Bookworm

I was going to ask my father to help me move my adopted recliner chair into my bedroom which I saved from hard rubbish collection, but he's got a sore knee as well as a sore back. All that doesn't help the fact that there's a tiny little gate between my house and driveway that I think was dismantled when we moved into this house to get our furniture inside. In terms of having a soft and comfy chair to sit back into and get some reading down, things don't look so prosperous on that avenue.

My diary for 2012 was made from a recycled Little Golden Book- I bought Bambi in the end deciding against 'Barbie and the Scavenger Hunt'. I've never had a cool looking diary and while I often forget to write in it and refer to it religiously like a bible I still enjoyed taking it with me to my university information session and jotting down notes at the back. There's a whole heap of incomprehensive jargon as well as subject codes at the back and some notes about them from yesterday.

While there are several bookcases in my house, none of them look as cool as this wall bookcase spelling out the word 'read'. I have seen invisible hanging books attached to walls but nothing that really measures up to this frame and all the books contained within it. The bookcases at my parent's house are full of model engineering books belonging to my father and are crammed full of them. There's even books lying horizontally on the vertically stacked ones. I think the shelves would be sinking and dipping by now, if they weren't help up by more books crammed in the shelf underneath them.

I love the small bookcase in my room- while the middle shelf is occupied by my basketball trophies to make room on my desk, the top shelf is full of magazines such as Vogue, Frankie and Russh and the Kodak Encyclopedia of photography. I feel really cut about Kodak filing for bankruptcy, I remember my father showing me his Kodak Brownie, a gift from one of his sister's and his name written on a band aid in the handwriting of my grandmother who's been long dead. There's charm and nostalgia for me and the brand and I do hope to stock up on film as little mementos of a great age that has come to a halt thanks to the digital age.

I myself own the complete illustrated works of Lewis Carrol, although I'm willing to bet that my copy was a lot cheaper than this. For one thing my copy isn't a hard cover copy and has a pink cover with illustrations that seem to be in water colour and I bought my copy from Aldi, a discount supermarket who were also selling complete works of Shakespeare and also other classic novels. In retrospect I really should have stocked up on classic literature at the time but I've barely made a dent into my book yet. At $14 AUD, it was a good bargain though and unexpected.

The great thing about borrowing books and magazines from the library is that they often have lots of copies of Vogue from before I got my subscription and that the time limit of a loan pushes me on to read the book before I have to return it. I find that when I own a copy of a book or magazine that I seldom do read it, except for the day of purchase when I can't wait to pour my eyes over its contents. I'd really love to find my way around all those magazines piled high- I've got my eye on a few copies of Lula on eBay as well as Oyster magazine and a runway collection look from Vogue Paris of 2011's runway shows. So much literature, so little motivation to read it sadly enough.

I'd love to curl up in a chair in my room and sit with a good book for hours on end but the book I'm reading at the moment is a little more difficult than I had reckoned. It's a novel by Terry Pratchett called 'Making Money' and is a Discworld novel. He's most famous for writing 'The Hogfather' which was made into a film and has written about thirty of forty novels about Discworld, a world parallel to our own. There's witches and wizards, gnomes and clay monsters called golems and the city of Ankh-Morpork is run by a tyrant. I thoroughly enjoy all his novels but this one isn't as easy to get into initially as the rest. There's a lot of quick scenes and not enough background information to understand the beginning with ease in my opinion.

I love the artwork quality of old books, the hand sewn pages and material covers and even leather bound books kept safe from the elements. The collection shown here of gold gilt books that look like they could fall apart in your hands is an amazing way to decorate. It suggests worldly experiences and knowledge as well as intelligence and intellect.

In the weeks leading up to my rescue of the old red recliner I had a real inclination and fetish for vintage looking furniture, especially nurse stools and armchairs. There's something very comforting about upholstery as well as tapestry and worn out leather and the way it's sort of been squashed to fit around a person. When getting stuck into a good book being comfortable is essential and while lying in bed is one of my usual favourite spots, I would like to keep the two activities, sleeping and reading separate. Supposedly it makes it harder to sleep at night and you should only use your bedroom to sleep and nothing else.

Geeky Glasses

What could go better with a beaten up and old dog-eared book bought second hand then a swish pair of glasses to read them with? I don't currently have the urgency and need to wear glasses but I am itching to own a pair- at the age of forty both my parents acquired two pairs of glasses each so I can expect my eyesight to deteriorate at the same speed as theirs.

 

I do wish i could just hide behind a large pair of frames already and have the familiar red pinching marks on my nose bridge, geek chic has always had its charms to me but it's been a bit of a punishment to not need glasses. I don't scope out second hand shops often enough to try and find someone else's glasses with a mild magnification to wear for myself. Popping the lenses is just too much of a dead giveaway that I don't in fact need glasses so I would prefer to leave them in there if I had the option.

There's just a wealth of styles to wear, whether you try to look like Buddy Holly or perhaps go for frames that are more sleek and angular. Thin metal frames that are on the brink of being invisible have long been out of style and I am rather pleased to see people embrace glasses as a part of their appearance and a distinguishing feature. I do quite like tortoiseshell frames- it seems you can get away with wearing them day or night and the speckled colours adds a bit more character to your glasses as opposed to plain black.

I do quite like the design of these frames, as well as the pretty face behind them. With her mouth ajar and her light blue eyes wide she seems shocked when posing for her own self-portrait photograph. The size of the lenses are so large, but the frame is so thin framing around her face it seems like such an awkward combination to have these two features together but I quite like it. Glasses certainly can dress up a sweater and hair pulled up into a messy bun. I wish I could wear glasses like that, they're not fake either they have the lens glass still in tact. I don't like the way some people remove the lens of glasses frames, it's advertising to the world that you're a bit of a cheat and don't really need glasses. Still, I would like to wear glasses for the sake of wearing them and looking interesting. It's the least drastic accessory you can wear without permanently changing anything about yourself.

Even these companion animals are lucky enough to have access to wearing chic and large sized glasses, although that cat looks a little grouchy to me. It's not high on my list of priorities to find a pair of chic glasses but perhaps if I study university in the CBD of Melbourne and have time to mill around before and after classes I can scope out some of the vintage stores and snag myself a pair. This is all wishful thinking really, I have a fake pair of glasses as it is in purple but they're not in this large and over sized fashion and I also seem to have misplaced the case. Oh dear, maybe when I finally clean my room out properly I'll do a geek chic fashion post and show you all what they look like and what I look like.

 

It's not often you see metal frames instead of plastic for glasses but I do like the size of these ones and their design. The photograph and girl modelling looks all the more chic by her partially shaved head just above her ear and the plaits around it. I wouldn't mind trying to cornrow/ braid above my ear myself but goodness knows I'm not coordinated enough to do it.

Cat's eye framed glasses are a little more difficult to pull off, I don't believe as many people really can pull them off as well as the large Buddy Holly style frames. You need to have a sort of a thinnish looking face, good looking nose and short curly hair. I have none of these features really so I'll just stick to what I have and what I know. Besides, when buying glasses you really do need to see what they look like on your face and whether they suit you- especially if you're going to be wearing them constantly and people will recognise you're face with your glasses.

Crafty Devil

One of the things I looked forward to most during the middle of my exams was all the free time I would have and I hoped and dreamed that I would be blessed with creativity and inginuity to make something come to fruition. Like redecorate and clean my room. I haven't seen so much on any of those fronts yet, since I only had one or two days after my final exam to prepare for going away for a week on the Australian pilgrimage known as 'schoolies'. When I came back though I did do the dishes, sorted out some of the dried laundry, put all my nice clothes on hangers and inside my monstrous wardrobe and scrubbed the shower recess. Nearly an entire week from all that frenzied cleaning and the only other thing I've managed to do is to chuck some of my nastier note books from Calculus and Physics into the recycling bin as well as organise text books to be sold. I still need to photograph all the clothes, books, bits and bobs to be sold on eBay and work out how I will represent the items pages, but that's a worry for January I think.

I have ripped into a few books such as the Diana + hard book issued with the Diana Dreamer camera I sucessfully won at online auction, although I admit some of the material was recycle in a newer edition which I had previously read. I never tire of hearing about the all plastic wonder-camera and how Andy Warhol despised it. I like the new stories though to go with photographs streamed online to the Lomography Society website. I managed to get a third of the way through Terry Pratchett's 'Johnny and the Bomb' yesterday while on the bus and inbetween working yesterday. Another book I've already read but I thoroughly enjoy Prachett and the characters of that particular novel are simply charming. Once I'm bored of vegetating on the couch and developing bed sores I'm sure I'll sooner or later regain my vigour for reading and sort out my bookcase crammed with issues of Vogue and Russh.Colour coordinating my bookshelves would really be lovely and perfect.

My desk looks like a bomb hit it, why can't it be neat and covered in pug ornaments? At times I have almost weakened to splashing out on ceramic deer figurines to decoarte my desk but there are a lot of neat things at my place of retail employment to inspire me as well such as figurines, tea pots and a yellow submarine tea strainer. I am bound to blow most of my earnings on stuff from within the store, had I the space for it in my bedroom.

Illustrations! Another thing I had to give up in the heat of battle in the war against exams! In the last few months I developed the most magnificant callous on my ring finger where my pen rested. Needless to say, extraneous writing and drawing became off limits so as to not exacibate the condition. But after a few weeks of laying off the pencil/ pen I might be able to return again with a vengance and draw to my little heart's content.

 

I like the way clothes and necklaces are hung on the white walls, it makes their colour seem even more bright. For my room though since the floors are hard wood and the walls are plain white, the space is ideal for taking photographs once I reorganise the space, figure out how to properly use it and place myself in front of a tripod. The best fashion blogs have people helping them to take photographs of their outfits and that's the kind of blog I'd like Secret Hipster to be, only I'm ashamed of my body at times and I don't flatter myself. I need more time to work this out and create outfits at the moment. For now, I will settle for showcasing amazing photographs of jewellery and fashion pieces with running commentary.

Another great love I had to abandon was crafting things and recreating bits and bobs. I think a trip to my local library is in order; to kick-start my enthusiasm for reading and borrow some craft books. Reading at my leisure always turns out bad; I work best under pressure and when there's a book with a time limit only then can I seem to read it.
There's always some fascinating books on crafts to be had and I'd like to try my hand at some of those things, particularly stiching and sewing. The little gameboy original in this last photograph is something I'd like to make myself, byt finding exactly the right coloured buttons for the A and B buttons might prove to be a challenge. Push come to shove, I could find that colour shirt at an Op Shop, but it and then detach the buttons for my own devices.
If there are any exciting (although I very much doubt that) new developments to my artistic flair and personal style, you will be sure to hear of it on this blog.