were still about 15 people between us and the signing table Neil announced that he was going to have to stop writing personalisations and just do signatures because there were 140 more people to see in 20 minutes. I was disappointed but very glad he was doing something to ensure everyone who wanted one got a signed book.

When the little girl and her family walked forward he looked up and exclaimed 'You're the girl from the video! It's so good to meet you! I wish you'd been down earlier so we could talk more' and shook her hand, asked her name and even personalised her book (I was so happy he broke his rules for her). She gave him the script from the video and then it was my turn to get Coraline signed.

He said 'sorry about that, she's the girl from the 'because the origami' video'. Then it was my turn to exclaim because I'd seen the video and was amazed I hadn't recognised her; I told him so. Then he signed by book and I quite embarassedly said 'I've got something for you too' (other than the script, the table was bare, clearly bringing presents was not usual practice) 'It's academic proof of the cat's dream'. I handed it over and he started to open the paper to look, looked up at the line sheepishly and said 'I'll look at it later. By the way I like your hat'. I said thank you and left, floating at least 2 inches above the floor.

The wonderful video is here.

For those who don't know, this is the cat's dream. When reading for an archaeology essay I found 2 lines of text in Terry O'Connor's book 'The Archaeology of Animal Bones' that said roughly; Homo Sapiens, domesticated in 7000BP by cats as a source of food. I had photocopied the page for Neil and written the Havard reference for the book at the bottom.

I hope he did read it. I hope it made him as happy as it made me when I found it.

I didn't take an outfit photo, but in addition to my very special antique top hat I was wearing an outfit very similar to this:

What I'm wearing:
Knit Dress: H&M
Black summer dress: original cream, from H7M in the sale for a fiver; I dyed it of course.
Black lace skirt: New Look (same old, same old)

Instead of the necklaces in that photo I wore my Ankh, as a tiny nod to Death from Sandman.

I will leave you with this piece of wisdom from the first page of this edition of Coraline:

My top hat makes me a celebrity?

I like to wear a top hat. I wear it a lot of the time when I'm out and about because I'm my opinion they are just about the coolest hats around and I think it suits me.

However It does make blending into a crowd a little difficult...

I've posted this photo before but I'll re-post it because I don't think I explained the story behind it:

I got spotted by a 'talent scout' for a clothes show modelling competition. It was for Suzuki Streets Ahead and they were looking for 'fashionistas and creators of cool'. Me? A fashionista? Really?????? I think it might have been one of those day when I was accidently 'on trend' or something, because when I turned up for the next round of the competition... there was honestly dead silence when the Birmingham public were asked if I should go through to the catwalk show =P I got free tickets for my trouble though so the humiliation in front of a couple hundred people was worth it, besides not one person I knew was there so no one saw me looking like an idiot on a stage whilst a 'celebrity stylist' tried to tell people how to dress like me 'well, really, without the hat, its a quite wearable look, you can get tights like those in any high st store... urrrmmm... where did you say your shoes were from?'. It wasn't the same outfit but thankfully I managed to escape without any pictures that time! Although I did like it so I'm sure I'll wear it again sometime and take photos for you guys.

So I went to the clothes show and what did I buy there? Another top hat. The one I'm wearing in the picture is a collapsible silk one so I can't wear it in the rain or any other risky situation! The clothes show one was cheap enough that I can wear it out clubbing and not worry about it getting wrecked.; if it gets a bit battered I think it'll just add some whimsical charm.

I never thought it would happen again, but yesterday I got stopped by a photographer who wanted to take my picture because he 'noticed the hat'. He gave me his card and said he'd email the pictures, so I hope he does (although his flickr page doesn't exist so I'm not holding out too much hope...). He was quite cool looking himself in a 'I'm an old steampunk geezer' type of way.

I hope I get some pictures to share with you, although I do wish I'd bothered to dry my hair before leaving the house now =P

Have any of you ever been stopped and asked for pictures?