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liked these paintings by Renee French

30/12/2019

 
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​Soulful.  See the rest here

Seasonal Greetings

24/12/2019

 
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Thanks for reading and looking, lovely viewers.  
I promise next year we will belatedly clamber onto the audio file bandwagon and read the book to you in person. Brace yourself for that shit.
We hope next year is better than this one, which isn't asking for much, really.  
While we live, let us live.
xx K, R and Fir

RubyHue Lipstick Review: Nars Marlene (Audacious)

22/12/2019

 
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Xmas came early for me this year after a kindly reader, Carole in Canada, sent me an incredibly generous bounty of Nars and Bite Beauty goodies, purely out of the goodness of her heart.  That shit doesn't happen every day, let me tell you, so I'm going to review my favourite of the bunch, Nars Audacious Marlene.  Thanks, Carole!

You may have noted that I am a bit of a fucking Nars superfan but this enthusiasm is based strictly on an overwhelmingly positive experience of the brand.  In particular, I don't think I've ever met a Nars Audacious shade I didn't like, and Marlene is no exception to that unblemished record.  

Marlene is a warm, bricky red, the colour of a really good tomato soup or a pile of cayenne pepper, rich and dense with a strong orange undertone.  Once again, Nars pulls off the impossible by creating a hot red that doesn't look like something stuck to Imelda Marcos' or Pennywise's teeth in 1978. You have got to respect that. 
It is loud, but in a RuPaul sort of way; there is great art and finesse in its brilliant volume.  Furthermore, there is a strongly organic quality to Marlene's bigness, which is probably why it's so successful aesthetically.  It is the queen of all the ocherous reds I've tried thus far, pulling in the best elements of capsicum, brick dust, vermillion lacquer, blood orange, volcanic mud and hot sauce.

Despite all those descriptors I wouldn't really call this shade dirty, for the same reason it's not really retro or vintage looking either; that deep twist to its incredible saturation keeps it strangely contemporary.
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The Audacious range features a number of different finishes, with this shade representing its most creamy and opaque manifestation.  Marlene applies like warm butter, spreading easily right from that nice fat bullet without feeling greasy or slippery, pretty much cancelling out the influence of your native lip colour, which is always a blessing.

​It doesn't thin out, even with vigorous redistribution, nor does it really dry down, retaining its supremely comfortable satiny finish that is tenacious enough to live through hot drinks and a light meal without wandering into any old bag wrinkles or doing that greasy breakdown thing.  It's lasting and reliable.
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You might be able to perceive the overwhelming nature of this shade's pigmentation and opacity in the palm swatches below.  Sheer it is not.
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Still, Marlene isn't for everyone.  I recently bleached the fuck out of my very black hair, am now terrifyingly ginger and pairing these two reds is umm... strictly speaking, a wee bit of an assault on good taste.  Ashy bitches and yellow-fanged smokers are absolutely shit out of luck.  Everyone else should have a go at this shade, especially all those deep/dark African and Indian majesties who have trouble finding a red that will stay even, graphic and loudly complimentary- I beg you guys especially to try Marlene.  ​

Below- natural light swatches.  Nars Iberico on the right there is a clean true orange and Urban Decay F-Bomb (original version) is a pretty red/red, if you need the references.  Marlene doesn't really go wonky under different lighting situations.  Mysterious Red is matte AF so you can see that F-Bomb and Marlene are definitely satin.
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L2R, MAC unless stated: Russian Red, Nars Marlene, UD F Bomb, Lady Danger,
​Nars Mysterious Red, Ruffian Red, Nars Iberico
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RubyHue Lipstick Review- just the facts


Photos du Jour: Random December Views, Port Chalmers

18/12/2019

 
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Fir / Spoon / Back Beach  / New Oak / Spray-seeding the Scraped Hill / Doll / Tulips
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Late Spring '19: General Garden Business

6/12/2019

 
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We can't afford to smash a bottle of champagne against the prow of our new porch to declare it officially open, so just imagine video hos twerking in a semicircle to celebrate the occasion.

Unlike those other bloggy people who pretend they love working together as part of their particular romantic coupley brand, R and I usually end up at each others' throats in the course of practical projects, due to our shall we say conflicting modi.  I am proud to report that nobody died during this one, but I feel it was more of a fluke than personal progress.  I'm sure plenty of people still got to hear me losing my shit at crucial moments as they walked their dogs past the site.

This structure was necessary due to a month of downpours and high winds robbing us of our treasured purple bird plum, which provided shelter to this spot before keeling over toward the house one morning during a gale, almost taking the aviary with it.  It was gut-wrenching to have to cut it down and we will miss the yearly blossom spectacle horribly.  
Neither I nor our textile collection can stand much UV beaming directly into the house so this newly naked northern aspect needed something to replace the plum's generous shade.  As a bonus, I now have a place to house the cacti and aloe oveflow from elsewhere as everything gets bigger.  

​You don't really think about that as you're amassing a collection of tiny little baby plants; the Aloe alooides in the centre of the above image used to fit in the palm of my hand.  Now it could scoop the brains from ten craniums at once with its monstrous extremities, if it were so inclined.  If you want to save yourself some hard choices, be wiser than me- take a rational moment in the midst of your compulsive acquisition to wonder about ultimate sizes and where all that arrant vegetation is going to live, long-term.  

Half an acre and a knack for building awkward polycarbonate structures mean I can flip moderation the bird for a few more years.  Here are some of the fruits of those happenings.
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Various Rebutias, Lobivias and Sulcorebutias.  I cannot be arsed trying to keep up with their highly mutable taxonomic nomenclature so they remain 'that purple/orange/yellow one' to me.  Most are easy to both both acquire and cultivate, so if you're looking to get into cacti, you might as well start with these guys.  The flowers are gorgeous and reliable, often repeating throughout the summer months.  The pale crustiness you see on a few is supposedly spider mite damage, but it doesn't seem to affect them too much and we are anti-spray, except in the case of losing a valuable plant I couldn't replace (it hasn't happened yet).  Mealy bugs are their worst enemies.  I squish the bigger ones with tiny twigs and blast them off with a hose or camera-blower thingy.
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The incredibly luscious, neon-emerald velveteen of Tibouchina 'Moonstruck's foliage.  I planted the darker purple variety out last year but it shit itself over winter, so I'll keep this guy potted.  Tibouchinas are super-draggy in flower but I don't accept that there's such a thing as bad-taste plants.
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Below: the lovely silver and indigo stylings of Salvia discolor.  It's a brittle, slightly awkward plant but the near-perpetual flowering and scent of blackcurrant cordial pleases me greatly.
With the newish potted garden out the front of the house, I've been getting into Salvia in a big fucking way.  These are a selection of the earliest flowering wee jamensis  and microphylla hybrids; there are red and yellow varieties just coming on.  I have other larger species, including the obscenely green involcruta below left, but they're generally more of a midsummer-autumn thing. 
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Ambridge Rose: one of the pretty bloody wimpy DA roses I've rescued from very moderate competition in the general garden.  Its revival from a single cane is more tribute to the quality of the graft than the plant itself.  I persist with this variety because the colour is lovely and the scent is a truely delicious hardcore myrrh.  Wish I knew how to quit you.
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Metrosideros 'Springfire', a nice little hybrid (?) Pohutukawa from somewhere in the general Pacific; I can't be more specific because every single fucking nursery claims it is something different, ranging from a true dwarf species to a hybrid larger tree.  I'm not even sure this is Springfire since it seems to have lost most of its leafular waviness, but I'm enjoying the dangerous volume of that orange and the prospect of extended summer flowering.  Bellbirds skulk around it furtively, defying my presence to get at the early nectar.  We sincerely hope Myrtle Rust doesn't make it this far south and wipe out all our fantastic Myrtaceae specimens, as it has done in Australia.

Notice the ye olde wrought iron fence panel in the background- that's new too.  We bought some online a while back that looked like they were probably yoinked out of some Victorian grave somewhere and painted them up to put up along the front garden.  Hot tip: paint your rusty iron panels before you attach them to a fence over a 15 foot drop.
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The very gratifying Urospermum dalechampii, the Golden Fleece Daisy.  The foliage is dandylionsque and the leaves you see at right belong to an unrelated nearby sage.  It's supposedly a pest in some places but guess how many shits I give.

Below: much excite-, the slow unfurling of Arisaema speciosa, the Beautiful Arisaema.  After getting a bit too fucking optimistic and planting out the Aroids I had amassed, then losing the poor little buggers to our wet winters, I decided to try again and stick to pot culture.  This guy is the first one up.  I will post more pics when the other species do something interesting.
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