An Etsy Discovery

Oh Etsy.  I love it, I really do.  It's a veritable treasure trove of amazing stuff.  Yet it's so very big (and, let's be honest, not the easiest website in the world to navigate) that I tend to go "oof" at the thought of idly browsing through it for pleasure.  I haven't got the patience.  I have to brace myself and do it all in one huge go when I've got my Christmas presents list in front of me instead.

I cope much better with Etsy when someone goes "OI ALEX, LOVELY STUFF ALERT!"  That way I can add it to my favourites, check back every now and then for shiny new things and not have to go through the whole palaver of browsing through 987623 pages of stuff that I don't want to find the one perfect thing that I do want. 

Louise from Naive Melodies got in touch with me a couple of weeks ago to let me know about her Etsy shop which sells v. pretty jewellery.

She very kindly sent me the rectangle charm necklace. Isn't it lovely? I know the trendy fashion blogger thing at the moment is for massive, chunky, neon necklaces but I do not like them. At all. Massive jewellery, whether that be necklaces, earrings or rings, is for other people. It's not for me. It weighs me down and irritates me.  Big or long necklaces are the worst.  I have a terrible habit of getting them caught on things (especially door handles, which hate me) and either breaking them or nearly garroting myself. I like my necklaces pretty and, even if they're not exactly what you'd call little and dainty, on the simple side.  This is perfect.

I did want to do a proper outfit post but, well, I've got the plague and my face isn't fit to make an appearance on the blog right now.  The hedgehog jumper is from ASOS btw.

Louise has very kindly provided me (and you!) with a discount code for 33% off all purchases at Naive Melodies - just enter SOCKS33 in the appropriate box when you're paying. I'm sure you'll find something you like on there! I think I'll treat myself to the arrowhead necklace.  I need a bit more gold coloured jewellery in my life.

A Few Of My Favourite Things

It's not a Sound of Music reference. Just little things about today's outfit that make me smile:

#wardrobezoo

Sparkly shoes

Messy top knots

Mary flipping Poppins

New lippy. MAC Creme Cup to be exact.

Buttons on cardis

Fun earrings

Rescuing a long-forgotten frock from the mending pile and making it wearable with a new zip.

Dress - New Look (I think...the label has been lopped off) via New Life

Handmade cardi - charity shop

Peacoat - Tu

Flat shoes-Stylist Click

Earrings - River Island

Initial necklace - Sunday Girl

Mary Poppins necklace - Etsy

The Odd Socks Christmas Gift Guide

There are a lot of Christmas gift guides floating around the internet at the moment.  I love them.  I adore buying presents anyway but with gift guides, someone else has done all the hard work and found amazing things and shops for you.  What's not to like?  If I have a slight beef with them (and I do), it's that they tend to be very specific in their categories - "For him" "For her" "For the kids" "For your mum".  That's not my approach to present buying, or to life in general.  Why categorise things and people?  Just buy good stuff! I got my dad the Adventure Series by Enid Blyton for Christmas last year (which he LOVED btw) and I highly doubt that would have appeared on any of these "For Your Dad" lists.

I hereby dub this The Odd Socks Guide to Shiny, Marvellous Things on the Internet.

Catchy, huh?  Basically, these are amazing things I have discovered. Not your obvious things from places like ASOS and Amazon (although I do very strongly recommend the waterproof mp3 player from my last post cos it's brilliant) because you're bound to come across those yourself during the course of your mooches around the internet. These are just things I've found that I like. If they match the taste of someone you need to buy a present for, get them.  Or just buy them for yourself.  I won't judge.

The beauty of craft kits is that you have a choice: either give a crafty person the kit as a present or buy it, make it yourself and give the finished item to a non-crafty person instead.  I came across Gift Horse Kits on Twitter earlier this year and tackled Project Bunny as one of my summer things to do.  The kit was absolutely wonderful - very nicely packaged up, contained absolutely everything and had some brilliant, clear instructions.  I'd definitely recommend buying or making the Little Red Ted, Love Cats and amazingly cute Robins.

I went on holiday with Heather, the lovely and very creative person behind Custard Bean, earlier in the year.  Look, you can see her larking around in this post! She makes the most beautiful quilts and bunting, some of which decorated our holiday cottage in fine style.  Her etsy store is stocked up with fab handmade festive goodies at the moment, including this tweed stocking and a range of handmade tree decorations.  Or if you know someone with a Kindle, I'm sure they could do with a good Kindle cover.

Book lovers may drool at this one.  It's the Delightful Reading Spa at Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath.  If you live in that part of the world then frankly I don't know why you haven't bought this already.  For the rest of us, it's worth going all the way there just for this.  It's got to be worth every single penny of the £55 it costs.  Book heaven.

Cat fans, feast your eyes upon The Cat Gallery.  One of the volunteers at work introduced me to this website after I went a bit mad at the sight of her brilliant cat earrings one day.  She'd been to the actual shop in York but the website is just as much fun.  They sell pretty much everything cat related that you might ever need.  I'm sure you know a person (or cat) who'd appreciate the Crazy Cat Lady mug, glow in the dark collar, LED miaowing keyring or black cat roll holder.

I like a good papercut.  No, not the incredible painful yet minor injury, the craft!  Rob Ryan stuff is beautiful and readily available but it's worth seeking out some of the other online alternatives, such as Folk Art Papercuts on Etsy.  It's full of stunningly intricate designs available as prints or cards - the above picks are the Folk Art House, Long Necked Cat with Birds, Hillside Village and Horse prints.

My main beef with buying things from the USA is that, unless the total cost is very cheap, you get clobbered with customs and handling charges before the Royal Mail deigns to let you have your parcel. Threadless were awesome anyway but now they are straight at the top of my Hurrah List (yes, there is such a thing) for giving you a postage price which includes pre-paid customs so you know exactly how much you're spending. Also, their sale has been extended until this evening (28th Nov) so you can get loads of their tshirts for $9.99 (about £6ish) each. BUY BUY BUY!

I recommend Toile About You (aka my favourite print in the history of the world EVER), Bunnythmetic and Paper Zoo totes, the Runnin' Rhino iPhone case, and Oscar's Hideout and Captain Obvious tshirts.  But the beauty of the site is that you can pretty much pick your favourite design and you've got a whole array of tshirt sizes and styles to choose from, plus quite often there are other products (phone cases, bags, socks etc) in that design as well.

Sweets!  None of your cynical "oh aren't we retro, lol" packaging here.  This is proper stuff, sold by people who know what they're talking about.  A Quarter Of is my go-to website when I want something delicious and sweet.  Candy necklaces, Christmas Pud sweets, Iron Brew humbugs (zomg, they are truly amazing), vampire teeth... if they don't sell them, they probably aren't worth buying.

The Literary Gift Company is a truly glorious website.  I can browse through it with quite a number of friends in mind and immediately find about 96 things they'd love.  It's that good and that full of fab, quirky items.  I know exactly which people would like the procrastination pen, I Capture The Castle earrings, Go Away I'm Blogging mug, Penguin cufflinks and Shhh mug.

If you're buying for people who are a bit more academic than literary, check out their sister site Present Indicative. We all need a Votes for Women teatowel...

Jezebel Charms is one of my very favourite Etsy shops.  Some Etsy jewellery shops can be a bit samey but this really isn't.  It's full of wonderfully designed and unusual items that span the genres from Austen to Shakespeare to music and steampunk.  The Jane Austen quote necklace, Sherlock Holmes cuff, Regency dancing earrings and antique London map cuff are all fabulous.

How To Outfit Post, Odd Socks Style

The night before, have a mildly angsty rifle through my wardrobe trying to find something blog-worthy that you haven't already seen before. Decide that I don't own any nice clothes. Give up and go to bed.

In the morning, go "argh" and shove on something that looks vaguely presentable.

Give up tea break to:

Go and stand in the freezing cold by my beloved brick wall.

Hi, brick wall! You are looking bricktastic today.

Having had to put sensible spare flats on to get to the brick wall, swap for shoes I've actually been wearing.



Prop camera up on picnic table, check I've got the settings right and fire up the multishot option.

Try my utmost to avoid being seen by any passing gardeners/visitors/school children. This often to leads to photos such as this:



Keep coat on initially, then decide that despite the freezing conditions, it really must come off at some point. Take a minimum of 50 photos.



Decide I look like a troll in all of them and ponder whether I'll ever be brave enough for an outtakes post. Attempt to distract from this by taking arty-ish closeups of the jewellery.




Run back inside and have v. large cup of coffee to warm self up.


Give up lunch break to:

Upload photos.

Groan almightily at the amount of them where I'm either looking gormless or have managed to zoom in too much and chop my feet or head off.

Narrow it down to a few that I don't actively loathe. Crop, resize, alter the exposure if necessary.

Upload to Blogger and edit the HTML coding so they show up as a decent size. Tag, add links, loudly curse Blogger's really annoying habit of inserting random coding in places and making it look a mess.

Get massively sidetracked by work (yeah, lunch breaks are a notional concept here).

Remember I haven't finished, go back and write something vaguely interesting to accompany it. Usually fail.

Think "oh feck it" and hit "publish post" anyway.

Feel guilty about my shocking lack of replies to comments.


Blogging. Weird pastime, isn't it?


Dress - AX Paris via charity shop
Shirt - Um, Gap, I think. I stole it from my brother
Shoes - Next, via charity shop
Coat - c/o Very.co.uk
Locket - Etsy

Green With Envy

I promised you a proper sighting of the green trousers so here you are. Are you jealous? They are quite almightily green.

They were possibly slightly more flattering in the holiday snap - isn't it a bit of a kick in the face when one blurry outtake photo looks better than any of the 133 proper ones that you took? Oh well. I don't really have any trousers that aren't jeans any more so it's quite fun to give something this bold a try.

I love staring at my feet, especially when they're this dotty.
It's that Boots vouchers time of year again - I treated myself to the History shade from the Poppy King range. It's lovely.


Jumper - H&M
Chinos - Primark
Shoes - Irregular Choice via ebay
Handbag - vintage, a very lovely present from the very lovely Zoe
Earrings - Etsy seller Still With You, courtesy of a blog giveaway at A Daisy Chain Dream.


This month is going to be a bit of a killer. Char and I have declared that October is time for caanowrimo (Char-and-Alex's-Novel-Writing-Month)to be unleashed on the world. I know NaNoWriMo is November but November is always ridiculously busy for me so it was now or never. This means I have to write *gulp* about 1600 words a day, every day. It's going to cut into my blogging time a bit (well, a lot) but I'll do my best to keep things ticking over as usual on here. I'm ahead of schedule so far but I doubt that will last...

Life Through A Lens

Two things that I would never seek to change about myself: my height and the fact I wear glasses. Yet people seem to constantly feel that it's ok to comment sarkily upon them. The height thing - yeah, yeah, I'm short, I know that. Really doesn't bother me. But the glasses thing makes me very cross.

I like wearing glasses.

I always have, even before specs got all cool and hipster. I can barely remember a time when I didn't wear them. I do have very faint memories of having to wear an Elastoplast eye patch in infant school to try and strengthen my lazy eye but I think my brain has suppressed most of the horrors of that.

What I really do hate is people who seem to think that glasses are hideous and that wearing them must make a person dull and unstylish. That sort of person will actually think it's ok to tell me I'd be much prettier if I didn't wear them, or that I will (and this is a direct quote here) "ruin the wedding photos by having glasses on." Did you know that bridesmaids shouldn't wear glasses? No, me either.

When I came across this Hero & Cape tshirt I just had to buy it. It's a little bit of an up yours to all those idiots who like to pass comment about my specs.

T-shirt - Hero & Cape
Shorts & bag - H&M
Shoes - Irregular Choice & Dorothy Perkins
Rings - MerCurios and craft fair.

(I was having a hideous photo day with a great big fat face, so attempted to improve things with changes of shoes and hair. Didn't really work. Oh well.)

Mon amie Chloe also succumbed to the lure of the tshirt so we decided to double post about it. I should probably point out that what you see is not quite what arrived - we both ended up altering it for fit reasons.


The tshirts are lovely quality and great designs but the one slight flaw as far as I'm concerned it that they're unisex fit. I'm not the skinnymalinky type of girl who can pop on her boyfriend's tshirt (well I don't have one, so that would be tricky in itself. Go with me here...) and look stylish. I just look like my tshirt is too big. This one fitted ok in places but the neckline was a bit too high so I chopped it down a bit and edged it and the sleeves with some black ribbon. I may still alter the length and sides a bit but then again I may just leave it as it is - I'm very weird about tshirts and potential cling/muffin top. We shall see.


ps - am not ignoring the riot situation. I've been glued to Twitter and News 24 for the past couple of days and I am livid that idiots are doing this to my city. My brain needs some lightness though. I don't want my blog to be as ranty as my tweets are at the moment.

Floral Frenzy

Clashety von clash clash. That's how I feel today. I don't usually do two floral patterns together at once. Today I've clearly lost my senses as I've got three on, if you count the madly patterned tapestry coat.

This top has a very odd drawstring waist. I like it more when it's tucked into things.

Blouse - ASOS via charity shop

Shorts - River Island sale

Belt - pinched from another pair of shorts

Boots - swapped

Coat - Kookai via car boot sale

Necklace - H&M

Bangle - pinched from Mum

Earrings - giveaway win, made by the lovely Sarah of SBV. You can buy them from her fab Etsy shop

Haha, I've just worked out that the necklace cost more than pretty much everything else put together. Even that wasn't terribly expensive: this is a cheap outfit!! The coat may be a strong contender for best purchase of 2010. Keep your eyes peeled in July for winter coats at car boot sales. That's my tip for today.

I came across something whilst idly blog-hopping the other day that suggested that anyone who wore shorts and was bigger than a size 10 and shorter than 5'8 needed to hang their head in shame. I can't tell you which blog it was on as I got very cross and shut it down immediately. Seriously, bollocks to that. Mock my chunky thighs if you are the sort of pathetic person who wishes to do so but you won't stop me wearing shorts. And really, it's far from important. I don't want to bang on about things on here too much as I feel like I've been very doom-and-gloom recently but there are much bigger things worrying me than the size of my thighs.