i'm a-pleasin' my sunshine

The best thing about being on holidays is not wearing a watch. You don't need to know the time you only need to know you have enough of it to do what you want, when you want; the day is yours for the taking and the laid back Spanish mentality is perfectly conducive for our daily wanton disregard of official time.


We went to Marbella for a wander around and roamed the streets with nothing more in mind than the probability of happening upon something interesting. We sat for hours in the middle of the Orange Square eating waffles, drinking beer, watching the world go by, then continued strolling on in no particular direction.


We came across a modern art gallery, or rather The Museum of Spanish Contemporary Engraving, where there was an exhibition entitled 'The Qatar Drawings' by Dutch artist Jan Hendrix. On a side note his work reminded me of the project my friend Una is working on at the moment based on the idea of brambles. You can see some of her drawings on her blog www.unamcmahon.wordpress.com

forget about your worries and your strife

Greetings from the south of Spain! I’ve disappeared to a house in the mountains because the middle of September is the new cool kid’s holiday season. I finished work on Friday evening and packed up my desk then the next on my list of things to do was pack up my suitcase. A daunting task at first, considering A. I'm such a "maybe what if I might need x, y or z" person who always carries too much in her handbag, B. I only had one Ryanair-sized carry on case and C. Being the only girl meant there wouldn't be anyone to borrow from should I have omitted some crucial item or other... But I sang out loud to myself like a little Baloo to remind myself that all I needed were the simple bare necessities, which, as it transpires consist of one towel, two bikinis, two dresses, one jumpsuit, one pair of shorts, three tank tops, four books, and a toothbrush. Easy peasy.

The good weather, the good food, and the good times last night lead us to a mighty strong desire for a delicious greasy fast food for brunch today. So we embarked on our adventure in search of a Burger King and when parking the car I spotted a Charity Shop at the top of the hill. The dustiest looking of places from the exterior, the inside was crammed full of stock and crowded with the dogs of the very friendly volunteer lady.

I bought this leather bag for fifty cents and could possibly have come out with much more had I not been in the most indecisive of moods and so easily distracted by the small doggies who just had to be rubbed and played with; but I'm not complaining I mean I did bag a bargain after all. Har har...

the whole Fair affair

Now then, a lovely photographic post because my goodness gracious me but I'm oh so exhausted from the day... Thank you so much to everybody for coming!

Kava Gorna

I'll tell you how it all began... Once upon a summertime three little girls and one little boy packed up their bags and flew to a land far far away. Known to some as New York City it was to become for them a place of hopes and dreams in the everyday. Together they lived in poverty between the walls of a derelict building in suburban Brooklyn, neighboured on the left by a piano man, and a doctor in exile on the right. If they slept it was four to a room whose floor was scarcely wider than the single mattress which lay upon it. But they were young and full of life and so spurred by the energies of the night and also the vodka, the cheap, cheap, vodka. They lived by one rule - to follow the party, wherever, whenever; although the good times had the habit of bringing them downtown to the Misshapes most weekends. It was here one night after the club closed and the crowds were beginning to dissipate that they found themselves in a limousine with their new friends Randy and Nikolay.
The two boys were models, existing on a hunter-gatherer diet of nuts, berries, and cheap, cheap vodka. And to find out what happened next I'm afraid you'll have to find my old diary and read it, because I only said I'd tell you how it all began...
However, my story isn't an irrelevant one, for I began this post with the subject intention as Kava Gorna and there I shall end, (sort of)as it was whilst googling Ms Gorna that I came across an article on designer Katie Gallagher. Katie graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design but now works and lives in Manhattan with her boyfriend Nikolay Saveliev...
Here they're photographed by Kava Gorma in a Chinatown fish market with Katie wearing a jacket and leggings both of her own creation. Her stuff is actually pretty damn amazing, look at her website here: http://www.katiegallagher.com/

Homeward bound

Being one of the multitude of office workers whose existence Monday to Friday is centred around their 37 hour week means I've become a living-for-the-weekend pleb. A pleb, yes indeed a common proletariat; a slave to Excel. How tragic it is that one can fall so fast so quickly, one day you're a happy out student the next you're nothing but a number on a payroll...
Come Saturday I feel free as bird, or maybe it's more like a rabbit let out of his hut, but anyway I went to get my weekly luncheon fix of beans and pulses seasoned with healthy amounts of hippy karma from the market, and the weather was lovely to me smiling sunshine down and rejoicing with me over my temporary liberation. Lovely lovely. On my way home I met my sister on her way home from work ha ha the sucker working her weekend job ha ha and she took a photo of me working the only thing I should be working - my white shirt, or if I dare be so bold as to say working the minimal look. Oh yeah...

Fairtrade the Irish way

I'm sure you'll know what I mean when I ask if you ever get an overwhelming feeling of uselessness when you think of all the problems in the world you'll never be able to fix or all the poor people you'll never be able to help? Sometimes it feels like a far cry from enough but the little choices you make everyday add up to playing a part in the overall scheme of things. From throwing your newspaper in the recycling bin or having a compost heap in your garden to making ethically conscious decisions in your purchases we're actually doing more than it might seem.

I'm ashamed to say that toward the end of my poor student days last May I went through a phase of buying €2.00 coffee from the Eurosaver menu in McDonalds. It was cheap, didn't taste so bad, and when I had six stickers collected I could get a cup for free. But after having not eaten there in around four years, bar once in an airport, I am now shocked and appalled at myself for the extreme atrocity I managed to commit in such a short period of time. From now on my caffeinated beverages will be of a Fairtrade nature or I shall simply have to make do without.


Luckily it's not that difficult to find Fair Trade food and drinks, but in terms of fashion it's much harder to locate a company whose clothes are ethically sound. Organic cottons are slowly becoming more widely available, with high street stores beginning to launch lines, such as H&M's Garden Collection, but the availability is still rather limited. Sustainable trade is essential in the long -term fight to bring third world countries out of their poverty and I think much more needs to be done to bring awareness to the fore.
EDUN is one perfect example of a fashion label conscious in what it does. Established in 2005 by Ali Hewson and Bono they have built a network of organic and locally sourced textile products, and they strive to encourage trade in Africa, build sustainable working communities and provide a working model of business for third world countries (from which we in the developed world can most definitely learn a thing or two).

Last week the do-gooders took part in Louis Vuitton's latest Core Values campaign which supports Al Gore's Climate Change campaign. Annie Leibovitz shot them wearing clothes from EDUN and carrying bags which were designed in a collaboration between the Hewson's and Vuitton, and which have hand crafted charms created in Kenya for the fairtrade jewellery label MADE attached to them. Apart from the carbon-footprinted-fact that they flew to Africa to take the photographs and that for some reason there is a private aeroplane in the background, the advertisment is fantastic because the Hewson's fee for the shoot as well as all proceeds from sales will be donated to Technoserve in Africa for the Conservation Cotton Initiative and to the Chernobyl Children International.

Now tell me that isn't worth a lifetime void of big macs?

fair play

By gorries but you wouldn't believe how many people read the local papers!

Last week I had the terrifying experience of my first ever telephone interview with a journalist and this week I had the equally as shocking experience of my first ever front page cover. Telling a person they will be featured "in the paper" leads them to think a short article highlighting the main points of what was discussed in the interview will be printed somewhere amongst the other news for the week- youth arrested here, vintage fair there, water shortage elsewhere, but it certainly doesn't prepare you for a page dedicated entirely to you half in picture and half in text. Well there it is anyway, my 15 minutes.


And as all publicity is good publicity let me take this time to advertise some more - if you haven't read my earlier post on the fair look here and you can also read a summarised version of the article here. It's on next Sunday so make a note in your diaries to come along for a look around ahra go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on...

the time of year

We have our years subdivided for us, broken into the likes of summertime or christmas time for example, but the good times are those unofficially recognised weeks in between. They're the best because they're all your own. Like right now the summer is nearly over but instead of the impending sense of sadness you expect you would feel, it's actually really exciting. There's the same sort of expectant feel to the place, as if a contageous anticipation has begun to spread, and hopes are on the up as they were when the summer began. There's the great back-to-school weather and old friends are coming back in to town for college, and although the nights are getting longer it doesn't feel as though the afternoons spent hanging out together outside are getting any shorter.

So while we're happily making lanes of memories down which we will one day be able to walk, I'm also loving how it's time to start knitting again. Last year I learnt how to knit with five needles at a time to make mittens, this year I want to learn to knit in the round to make better hats. In the mean time if anybody wants a scarf, let me know!