cutting in

When talking with A Lady this week and forcing her brain to help me select a date outfit, we decided that cutoffs were the way to go. They're not exactly my normal level of date-wear, but it was oppressively hot for a good long spell.

I took her advice and went with cutoffs and a swingy tank top, and then: oh. Yes, we twinsied it up this week, didn't we?

Cutoffs, thrift store old-man jeans; tank, Gap, sandals, Aldo.

My hair has inexplicably started to get wavy and, dare I say, slightly puffy in the past seven months. This baffles. I have had stick-straight hair all my life, not a hint of wave to it, and now suddenly I am confronted with these odd curly bits that want to poke out and create a sort of cotton-candy effect around my head. I am not for this at all. The solution thus far is to pull it half-assedly back into a bun and try to ignore it, and also to wear a trilby. And to keep doing that thing with my hands.

lyle, lyle crocodile

Alligator, crocodile, whatever.
Let's just agree that I need a two-finger ring with a malevolent reptile on it, okay?

beheaded

What started as a joking assertion that my apartment has a disembodied-head theme has started to really take hold. I will say one thing for it, morbid as it may appear: it's really, really easy to get good decorating ideas when one has a theme. The phrenology head started it all, so we can blame Junk Science.
You walk into my house, and you're immediately greeted by a wall of disembodied heads: mugshots from the flea market, and silhouette cutouts.


The most wondrous room for disembodied heads is my bathroom. No, I don't really know why. But when the white lady-head vase joins the black and white lightbulb head, and you realize you have a great black and white photo of a line of wigs on wig-forms, you just sort of roll with this.

(the white vase was a gift from Ruth, who had no idea I was cultivating a theme)

(this photo makes me so happy: the lineup of wigs I took care of for Hedwig and the Angry Inch in 2002.)

It's really no wonder that I've started to think about expanding the collection. My lusted-after amber skull in a bell jar is gone, tragically; I'm considering filling that void by creating a little shelf of tiny black skull candles in my living room.
I want them to be tiny: somehow, I am convinced that a line of five 2" high glossy black skull candles would be fantastic, and not Hot Topic Goth circa 1998. My parents, who remember my short-lived goth phase, may disagree.

I think a life-sized glass head could go quite well in my bedroom. No, seriously.

You can all begin backing away slowly now and making the "girl is crazy" eyes at eachother, I suppose.

sideshow

Well, aren't they a pair of vicious trollops.

Why yes, yes we are.

booze clues

Lesson learned: scotch freezes much less well than gin does. My first batch of scotchsicles turned out to be individual servings of scotch slush (tasty, but not the ideal way to drink Laphroaig); the second batch barely held onto the popsicle sticks and base before slushing up. I continue undaunted, however, in my quest for scotch-flavored popsicles!

This batch: per 1 cup of volume in popsicle molds, I used 4/5 of a cup of water, mixed with about a tablespoon of honey. This water base should eventually get tweaked to firm up the popsicles, but apparently a 4:1 ratio isn't quite it. I used 1/5 of a cup of scotch (the aforementioned Laphroaig, because I don't believe in cheap scotch).

I think a 5:1 ratio of honey water to scotch might be enough to create a solid popsicle, but I fear that it will still melt rather quickly into a puddle of slush. I need to get all scientific up in here to figure out the ideal ratio that allows both freezing and delicious booze flavor. (Helen? Guidance?)

cream of the crop

Bought at the Vintage Heaven pop-up* last weekend:

I keep thinking of this dress as the sort of thing that a really, really passive-aggressive mother-in-law would wear to a wedding. "But it's not white, dear! It's cream! I simply don't know why you are upset."

To take it from matronly territory into something less proper, I'm thinking of removing the sleeves. The neckline didn't photograph particularly well here (and yes, my head is all cut off- you're only missing my post-yoga sweaty face and ratty post-biking hair, I promise), but it's this gorgeous woven collar the entire way around. Should this happen? Or should I embrace the poofy sleeves?



*Although the Vintage Heaven pop-up yielded several treasures for me (and god bless sellers who take credit cards), there was a really super-unpleasant interaction I have to bitch about. I won't name the seller, because I am not quite that catty, but it went as such:
I picked up a really lovely floaty tunic top- well, ok, I'd probably wear it as a dress, too- from this seller's stand. It is a contemporary brand (so, not vintage at all, but I don't care, it's quite pretty), marked size M. In this particular brand, I happen to wear a M. However, I have some questions as to the sheerness of this piece, so I am going to try it on before dropping coin on it.
The seller scampers up to me and grabs the tunic: "Are you going to buy that? Because it's an XS." Me: "I'm going to try it on in the dressing room first. It's marked a size M." Her: "Well, it fits me, so it's an XS."
Me: "..." (thinking fuck off, you goddamn hag)
"I'm going to try it on."

I take that tunic into the dressing room with a half-dozen other things, and no, it doesn't fit perfectly. That doesn't bother me, or make me question my entire existence based on sizing- just means I won't buy it. No great loss- it was marked up quite a bit more than that particular brand should be, anyhow. I exit the dressing room with my pile of To Buy and the pile of Not Gonna Get, and what do you know, that seller is standing there ready to pounce: "It didn't fit you, did it."
Me: "No. I'm not getting it."
Her: "I told you it was an XS."

Seriously, lady, you can fuck right off. It's marked a size motherfucking Medium, and whether it fit or not is really none of your goddamn business. And by the way, don't mark up mall-brand clothes at 200%, you German-accented bitch.

walking tour

A brief glimpse into my brain from Wednesday night through early-early Friday morning

laid back

I am a goddamn genius.

This, friends, is a gin-and-lime popsicle, and I might not eat anything else today. My annoyingly involved errands from last week to find popsicle molds have yielded me a freezer full of treats, and my un-air-conditioned apartment just got a whole lot more awesome.

To make six popsicles in my molds, I used 3 parts lime juice- I used a frozen bag of lime pulp from the mexi-grocery with just a tiny bit of sugar mixed in- to one part gin. This came to about 18 oz. of lime juice, 6 oz. of gin, and a tablespoon of sugar. It's super-tart: definitely more like sucking on limes from your gin and tonic than it is a limeade. Oh, and it's pink because the gin in my freezer is bluberry-infused gin that's been sucking up blueberries for about a month and a half now.

dateline

This dress has completely become my go-to for that "must look hot for a first date but must not look as if I'm trying to look hot" look. Reasoning: a high-ish neckline is not desperately slutty; the fact that it's loose about the torso hides things like the huge pile of noodles I ate just before taking this photo on Saturday. It's also short enough to be rather like "yes, please do feel free to check me out", but not so much as to be screaming LOOK AT MY GAMS NOW AND MAKE SOME OBNOXIOUS WOLF-WHISTLE NOISES.

Anyway. Yes. I quite like this dress. And I think I need to buy it in grey, too. (50% off, you say, Penelope's? So if I buy four dresses, they are free, right?)

Dress, LAMade; bag, vintage ($5 at Vintage Heaven this weekend, woo!); heels, Urban Outfitters.

games of chance and skill

I think I filled out someone's hipster bingo card* this weekend. I should feel shame at this, but instead I am just filled with joy at my new hat.

Hat, H&M men's section; sunglasses, Marc Jacobs; dress, Uniqlo.

*Wearing a fedora, carrying a messenger bag, twittering, doing awkward white-girl dance moves at the Passion Pit show. That's enough for a full bingo if you already have the center free space.