My first photoshoot with the Ngaio blouse  was all very dramatic and formal – pencil skirt, stockings, heels, finding black and white backdrops in the CBD, and me giving the camera  my best ‘come hither’ eyes and ‘don’t even think about coming hither’ chin lift. When we got home, I put on jeans, and curled up on the couch to do the last of my semester’s marking.  After a few hours of that, I popped out into the yard to enjoy the sun and give my eyes and brain a rest, and Mr D got another sew of photos of the blouse: relaxed, casual, hanging out with Felicity. (and yes, the house needs painting,  It’s on our to-do list to sort this summer.  Colour suggestions?) I think I like the blouse  even better worn this way! Certainly Felicity does. 😉

I’ve written a lot about one famous New Zealand author recently: Katherine Mansfield.  This is blouse is dedicated to another famous NZ author – one who was certainly, at least for a long time, at least as famous as Mansfield.  I’m talking, of course, of Ngaio Marsh, one of the four ‘Queens of Crime’ of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Unlike Mansfield, I hadn’t heard of Marsh before I moved to NZ – but she’s not exactly high school reading curriculum material, and I’m not that in to detective fiction. I’m afraid I’m still not much of a fan of Marsh’s works, but that’s mostly because I find Inspector Alleyn, her most famous creation, to be an insufferable know-it-all with terrible taste in women.  If I met him in person I’d probably describe him as a wanker (but only because even after over a decade in NZ I still think words like bollucks and wanker and bugger are cute, and can’t actually make my mind believe they are proper ‘swear’ words). Other than Alleyn, …