And now for something completely different

I went rock climbing outdoors for the first time ever today! On proper rocks! LOML is a keen climber and often goes off into the mountains to do battle with Nature, but up till now I have been an enthusiastic advocate of gym climbing and a bit apprehensive about venturing outside onto (rough, pointy) rock. Today, however, LOML taught me to lead belay, and off we went. I feel a great sense of achievement. Outdoor climbing is much more empowering - I now feel like I could successfully survive being marooned on a desert island, or running from a hungry mountain lion, or something like that.




I hope you all had a great weekend!

Happy Easter!

Beret - vintage, thrifted
Top - thrifted
Jeans - vintage, thrifted
Oxfords - thrifted
Cardigan - thrifted
Sunglasses - vintage, thrifted

Happy Easter, everyone! We did our grocery shopping yesterday morning, which was torturous - the roads and the supermarket were absolutely crazy. Clearly everyone was in an enormous panic about the shops being shut today and on Good Friday, and rushed out to buy everything they could conceivably need. It was like watching people prepare for a nuclear holocaust. Except one that requires large supplies of chocolate and wine for some reason. Speaking of which, I had six chocolate eggs for breakfast and am feeling surprisingly un-sick.

I have sent out an email with the details of my vintage sale to everyone who left their address in the previous post - if you haven't received it, check your spam folder! If you live in Christchurch and would like to come, please leave me a comment with your email address, and I'll be in touch. I'm really excited about it - I went through my closet yesterday and there are some really great pieces going up for sale.

After this weekend, I'm going to be concentrating on the book full-time again. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm also a bit apprehensive. There is still a lot of work to do before I reach the end of the revised draft. I was chatting to LOML about this yesterday, and he reminded me that I'm still very new to the whole process, and shouldn't expect to be au fait with it just yet. It's true. Before The Cry of the Go-away Bird, I wrote four complete 'novels.' At least, I thought they were proper books. They were certainly book-length. They had a plot: a beginning, a middle and an end. They had characters. But they were stories. Long stories, yes, but stories - not novels. I know this is going to sound a bit strange, but a novel is not just a long story. It has its own geography - its own rhythm. If I have learned anything over the past two years of writing from home, it is that you design and build a novel rather than just writing it. It is a structure that you construct brick by brick - you don't just start at the beginning, carry on until you reach the end, and then stop.

I hope you all have a wonderful day filled with chocolate of various descriptions!

Great Friday (and attention, denizens of Christchurch!)

Beret - vintage, thrifted
Cardigan - vintage, thrifted
Brooch - vintage, thrifted
Dress - vintage, thrifted (I sense a pattern developing)
Belt - vintage, thrifted
Petticoat - vintage, thrifted
Bag - vintage
Shoes - No 1 Shoe Warehouse

Happy Good Friday, everyone! I know that Good Friday isn't traditionally a happy day, but we get the day off, and therefore it is not just Good, but Great. I have eaten a lot of mini-Easter eggs today, and now feel a little bit nauseous, but happy.

I've been thrifting more often than usual over the past couple of weeks - and it didn't help that the office at which I was working was right down the road from one of my very favourite thrift stores. One of the dangers of thrifting is the accumulation of vast amounts of Stuff, made easy by the very low prices. Thrifting is also an exercise in relaxation for me, and it's very tied up in my identity - I think that I've been indulging more often because I feel a bit unsettled about our move. So much is going to change - some things for the better, of course, but it's still scary. For me, creating outfits is a way of asserting control over my world. I might not be able to control what happens during a day but, dagnammit, I can control what I'm wearing and how I feel about it. And a big part of that is experimentation with new items, which is where thrifting comes in. I'm going to cut down now that I have finished at the office for the time being, but my closet is bulging at the moment.

To counter-act this, I'm planning to hold a little sale at my house to sell off lots of my vintage pieces - the ones that I don't love enough to take with me to the US. It's invitation only, so if you are a blog reader here in Christchurch and would like to be included, please leave your email address in the comments (suitably disguised to avoid the spammers, of course) and I'll be in touch with the details when I have a solid plan. I'm planning to price items from $1 up to about $50 maximum, so there should be something for everyone! I'm also going to sell off some of my books - I used to work as a buyer for a book store, and I have managed to accumulate a huge collection of books that I've read once but don't want to read again (all my beloved books are coming to Austin, of course. Their numbers run into the thousands, so that should be interesting).

I hope you've all had (or are going to have, depending on your timezone), a relaxing day off.