The Versatile Blogger Award

So I got awarded the Versatile Blogger Award by Jeyco. While I was honoured that a true sewing rockstar noticed (and acknowledged, nay, rewarded) my existence, I detected a faint whiff of chain-letter-i-ness about the whole thing. So I looked into the origins of the award and it appears to be lost in the mists of (internet) time (an internet minute is two years in the real world). Seeing as no one seems to know who came up with it or why it is important [Damn you internet for your absolute lack of citation skills (yes I referenced Wikipedia, a total Science no-no. They sent out a poll to scientists asking why we never cite them but I think we all lied so as to not hurt their feelings)] I’m going to do this my own way. I blame Jeyco for corrupting me by doing things her own way (Thanks Jey, you’re out of the box uniqueness is what keeps me coming back <via RSS> for more).

So first things first,

1) Thank the blogger who gave the award and link to the person.

Thank you Jeyco, I love your unique self-made creations and wish I could afford to fly you to Australia to be my own personal designer/seamstress/ best friend for ever.

2) Add the Versatile Blogger Award badge on your blog.

Aaaaand therein lies the problem. Have you seen the ‘badge’? Hideous is an understatement. It looks like bathroom freshener packaging from the 90s (or women’s sanitary product packaging from the third-world but lets not go there now. There’s a time and place for everything and this is not it). So I went ahead and made my own (if this makes you all smashy-smashy-killy-killy run it off. You can thank me for the endorphins later).

That's right. Just like I said I would.

Now its got more of a discount-self-assembled furniture home-depot vibe. Feel free to use it. Or not.

3) List the rules – done.

4) List 7 things about yourself.

i) I’m currently awaiting the results for the PhD thesis I submitted in January (hence the blog. Enjoy it while it lasts).

ii) I support equality for all human beings irrespective of race, creed, colour, sex, religious belief, or lack thereof (so it shits me to tears that gay people still can’t get legally married in Australia – do something about it here).

iii) I am a staunch defender of animal rights but I also eat animals (I can’t help it, they’re delicious). I try to minimise the adverse impact of my meat-eating lifestyle by buying only free-range, battery-free, organically-raised, humanely-killed meat (I rarely eat chicken. A friend once referred to it as the Christina Auguilera of the meat kingdom – its a dirty bird. Make of this what you will ;)).

iv) I find regretsy hilarious. If you haven’t heard of April Winchell and her army of fat jealous losers you should dedicate a weekend to catching up. Thank me later.

v) I don’t (knowingly) buy things made in China. I haven’t since 2004 (before which time I was young and dumb but saved from cheapchinacrap by the fact that I lived in countries where it wasn’t easily accessible). I take this stance because I do not support the Chinese Government’s policies concerning the treatment of workers, their ban against trade unions and grassroots organising and their total disregard for the sanctity of human rights and the environment.

The only high-street brand allowed in our house (its made in England by ~~Gentlemen~~ Chavs). © E4

vi) The glasses are real – a gift from Carl for my birthday this year, they have prescription lenses (which I’ve worn, at progressively increasing numericals, since I was 8).

vii) I’m attending the 2012 Atheist Convention in Melbourne in April. I’ll be there with a bunch of friends, so if you’re going to be there too we should probably meet up for reasonable discussions© after.

5) Pass the award along to 15 dedicated blogs – no problems.

Fashion/ Style

Miss Moss Clothing, jewellery and decor design from across the globe. I really like her aesthetic from the blog design to the kind of fashion she highlights. This is a moneytised blog (i.e. She makes money from sponsor ads, even if they are indie so use adblocker/ google reader if your eye-drums are sensitive to this).
Garance Dore – Parisienne, illustrator, style-icon, photographer, and the truly beloved of Scott Schumann (the Sartorialist).
Bicyclechic – spandex-free pictures of Europeans (the Viking kind) swanning around on their excellent bikes.
Style is Style – one for the curvy ladies. This chick has awesome style and great colour sense. This, too, is a moneytised blog and I followed it for a while in Google reader. Then I got sick of all the product placements and unsubscribed. Her styling is worth looking at though so I would recommend it if you are shapely and looking for colourful inspiration.

Art/ Design/ Type/ Illustration

The Tower Project Blog – Vintage-y awesomeness. Documents the digitisation/ cataloguing of antique non-academic (read: fun) books from the Cambridge University Library. Best post here. Edwardian paperdolls-OMG-youguys!-totes-heartz etc. (I don’t actually talk like this, I point and laugh when others do. So this here is sarcasm yea?).
Drawn – best ever site for illustration. They cover all sorts of art (from hand made to animation) from all over the world. Highly recommended. I found this guy there. How cool is that?
OMGposters – covers awesome poster art (lots of screenprints and hand pulled stuff as well as regular, and limited edition prints). Some of the creepy/creepy-cool stuff I’m not into, but he has a lot of minimalist/ mid-century modern stuff that I quite like (I discovered the small stakes/ jason munn here).
Design milk and Design for mankind – more design (more of a hand made/ craft focus in the latter).They’re different blogs but I read them at the same time so…

Food

Smitten Kitchen – food (with metric conversions for all measures)
In pursuit of more – I have no idea what this is about; I don’t actually read it I just oogle the food pr0n.
@ down under – more food pr0n, but there’s stuff here I’d actually make. From down under (doh – New Zealand not Australia).

Not Food

27b/6 – the original internet troll. This man is the gold standard that all else is measured by. Best post here; if you have ever, been expected to do something for nothing, you will love this guy. If you love lolcats, you may hate him. Consider yourself forewarned.
Mommy Man, adventures of a gay super dad. Best post, here.
Maximum wage – you know how Stephen Colbert is an @$$hole and such fun to love at the same time? Well so is this guy/ girl/ other. Best post, here.

Aaaaaand..

Sewing (Well it didn’t say anywhere that they all had to be sewing blogs – and I’m a multi-dimensional entity with the approximate attention span of a gnat so..)

Pattern runway – the awesomeness behind the Pattern Runway line of indie patterns documented in blog format.

6) Let them know about the award – Sure. (Read: Oh thank goodness WordPress has trackbacks so I don’t have to bother with this part). I just wanted to share some blogs that I found cool, and the two days it took me to finish this post made me realise that this really is way too much extra work to unload on anyone so I’m just going to leave it to the bloggers concerned to handle if they want to.