Wild and Woolly

It may come as a bit of a surprise but I actually like playing video games from time to time- especially with my boyfriend. Lately we've been playing Yoshi's Woolly World, which is about as cute as it gets (aside from my beloved Animal Crossing) navigating an amigurumi world to recover balls of wool. In the opening sequence, Yoshis of all different types and colours happily frolic around the home world until the mischievous Kamek bewitches them into balls of yarn and scattering them across various worlds. Aside from the super cute, pastel graphics every time you save a new Yoshi you can choose to customize yourself in their image! The combination of easier boss battles, cute graphics and easy mode for beginners makes this game perfect for small children between the ages of five and ten. Or bigger kids like me who aren't the best at video games (aside from Super Smash Bros. where I kick ass!) Sorry for the slight deviation, there'll be plenty more fashion tomorrow.

1-GameSpot, 2-Nintendo Enthusiast, 3-Nintendo Store, 4-NintendObserver, 5-TheGamersHub, 6-CtrlHelp, 7-NintendoLinked.

Where is My Mind

It's hard to believe it's been over a year since I first penned these journal entries (remember that I wrote my 2014 journal entries in a 2013 diary?) and a lot has changed since then. These feelings of uncertainty towards my partner have since been resolved, or rather I was able to express them and feel so much better for it. We're back together now but that feeling of freedom and being in touch with my own body and soul was so grounding. Anyway given that I spent a lot of time composing these thoughts and creating little doodles to accompany them I thought they needed to exist online as well as tangibly. Or that maybe someone would find these photos at just the right time and deem it some sort of miracle and take comfort in these words frozen on the page. The human experience is always an embarrassing debacle but there are rare moments of exceptional beauty. Not the stuff of art films but memories which crystallize in our minds and we will hold on to for decades to come. I take comfort knowing that people have extended such kindness and warmth to me in the past, and those moment are just as powerful as being told that I am loved. In those moments words are not needed, I feel it all around me and there can be nothing more perfect or powerful.

I'm a Scientist Too

So this is something I've managed to avoid or at least delay for the last three or so years. Now that I'm a month into my honours and have technically finishing my undergrad degree it's time to face facts: I'm a scientist. It's something that I've only ever mentioned in passing, or heavily down played under some kind of false modesty because saying it out loud on the Internet is an incredibly scary thing. I felt taking pride in my achievements would make me some kind of bad person, but I should be proud that I have a BSc with a double major in geology and a double minor in biology. I suppose I was reluctant to address this at the end of last year while I waited to receive the news on whether I had been accepted into honours. I've always kept quiet about this because I felt concerned that this would somehow make my opinions about fashion less valid. The other scenario is that researchers would find my fashion blog and that my academic work would be taken less seriously. The worst scenario is that I would be forced out of science on the basis that I like clothing. It's taken me a very long time but I've finally realised that one shouldn't detract from the other and anyone who thinks so is not worth my time. Unfortunately the fact remains that some very influential people within science may object to how I dress.


My project is on palaeontology and focuses on the analysis and identification of organic inclusions in amber from south-eastern Australia. Basically I'm looking for plant material as well as any insects and other invertebrates. I'd like to think that I'm doing work related to Jurassic Park, but without the cloning and addition of frog DNA (plus genetic material has a half-life on the scale of thousands of years rather than millions of years but whatever). So far it's been a lot of work but I've been very lucky to work on a project which I love and am already considering a PhD next year- if I get the grades.

Thank you to Annika Victoria from the Pineneedle Collective for largely inspiring this discussion and giving me the courage to give form to these thoughts. By keeping silent for so long about my involvement in science I was actually contributing to the perpetuation of a stereotype that scientists are always white straight cis men and usually upper or middle class. Dismantling this pre-conceived idea not only helps the next generation of budding scientists, but also helps women already in science (of which, there are few). The women who are in science are typically stereotyped as some kind of hero for balancing their home and work life. This is something I've discussed with a good friend from university and we're both sick and tired of hearing this repeated over and over again. 

*Photos via Rookie Mag: Dinosaur Jr