This Second's Obsession

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Friday Favourites: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Getting Addicted and Just Enjoy Pinterest

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When you first heard about Pinterest, did you immediately think ‘That sounds like something I should definitely avoid or it will take over my life?’

Are you still relying on old-fashioned bookmarks to keep lists of sites you might maybe, someday revisit, if, in the meantime, you don’t forget what they are and why you wanted to look at them?

This was me. For far too long. Then eventually I gave in, and you know what? I haven’t regretted it. I love Pinterest, and it doesn’t take up masses of my time. Here’s why:

1. There are only so many pins

When I first joined Pinterest, I was really wary. I set up my first board, DIY Fashion, thinking that would be the only board I would ever allow myself to make. I already had loads of stuff ready that I wanted to pin – the reason I was resorting to Pinterest was because my browser bookmarks just weren’t working. I wanted to be able to scroll through and find the tutorial I was looking for by looking at images. Far faster and easier than reading titles.

I pinned everything I started with, and then spent about an hour a day for the next week adding more pins as suggested by the app. But then, something unexpected (but with hindsight, totally predictable) happened.


I ran out of stuff to pin.

There are only so many pins! And this is true of every subject! I now have boards about hair and vintage dresses and embroidery and organisation amongst others (for the full list, see my page here). My feed is now mostly repeats of things I’ve already pinned, so the upkeep, checking my feed for new pins and pinning them to the relevant boards, only takes about ten minutes every couple of days.

2. Most of the notifications can be ignored

Sometimes I get over 100 notifications a day from the Pinterest app, but I ignore them. Why?
They’re mostly just other people liking and repinning my pins. I don’t even have the app set to push notify me of these, so I only see them when I look at the app itself. Then all I need to do is tap the ‘You’ tab and they’re all cleared.

3. If I don’t look at it for a few days, ‘News’ will let me know what I’ve missed

The Pinterest app sends me push notifications with suggestions of new boards to follow or top pins that match my keywords, so if something’s popular and I haven’t checked Pinterest for a while, I’ll still find out about it eventually. It’s like having a virtual assistant for my hobbies.

4. I’ve gotten followers without even trying

I don’t have hundreds and hundreds, but just by keeping my boards updated and pinning great content I’ve acquired a small following – hence all those notifications!

5. It’s a really lovely way to store lists

Ultimately, Pinterest is a visually-appealing, user-friendly, interface for storing lists of links. It’s much easier to use for anything visual, like DIY tutorials, recipes, hairstyles, make-up, etc, than traditional bookmarks.

With that in mind…

I would love it if there was a way to import some of my old bookmarks. I have masses of old make-up tutorials and inspiration photo posts bookmarked but pinning them one by one would be extremely time-consuming. If there was a mass-uploader that would let me import them and then just pick an image for each one that would be perfect!

Do you use Pinterest? Do you have any tips, or favourite boards? Let me know! You can follow my boards here.

this dyeing obsession

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After my successful shirt-dyeing session last year, I became obsessed with Dylon Intense Violet and started to plot further dye-based adventures. I went through my wardrobe and picked out all the things that I liked, but didn’t love because they were white, pale pink, a pale shade of grey, or otherwise Not Purple Enough.

I wrote down the fabric composition of each item, and then I loaded up the Dylon website and added to my list the best type of dye to use for each item. I decided to start my quest for purplefication with three items. This was mostly because Hobbycraft only had one box of Intense Violet machine dye left, and after the tedium of stirring last time, I decided that I would avoid future hand dyeing whenever possible, so I picked out the items that would get better results from hand dye and resolved to do the rest in the machine.

I checked the weight of the fabric by putting it into a jug on top of electronic kitchen scales. Do not attempt to use bathroom scales to weigh your fabric. They are too imprecise. The first item I chose, along with the scales and jug:

 
This cardigan was a faded pale pink hand-me-up from my sister and had quite a few random yellow or brownish stains. It’s a really good fit though, so I didn’t want to throw it away. Perfect candidate for purplefication, and 100% cotton so ideal for machine dye. The other two items I forgot to photograph before I’d already put them into the bowl, but I did take a picture before adding the dye.
The grey angora/wool/nylon blend cardigan, according to my research, was better suited to hand dye because of the natural fibres. I had no idea how it would come out, because of the nylon content. The other item was a white leotard, or as Topshop (and other brands) insist on calling them, ‘body’. Come now. A body is the thing that goes inside the leotard. As you would expect, the leotard had lycra in it, and apparently lycra does not get on well with high temperatures and agitation, so hand dye was again the best option.
So onto the results! The cotton cardigan came out beautifully.

In the photo it looks like the middle section is pinker, that’s just my camera. It’s actually the same fabulous shade all over. All the stains have disappeared and the whole thing looks refreshed and ready for many more years of wear. A+++ would dye again.

 
The grey cardigan turned out much better than I was hoping. It’s came out more of a pinkish shade, but it’s still pretty uniform.

 

 

Again, the glowy pinky section in the middle is down to my camera.
The leotard did not come out as well. It’s quite patchy, especially by the seams, and the thread it was sown together with didn’t take the dye (it’s probably polyester), so now it stands out, white as before.

This time the colour variations are not down to my camera. It actually looks like this.

 
I’m not really concerned though because a) I was never going to wear it as-was, there were too many stains and b) I’ll probably wear it under a cardigan or another top, which should hide the imperfections.
All in all, I’d say that this session was very successful, and I look forward to even more adventures with dye! I’m going to write a post with all my fabric dye tips, so if you have any questions, leave a comment or tweet me!