Curiouser and Curiouser

My brother's gorgeous girlfriend took this series of photos of my darling mother recently, looking like Alice in Wonderland or some other fairy tale...

Coming Soon to a Gallery Near You...

 I just found out about this exhibition which is about to open at the National Portrait Gallery...

Well, that'll certainly be a worthy distraction as I expectantly wait for this to open at the Tate Modern later in February... 

And then I still have this to look forward to the following month...

Oh, London, you know just how to treat a girl, don't you? Indulging me with all this wonderful 20th-Century art and design...

Keep an eye out for posts about all of the above over the coming months!

The Queen! Now at the V&A!

As if the Windsor exhibition wasn't enough, now the V&A are having a Diamond Jubilee photography exhibition, featuring Cecil Beaton's mid-20th century photos of Betty and the rest of the royal fam.

Princess Elizabeth at Sweet Sixteen (Image source: V&A)

On now, until 22nd April.  Unfortunately, for me, those are heavy duty thesis months but we'll see how I go...  Maybe if I kept away from my blog, as I said I would...

Shrimp and Kitty Love

Weekend!  And I particularly need it this week...  Been working especially hard...

As a special treat, here's an adorable picture of the gorgeous Jean Shrimpton which I stumbled across recently.  I didn't make note of where I found it, I'm afraid, so hopefully I don't enrage anyone by having stolen their picture.

Have a great weekend, lovely readers, be it a restful or a raging one! 

Sewing Silhouette

Kathy over at Behind the Curtain recently posted a selection of pretty pictures of girls sewing.  Okay, I see now that it was actually three good weeks ago.  Damn, time flies.  Her post reminded me of my mum's sewing room in my parents' house, in which she has a number of framed pictures of the same subject.  When I was there some time ago, she snapped a picture of me on her film SLR as I sat by the window, stitching some repairs.  I think it's rather a pretty picture so thought I'd share it with my lovely readers.

And no, I don't have a pierced lip, I'm just holding a safety pin in my mouth.

The reason it took me so long to post this is that I had to try to remember to take the print in to work to scan it in.  Once I'd done that this evening, I played around a bit to see if I could lighten it because I know how pictures can end up looking much darker on some screens and it's already quite a shadowy one.  I ended up having some fun experimenting!  Because the scanner was a bit scratched, the image ended up looking wonderfully weathered as I fiddled with light and exposure and hues on Photoshop.  I couldn't pick which my favourite was so here's a little montage...  It doesn't seem so vain when I'm just in silhouette!

I still think the original is my favourite though.  I love that it's so dark with my silhouette against the light window, and the details such as my shoes are barely discernable.