// Journey to there (but not back)

Posted on | March 12, 2010 | No Comments

I have to say that I’m not too into Facebook and stuff… …but on the other hand I believe that different people prefer to follow the blogs different way. So now you can follow these posts on Facebook and on Twitter. I’m not promising posting any extra… …but who knows…

Oh — and you can follow this blog by ordering the posts to your e-mail, too! Check the subscription form in the right hand column.

Posted on | March 12, 2010 | No Comments

// Few small updates

Posted on | March 8, 2010 | No Comments

I cleaned up a bit my links section… …that Javascript based widget gets darn slow with more content. I separated the inspiration heavy blogs to their own category — and now you can find them from this page. And street style is here. Planning to expand those both categories considerably. I also removed few blogs that are not updated that often… …they are still on my personal reader, though!

Posted on | March 8, 2010 | No Comments

// Clearing the head

Posted on | March 4, 2010 | 18 Comments

I started this blog as a lighter option for my two previous knitting blogs. They really got too heavy to work with in side of my work and studies. The blogging also gave me enormous pressure to actually accomplish something in the area of crafts — and that kind of ruined the dimension of using knitting as a form of relaxation. But on the other hand I also learned to love blogging, saw the good things coming of using English regularly in my writings and felt the benefits of exposing myself as an object of photography. My self image issues have never been too serious, but I have been avoiding cameras, now I feel so much more relaxed towards those (although I still don’t like the cameras in informal situations). With this “style blog” I thought that I can still explore themes very close to the original ones with less effort — and still keep crafting and doing stuff, sometimes less, sometimes more. I was doing some style diary stuff in two websites before, and I really felt that it could push me to use my wardrobe more creatively. I also like to discuss about style issues — and don’t have too many opportunities for that IRL.

I think that in many ways this blog serves it’s original purpose. But I also feel some new kind of pressures, which are not too easy to define.

First of all — I feel that I’m only marginally interested in fashion. I mean I do like browse through some collections from few of my trusted designers for some ideas — and I always enjoy discovering a new talent for some fresh looking ones. Often I do the browsing not for single garments but more for styling ideas. But I’m not a least bit interested spotting the IT items of the season. I do not care the conceptual backgrounds of the collections that much I like to take the items and the styling as they are — and if there is anything for me or not. Of course I could think the whole fashion thing as a form of art… …but come on, I will never experience the shows as a whole — and the clothes will thus not be for me the manifestation of designer vision that easily (more like material for my own vision of myself if I can be that cocky). I could expand my knowledge and use of time for these issues — and I would probably like to do that if it were my job. But it is not. So therefore I want to keep the fashion reporting in this blog totally random, infrequent and self-indulgent. Disclaimer for the designer reader: that does not mean that I do not want to write about fashion at all, and I’m really open to writing about the stuff that I like. I just want some decent resolution press images to do that, and I’m often too lazy to dig them from your publicity partner!

I also feel that I’m only marginally interested in trends — and on a very practical level. From my perspective I see trends as a waves that bring fresh looking stuff to the shops — and I’m going for them especially if I like them but feel that they are soon gone. For example I have always loved the harem pant silhouette — so I definitely have used this opportunity to collect some dropped crotch stuff to my wardrobe, and I will definitely be wearing it long after it is considered to be in or hip or whatever. I have also stocked the sequins… …that commodity has not been widely available in this country before past few fashion seasons, we Finns are modest folk with no interest to excessive bling… …ok, so much for the rambling, this is not a trend blog!

The last thing is my relation to shopping. Somehow I feel that this blog adds some pressure to buy new things… …on the other hand it gives me also pressure to keep the shopping in control, because I don’t want to be (or look like) a reckless consumer, it is totally against my values and I really don’t like collecting heaps of stuff to my life. But I’m not all sure if this high street shopping restriction is working for me. Let me explain… …initially I thought that I could save my money for some fancy designer piece if I just minimize my high street purchases. But then again, based on my previous experiences owning the actual full priced designer stuff does not increase my happiness… …because I always feel quilt about purchases that are very expensive. I also hesitate using too expensive stuff — I’m clumsy and constantly afraid of ruining the pieces I love. This fear is even worse if there is huge financial investment behind. I’m not after too recognizable pieces, either. And in the end, when I examine the amount of joy I’m experiencing from a clothes purchase I’m not all sure if there is a difference between good high street buy, good designer piece acquisition or good vintage find. And the situation is even more difficult when I’m considering the reality, from big names I can probably never afford the actually interesting pieces but more like those basics — and for me it does not mean a shit if my regular T sports the designer logo or not.

So maybe the better approach for me would be to just rationalize my shopping just a bit by involving some planning and combining it to more spontaneous purchases (yes, I like to be quite spontaneous, I feel that too heavy planning restricts especially those areas of life where intuition is involved). Clothes are in a sense my only hobby, everything else in my life has something to do with my work or my studies, so I probably should not suffocate the pleasure I’m getting from it — nor cultivate unrealistic visions of what kind of purchases I can actually make.

Right now I’m thinking two larger purchases for this year, I’m planning to get a pair of some middle priced footwear as the reward for my exercise project this spring. I’m not going for any big names… …actually I have the idea of what it will be. And for the autumn I’m investing some outerwear, this country is all about outerwear and I have one serious shortage in my collection. I even have savings plan for this. For the rest… …I think that a monthly budget might be the best option. I do want to keep the high street shopping in control and favor indie designers (mostly sales considering my income) and second hand instead. So this will not be a shopping blog, either, although I’m loosening my self-made shopping policy a bit.

But I’m not sure if I can call this even a style blog. I mean, I don’t consider myself as a stylish person, hate the idea of showing up here like some authority to say what to wear and what not; there definitely is not any coherent style going on through my outfits… …I don’t care too much if I’m age appropriate or if the clothes actually flatter my bodily proportions. I do mind some dressing codes because I find that they make certain situations easier to handle for people — but I would like to avoid a life where dressing codes are ruling more than 20% of my choices. I do love clothes, though, and there definitely is some self expression going on through my choices, actually I sometimes feel that my clothes are more me than my actual skin. But that puts me in a bit awkward position, this whole thing starts to look like a personal blog — but just limited to one facet of my personality — and I don’t actually like that thought.

So maybe I’m just asking here — why are you writing yours? Why do you read this one? (And congrats if you got this far ).

Posted on | March 4, 2010 | 18 Comments

// Pine mouth incident

Posted on | March 3, 2010 | 5 Comments

Oh, this is so totally unrelated thing… …but it kind of explains the blog silence of the past few days.

On Monday I recognized a strong metallic taste in my mouth. First I thought that I had just licked or inhaled some nasty chemical (I hate aerosols for this particular reason, I get the foul taste to my mouth so easily). But it just continued. Everything tasted bad, especially wine made me almost nauseous. My appetite was plummeting. Googling taste symptoms does not give particularly encouraging results and I started to feel very bad about this — I’ve been struggling with my health so much lately.

Then I just accidentally ran in the article about pine mouth — curiously pine nuts can cause this funky taste distortion to some people. Not all pine nuts do it — nor all people do get the symptoms. It takes usually 1 to 3 days from the ingestion of the nuts for the symptoms to appear — and from few days to couple of weeks for them to disappear. On Saturday I made a delicious side dish with roasted pine nuts, spinach and garlic. And on Sunday I followed the example of Anu and whipped up a homemade nut müesli, containing pine nuts among everything else. These nuts are from different sources so I can’t be sure which ones caused it.

What an enormous relief to find a very likely explanation with no health implications involved at all.

Posted on | March 3, 2010 | 5 Comments

// Welcome to my surroundings

Posted on | February 9, 2010 | 1 Comment

Google camera crew visited here last summer. Now you can, too!

Posted on | February 9, 2010 | 1 Comment

// 2010

Posted on | December 31, 2009 | 8 Comments

First things first: happy, happy New Year to you! May 2010 be good and exiting year for all of us!

Thank you for being here, reading and commenting. I think that a blog is not much without the readers. Your views are always appreciated and I’m extremely thankful for all the good reading that your blogs and the blogs I’ve found via yours provide. It is great to know you!

Then the new years promises. Nah, not really, but I actually like this rather artificial discontinuation point, and the idea of setting some sort of goals and plans for the future. So why not now?

Last autumn was not particularly easy time for me, I had some health problems that among other not so cool things broke my exercise routine. I think that I’ve got some sort of grip of them now, but I want to continue without medication from now on. So I really need to figure out how to exercise to help me feel well and actually be well. I will not make it a huge point in this blog, but I will lightly document how it is going, so occasional fitness project post or mention might follow.

And then the second one, more relevant to the content of this blog.

I have been saving the majority of my shopping money for sales times for a few years now and I’m quite happy to my last autumn success — I cut down almost all impulse clothes shopping in Zara and H&M and had decent amount of money to use in December. Still I think that I have shopped too much. This year I plan to shop significantly less — and better.

So the idea is that I will make my first serious purchase this year around May/June — I will save until then and try to use the whole sum to one or two investment pieces. And the same for winter sales time. The timetables can change if I get some opportunities to travel but the basic principle stays (although I think that I will prefer planned purchases from web instead of quick random browsing of stuff). In-between times I’m allowed to shop only necessities, in my case underwear, socks, tights and maybe leggings and t-shirts — the idea is not to stash these more, but replace items that have been worn out. I can make some limited second hand purchases — but just good and useful pieces with great price, I have to also make a list what to look from charity shops to make this more controlled. In addition to that I can do (knit and sew) stuff myself. But no high street shopping at all. No stashing DIY stuff.

Scary. But also somehow liberating, I have decided just to stop thinking about buying new stuff and concentrate on using the current wardrobe creatively — and there should be plenty of time and energy left to plan and execute some larger DIY projects. I have done similar thing once before — I had financially very challenging period in my life and I just cut out all clothes shopping — now my life situation is so different, actually I think that I will just breathe more freely after this decision.

I don’t even think that this will make blogging difficult. I have still lots of stuff in my wardrobe that has never been photographed here. I have always enjoyed the view to how other people cycle their wardrobe and make out new ideas how to make the favorites look fresh in different outfits. And then, I can probably dive deeper to DIY stuff in this blog, I’m thinking about sharing the projects from beginning.

Did you make any plans or promises for 2010?

And FYI: no, Bollinger did not sponsor this post, unfortunately …

Posted on | December 31, 2009 | 8 Comments

// Gunmetal and platforms

Posted on | December 6, 2009 | 2 Comments

atacoma

Acne is seriously teasing me with this new Atacoma release. Gunmetal. Duh. I really don’t want that… …or do I?

In Berlin I run a baby blue pair and I swear if I had not purchased my Mentor for Rützou wedge pair earlier this fall my shopping budget would have probably been gone bye bye. But these shoes share such a similarity in overall shape that I could not justify.

Another slight hesitation I have with Atacomas is their instant recognizability — Steve Madden or that another shameless copycat brand has even produced almost one-to-one copy of them — and that is definitely a sign of a “it”-shoe of the season. I have to say that I have more and more issues with instantly recognizable “it”-items. Maybe it is better to keep my eyes open in my next London visit for something less well known. What do you think about instantly recognizable trend items?

Posted on | December 6, 2009 | 2 Comments

// Poof!

Posted on | November 21, 2009 | 9 Comments

tutu

I have some fascinations for strangest of items. One of them is tutu. I have two… …well the other is full length nude tulle skirt with lining, not sure if I can really count it, the other is silver gray, more true to its origins.

From Etsy I have found several tutu shops, but I think that two of them are above others, Princess Doodle Beans makes beautiful and very affordable tied tutus (the image above and my gray one is from there), another one I’ve had my eyes on is Tiara’s Tutus.

I’ve used the full length one as evening gown with super tight, almost corset like dark jean jacket. I also have plans to make a super minimalistic leather corset to pair with it. The gray one is still waiting its debut, but I have plans…

carrietutu

carrietutu2

Sorry, just could not help adding some Sex and the City tutu goodness here. I’m not sure about the origins of the first image, it has been in my inspiration folder for ages. The seafoam colored one is from Bunny With a Toolbelt. I think I could use one mid length one in seafoam color in addition to those I own…

Do you have any use for a cloud of delicious tulle?

Posted on | November 21, 2009 | 9 Comments

// Everybody wants a piece of Jimmy

Posted on | November 14, 2009 | 6 Comments

I skipped the H&M IRL chaos today — but to be honest queued to web shop for a while. With no possibility to fit the clothes on I was mainly interested in accessories. Jimmy Choo is definitely not “the thing” for me and I’m not dreaming their actual stuff at all. But when H&M pricing meets decent quality and even slightly interesting design I’m always curious. Back to that later.

The thing I’m writing about here is quality and design. A regular H&M pair of shoes costs about 40 € — material is very probably polyurethane and the designer is nameless. Now we have here real leather shoes designed by Tamara Mellon, who gladly presents her face in the PR of the collaboration. Shoe prices start from 60 € flats ranging 80 – 100 € heels/flat boots to 180 € (for thigh high leather boots). These prices are still very accessible, even with smallish Finnish income you could still indulge yourself with pair or two within a year. Not saying that those Jimmy Choo designs are the most practical ones to invest your hard earned money, that’s not the point here.

But if that is the price of mass produced but thoughtfully designed and decently manufactured product why is not everything available for us consumers to buy well designed and decently manufactured? The fact that designer actually wants to be presented in context of her work is actually a really good general measure of at least acceptable quality.

I want the faceless designers to step forward and insist that the general quality should be such that they can proudly add their names to the products. I want the nameless designers in the industry to demand such a freedom in their design job that they don’t need just copy items from the high end brand catwalks. I want the unknown designers — and bit better known manufacturers — have that much responsibility in the production that they can proudly tell where and how the product is manufactured and how the materials are produced. That will probably add another ten to twenty euros to the price.

But hey, we can afford that.

Posted on | November 14, 2009 | 6 Comments

// Five guilty pleasures

Posted on | November 1, 2009 | 9 Comments

Lovely Lily from UnoCosa’s Scrapbook sent me the Divine Award couple of days ago… …and although I have thought that I’ll keep this blog pretty free of personal stuff I could not resist to answer to this. It might be that I’m bit blinded by the fancy name of the award!

Ok, I should list five guilty pleasures of mine. This is not the easiest task, because I try to live relatively guilt free life — I mean what’s the point of pleasure if you spend a lot of time afterward regretting. But because I’m not perfect =)…

5) Beer, cookies and really good fresh bread. I have some problems with grains and really can’t eat them in large amounts. But an occasional cold beer, warm chocolate chip cookie from my local coffee shop, or a small loaf of oven fresh bread with butter melting on top just… …gets me sometimes.

4) Computer games — oh yes I have used hours and hours with these, starting with Aquarius computer in 1985, moving to Amiga, PC, we also had Xbox for a while. My genres are light strategy (Civilization, anyone?) and single player adventure/role playing games (from System Shock to Fallout trilogy). Just don’t even dare to try multiplayer RPG:s, well, maybe when I retire (if I ever do) I will let go… I enjoy playing and feel that it is a great way to get rid of for example work related issues that stick to my head sometimes too tight, but on the other hand I feel that it is total waste of time — plus I easily mess my circadian rhythm when playing…

3) Good coffee. We have a capricious but good Italian espresso machine at home — and my husband is quite seasoned barista these days, he makes great coffee. The coffee shop on the ground floor of our house is also very good. I enjoy the sense waking aromas of fresh ground espresso beans and a good hot cup of coffee is absolutely on top of my everyday pleasures list. But I really have some sleeping disorder thing going on — and can’t help but think that the daily dose of potent stimulant might not be that good for me.

coffee

2) I really can steal a bullet point from Lily here: a cigarette, a drink and good conversation over the random reflections in life .… I am just a very simply being who gets pleased easily with very small things!!! Except that I don’t smoke. If there is any guilt involved to this it has something to do with the amount of wine I’m able to consume… …well, I’m relatively responsible with this but a bottle of wine is common sight in our dinner table and I sure enjoy it as a part of the social activity, too.

1) Mmm-hmm… …the clothes. I have lots of them and I know that they will keep coming. Dressing up is quite a pleasure for me but I can’t deny that there is also a certain amount of guilt involved. I like my life to be relatively clutter free, so I just can’t justify excessive amount of shopping — plus living here is quite expensive so every square meter used to clothes storage really counts. I don’t want to convert our apartment to a giant wardrobe, and I’m afraid that we already are on a verge of that.

I also see that I’m coming more and more critic about consuming. I think that the right price for an item is such that it can be produced ethically in humanitarian and ecological measurements. But there is no way for a consumer really know the backgrounds of these issues in most cases. Oh yes, those single aspects of ethical production are eagerly used as marketing slogans these days, but I have strong doubts if those “organic cotton” or “environmentally friendly” labels tell the whole truth about mass produced items.

So I try to choose more and more from small producers and artisans, products those lifeline can be traced entirely (really difficult and rarely applicable), buy second hand stuff and do things by myself. Plus I really need to wean myself from too cheap stuff. I have enough basics, enough everyday stuff and if I use my spare money for cheap clothes we are going to drown to them sooner or later. The right justification for a new garment to enter my wardrobe is that I absolutely, deeply love it — and that it is really special enough. And I’m afraid that these conditions are not fulfilled with cheap mass produced stuff.

I think that i might pass this award for some fellow Finnish bloggers, I really haven’t seen it circulating around here too much. So it goes to stellagee, sugar kane, Jalouse, Maria and Julia — don’t feel any pressure about this, just wanted to mention you lovely ladies!

Posted on | November 1, 2009 | 9 Comments

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About

Location: Helsinki, Finland

Contact: kamicha (a) gmail dot com

I'm especially interested in young designers creations, non-established labels and indie fashion. So if you have something interesting to show, feel free to contact!

You can find Finnish design from both specific and some outfit posts - but both are tagged.

You might be also interested in DIY posts, How-to posts, DIY ideas - or my adventures in Etsy =).

More about me and this blog.