Gauguinesque

Colour which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power.”  

Painter Paul Gauguin, via 1

 The Outfit

Maxi Dress: Charity Shop

Floral Head band: made from a floral band from a sunhat, charity shop

Sandals: Toast

The Soundtrack

Kate Bush: Hello Earth

Well here I am updating my blog rather later than planned, all those of you who are parents will have known my plan to blog once a month was laughable! The babies are 6 months old now and I am finally getting the occasional moment of spare time. This photoshoot, totally the wrong season, was taken in August 3 months after the babies were born, when they still took long enough naps for me to take photographs. I shall endeavour to create more posts in the months to come but it'll be a while before I can do so as regularly as I used to. Unfortunately I never get time to comment on your blogs anymore, I rarely have a chance to read them but I so love it when I do.

Two For Joy

From this belly....

came these baby girls, a little premature but so healthy and strong...

Introducing Snow White and Rose Red

(not their real names)

I am so happy. So exhausted, so happy!

I won't be showing any more photos of them on this blog until they're old enough to give their consent, but wanted to give you a glimpse.

Do hope you're all well, I'll be back online blogging and visiting you about once a month if I can.

Under The Bower

Out of this wood do not desire to go:

Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.

I am a spirit of no common rate;

The summer still doth tend upon my state;

And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;

I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,

And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,

And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;

And I will purge thy mortal grossness so

That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.

Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!

Extract of Titania's speech to Bottom, A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare via  1

The Outfit

Blue Maternity Dress: Asos sale 

Blue Necklace used as Headband: charity shop

Gold Flipflops: free with a magazine years ago

Bracelet: Granny Penny's

Photographs taken last month at 30 weeks pregnant with twins

The Present Of The Past

That green, green caravan.

Chipped paint and the smell 

of burning sausages.

A carpet of wild grasses and flowers 

spread before me, more majestic than

any red velvet line.

How I love this place.

The placid horses in the adjoining 

field watching in bemusement

as I place my spindly eight year old foot

onto Titania's carpet

and throw myself in the air.

The fauvist ballerina, all arched 

hands and pirouetting limbs,

flying into the sky

and then rolling into the earth,

grasping fistfuls of grass as if

readying myself to consume the

world.

A haze of Beethoven's 

Pastoral Symphony in my

ears, my eyes, my mouth. I can taste

its mellow honey.

My mother claps her hands

 in smiles, beautiful tanned gypsy

woman icon in cheesecloth red.

Perhaps one day, if I laugh enough, 

I will be that woman.

Now is all preparation.

I am singing as I dance,

I am embracing the air as a trainee lover

and it plays waywardly with my 

dark curls, blowing them up high

above my head so that I grow a tall crown of hair.

Queen of the flowers.

I feel beautiful. The boys join in,

moving their bodies like mad 

little warriors fighting against 

an unseen force.

This is my freedom. Great blasts

of joy lift me out of

my insignificance and carry me on the wind,

heady summer carriage of hope.

The bonfire my father builds burns holes into the dusk.

Happiness poem written by me (and published in a national anthology) in 1999.

The Outfit

Vintage 1970s Maxi Dress: bought and worn by my Mum when pregnant with my younger brother

The Soundtrack

Van Morrison: Astral Weeks

Photos taken by me last month using my little digital camera at 26 weeks pregnant 

In Contemplation Of Growing Things

Don't go outside your house to see the flowers, 

My friend, don't bother with that excursion.

Inside your body there are flowers.

One flower has a thousand petals.

That will do for a place to sit.

Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty

inside the body and out of it, 

before gardens and after gardens.

Kabir

The Outfit

Vintage Chinese Blue Silk Dressing Gown: from a vintage market in my Manchester days in the 90s

Blue Striped Body Con Dress; very old (and now very streeeeetched!) from Topshop

Vintage Fur Stole: passed down from late Granny Kiki

Vintage Chinese Parasol: passed down from late Granny Kiki

The Soundtrack:

Gregorian Chant

Photos taken by me using the self timer on my little digital camera.

I'm grateful for all your kind messages and brilliant advice on what to wear when breastfeeding (special thanks to Radostin and Curtise, for being so reassuring and helpful my dears).

The pregnancy is going well, although inevitably rather exhausting. Believe it or not I have until the start of June before I give birth (I know! How big will I be by then?!), and in the meantime I'm enjoying embracing the fullness and vitality of my ever growing, moving bump.

Cocoon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

 

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

 

Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,

Nature without check with original energy.

 

 

Part 1 of Song Of Myself by Walt Whitman, via 1

The Outfit

Vintage 1970s Liberty Print Pregnancy Maxi Dress: made by late granny Kiki for my Mother

Rosebud Clips: from Accessorize

Black Belt: old from the high street 

 

The Soundtrack

Nick Drake: Place To Be

 

 

Photos taken at my parents' house a few weeks ago when I was 22 weeks pregnant with twins.
The large portrait I'm sitting next to shows late granny Kiki in her early twenties.

 

Thanks for your thoughts on nursing dresses. I may need to opt for separates much of the time when breastfeeding, but refuse to give up my dress addiction entirely. Some of you were asking for an example of what I'm looking for, it's this sort of thing, with a wrap tie front and hidden panels for nursing beneath, only below knee length and ideally a little more interesting:

 

 

 

 

 

 

or button down styles like this:

 

 

 

 

I'm well aware I may be asking the impossible! Have already succumbed and bought one high street nursing dress. And if need be there's always dresses like these on Ebay......

Blooming Madly

 

 

 

 

 

 

"What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”

 

Extract from To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf, via 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Outfit

Vintage 1930s Ponyskin Leopard Print Coat: made by Granny Kiki for Kiki Couture

Black Floral Maternity Dress: in a sale from Asos

Brown Boots: from New Look

Black Faux Fur Hat: a gift from an ex-boyfriend many years ago

Pale Blue Gloves: passed down from Granny Penny

 

 

The Soundtrack

Kate Bush: Ariel

 

 

 

CALLING ALL UK CHARITY SHOPPERS!

There are many wonderful things about being pregnant, and growing a bump twice as large as the usual; but finding maternity and nursing (breastfeeding) clothes is nigh on impossible without resorting to the High Street brands, which I hate to do. 

I don't want to have to dress like a dull as dishwater mummy in striped nursing top and leggings just because I'm pregnant, it shouldn't have to be that way! With potentially a few years of breastfeeding ahead of me though, I need all the help I can get from you gorgeous vintage shopping goddesses, to find beautiful second hand nursing clothes, particularly dresses, that don't cost a bomb and help hide the tum...

So if any of you eagle eyed UK based lovelies ever see any size 10 - 12 maxi/nursing dresses (with buttons down the chest, pull down tops or covered slits for the nipples) when you're perusing your local charity shop haunts, please do pick them up for me and I will repay you the money with interest, and many many thanks!

 

 

Thank you all so much for your kind congratulations and well wishes!

 I look forward to charting my  multiple pregnancy progress through this blog in the months to come.

 

 

A Woman Changed (Times Two)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry

 Took its place among the elements.

 

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.

In a drafty museum, your nakedness

Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

 

I'm no more your mother

 Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow

 Effacement at the wind's hand.

 

All night your moth-breath

Flickers among the flat pink roses.

  I wake to listen: A far sea moves in my ear.

 

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral

In my Victorian nightgown.

Your mouth opens clean as a cat's.

 

The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try

Your handful of notes; The clear vowels rise like balloons.

 

 

Morning Song by Sylvia Plath, via 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

The Outfit:

Vintage Stretchy Black Dress: from a charity shop

Green Sequin belt just seen: from a friend

Earrings: from Accessorize

 

 

I've not been online or blogging much recently, and now you can see why.

I've been working on a particularly happy, important and taxing project: that of growing two babies inside me!

This multiple pregnancy will (fingers crossed) continue to take up much of my energy in the coming months, and future years of mothering, so I'll be blogging less frequently, but still hopefully about once or twice a month from now on.

 

 

Photos taken a few weeks ago when I was 18 weeks pregnant with twins.

Hoping you're all well, looking forward to catching up soon.

 

 

Wildcat

 

 

 

 

 

He pads on grassy banks behind a fence,

          with measured paces slow and tense.

          Beyond his cage his thoughts are sharp and white;

                  he lives a compelled anchorite.

                  A solid ghost gone blind with all the green,

                              he waits and waits to be unseen.

 

 

A Snow Leopard by Jason Gray, via 1

 

 

 

The Outfit:

Vintage Fur Coat (mink): passed down from Granny Penny

Black Wool Beret: passed down from Granny Penny

Leopard Vest Tunic: from a charity shop

Grey Cardigan: from the high street

Denim Shorts Underneath: from Topshop

Black tights: very old, bobbly and bit too worse for wear

Black Rosette Shoes: old from Irregular Choice

Sunglasses: old from the high street

 

 

All photos taken by me using the self timer on my little camera.

 

 I am delighted to be a part of Visible Monday, hosted by Patti from Not Dead Yet Style, click on the website link to see her outfit and those of many others.

Also linking this post to Shoe Shine, a great event hosted by Bella of The Citizen Rosebud, click on the website to see her beautiful shoes and those of many others