My Favourite Reads: The Bad Beekeepers Club - Bill Turnbull

Did you know that Bill Turnbull, off the telly, is also a bee man now, a beekeeper? Yeah, I know. This book is his affable account of taking up beekeeping as a hobby. It is amazing.

This is possibly one of the most unexpected books I have ever read. I found it after looking for books that could teach me something about beekeeping (I was feeling idly curious about bees), and ordered it out of vague intrigue before I even realised it was written by Bill Turnbull, so when I received it in the post and all the cogs in my brain whirred into the correct position, I was newly intrigued and ready to have a good laugh. I was not disappointed.

"I'm sure the makers of Blu-Tack never imagined that their product would one day be used to plug holes in the corner of a beehive."

― Bill Turnbull, The Bad Beekeepers Club

Turnbull's narrative of stumbling through the building blocks of learning to beekeep is remarkably affable and quite sweet. There are tales of getting stung at inopportune moments, tales of trying with gritted teeth to move bees from inconvenient places, tales of bizarre bee-related accidents and countless mistakes, and also lots of genuinely informative bee information. There's a whole heap of funny stories of clumsy beekeeping, but throughout an earnest love and respect for the bees. A really nice read that is both light and filled with heart. And hey - it also teaches you something about bees, and how easy it is to get Bill Turnbull into an embarrassing bee-related situation, so there's a lot going on here, and it's pretty great.

10 Cute Tops - Roses, Stripes, & Fruits | Zaful Wishlist

✶✵ This is a post made in partnership with Zaful and includes affiliate links. ✵✶

Yes, it's another Zaful wishlist! I love making wishlists a lot, since they're a great way to assess a certain style/cut of clothing or to create a sort of mini moodboard, and for some reason it really motivates and invigorates me. Maybe more so than buying stuff I like, since I have always enjoyed and felt deeply satisfied by a bit of window shopping. It's fun to analyse and talk about why I like the things I like, and maybe how well they fit in with me and my style, so please excuse me while I write 999 wishlists. You can't stop me. This is my world of wishlists and you're the helpless spectator. Okay, that sounds more ominous than I intended. I just love to write wishlists, and I hope you enjoy reading them too.

Let's look at some tops!

1. Floral Embroidered Mesh Blouse & Skirt Set - $24.99

I'm seeing quite a few of these see-through embroidered floral designs lately, and they're so interesting to me. I love how ornate they look. They're like a modern take on the transparent muslin clothing seen across classic Greek statues and paintings, or at least, that's what I'm reminded of to some extent. The embroidery is so pretty. You can wear the garden of Eden now (whilst chomping on apples, if you like).

2. Bowknot Floral Flare Sleeve Blouse - $20.99

This is another floral item, and clearly very 1970s inspired with the cut and flared sleeves. It's really the pattern and bowknot I'm most interested in here. If you put a bow on something, my ears automatically perk up like a cat when it hears the rustle of any kind of packet. This would be a perfect top for my self-insert Prisoner: Cell Block H original character to wear.

3. Striped Knot Front Crop Tee - $16.99

This is a simple, cute little cropped t-shirt. I love it because once again, it has a bow tie situation, and it's a lovely colour, and it has such cute stripes. This is the perfect casual tee.

4. Flounce Off Shoulder Striped Cropped Blouse - $19.49

Next I've picked this off-the-shoulder almost peasant-style blouse. I just think this has such a cute look to it. I love the ruffling, and the little buttons, and the gentle blue colour. This is the kind of top I imagine wearing in a meadow whilst counting buttercups.

5. Short Sleeve Orange Print T-Shirt - $14.02

This is a really fun one. A nice and easy white t-shirt, with a big orange on it. There's just something very enjoyable about this, and hey, it's good to express your love of fruit through your clothes. Oranges are one of my lesser-liked fruits, but still, I like this a lot.

6. Crew Neck Striped Knitted Top - $22.49

I really like the cut and style of this top, and it reminds me of movies like Empire Records and 10 Things I Hate About You - there's a particular kind of 1990s style feel to this. The more stripes the better, right?

7. Embroidery Cable Knit Sweater - $17.54

This is a sweater, not strictly a top, but I couldn't resist including it because the design is so pretty. Look at the roses. So sweet.

8. Bowknot Striped Embroidered Crop Top - $15.49

Here's another very cute and very simple t-shirt. I like the very light striped detail this has, and of course the bowknot and little rose patch.

9. Drop Shoulder Star Blouse - $19.00

I love this top because it's the night sky! I can't think of anything I'd want to wear more than that. I really like the pattern and shapes of the stars, they look so small and adorable.

10. Off The Shoulder Ruffled Checked Blouse - $8.58

My last pick is this gingham ruffled blouse. Another off-the-shoulder top, I think gingham works really well with this kind of style, and looks really delicate and soft.

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So, which item do you like best? I think my favourite might be the yellow striped top. It looks like a lovely, comfy item, and the yellow is a nice, happy, sunny colour. And like I said, bowknots are irresistible.

5 Favourite Songs | February 2018

It's time for my February round-up of 5 of the best songs I've been listening to this month. Many of these are actually new releases, because I've been listening to plenty of new and tasty music during February, so let's talk about some of it!

1. Pale Waves - The Tide

I'm completely head over heels in love with Pale Waves, a very much up and coming band hot on the heels of The 1975 (who they have a lot of direct involvement with - they toured together and Matty Healy directed a music video for them) with a synth-y, darkened pop sound that I live for. The Tide is a beautifully undulating addition to their growing catalogue of their slightly brooding, but incredibly dancable tracks. Their EP is out now, and I highly recommend giving it a listen.

Links: YouTube | Spotify

2. Kero Kero Bonito - Only Acting

I've been a big KKB fan for a while, and it seems they're back with another catchy little bop. This one goes in a somewhat spooky direction, and I love the music video for it which reminds me of so many things, not least 1990s music TV culture, the wave of Japanese horror that accompanied the film Ring into our collective consciousness, and the found footage style that found footing around the same time. It's a great foray into the pop culture of that time period that clearly inspires Kero Kero Bonito a lot. And the song is cracking.

Links: YouTube | Spotify

3. Not3s, Mabel - My Lover (Radio Edit)

This keeps being advertised to me on Spotify, and I'm glad because it's good. This song is really smooth and relaxing and makes really good use of male/female dual vocals for a beautiful harmonising effect. The video is pretty cute too. It involves candy floss and teddy bears.

Links: YouTube | Spotify

4. BoA - ONE SHOT, TWO SHOT

BoA is a living legend, having debuted at age thirteen in the year 2000. She is still out here releasing incredible music, and this new single has me shocked to my core. I love it. It's delicate and smooth initially before building up to a brilliant dance track that is both energetic and effortless. Get thee on the dancefloor.

Links: YouTube | Spotify

5. They Might Be Giants - When Will You Die

This is a wonderfully cathartic song to listen to if you hate someone. It's refreshingly upbeat, straightforward, and happily hateful. It may have been released in 2011, but it's a timeless, playful, funny, and freeing song.

Links: YouTube | Spotify

♬

I'm really excited to see what will end up being my favourite tracks next month, but in the meantime please let me know what you're listening to at the moment. I need to know about ALL the music. All of it. Find me on the dancefloor wishing I had BoA's multicoloured sequin jumpsuit.

LOVE DOG: Red & Blue Paintings

I've said it a million times, but I love aimless painting. Painting with no idea what you're doing and making everything up as you go along. Painting big shapes and just enjoying the feeling of the brush on the paper. Sometimes I like to have plans and ideas stored up in a metaphorical big box of ideas (I love to keep notes and I find that the more notes I keep, the more naturally and spontaneously ideas seem to come to me), but other times I like to just wing it. These paintings were more towards the latter.

I seem to have stumbled into a heart-focused theme here, and I embrace that. I love hearts. I also really like the blue/red colour combination, so I've gone for that again. A nice and easy colour combo that I love revisiting.

I'm not sure why I own lined notebooks considering I always paint in them much more than I write in them. Maybe I should make sure to stick to plain pages in the future. It doesn't really matter though. Maybe I should hand-write more. I love doing it - there's something therapeutic and rhythmic about writing things out.

Anyway, these paintings were really fun to do. I love the hearts, the colours, and the things that fall out of my brain and perpetuate my continuous animal-related amusement.

For The Moon & Stars

Good morning moon
I'm glad you're still here
In pale morning sky
Without any fear

Good evening stars
How have you been?
I see you've let
The night begin

Good night my friends
From far away
Thank you for bringing me
One more day

Let's Play: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Game Boy

I love to play old, strange, and foreign Game Boy titles every once in a while, so I thought I would have a go at this Sailor Moon Game Boy game, released exclusively in Japan in 1992 and fan-translated into English in 2004. Let's see what it has to offer.

The first thing the game does is ask you whether you want to play 'boys' or 'girls' mode. I was intrigued by this, but sadly it's just a difficulty option. If you choose the 'boys' option the game gives you fewer lives and a smaller amount of HP. I'm not a big fan of this, for obvious reasons, but alright.

How the game works for the most part is that you walk around an area, investigate because your cat has a bad feeling about something, and then end up in a fight stage with a boss. On the first level (if we can call it that) there is also a "Sailor Game" mini game, which echoes the Sailor V arcade game featured in the Sailor Moon manga/anime. You have to beat up a burger. It's a nice touch.

I didn't play the entire game, because the layouts are a little bit confusing and figuring out where you have to go is tedious, but apparently it has about three levels. The game is fairly difficult, but I think it's a very interesting adaptation.

Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon follows the events of three episodes of the Sailor Moon animated series. I think some of the character designs and animations are quite nice for Game Boy titles of this era (check out my animations below), and I think my favourite parts of the game are being able to talk to Luna and playing the Sailor V arcade game.

I also like that the icon for Usagi's lives is a little bunny (because 'usagi' means bunny, get it?) - another small touch that gives this game a bit of extra character.

It's not a very enjoyable game to play, but it is better than a lot of games from this time, especially TV tie-ins. At least the movements and animations in this game are relatively fluid. I recommend playing it on 'girls' mode, because clearly what we're dealing with here is the Dark Souls of 1992 anime tie-in Game Boy games.

Outfit & Zaful Haul: Heart-Shaped Glasses

✶✵ This is a post made in partnership with Zaful and includes affiliate links. ✵✶

I was asked to pick out some stuff from Zaful during their Valentine's Day sale period, so of course I decided to grab some romantically themed items to create an outfit around. I knew I had to grab their amazing heart shaped rose-tinted glasses, because they're so ostentatious and cute.

Look at them! I love them. I think I did really nicely for accessories here, but let's detour for a moment to talk about the outfit.

The only clothing item I picked up in this little Zaful haul was this interesting blue crop top. I had my eye on this because I thought it was a fascinating shape and I wanted to see how it would look on me. Its style reminds me of both the 1970s and early 2000s simultaneously, and I love the puff sleeves and light blue colour.

I was pretty impressed with both the cut and the feel of the material here. I was a bit worried it would end up fitting me weirdly, but luckily it fits really nicely. I paired it with my red H&M skater skirt because I can't resist a baby blue/postbox red colour combo.

Now let's move on to the accessories and miscellaneous items. I picked up these awesome heart earrings. I like the colour options a lot, and they're nice and simple studs that hopefully will add a cute touch to all sorts of outfits.

I also grabbed this flexible mini tripod to try out with my camera. It seems pretty sturdy and easy to manipulate in testing so far, so I'm pretty happy with this.

I decided to go for a make-up item as well, and I was really pleasantly surprised with this lipstick. It's a lovely earthy dark red colour (sorry for not swatching it), and it feels nice and creamy and looks great for my skin tone, I think. It smells like chocolate too.

The very last item I chose was another pair of heart-shaped earrings. These are a cool drop style and they're really fun to wear. Unfortunately, there is a thin plastic film over the red part and air bubbles can be seen here. It would be better if those air bubbles weren't there, however I do still like the earrings a lot despite that.

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I'm not sure what my favourite item is here, since I'm so happy with everything. I want to say it's the lipstick, since it smells so good, but I don't know. Overall I really enjoyed all these items and I shall probably be obnoxiously wearing the glasses every day for a while. Which item do you like the most?

My Favourite Reads: Mort - Terry Pratchett

Representations of death are fascinating to me. As a theme, as an event, and as a character. And no book represents death as a character more wonderfully than this book. In Mort, Death is clever, intimidating smarty-pants who loves cats. He's wonderful.

“He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.” 

― Terry Pratchett, Mort

Terry Pratchett is perhaps comparable to Douglas Adams in many ways. They share a particular kind of tongue-in-cheek comedy and a flippancy towards quite serious life subjects, and they also have a real talent for creating characters who are ostensibly simplistic yet ultimately have quite a depth of character. Perhaps Discworld is to fantasy what The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is to sci-fi. Pratchett has such a flourish to his worlds. I feel like he could've written endlessly and I could have read Discworld novels endlessly, the both of us turning in a circle of literary production and greedy consumption for eternity. I find it hard picking out details of individual Discworld books just because its universe is so real and all-encompassing in my head, but Mort remains a very special book to me in that it introduces Death.

There is rarely a character that I feel as close to as Discworld's Death. His very existence is funny. To the core of his conception rest a thousand giggles, and I refuse to stop laughing. His resolute presence in the jumbled, chaotic universe of the Discworld novels is in itself deeply amusing, and I love that he acts as this matter-of-fact foil to the abject silliness that the much more supposedly 'normal' characters get carried away with. Death is the voice of reason, but he could also murder a curry, apparently.

Brilliant.

Diary: Pasta & Packages

It has been an interesting time so far in February, what with making my scanner animation and finally trying out Netflix for the first time (it is pleasantly smooth to use, so I've been using it as a chance to finally catch up on some Once Upon a Time).

I think that what I meant to say on 7th February is that my nose mysteriously hurts, but clearly the space between my brain and hand made this into even more of a mystery on the way. Please appreciate the dog café stickers I've added here. They're really calming and make me want to have many, many desserts.

I've been reading a lengthy book of Korean history (A History of Korea - Jinwung Kim) which is incredibly interesting, and it's got me thinking about what I'm reading. I think it's going to take me a long time to finish, so I'm thinking about starting another, shorter book to read alongside it, but I'm not sure.

I also got a few packages of wigs, clothes, and accessories which were really fun to receive and I've done some blog posts and video stuff about those items. I spent some of Wednesday listening to a lot of relaxing music - some nice and soft gentle pop stuff and some piano instrumentals.

I ended up forgetting about my diary for a couple of days, but that's okay - you just get to see more stickers if that happens! There's really no way to lose. I've mentioned pasta twice across these pages, so clearly I have something on my mind, and it's pasta.

AIMLESS CHALLENGE (20 THINGS TO DO WHEN YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO)

Do you ever feel like you're standing outside your life and staring blankly at it, seemingly completely devoid of all brain activity, even though you know you should probably do something? Well, I've written a handy list of things to do when you don't know what to do. Let's call it the AIMLESS CHALLENGE. These are your tasks - complete them if you dare.

1. Compose a poem about the moon. A haiku, a limerick, rhyming couplets that have little connection? WHATEVER.
2. Draw a dog. Especially if you can't draw - just draw a dog, okay?
3. Take a photo. Why are you ever NOT taking one?
4. Organise your socks. There's no better time to organise your socks than right now! What a riveting activity!
5. Eat ice cream. No reason for this, I just thought it was a good suggestion. Try praline or pistachio flavour.
6. Read some non-fiction, and either learn something cool or fall asleep - or both!
7. Think about Niles Crane. Just think about him.
8. Put on a necklace. Or five necklaces. You can put on as many necklaces as you want. That's the beauty of this world.
9. Write an angry letter. To your dad, to Mr Blobby, to the electric company. Whoever.
10. Visit the river. Walk alongside it. Wave happily to it. It appreciates your company.
11. Start a blog. If I can do it, you certainly can. Write ten blog posts about your hatred for the Cloverfield movies, or whatever.
12. Play video games for six hours. Grow crops, or destroy orcs, or capture cute monsters for a while. A long while.
13. Force someone to watch a slideshow of your holiday snaps. A timeless classic for all the family!
14. Write a Will & Grace fan fiction where they get abducted by aliens. Please. And then send it to me.
15. Clean your floor. Come on, it needs cleaning and you know it.
16. Make a macaroni-decorated frame for someone. The greatest gift of all.
17. Clear out your wardrobe. Only keep the items a cool space detective would wear when time travelling to 1981.
18. Rearrange all your furniture, decide it looks weird, and then put it all back in its original place. A really important ritual that we all must carry out every two years for no reason whatsoever.
19. Watch this series of video essays about the Transformers movies by Lindsay Ellis. It's called 'The Whole Plate' and it's amazing.
20. Sleep. You've done enough now. Sweet dreams.