Fitting Room Focus: Stripy Dream

This instalment of Fitting Room Focus sees my return to the stripy wonderland that is H&M embracing spring time UK needs for shorts and soft happy warm weather patterns for fun Pimms drinking and stuff.

Here's me looking equally like I could be going running OR relaxing with a big portion of chips. A cunning disguise. I was actually doing neither.

top - £9.99, shorts - £14.99

This shirt is a bit too loose and blustering but I liked it's gentle colour and thought it would look nice with these trip-to-Kew-Gardens shorts. I love the shorts LOADS, but their weakness is that they have the stiffest button in the world. I'm not here for that, because I need my clothes to be about as tricky to remove as the plastic on a cheese single so I can avoid dying from exhaustion on my way out of a pair of shorts.

trousers - £19.99

Once I had removed the shorts via the emergency services, I tried on these light and breezy trousers. They were really comfy and pleasant to wear. Perfect for the warmer weather we've been having, but also good for if the weather decides very suddenly to get all cold. That's the beauty of light trousers. Good cuffs, good bum pockets, and good little stripes on these.

dress - £19.99

The last of my stripe trio comes in the form of this - a simple dress which looks like something you'd wear to a beach maybe? It looks like a "looking at the sea" dress or a "wear to barbecue" dress or a "making apple pie/chirping like a bird" dress. Hope those thoughts made sense. I like this dress it makes me feel very comfortable and cute and like I live in a La Redoute catalogue or something.

I love the muted colours on all these thingies, they are very "kitchenette"/"have a fruit" idk I'm too relaxed to form more coherent thoughts because these colours and patterns are so relaxing. Wow.
:o)

Listening to: Crowded House - Whispers And Moans

Notebooks!!!

In the past week or so I've been keeping lots of messy notes and lists in an all-purpose notebook. I haven't done this in a while because I've been keeping lots of notes online and in documents and drafts, but my sudden switch to the messy paper note-keeping I used to use has surprised me in its efficiency. I switched to digital note-taking largely because I felt really messy with my filled up and scribbly notebooks, but I think the messiness on those pages might've allowed my mind to be a lot less messy. It seems like physical note-taking on paper is a lot more dynamic (for example, it's much easier to draw little pictures and let your thoughts translate onto the page in the exact configuration that's most useful).

Basically, notebooks are the best. I'm sorry for forsaking you, sweet notebooks. To celebrate notebooks and remind myself just how useful they are, I've scanned myself with a couple of old ones that were very helpful (at the one at the top of this post is the primary one I'm using now). Thanks notebooks, ily.

Listening to: Tim Rose - Morning Dew

Diary: "I spent a lot of today with my jumper over my knees"

This week's diary subjects include Pokemon, large cakes, too much chocolate, questionable 90s film-making, cauliflowers looking like brains, and sleeping in the fetal position. Enjoy.

Listening to: Little Mix - Change Your Life

Fitting Room Focus: River Island Romp (sorry I just really wanted to say romp)

legs - 99p

This week I returned to my number one favourite dressing room with excellent lighting, mirror placement, and shop music: the one in River Island! As you can see below, I was having a magnificent shorts and bare legs day. Feels good.

I also wore this shirt to protect against the sort of delicate breezes that send my life into incredible upheaval because apparently I can't cope with what some of you might call "outdoors"

top - £22, shorts - £25

So as you can see, the first item of clothing I picked out in River Island was this geometry pop star crop top conundrum. I don't know how comfortable people who aren't Rihanna or Jessie J tend to feel in the land of extremely visible bellybuttons, but it's not really a place I want to be, although it was fun trying this on and pretending for a moment that I was in a Jetsons-esque nightclub shouting out parallelogram facts from a hoverboard.

I quickly put my own t-shirt back on, comforted by the excess of material draping across my form like a droopy curtain (I think I do the droopy curtain style pretty well), and turned my attention to my favourite thing ever: these shorts! I am a huge shorts fan, as I'm sure you well know by now (if not, rest assured that I truly love shorts, for they are comfy and easy to wear), and these shorts certainly did not disappoint. There is something about the cut of them - high waisted and flaring out smartly at the legs. They also have cool little zips at the bottom of each side - a nice detail. Shorts!!!

skirt - £25

Next up I grabbed this floral skirt. The pattern and colouring are a perfect distance between cute casual and smart. I feel like this skirt could be very versatile and I like to see how it looks paired with BUSINESS ATTIRE. Not sure why I capitalised that, it just seemed right.

was tempted to draw in some faces on my knees here but I exercised incredible strength of will in not doing so

dress - £30

I also found this fun and cute dress. I think the two pattern work perfectly together to create a really dynamic and interesting look. It feels very playful and also is lightweight and comfortable - an ideal warm weather dress.

To conclude, here is a picture of me winking:

;-)

Listening to: Nena - 99 Red Balloons

Simple

No fun little attachments this week, just some simple scans. Sometimes it's nice to go back to the basic formula and remember that the point of these is to record myself, a tiny fraction of my physical existence. Besides, I'm really tired today. (｡･ˇ⊆ˇ･｡)

Listening to: Pulp - Something Changed

Diary: "my amazing drawing of a grandma"

I skimped on diary entries this week, so I wrote some extra pages today to make up for it a bit. I'm happy with my illustration to text ratio though - the pictures are probably my favourite part, sometimes especially the shaky ones (like the above self-portrait). You can watch the video I mention in the last page here. I hope you like the dogs I drew this week too (my favourite is the one on the right with ears in the air!)

Listening to: Blancmange - Game Above My Head

Fitting Room Focus: Nautical Stripes & LYING TROUSERS

thick stripes & cute peach cardigan

Join me on my adventure to Next, the land of wildly inaccurate sizing, a selection of peachy pink delights, and good old loosely-nautical navy and white stripes.

Here I am showing off my rectangular, cutesy, android-like self in age-old Primark shorts, burgundy H&M jumper, purple tights (deceptively black-looking in this photo), and a David Bowie t-shirt (not that you can tell). I was also wearing my creamy white H&M biker jacket, but as you can see I'd already ripped it off in my hurry to shoo excess body heat.

Also of note is this bug badge which I keep on said jacket. This was a present from my mum and it is the best.

chinos - £20

I picked up two pairs of chinos and some jeans, and - whilst not all of these were quite my size on the label - none of them fit. Not even a little bit. I don't know what's going on with Next's sizing, but it sure did offer me some easy entertainment in the form of SAGGING FLAPS OF MATERIAL PARACHUTING AWAY FROM MY BODY.

cardigan - £25

I did, however, manage to find some things to fit me, like this spotty pink cardigan. They definitely had a strong colour scheme of soft pinks and corals with dark blues going on in store, which I liked. I think I would prefer this cardigan to ditch the sections of smaller spots in favour of having the larger ones all over, but I'm not sure. Sometimes having the two might be nice. I'm undecided.

jeans - £26

Here's me laughing at the ill-fitting jeans I picked out. Pfff. Jeans.

jumper - £30

I found this jumper and the striping is ideal. I love the blank navy parts. I feel like they give more visual "weight" to the jumper. Or something. *fashion words*
Also the big open neckline is nice.

when I'm smiling and my tooth pokes out like this it reminds me of Chip from Beauty & The Beast

cardigan - £20, dress - £45

I found this simple grey dress with a flattering shape and interesting but subtle pattern, and that's pretty cool, but the star of this excursion has to be this adorable coral cardigan. I love the colour, it's generous pockets, and the way it drapes. It's so cute!

favourite patterns :o)

Seriously, that cardigan. Wah!

Listening to: Bis - Eurodisco