experiments in dressmaking - shift dress

This weekend I made.....a dress! 

As you can see it's nothing special but it's the first dress I've ever made and therefore I'm going to talk about it, much like a proud mother talks about her children (forgive me).

It's a v.simple shift dress, using only two separate bit of fabric. I used a dress I already have to make the pattern. 

I've had the fabric for absolutely ages because I couldn't decide what to make with it. So happy I finally got around to actually doing something with it!

Mitch suggested that I leave it without the collar but I thought it needed something extra (next time I might have a go at including pockets - the best dresses have pockets I reckon). Anyway, he picked the colour for the collar and I think cream suits it perfectly.

Ok, I've finished being pleased with myself. 

I'm going away for a couple of days (yay) and guess which dress is coming with me :)

Tuesday's Tees - Hero & Cape

Feast your eyes on these excellent tees from british clothing label Hero & Cape.

Now, I realise that those bottom two aren't in fact t-shirts but I thought that the jewellery on Hero & Cape was pretty rad so I've included a pair of their awesome earrings and art-deco style-y necklace. More cool stuff to be found on their website!

sporty weekend

So the olympics have started with a bang (or several actually). I know I'm a Londoner and therefore totally biased but I thought the opening ceremony was absolutely freaking awesome!

This might sound a little trite, but I don't think I've ever felt so proud to be British :)

Favourite bits: the whole industrial revolution bit and the forging of the centre ring of the olympics logo (above), all the Mary Poppinses coming to the rescue, the luminescent birds on bicycles (below) and of course the lighting of the olympic flame - such an amazing idea!

The games are now well under way so this weekend (and yesterday) I caught up with all the sporting events. What I've seen so far has been awesome, particularly the gymnastics, judo and archery!

The big games aside, I've been drinking vast amounts of tea and eating more than my fair share of cake. On Saturday my sister took me to one of her favourite tea establishments: The Tea Box . They not only boast a huge selection of teas, lunch-time foods, cakes and treats but also an excellent selection of sweet and savoury scones. Their goats cheese and caramelised onion scone was amazing. I also found room for a slice of  their monkey nuts loaf. It came out warm from the oven with a little helping of butter - soooo good.

(left) At The Tea Box when they serve you your tea they also present yo with a tea timer so you know when to pour to get the right strength cuppa! Genius! (right) The tastiest savoury scone I've ever eaten!

The tea and cake consumption didn't stop there. On Sunday Mitch and I went to investigate a vintage pop-up market in Brixton. It was mostly clothes and bags, with a few jewellery bits and bobs. What interested us most of all was the vintage tea room which accompanied the market stalls. Cue more tea and a rather delicious raspberry and chocolate brownie! 

(left) Mitch tried on some vintage glasses - with a seriously strong prescription - which made his eyes look massive. This amused me greatly. (right) I didn't just stuff myself with cake, I also did some sewing which I'll share with you soon! Hope you all had great weekends too! 

an award? for me?!

That's right folks!

The lovely Jesse over at well it's okay has nominated beard today gone tomorrow for the Liebster Award! Liebster is a German word which means: sweetest, kindest, dearest, pleasant, valued, cute, basically lots of really nice things and is given to up&coming blogs with less than 200 followers. Isn't that cool? What's also pretty cool is that you can follow the trail of awards back to discover lots of other awesome blogs!

The rules of the Liebster Award:
1. Each person nominated must post 11 things about themselves.
2. They must answer the questions that are given to you from the person who nominated you.
3. You must then create 11 questions for the people you've nominated.
4. Nominate 11 bloggers and link them in your post
5. Let the bloggers know they've been nominated.

Here are Jesse's questions to me:
1. Who is your favourite cartoon character? Probably Snowy from the Tintin comics
2. Describe your blog in one word? beardy...? 
3. Where were you born? Hammersmith, London
4. If you could have anything to eat to eat right now, what would it be? the stilton burger from Honest Burgers, I've not had one for absolutely ages and I've been seriously craving it, along with their amazing triple fried rosemary and sea salt chips.
5. What is one big thing you want to accomplish in 2012? I'd like to see me and the new venture at work grow a bit more.
6. If you could live in a past decade which would it be and why? The 60s - the music, art, fashion, the changes that took place, the hype about space exploration...
7. What are a few websites/blogs that you have to check everyday? I'm quite bad at checking things everyday so these are the current sites I regularly visit: betty magazine, kitsunetsuki, I wanna go to the beach, well it's okay, oh so lovely vintage, one sheepish girl, retronaut. 
8. Worst movie you've ever seen? it's got to be an adam sandler film - the waterboy is hugely crap
9. Favourite thing you've done so far this summer? because the weather's been so rubbish apart from this week it feels like summer's only just started! But I'd say comic con and Mitch's birthday at the science museum and going out for dinner after.
10. What do you usually eat for breakfast? seeing as it's summer I've been having lots of raspberries, strawberries and blueberries with yoghurt but I guess my go to breakfast is marmite on toast.
11. Briefly describe your dream house? an old farmhouse or converted barn in the countryside not far from the coast, with some land for animals to graze and to grow vegetables. I'd like a nice big kitchen and living room.


And now for 11 things about me:
1. I LOVE making lists (so you can image how fun I found this award nomination).
2. New pens and notebooks are a weakness of mine, I love buying new ones.
3. I've been dyeing my hair since I was 17 and I'm pretty sure I'll never go back to my original colour.
4. Most superstitions don't get to me apart from the magpie one, so whenever I see one magpie on it's own I have to salute it to cancel out the 'one for sorrow' bit - crazy but true.
5. My favourite fruits are mango and melon.
6. I am at my most productive before midday.
7. I like milk in my earl grey tea (much to the disapproval of some).
8. I share my name with my nan but she hates it so everyone calls her Nancy.
9. I'm not a big fan of swimming pools but I love to swim in the sea.
10. If I could have a superhero power I'd want to be able to fly (or possibly have the ability to shape shift into any animal I want...)
11. If I could have any creature, and I mean any creature, as a pet, I'd have a dragon.

Questions for my nominees:
1. If you could be any animal what would you be and why?
2. What one book do you wish you had written?
3. You're only allowed one for the rest of your life: chocolate or cheese?
4. Money is no object, where is the next place you'd like to travel to?
5. What are most looking forward to right at this moment?
6. What is your signature dish?
7. What was the last fancy dress party you went to? What did you go as?
8. What's your favourite song/band? (you can answer either or, as it's a tough one)
9. Do yo have a moto, or a favourite quote, what is it/who said it?
10. If you could go back in time what would you tell your 14 year old self?
11.Where in the world is your favourite place?


So, to conclude, I'd like to nominate:

Katie from Ever so Ethnically Confused
Kirsty from Kirsty Helen
Annie from Along the Way

Tuesday's Tees - Old skool olympics

It's the opening ceremony on Friday, so London is reaching the height of Olympic mania, that is until the games actually start when we'll no doubt reach a new level of craziness, hello mass overcrowding! Although there's plenty to get cynical about, the whole event is also quite exciting! To express some of my excitement in t-shirt form (naturally) feast your eyes on these beauties!

Sadly the last two are only for kids but all are available from Gap.

a super sheep and a super 8 camera

I'm not one to break the english stereotype about talking about the weather so...

Huzzah! 

It's sunny and super-hot outside! 

To celebrate the amazing weather there's been plenty of walks in the park, strolls around town, sunday market wanderings, summer fruit guzzling, homemade fruit tea drinking, al fresco dining and sheep petting!

Yes, you heard me right, and not just sheep, goat petting too!

On Sunday, Mitch and I stumbled across Herne Hill market, despite us having lived in the area for just over 10 months, this weekend was the first time we'd seen it. Full of stalls, selling breads, cheeses, meat, cakes, chutneys, fresh fruit and veg as well as food stalls with a variety of dishes - it smelt amazing. There were also a couple of stalls with antique-y looking things including some vintage dress patterns (if I was several dress-sizes smaller, could read a pattern and had any money they would have been mine).

The highlight of the afternoon was of course the sheep, goats, ducks and guinea pigs who were also in attendance having travelled from New Malden farm. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll probably know that I am very fond of farms and especially the animals that inhabit them. The sheep and goats were v.friendly so we petted and fed them lettuce leaves. Simple pleasures. Mitch got chatting to the man who'd brought them to the market and he told us some stories about the animals. The two lambs had been saved from the slaughter house (I cannot repeat the more in-depth details of the story, I honestly don't know whether I'll ever eat lamb again) and the sheep, Amy, was something of a celebrity. Despite being only three years old (and also recused from the slaughter house) Amy has starred in three television drama programs (including Foyle's War, twice), raised £12,000 for St George's hospital and, quite recently, received a gold medal for raising said money! What a legendary sheep. This is her :)

After our lunch and Sunday scone at Relay Tea we popped into a particularly awesome little second-hand shop which we often visit, mostly to covet all the amazing bits of furniture the guy has. We always leave empty-handed because we have no room for any more stuff in the flat. But yesterday was different. Mitch found a v.cool looking hand-held super 8 film camera. We saw lots of 8mm film cameras (and projectors) in brick lane but none like this one. It has film inside it but the mechanism appears to be jammed, Mitch plans to take it apart and try to fix it, so watch this space!