february 27, 2006
paper, scissors, rock!
For Adelaide's recent zine fair extravaganza I made up some badges and zines. The most frequently shifted unit was definitely the "paper, scissors, rock!" badge (or magnet) collection. So frequently shifted was this unit, that I sold out of all the sets I'd made up.
Alan Brough from television's Spicks and Specks bought a set!
Now, dear readers, I offer you the chance to buy absolute wicked badges. Please note the non-traditional rock symbol being used on the third badge.
PSR! badges or magnets.
1 set is $6 including postage and handling.
2 sets for $10 including postage and handling.
I'm going to work out some type of paypal situation or similar so that I can get paid easily. However, feel free to register your interest in these totally wicked badges so I know how many more to make up.
(Prices for Australia only. Contact me for more information about international shipping.)
pipstar @ 02:11 PM | link | Comments: *
february 19, 2006
re: design and dinner
Back when I first started blogging (oh so many years ago) I was using Blogger and I didn't have access to categories. Instead, I made up separate blogs for recipes and images. And for some random reason along the lines of "travel specific design" I ended up making a separate travel blog.
Which has left me with a horrible dilemma - how on earth am I meant to redesign battlecat.net and make it more coherent?
Answer: I'm going to create One Blog To Rule Them All and it will reside on the front page and Be All Things To All People. It will be a fresh and shiny blog and will rely on categories to divide it up into food, travel, images etc. I'm even going to invest the time needed to set up Movable Type's dynamic archives.
But don't worry, all the old stuff will be archived and kept in its current places within Battlecat.
Anyway, tonight I have to head up to my Mum's place to cook dinner for my two brothers. Here's the recipe for tonight's meal.
pipstar @ 04:26 PM | link | Comments: *
february 16, 2006
me me meme (4 things)
Christy tagged me for the four things meme, so here goes:
Four Places I have worked:
At a florist as a florist's assistant (the most physically demanding work I've ever done)
An organic cafe as a sandwich maker, retail assistant.
Ratbag Games as a games programmer.
At a charity as a telemarketer selling lottery tickets.
Four movies I can watch over & over :
Withnail and I
Secretary
The Sound of Music
Amelie
Four places I have lived:
Ashton in the Adelaide Hills
Near Paradise (Dernancourt)
Coffs Harbour, NSW
Various houses around Parkside and Unley
Four TV shows I like to watch:
Spooks
Teachers
Mile High
Foreign Correspondent
Four places I have been on holiday:
Vietnam
Europe (Spain, France, Turkey, Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland)
Byron Bay
Tasmania
Four of my favourite dishes:
Goldfish Pie (Smoked Haddock)
Roast Lamb
Vietnamese Cold Rolls
Australian Breakfast Sushi
Four websites I visit daily:
Ask Metafilter
Treehugger
Nicht Das Papierkrieg
Crikey
Four places I would rather be now:
Having a cup of tea at Mum's
Learning to snowboard in Japan, Romania or New Zealand
Anywhere with Dan
Lhasa, Tibet
Four people I'm tagging with this meme:
Aliese
Dan
Ianto
Ellie
pipstar @ 11:27 AM | link | Comments:
february 15, 2006
stop me if you've heard this one before...
I've submitted a BlueList to the Lonely Planet website in the hope that I may win an opportunity to write for LP.
You can check it out and vote for it here.
pipstar @ 11:09 PM | link | Comments:
february 14, 2006
if you're squeamish, miss out on this post.
There are moments when I have absolutely no idea of what I'm going to do with myself. Am I going to be an architect, a teacher, a writer or a listener?
Today a woman told me she wasn't able to buy a ticket because she'd recently been diagnosed with cancer. She wasn't able to work anymore and she was about to go into hospital for major chemotherapy. A couple of weeks ago an old guy, a gentleman, told me that life was just not that good anymore because he missed his late wife so, so much.
Both times I started to cry, oh so quietly, but cry nonetheless.
This current job is really just a means to an end. In three or four weeks I'll leave so I can get all the goodbyes said and loose ends tied up. I'm just on the phones trying to sell lottery tickets, but sometimes I hear a story or a laugh, or even just a pause before an answer and it will touch me so much.
I have no idea what I am going to be, but I'm starting from this moment with 26 years of life behind me. I have no idea of where I'll end up living, but I'm starting from this bedroom in Parkside.
Wherever I go and whatever I become, it's going to be with Dan beside me. He lets me know that I can achieve anything. And on those days when the world just overwhelms me and I can barely even move, he hugs me and brings me tea.
Dan you are my bestfriend, my soulmate and the love of my life.
Thankyou for being there. I love you, I trust you and as you believe in my potential, I too know the great things you will achieve.
pipstar @ 09:45 PM | link | Comments:
february 14, 2006
things i'm a bit partial to at the moment.
Icebreaker clothing and Goretex jackets
Dilmah tea with purple Vitasoy
Smart looking spectacles
Handmade electronic Valentines
Midnight dance parties
Friends and housemates
Crikey daily emails
Wholemeal muffins with honey
Skype
Impractical pointy green shoes
Pink ugg boots
Naot sandals
Luge racing on tv
CouchSurfing and HospitalityClub
Badgemakers
Ratatat
Knowing the starting point, but not the desination
St Johns Wort and Vitamin B
3 more sleeps until Dan gets home
Knowing that I don't have to go to work the day Dan gets home.
And most importantly, Dan himself.
Happy Valentines Day,
Love Pippa
pipstar @ 12:30 PM | link | Comments:
february 07, 2006
be prepared.
It does appear that as a child I took the boy scouts' marching song very much to heart and have over the years, become more and more concerned about preparation. I write lists. Sometimes I actually even do the stuff on the list - but more than anything else I like the concept of a list whether it is a To Do List, a Places To Visit List or a Top 5 Desert Island Disc List.
While there is a control freak element of my personality which takes delight in making lists and knowing what to do next, there is underneath the control freak, a person who is very worried about stuff not turning out quite right. In the back of my mind there exists a tremendous list of things that might happen and often I seem to think about ways in which I can prevent them, or survive if they do eventuate.
That at least is one reasonable argument for why I get so fixated about packing lists for travel. Then there's the other aspect of working out what to source and pack and purchase. It is an awful lot of fun.
Preparing stuff for a trip is all about day dreaming the future. For example the purchase of my new jacket has allowed me to dream of unknown yet highly advanced snowboarding skills, wind across icy Siberian tundra and the shock of cold weather when I arrive in Shanghai. Not only did finding vacuumed packed disposable underpants pique my love of unusually packaged products, but I was able to imagine surviving the limited opportunities to do laundry whilst on the Trans-Mongolian railway.
But there are certain pre-departure decisions which are far more concrete than the possibility of rain or a luggage delay. What should I take away as my initial book?
I've already read both War and Peace and Anna Karenina, which would be the obvious choices for train travel across the steppes. Something about China would be great, but any book which criticised the Chinese government could be confiscated on arrival. Crime and Punishment is about to be completed and quite frankly Dostoevsky can be a bit too serious, I'm not sure if I could read any more straight away. There's an obscure travel book by Peter Fleming called The News from Tartary which I would love to take away, but I only have a hardback copy and it's a hard book to find.
So, even though I'm heading nowhere near India on the forthcoming leg of my travels, the two books that I would like to read while travelling are Shantaram and A Suitable Boy. I have to admit, I've already read both of them and they are both firmly in the Desert Island Books Top 5 list. Both books are huge as well.
Now, if I can only convince Dan to read them, I'll only need to carry one at a time.
pipstar @ 10:40 PM | link | Comments: **
february 06, 2006
fancy dress
If you looked at the piles of clothes that I'm selling, giving and throwing away, and also considered the clothes I'm keeping - you might begin to think that I have a lot of clothes. Perhaps you'd guess that I like to shop and buy nice things.
You would be right. Though when I've bought big ticket items worth being excited about they've been things like a laptop, a camera, a vintage dining table or a washing machine.
But today I bought the most expensive item of clothing that I have ever owned.
It's more expensive than my fancy handbag from Tribu that is really two bags in one. A greater investment than my green check coat or my toastie warm Icebreaker hoodie. And it cost way more than the pair of Sass & Bide rabbit boy jeans that I lusted after and finally bought at full price during a period of work-related anxiety. It will probably be worn more times than any of my three extremely hot little black dresses and won't require regular dry-cleaning.
You see, some people talk about buying a good suit, others consider a Burberry trench coat worth investing in, and I have to admit that money spent on jeans that you'll wear again and again is never really wasted. But my stepfather's investment piece of choice has always been a Goretex jacket.
Goretex jackets are prohibitively expensive, we're talking in the ballpark of $400+ for something that probably won't be featured in any high fashion magazine in the near future. They're the kind of jacket that serious Outdoor Ed types, such as my stepdad, "Outdoor" Ed, actually require. And that's because people like Ed go hiking in the rain, and cross-country ski and camp in the snow for fun.
Quoth the Gore-tex website:
This maximum-performance fabric is engineered to meet the demands of avid adventurers who want to maximize both the time they spend and the comfort they enjoy during their favorite pursuits.
Apart from bike riding through the parklands at night and the occasional day hike, I'm not sure if I could be counted as an adventurer, avid or seasoned. Sure I've travelled by myself and had my boobs grabbed on a remote mountain in Turkey. I've even walked through a blizzard in a substandard waterproof garment without even realising that I was in a blizzard because that's what I thought normal snow was like.
So despite my enduring love for a boy who is spending four weeks snowboarding in Japan and who ensures me that I too will love to snowboard and ignoring my claim that I will partake in a ridiculously long cycle journey at his side, even with my intention to travel almost continuously for the next 5 years including stops in icy places such as Siberia and wet places such as Ireland, it may seem a little bit presumptuous to make such a waterproofed, technical wear investment.
Still, you have to admit that it is rather a cute piece of technical wear.
pipstar @ 10:57 PM | link | Comments:
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