Second day of Brussels

15th of July

Today I got up fairly early, had my breakfast and decided I should stay one more night at the hostel. This was Mr E's last day in Belgium so we went out sightseeing the whole morning and afternoon. On the map there is loads of info about different stuff to see, or not to see. Like the park in the middle of Brussels which is famous for its 'rough gay sex at night'. How wierd isn' that! One thing I will not be seeing at least!

First stop was the Brussel history museum where we learnt how ridiculously small brussels were in the medeival times. Also there was a river going through the town which had to be covered up due to its horrible smell. One of Belgium's most famous things is their Manneken Pis, located in the heart of Brussels, which is a tiny little statue of a boy standing peeing. On the national day (the 21st if July) they dress him up in a tiny little cosume; Last year he was standing in a American coloured suit, a top hat on which it said 'Yes we can' and in his hand he held one american and one belgian flag. He has previously been dressed up in costumes such as Elvis Presley, a clown and some noble 1700 century outfit. Pretty fun I must say.

Second stop was Manneken Pis, he was so small you could easily have missed him if you weren't looking!

Third stop we started heading for the european center, but was it hard to find! We ended up cycling for some two hours trying to find this place and once we did time was so late we had to start heading back to the hostel, Mr E had to gear up his stuff for he was cycling to the airport, and I bought a map of Belgium to plan my journey.

At around 4pm Mr E got going, and I was left with a terrible feeling of beeing alone. For some reason I got really sad and I realised I'm actually affraid of being on my own! For a trip meant to be to a festival with loads of drinking and loads of people, it had now turned out to be a soul searching trip with only me and my bike. Which I by the way have to name, she's got soul man!

With this terrible feeling of despair I was just looking at my massiv map realizing just how far I have to go. I was convinced this whole thing is just a massive misstake!

Across the courtyard there was a guy sitting, he must have sensed my mood and came over to ask if he could join me. 'Of course!', I said. He was Mr D an turned out to be a really nice bloke from Norwich. Moreover he was doing the same thing as I, except he is going to Istanbul. Like me he's totally unfit, drinks and he smokes! He also confessed he didn't either like to be on his own and was dreading his upcomming birthday which he would have to celebrate on his own! He was such an angel in disguise and gave me the courage I needed to actually look forward to my journey.

Just before he met me, he had waved goodbye to his friends that he had been with all the way from amsterdam to Brussels. Us both being all lonely and sad we decided to go out for a kebab in the kebab district. It was nice, I learnt that Mr D likes to write poetry and back in Norwich he had been working in an office but absolutley hated it, hence the reason for him quitting and going out on his cycling journey. He has a blog where you can follow his journey: www.buriedinpomposity.blogspot.com I do recomend it, a very funny blog I must say!

When we got back there was some new occupants in my 10-bed room; two canadians of which one was 2,07m tall! Nearly 60cm taller than me, you can imagine how small I felt next to him! We ended up sitting on the courtyard with three more guys from Austraila, whoms names I never remembered, having some beers and some raspberry vodka which we had to sneak away to drink like high school students.

Later me and some of the crew decided to go for a walk, and where do you think we end up passing? The rough gay sex park. Need I say we lost our lust for walking and went quickly back home, where the guys staying had heaved three table-loads of beers, They were pretty drunk..

I'm in fregging Belgium!

The 14th of July

The 19th-21st of July there was supposed to be a massive festival called Pukkelpop outside Hasselt in Belgium. A week before I decide to go, but not just go by plane or something, oh no, I, totally unfit, no excercise for about 4 years decide to cycle! So I gear up, buy a bike and on the 14th I get offered to get a ride with a friend's parents in a house-van all the way to brussels!

All is going well, the parents are so nice and so funny, the whole trip down is just a blast! 1 hour away from Brussels, my phone is about to charge out, I get a text or rather 4, from my friends that I was supposed to meet up with the 18th in Brussels. Unfortunatley I have misstaken the dates for the festival; it wasn't in July, it it in AUGUST!! Great timing for my phone to die, not!

I finally arrive in Brussels somewhat tired, pack everything onto my bike and have no clue to where I am. So I head towards town to try to find the central station, I figured I could sleep there a couple of hours and then start my cycling journey home. Haa, the heavens open above me and the most massive thunderstorm strikes so I have to run to shelter: Where I stood for surely two hours.

It was still raining but I had to make my way somewhere, so I ask for directions cycle up a hill and get lost again. So I see these two guys, and I thought I heard them speaking swedish. I should add that no one I'd asked so far had spoken english.. So I quickly turn my bike around and oi's for their attention. I was right they were swedes, looking for an internet cafe, and so was I so I joined them. They ended up cycling to their hostel, which had a computer, and I decided to reserve a bed for the night there instead of sleeping on the station. By now time was around 7 so we cycled in town to get some food; a lovely kebab district just next to Grand Place Grote Markt. The guys had cycled from Copenhagen through Ansterdam and Germany, and apparently the cycle routs in the Netherlands are fantastic, on a bike you have priority even over cars! I'll have to cycle through there some day.

When we got back we went to bed, one of the guys was flying home early in the morning and the other guy was staying until around 6pm, then he was going to take his bike to the airport and fly home too.

It is fantastic..

..how stressful and distracting it can be to not have somewhere to live.. These last couple of weeks have involved events which have been the very last thing I've needed in the end of my project! I'm now living on a sofa at a friends, very temporary but at least it's somewhere much less stressful..



On tuesday I was dying fabrics, a hemp fabric in cochineal (squashed cockroach females), It gave a pinkish hue which reminds me of all the pinks I've seen a lot on pictures on coral reefs. I also dyed a cotton flannel and a linen fabric in indigo. I'm the most pleased with the linen and the flannel, the flannel gave a wave-like pattern. The linen I squeezed into a ball and put into the dye bath which gave a really cool batik effect! All of these fabrics have been sourced from organic sources, mainly at www.greenfibres.com. First pic is the linen, second pic is the hemp and the flannel.

On monday and wednesday I've been working dead hard on my cowl trousers. They have been such a nightmare! But now I can finally see the light in the end of the tunnel! I've been working with these for like four weeks now, when I started I realized that the denim fabric is to stiff and won't drape as like jersey would. So I had to make a seam on every cowl and make a facing for each one. All I have to do now is to take them in slightly over the bum to make the crutch deeper. First pic is the back, second is the front view.

I think I need to become better..

..at updating this thing..

I thought I'd never say this but I'm so glad to be back at uni again! To be completely honest with you, this easter have been an absolute mess! I've been in such a weird up and down spring-euphoria/left-over-winter-depression, I haven't gotten anything done! Absolute nothing, I was so uninspired that just the thought of writhing "hi" here seemed like a cheap B-horror film! I did tell myself that flickering in pattern cutting books wasn't doing homework so I some how I got away with that. It made me realize I want to work with cowls for at least one garment. Below is a top and skirt (with a cowl) by designer Liza Rietz (there's a short interview with her on http://coquette.blogs.com/coquette/2008/10/page/2/ )

There's been some thinking done though during easter over here, and how to get this thing a bit more organized. There should be at least one update a week, more if i find it worth mentioning of course. Then considering; what day? I'm in uni the first half of the week until late and when I get back my brain's like an overcooked broccoli, mildly said. Then there is the weekend, sunday would be a good day to update seeing it is the last day of the week, I do work on sundays however. So we're left with friday! The end of the week, the beginning of the weekend! Super Duper! I'm a bit scared now, seeing that I have an actual Update Day.. Oh well, let's just do as Queens of The Stoneage said and "go with the flow"

How much is your shirt?

I watched a swedish documentary today, it was fairly briefly about the textile industry. It's astonishing how cotton is one of the most popular fabrics and yet it is the least sustainable crop. For every 1 kg clothing we buy there is 1 kg of chemicals from pesticides, dyeing and varying treatments! Surely there must be loads of chemicals left in the clothes when we buy them, affecting us as well, but on a much smaller scale.

The chemicals and pesticides trickles down and pollute the groundwater supplies making it directly poisonous for drinking. However the people living in these areas have no choice but to drink it even though it leave them with cancer and congenital disorders.

This isn't directly big news but it made me think about my collection and how I, as far as I can, want to avoid cotton, and if I do use it I'll make sure it's sourced either secondhand or organically (even though there is pesticides involved there too).

Tanked up fishies

There was a day when I went all the way to the other end of London; Peckham where Horniman museum is. They have a free aquarium so I don't have to throw up those painful 16 squids as they charge at London Aquarium.. I was surprised of how much they managed to cram into that small space. It was good though, got some inspiration, and some 'on the spot drawings'. However I should have anticipated the fact it was a friday afternoon and all parents living in the area took their little kiddies for an outing.

Gosh, here we go!

Hmm what have I gotten myself into? Keeping a sketchbook online for everyone to see, all in the name of internet revolution..

Briefly what I'm doing then; this is my last term in uni, fashion and textiles, we're doing our final collections. Now I'm the kind of person who's conventional sketchbook will look really boring, empty,thin and very childlike. Those massive A3 white pages scares the shit out of me (and the black ones was apparently worst), So I tried an A4 plastic sleeve variation, it worked all the better, but still, I'm not quite happy. So here we go a sketchbook in the format of a blog! I mean most of my information comes from the internet anyways so then I can save my pennies on printing (and some trees too) in the process!

So, for the last collection we may choose whatever theme we like, which seems great. If you didn't choose a theme which covers more than 70% of our earth; the ocean.. To let you know, Apart from fashion and all things pretty (also pink(!) ), I have a great passion for the sea and everything consumed by it. I'm also very concerned of the fact that if we're carrying on fishing like we are, there won't be much of a living ocean for us to enjoy.





This is the theme board I made to show my theme, the feel and somewhat the colours I'll use. I'm absolutely convinced that all of this will change during the course of time, but hey! It's a start!