2017 Flashback, #2 - Blogger Meet Ups

I'm sharing some of my posts from the year.  This post  (first published here) was all about a blogger meet up that almost didn't happen.  

29 October 2017

Hi darlings!  You haven't heard from me for a few days.  I'm back home now and, no surprise, I am kicking off my restart with a post of epic proportions, sort of like a small Enid Blyton adventure - but without the choccie biscuits and ginger beer.  So I suggest you get yourself a coffee and cosy up before you start reading.

Four Two Go to Batemans

So who are our Four?  Anna and Mr Him from Mutton Years Style and Pout and her Photographer.  If one of us took a pet it would make Five, but so dedicated to the legacy of Enid Blyton we are not. 

You've previously met our Four out on their jolly japes in Lewes and Wakehurst.

Continuing their adventures, our Four arranged to meet up to visit another historical place in Sussex (be warned, there are many!).  They chose to meet on the day when Storm Brian pelted his way through most of the UK.

The Pout Two set off from the Sussex coast and had a hairy drive through flooding and debris-strewn roads but made a timely arrival at their destination.

The Mutton Two didn't.  They had decided to have their own adventures, which you can read about here  and  here.

Their drive was hairier still and they found themselves in a place called Heathfield with a motor car that had decided to , err, stop.  They thought at first it was quickly fixable after a short pit stop. 

So what does the Pout do when faced with a short delay?

Why, she eats a yummy cheese scone, of course, whilst she finds where her friends are stuck on the map. 

Hmmnn, not far, it seemed.  About 1.5 inches, as the crow flies.

But not far was too far as without a working car it doesn't get you to this fine building here

Soon the Mutton Two's car stoppage had been upgraded to not-working car status, requiring some emergency AA attention.  Yes, there was much more exciting fun to be had with a broken motor car and a hang-around in a storm-exposed Co-op car park whilst waiting for a friendly AA man and his tool bag of tricks.  And who can blame them?  It certainly makes good copy.

So all hope of a meet up at this historical place was abandoned.  Instead, The Pout Two continued the tour and acted as proxy for The Mutton Two, who were at Brian's mercy in a place called Heathfield.

But where were The Pout Two?  Let's look at the clues.

Here's Mr X whose house it was, BITD.  I'll kick-start you a BIG clue - this one didn't make cakes!

A list of books titles and beautiful animal prints lined the walls.

Desks and cosy reading spaces could be seen; a book casually left to the side of comfy sofa.

An early typewriter and an overflowing waste paper basket.

Ephemera of the time.

Books.

 

More books.  And more books still.

Our gent was obviously an admirer of well written works. If he were around today, he would surely be a reader of The Pouting Pensioner.

So, dear reader, those are my clues.

Who lives in a house like this? Well, here's a big clue.

Yes,  four two went to Batemans, the home of Rudyard Kipling.  Did you guess right?

    I'm sure I don't need to tell you who he is as you are obviously someone who enjoys reading great literary creations if you are reading this Pout post :0) !!

And so the tour continued.

Here we two saw Kipling's school boy gear, his place of ablution and his bed.

We saw his aga, and TP asked our Pout to rustle him up a quick omelette.  Typical!

We saw where he dined with illustrious guests of the time.

Where he enjoyed post-prandial drinks.

The state of the art gadgets he installed.  He liked all the latest gizmos, like electricity.

He certainly did well from his writing.  Here's his Rolls Royce.  I wonder how many more posts I have to write before I get my first roller :-) !!

Mr Kipling's house is now owned by the National Trust.

And as always with these properties, egress is not possible until one has admired the beautiful scares and homewares on sale.  It is nigh on impossible to walk away from these shops without one of these gorgeous scarves in a carrier bag.  However, on this occasion I  succeeded.

It is nice to walk through the gardens, which I did on a previous visit.   But with Brian finding me every time I poked my head outside, these shots represent as far as I ventured.  Eventually Brian caught me proper when returning to the car and belted me with one of his deluges.  Drowned rat, you get the picture don't you.  My carefully coiffed hair ;-) now wet. bedraggled and flat as a pancake.

Whilst all this culture was being taken in and coiffures were being dismantled, The Mutton Two had met with the AA man who had done the business to get the Mutton Motor back on the road.  And that road led to the nearby Star Inn, a delightful 14th century Sussex pub, where they arranged to meet with The Pout Two for a hearty luncheon.

However, The Pout Two's satnav decided to have its own fun.  It chose not to include this pub on its normally reliable Places of Interest section, despite the pub having been there for more than 700 years.

The Pout Two drove and drove with no sighting of the olde worlde pub.  So when a modern-day satnav fails, one has to resort to the olde satnav.  The Pout popped into a hairdresser's and asked the way.  The successful collusion of a receptionist, a barber and the gent whose hair he was cutting resulted in step by step instructions being given on the back of an envelope.  Turns out the pub was in Old Heathfield and we were driving around well, just plain-vanilla Heathfield.

Thanks to the excellent directions of those kindly Heathfield people, The Pout Two found themselves finally reunited with their friends and Two became Four.

Anna and The Pout were united with a bottle of grown ups' ginger beer and all was good.

And the chatting commenced.

We managed to pause the chat long enough to order some fine fare.  

TP's banger and mash and the Pout's starter prawns.  With chips.

We four chatted and chatted.  It's so wonderful what frendships are made in Blogland.  To meet a fellow blogger is special indeed.    And as we have met several times previously, we chatted for Blogland.

At times, most of the time the men talked amongst themselves and Anna and The Pout talked much blogginess.  Outfits, collabs, blogger meets, bot issues, family, work, the universe. 

We paused to take in the splendour of what was around us.

The pub smells welcoming, a lingering smell of old log fires.

We took in the quirkily cosy pub décor.

The decor got blurry.

Wine bottles were mistaken for fuel.

So we thought it time to leave.

Maybe it was for the best.

I'd like to thank the erudite and funny Mr Him and the witty, delightful and stylish Anna for another lovely outing.  It's great to meet up with old friends and The Mutton Two are already feeling like friends we've known forever.  Maybe next time we'll just cut out the middle man and head straight for the pub!

And thank you , dear reader, for joining us on another Four Go To ... adventure.

A la perchoine.

2017 Flashback, #4 - Coco's Pearls

 It seems that pearls are still very much in our hearts as well as hanging around our necks.  The Coco Pearl (here) was a popular post, which was a relief as The Photographer certainly put in the hours when I was compiling it!

12 November 2017

My blogging mate, the so lovely Anna of Mutton Style, invited me to join her in putting together some Chanel pearl layering.  After a day sorting our my jewellery into colour-groupings,  Anna's email was serendipitous,  her timing impeccable.  Yes, I'd created a neatly stored stash of pearls in one of my jewellery drawers, so it was game on.

But hold on, pearl layering?  I know about pearls layering my lovely Zara top, but not much else.  Time for a bit of research.  Oh how I do love research!

I think of Chanel and I think elegance and timeless dressing.  I think boucle and braid trims.  I think chain belts. I don't immediately think of pearls, but having spent hours drifting around Pinterest thoroughly researched the subject matter,  I now know that was something Coco did with panache.  She piled them on in abundance, more being more, and it's seems that, as always, many have copied her perennial style.

However, pearly layers alone would look indecent on this blog, so I had to think up outfits to go with my pearls.  There are some styles which are synonymous with the house of Chanel and with its founder, Coco.  Join me on my journey as I match some classic "Chanel" outfits with pearls.

Boucle Suits

I had to dig deep in my archives to find a pink boucle suit from Alexon, from yonks ago.  Time for some 2nd lovin' for this pinkie.

I used the jacket on its own in order to create a black column with a skirt from another boucle suit.  It's black.  You can't see the texture.  Trust me, it's textured boucle!

I teamed it with a Next frill-front blouse and Clarks heels with a errrm, with a  "reptile that shall not hiss speak its name" print.

And I started piling on the pearls.

This is a nice mixing up of the two suits.  Sort of brings pink into winter.

Coco showed more restraint here though, just a doubled-up pearl strand.  Elegant, eh?

Of course, those with Chanel-style jackets can try mixing it up a bit with jeans.  I love these looks and I feel some mixing up brewing in my wardrobe too.  And if I am going this route, I will search around for some braid to Chanelify the jacket.

OK, boucle and pearls, in the bag.  What else? 

Leoprint!

Well, you can imagine how excited Lady Leoprint was when she realised that pearls and leoprint look pretty fine together.

Out came my ancient black boucle Marina Rinaldi suit, which has an animal print fur trim.

I decided to do some pattern mixing with my animal prints.  I added a Next leoprint jumper.

I piled on more pearls.  I discovered you just keep adding to the pile around your neck.  Peasy.

Then I had a plan ...

Excitedly I discovered that I could create a muff-effect feature .  Cute, huh?

I like this outfit because the pearls and the leoprint tone each other down.  Maybe the layers got a bit messy, though.

So, suits n pearls, done.

Dresses

My mate Keira guided me towards longer strands for dresses.

My black base is an Artigiano faux-wrap dress.

I introduced some length.  I realised that it's quite a challenge to keep long strands tidy.

But I think I could work on this to tidy up the layering.

So, LBD and pearls.  Classic.  And done.  I felt TP would want to take me places in this outfit.  And probably leave me there!

Seems like there are two ways to go with layering.  Mess 'em up, or keep 'em orderly.

I chose orderly for my next look, wearing a long Rohan jersey dress.  Black, of course.



I realised that by de-cluttering the neckline and adding a medium length to the mix, it created the orderly look that I was going for.  Graduated.

Oh how I would love to go places in this black and pearl number!

And I read that longer length skirts are the thing for AW17, so here I show you something pretty near to bang-on-trend.

Lace

Well what about throwing lace into the mix?!

  

I felt lace needed something soft-coloured.  Pink.

I paired up the suit as nature the designer intended, skirt and jacket now together in pinky union.

The lace top is from Dotty P.

You can see my jewellery cabinet on the right.  Missed a photo opp here, should have opened it up so you could see my brilliant organisational skills at work with jewellery categorisation.  So proud.

I felt that the model had been right to keep the pearls high around the neckline, which is what I did instinctively with this outfit.  

But, dear reader, do you have any ideas where I could take this outfit?  I felt I was all dressed up with no clue as to where to go in it.  It was a smart step to far for a lady in retirement.

Chanel-casual

I was surprised to see that Chanel did casual too.

Here's Coco in a cream skirt and cardi.  Well, I don't have a skirt that follows this look so, lucky me, I found a pic in ... black.  And I have an abundance of black, eh peeps?!

Firstly, I decided to follow the model's headless queue for consistency.  

I also followed her queue with the limited layering for this outfit, keeping pearls to just a few twisted strands and slightly away from the neck.  I felt that was a good call in terms of balance.

 I wore the black boucle skirt again, with a black M&S cardi.  I added a Next ivory layered blouse. 

I think this is a look that would be soooo nice to wear out somewhere posh for lunch or Earlybird dinner.  But I think what's pulling this outfit down is the a fail in rule-of-thirds dressing.  The outfit would look better with a shorter top, as Chanel and the model demonstrate.  You live and learn, eh?

Again, I see this outfit as having its casual cousin.  Switching the skirt for jeans, tucking in the blouse and keeping the court (pump) heels and I'd have myself a nice smart-casual outfit in the making.

So, what more can I do with my pearl layering?

Well, enough of all these smart lady-wot-lunches outfits, I needed something cosier to slip into so that I could sit in my chilly garret and write up my notes.   So how does this look work for ME-casual?

Pout-casual

I took my inspo from this lady.

I threw the lace top over a pair of loose jeans and introduced a bit of gold.  A large pearl pendant on a gold chain.  A necklace of gold and pearl.  I added a loose grey cashmere merino cardi.

And just when the poor Photographer had thought his work was done, I decided to switch cardis.

A shorter Woolovers cardi.

And as The Photographer clicked,

I reflected on the paring back of pearly layering in this outfit, pitched just right.

And I thought, "The Pout did good".  

But not that good, for one last category is missing.

Nightwear

No pearls.  Just this.  Inspo, Miss Monroe.

There you have it, darlings.  I have given you an abundance of pearls, in varying degrees of layering.  And it's been fun.

Through this little exercise, I've learned that one has to play around, add and subtract, to achieve balance that's right for the outfit.  

I've learned that there are times when a mix of pearl sizes and graduation suits the outfit, and there are times when the pearls need some serious mixing up.

Pile it on.  Just like Coco did.

Yes, I've learned a lot on my pearl layering journey.

Did you enjoy the journey with me, dear reader?

So my mind turns to you, dear reader.  

Do you pearl-layer?  More is more?

Or do you think a single strand showcases the pearls, that less is more?

And has my little exercise helped you think up some outfits and how to accessorise them with the pearls from your jewellery box/cupboard or charity shop raid?

As ever, I'd love to hear what you have to share.   There's a comment box below just crying out for you!

 Now, I'm off to Anna's blog to see what styling treats she has for us  here.  Why don't you pop on over too.

A la perchoine.

Pinterest photos were sourced in this post.