Glasses from Wetherby's

And we publish this admittedly stunning picture of the lovely G mainly to say that Mrs Wetherby has applied her considerable design skills to glasses. Only one pair so far and G is wearing them

Nuptial Joy

Tessa is sad to have to report that there have been some VICIOUS rumors circulating about her in the parish. The gist of these rumors is that she is gay. No, not in the Oxford-Websters sense. Tessa would never deny her essential gaieté, her love of life, joie de vivre and all that. No. The essence of these BASELESS accusations is that she bats for the other team, holds her liquor by the ears..... you get the point. Actually Tessa likes a dick as much as the next woman to the extent that she keeps several of them in her invo in case of urgent need.
It all started when T met G, a small but lively piece of fluff, in the Lesbian Tearoom where she was conducting sociological research. It appears that G was one of the three or four AFs who actually read this crap and she was insistent that we should finally get round to blogging some nuptial wear. And since there were two to be blogged, Sim Tessa was rapidly converted into a Temple of the First Church of Climate Catastrophe and Purportedly Pissed-off Gaia. Oh yes! Tess is a believer and scorns the skeptics and deniers! And I don't need to be accused of talking my own book when I say that the results were pretty nice. Just look for yourselves.
Which brings us to our point.
Tess looks just beautiful, standing under the statue of St Al Gore, in a Lyn Wedding gown by Bliss Couture. (Incidentally she rejects the false assertion, made by many who have not been bathed in the light, that failed Divinity is not sufficient qualification for St A to speak authoritatively on the words of the Goddess). It should be mentioned at this juncture that Tess is highly qualified to look beautiful on her wedding day. She's had five of them in RL and has worn a deeper shade of virginal white on each occasion. Tess's hair is worth a mention.We had pretty much abandoned LAQ as a source of hair. SO 2007. But we've been visited by a nagging suspicion that things are looking up again at LAQ hair and have recently bought several. It's the only thing to do when you're wearing a LAQ  hairbase skin. Nothing can look more natural. We look forward to more LAQ hairbases with colors other than black. This hair is LAQ Tess. Could anything be more appropriate?
We should also mention that Tess has abandoned the LAQ Imani that she has worn close to her heart forever and replaced it by LAQ Ania Nougat Hairbase.
G. We'll call her just G for the protection of the innocent
She looks lovely, doesn't she? She insisted on a temple wedding safe in the knowledge that the Goddess supports Sapphic unions and that by the intercession of St Al, she might be able to access Tessa's previously inviolable parts. Some subsequent piccies in Tess's stream suggest that she may not have been entirely deluded in that supposition. We're prepared to give Tess the benefit of the doubt though. The intercession of such a great, glorious and correct figure as St A is very powerful and even if the picture isn't a fake (which we doubt) Tess couldn't be held responsible for her actions.
G was wearing Dangerous Wedding dress by Nonna Hedges Formal Gowns. The high hair is Holly by Exile but let's face it, you wouldn't wear it for anything but a wedding.
So. After all this we can report that rumors of Tessa's changed nuptial, and possibly of her changed sexual status are premature. You still have a chance gentlemen. Present your credentials in an orderly fashion.
Ladies? Well we have to admit that she did let out some small cries of ecstasy at various stages of the proceedings so things may not be as simple as stated.

Tora Tora Tora!!

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

There have been disturbing reports of skepticism round the Parish about the "freakin' sculpty tiger" reported here and here as being missing deep in the jungles of Sim Tessa.

Tessa can only say.....

a) Oh ye of little faith

b)htf it is. I found it even though this invloved a dangerous and expensive expedition resulting in the loss of several native bearers.

c) Pretty harmless, isn't it?

Winter Wonderland

The north wind doth blow,
And we shall have snow,
And what will poor robin do then,
Poor thing?
He'll sit in a barn,
And keep himself warm,
And hide his head under his wing,
Poor thing.

If he had half a brain he'd gather his little chums together and do what Tessa's jockey did recently, fly down to Uruguay and disport himself as close to naked as possible on the sun drenched beaches of the Rio de la Plata drinking Mendoza wine. Bird brain by name, bird brain by nature.
But having said that, things are rarely as they seem. Ask any SL "lesbian" what they keep hanging between their thighs. They know..... And the terrors of the blizzard are far from Sim Tessa, in fact if it wasn't for that freakin weather machine which we lost some time ago deep in the jungles of the sim, snow and Sim Tessa would rarely appear in the same sentence.
However in deference to our AFs we are acknowledging the calendar and changing the banner. It wasn't a cheap exercise. Tess had to take several flights, and she never flies any way but First Class, to Shenyang, China, where she snapped this snowy scene.at Nurhachi's Forbidden City.
While she was at it she took the trouble to invest a few Ls in protection from the cold, and with pleasing results.
Let's look at the sweater first. Nice isn't it? Actually, although the whole outfit has a Nordic buzz to it, this is the only genuinely Nordic item. It's the Marius knit sweater from artilleri which of course means that paragon of Nordic beauty, Antonia Marat. The jacket, nice as it is, is a cheap Jap imitation from Aoharu. See? They aren't confined to leather. They wield a mean knitting needle too.
Hair is boys hair. Androgyny has reared its ugly head yet again in this blog and we may need to Take Steps. It's Boarder Ginger reds Penny from Bryce Designs.
The glasses are Tess's faves, Genius Peepers from Miel. AFs will remember from previous posts that unlike other glasses they attach to the chin, not the nose. This means that uniquely Tess is able, in this shoot, to apply a little mascara, in this case 03 blue Flirty from LAQ. Yeah, we know it clashes with everything but we just don't get the practice. And sadly, Tess may be able to wear mascara and lashes with these glasses, but smoking is out, an attachment conflict. Tess likes a smoke.
Speaking of LAQ, Tessa finally solved the Great Eye Dilemma. You see it's dead easy to get wonderfully deep and sparkling eyes in any shade of blue. But if you're like Tessa and looking for that smouldering Mediterranean look, rocking horse manure analogies immediately leap to mind. Fortunately during an encounter with Jeza May, and while she was looking deep into her eyes, Jeza was kind enough to point us in the direction of these lovely brown orbs. Problem solved!

Mad Woman Rapes Garden Shop

Yes, I know it's supposed to be a fashion blog but the first love of Tessa's life is gardening. Both RL and SL. She is a woman of many firsts. The first virtual compost heap. It composts bullshit. Goreans will have noticed her following them round with a shovel. OH yes! We do our bit for the virtual ecosystem and have been personally responsible for a two percent drop in virtual temperature. And while we're at it, we've just signed a deal with Redgrave to do fingernails with dirt under them. Can't be too dedicated to authenticity.
But we still think that the best garden center around is Liliana Bethune's Lilipily. It's not nearly as big as it looks. Judicious use of screens, hedges, streams and clumped plants have successfully divided up the garden into discrete areas giving an illusion of great space. At every turn there is a new vista and we are suddenly discovering delightful garden spaces, cuddle spots and even dance floors. You can get everything that makes a garden a garden, statuary, wind chimes, even paintings on canvas. As an architectural principle, Tessa believes in designing for the environment you're in which is why she rarely bothers with walls, doors (bloody nuisance: make 'em phantom and just walk through) and is quite happy to put paintings outdoors, even where there's that virtual rain which is never wet. We should also mention that the principals at Lilipily are disturbingly New Age and seem to expect us to prostrate ourselves before various Buddhistic images. Sorry, been there, done that. We find the Dalai Lama a cynical political manipulator, and have actually seen the discipline monks wielding their whips on young boys at Tibetan monasteries. But the total effect is delightful. And all plants you buy are reasonably priced and copyable. You don't need to buy multiple plants to fill the sim.
The negatives? There's just too much product on display. This has two results. Firstly you can get hopelessly lost. Really! There is a way round this which involves clearly defined wide paths but it doesn't quite work because of the second problem. Yes, the one prim sculpty plant in multiples combined with textures which are just too big means that you're stuck immobile amongst uniform gray. Make sure your graphics prefs are set at the lowest settings before you venture into Lilipily!
This sudden explosion of horticulture came about when, prim profligate as usual, Tess found one of those annoying "parcel full" signs popping up.
Shit!
Of course it was another Linden miscalculation, but, being accustomed to the futility of dealing with that faceless bureaucracy, Tess had no option to hie herself to Lilipily and see what was new in one-primmery.
The usual half hour wait while it rezzed, the usual jerky walk through scary jungles, the usual falling into hidden creeks and brushing off of virtual mud, the usual suppressed vomitus when we passed the new age stuff. But an underlying feeling of deep satisafction. Gardens are great but the absence of annoying insect life makes a virtual garden visit even more relaxing and stimulatory to the senses.

First the indoors. One of Tess's multitudinous residences on Sim Tessa is in the minimalist style. It has gray walls, polished concrete floors, lattice style black screens in place of interior walls and big windows looking out onto the ocean. Out experience has been that contrast works surprisingly well in removing the edges from such designs, and rather than emphasising the mod starkenss, we fill the room with antique furniture, occasionally even tending to the frilly. So when we look to plants, it's often time to go back to the stark and that's what we did here. No, not agaves or cactuses. There's doubtlessly a place for them but we haven't found it yet. We went for the queen of stark, the bromeliad. Tess loves bromeliads and plants them enthusiastically in RL, and has a particular joy in planting and growing the monarch of bromeliads, the pineapple. Don't try this at home! We put the one prim bromeliad Christiane in a pot and hurried it into a corner. Not from Lilipily in this case but from Maria's. You can just see the pot behind Tessa. It's a Tessa creation, a sphere suitably elongated and dimpled with a lovely knobbly texture to which Tessa has added just a smidgen of glow and shine.
Since we're in fashion blog mode, let's mention that the tee shirt is from Armidi as are the gray tweed slacks
We then turned our attention to the barbecue area. Tess is a dab hand at barbecuing and rarely eats indoors in the clement SL climate where you don't even get wet if it rains. Of course she has a 5 star barbie with gas and charcoal (only virtual pear wood!) and smoking hood, but the area was exhibiting some disturbingly bare spots.

We had previously tried to fill these spots with cycads, a lovely and ancient plant which every spring unfolds a layer of wonderfully green new March fronds. Spikey, yes, occasionally threatening, yes, but a goodcontrast to other greenery in the garden. But we sadly concluded that it was a plant with which most SL plant designers were unfamiliar and decided to look elsewhere for our screening plants.
Lilipily have always done large screens, big prims textured with forest scenes. We've used them before but have never been fully satisfied with the results. They usually turn out to be just big pictures with straight edges which require heavy disguising. However this one, the "Bamboo and Tropical Plants Screen", was different in that discrete use of alpha texturing gave it a nice top and edge. But we whacked a couple of cycads at the edges at any rate, just to be sure.
This hair is just terrific. It's Gigi from Mirone. Tee is once again from Armidi, sentiment ("You're damn right I'm right") is also by Armidi but heavily endorsed by Tessa. Notice how, almostly uniquely in SL, Armidi knows how to spell "you're". Glasses are Alicia by Nala

Then we thought we'd fill in a few bare spots along the brick paving. This one was only one prim like all the rest. Lilipily call it a Travellers Palm. Fair enough. We're prepared to make allowance for the wide geographical variations in plant naming that you see in SL. The Lindens name it plumeria when everybody knows that it's a pink frangipani. But to us this is a simple aspidistra.
Tee by Armidi

Tess is dedicated to Gracious Living in the garden and to this end has designed a number of platforms giving different vistas of the sim. The idea's straightfoward, a platform, a couple of Pillow Talk cushions, a sensuous oriental rug, some naughty poseballs, a great view and Bob's your uncle.Tessa pressed us hard to include the balls on this and even a pic of her utilising the balls with some rough trade she'd picked up, but in defernce to the sensibilities of our AFs, we have chosen to depict merely how terrific this screen looks. One prim!

The tank is Zebra Head by Emery who have a great range of rock tanks and tees. Do you need to know more about them other than that their main store is on the Heart of Glass sim?

 

The question then arises, what do you do with the space created under the new platform? Just fill it, dear Liza, dear Liza, dear Liza. Color's good and we'd been guilty in the past of using Lilipily's Rhododendra for this important task. But Prims.... Three prims per plant and you need half a dozen to fill a reasonable space.

No more! The new Lilipily Rhodies are one prim and ginormous. So we took a couple, mixed them with some sculpted clumps of lace-leaved ferns for green relief, and they look terrific. Four prims to do the work of what would have been at least twenty in the old dispensation. I know Tessa looks like a slut disporting herself like that but bear with us.

This pic taken on the platform shows both how well the new screens do the edge thing and also how you still need to stick a disguise on the edges if you're after total authenticity. It also shows just how cute that little pigtail on the Mirone Gigi hair is.

We dug a small valley amongst the hills, a hidden garden which we set out to make as lush as we knew how. That freakin lost sculpty tiger roars from in there somehow and we just know that eventually we'll find the weather center again and will be able to stop the rain. In RL we love the Abyssinian banana, musa ensete ventricosum. We love the big green tummy (hence the ventricosum), the massive deep green leaves and especially the great red veins on the back of each leaf.

There are a couple of options for musa ensete in SL. There's one from DiBoutanicals, a nice looking plant created by somebody who'd never seen a serious musa ensete. And no less than ten prims! Then there's the one we plonked in the middle of the hidden valley. It's from Bliss Garden Center, it's one prim, and it's not bad. Critiques? The leaves are a little redder than they should be and the red vein isn't big enough. The first we fixed by modding the color to something luminescent. The second we couldn't fix. Note that if you're searching it, in common with most of SL Luna Bliss has orthographical issues. She spells it as Abyssinium banana.

Tessa also has a folly which she fills with pre-Raphaelite paintings amid beds of lilies where she prays for forgiveness and purification.

Fat chance Ned!

Some, and let us say that we're well amongst them, would say that it's pure contrariness which makes Tessa eschew the fash Buddhas and put a Lourdes statue in the garden's more formal parts. Tessa merely bows her head in prayer for the souls of the cynical, and announces the opening of an appeal to allow her to build a real Lourdes grotto in her garden, replete with healing waters which will fix premature crashes and walking through floors.

Pray with us.

Legs and Bum

You've got 'em, why not flash 'em. The Mae West Philosophy, closely related to the Playboy "philosophy". Why not come up and see me some time?
The stockings are Lisa's Net backseam caramel by Lisa's Things This is a nice little shop full of pantyhose, garters and quirky stuff. The stockings here come in a multitude of colors complete with thong and the requisite garters. Tessa will refrain from comment on relative garter usage in rl and sl and whether this reflects the strong presence of cross benchers in the latter world. Would any woman wear these uncomfortable things if she could avoid it?
Shoes are .#205 Sandals, red from Mrs Wetherby. Yes, I know I carry on too much about Wetherby's but they're just the best.
Booty shorts are NN Booty Denim from Naughty N Nice We feel that there can be an improvement here. Wait for it.
And finally those shapely legs and bum are by Tessa herself.
.

Variegated

A dull, dull day. Grey skies. Bare trees. A chill wind blowing from the north. Yes, Tessa suffers from SAD, seasonal affective disorder, and felt that there was no option but to take refuge in SL to restore some color to her life.

Variegated.

That's what she needed to become.

(For those of our AFs who have temporarily misplaced their Webster's, it means multi-colored. The opposite of the dark days of December.)

Fortunately the task was made easy by the discovery that she had inadvertently bought a fat pack of hair entitled "wild card" colors during a recent rape and pillage visit to Exile hair. Tut tut Tessa. Detail. But we have to say that Exile is so good that any inadvertency can be excused, even in one as broad brush as Tess. And the colors are amazing. We don't normally get off on lair hair but this is just great.

By pure coincidence, while browsing round in FAB, she happened to chance upon these terrific outsize glasses in an exactly matching color. What with the big hair and the even bigger glasses she looked like an escapee from Charlie's Angels. Who said that 1984 was dead?

Hair Miss Southern Belle, color Astral, from Exile

Glasses Fab.Pony Nurave color grape

Jeans a comfort cut freebie. Being essentially a slut Tessa tightened them.

The T shirt is My Day Wet T shirt from Little Heaven. We were trawling round LH looking for some hair but evverything seems to have disappeared. Does anybody know what has happened? LH would be a great loss to hair devotees.

Maitreya Green

Thing is, Tess and Maitreya have never been much of an item. No. I exaggerate. The odd item of clothing, even an occasional skin. Where else would you buy boots?

But Maitreya hair? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Of course the fault's all ours. We were accused only today of being a pointy head and, to be frank, it's the pointy-head slider which seems to be most at fault when we put on the Maitreya demo and we have NO intention of changing that.

Conceptually it's fine, lots of wavey bits and hair hanging out in a manner which is meant to be more romantic than disorganised. But somehow it just doesn't work for us. Our greatest accusation aagainst us is that Maitreya hair lacks swish. Tessa loves to swish her hair as she goes along, the sexy walk button firmly applied in the hope of attracting the attention of guys and even the occasional fake woman. Oh yes! Tessa is as het as the next woman but the touch of a man in a skirt is strangely attractive.

So it was a pleasant surprise yeaterday, as we were going off to buy yet another pair of kinky Maitreya suede boots, that we discovered that the new Green demo actually fitted and that we could wear it without having to spend hours shifting prims, hours which could have been much better spent adjusting intimate balls.

We got so excited abiut it that we went and did this portrait in the Babydoll mode. Some people wish they could shimmy like their sister Kate. We just wish we could portrait like Babydoll.

Bush Expose

No. This is not our promised expose on Tessa's pubic arrangements. Oh no! Sorry boys, fake girls and occasional girls, you'll have to wait for that one until the spirit moves us.
No. The "bush" has no pubic connotations at all. It simply refers to the fact that the blogger's urge came upon us as we were taking the air in our hidden valley, a sinuous rill deep in the mountains of Sim Tessa where small animals gamble amongst rampant vegetation and dark damp places. Oh dear! We can almost hear Dr Freud stirring in his grave.
The linge is an oldie but a goodie, a corset and pantie set from Le Burlesque called Ruffle and Ribbon Corset. We just love the detail in  the textures, especially in the panties. Look at them in detail (No! Not you, you naughty fake ladies!). Just exquisite. And we love the little bows. Problem is, as with so many corset setups, you can only wear them for "intimate" occasions and burlesque dancing (as the name suggests). They have too many layers for anything else, mainly because the bra bit and the corset bit are on separate layers. Tessa suspects this is for those moments where the chorus line bares its collective breast for all to examine.
Shape, for anybody who is interested, is crafted lovingly by Tessa.
Skin is Tasha Peach from LAQ (where else?)
Hair is xt cinnamon from Analog Dog

Bobby Soxer

There's been a rash of James Dean movies on TCM lately and after watching Rebel without a Cause (such a stupid movie) and East of Eden, Tessa was forced to revisit some of her fave SL 50s joints, all the while contemplating what a crime it was against 50s womanhood that he was gay. The boys sometimes have all the luck .

We had originally planned to do it the easy way by just raping Artilleri. But en route we were waylaid, as so often, at Bare Rose Tokyo, SL's best value anywhere . There we picked up this lovely outfit, straight from 1956. It's called Poodle and comes in several colors for, being Jap, four fifths of five eighths of a very small amount. Look it up on their search first. Bare Rose is hell to find things, row after row of apparently unrelated goods several stories. high.

Suddenly Artilleri seemed redundant but we persisted and liberated some of her opticals, in this case Greta glasses *gray*, They're nice but you can't help thinking that, by comparison with the dazzling array of scripted glasses available elsewhere,they're a little past the use-by date. But we are after a retro look.

The hair is worth a mention. It's Kira from LAQ and is designed specially to go with LAQ hairline skins. It does and perfectly. Tessa admits a total addiction to the flickr stream of the Queen of SL portraiture, Babydoll and if you scroll through her stream you'll find several exquisite examples of portraits using LAQ hair and hairline skins. Just beautiful

Two Lovely Black Eyes

An honest opinion, ladies (and fake ladies of whom we know so many in SL). Tessa is always on the lookout for really dark and sensuous eyes. In RL she tends to the Nordic but she has always had ambitions to smoulder like a sex-crazed nymph of the Mediterranean. Trouble is such ocular attachments are as scarce as the proverbial rocking horse manure.

So when she saw these eyes, which were billed as "anime eyes", she jumped at the opportunity. Black as ebony. You can see the steam rising.

Question, and be frank with me, oh AFs, Tess can take it, do they actually look like anime eyes or are they better than that? The jury is out.

More fash details when Tess is no longer in the grip of the grippe.

Multi Climate Fashion

Many philosophers - of course this includes Tessa - have mused at length about the essential absurdity of SL and its many disconnects from the allegedly real world. The transfers from place to place in the twinkling of an eye, the flying, the skin changes from black to white to brindle, the detachability of dicks, the multiplicity of identity, of sex, even of species. Tessa once had to cease suddenly from having sex with somebody when she realised that it was herself, albeit in a different manifestation. Phew! At least she had the consolation of knowing that her counterparty had appreciated the experience as much as she had.

Which raises the important question of climate. Tess lives in tropical climes, at least in SL. Her garden is a riot of colors, greens of the palms, cycads and bananas, pinks and reds of the hibiscus, golden yellows of the trumpet flowers. The air is filled with the buzzing of bees, the laugh of the kookaburra and the Australian bellbird, and the roar of that freakin sculptie tiger which she lost amongst the undergrowth ever since that last sculptie one prim sale at Lilypili. Like many in SL she is constantly dodging falling coconuts, all the while contemplating the unquestionable fact that anybody who'd been brought up with them would never plant coconuts and certainly wouldn't lie under them (at least not if they valued the integrity of their skulls)

All of this implies a temperature which never falls much below 25 deg C, high humidity and everything that goes with that. Sweat. Red faces. Small fungi growing in the deep folds of the body. But here is Tessa, wrapped in a fur, bare midriff, looking totally comfortable and no sign of tinea vulgaris anywhere. After hours of Thought, Tess concludes that this is a technical phenomenon of multpile climate zones around the body. There must be a button somewhere to control this but Tess is not a techo and has only recently discovered how to stop flying.
All clothes here displayed are gifts with which Mrs Wetherby showered Tess after the Great Sneaky Photo Incident of the year nine (see previous post)
Hair Lydia from Exile
Glasses Genius Peepers from Miel
Diamond Pendant White Gold from Armidi Gisaci
Slacks Journey Tweed Slacks - Metallic Gold from Armidi Gisaci
Fur Brown Fur from Wetherby's
Top Karen wants a Minidress from Wetherby's

Fashionista

Hey! This is a fashion blog so why shouldn't I blog the greatest fashionista of them all, Alejandra Jumanya AKA Mrs Wetherby. This wasa bit of a sneaky little pic. Tess was cruisin' round Wetherby's and happened to cam in upon Mrs. W. Who, I must say, was most understanding about it all and personally gave us a dispensation to publish this. Personally I would've taken Tess over my knee and given her six of the best.

And Tess is pleased to report that after the Great Unpleasantness of October, the new Wetherby's is coming on apace. Lookin' really good Mrs W!

Sl Optics

Tessa is optically challenged. SERIOUSLY optically challenged. Moles, bats and other notoriously ocular incompetents have been preferred over her as guides, even in broad daylight. She once had sex with a traffic light thinking that it was a man in uniform - Tessa LOVES a man in uniform. It was only the noise of the crowd of spectators and the surprising unresponsiveness of the light (Tess has been known to make a dead man come) that persuaded her to cease and desist. Red, amber, green, back to amber then red again seemed to be just part of the natural rhythm of things at first, but as time went on it became increasingly monotonous until Tess started to wonder if the viagra had worn off.
So you can imagine that her total dependence on artificial optical assistance is such that even in SL she feels totally naked without it.
Fortunately SL is a veritable cornucopia of glasses shops and Tessa rapes them regularly. Let's have a look at a few.
Kalnins' are the kings of SL optics. They were very early in the field of sculpties and were the first to put super quality textures on SL glasses. Kalnins' were the first to use a tubular section for the lenses, as opposed to the rectangular box sections previously used. They do both sunglasses and optical glasses and some which pass for both.
Glasses were amongst the first fashion items to be scripted and Kalnins' are particularly script heavy. HUDs do fitting and sizing, on face vs on head is a popular option and you can set them to superfly when you need to discover who it is who is making unauthorised use of your intimate poseballs in the skybox at 800 metres. But Emerald has made their radar function redundant which is good because their radar can quickly transport you to Lag City.
Tessa's fave from Kalnin's is IxisGlasses Ixis from Kalnins', hair Milli black from Analog Dog
Tess is also very keen on Respect and Faust
Glasses Respect from Kalnins', Hair Lydia copper from Exile
Glasses Faust from Kalnins', hair Jenna auburn from Exile
Another odd optical house is Miel. Miel is unique in SL in that the glasses attach not to the nose but to the ear. This means that the optically challenged can wear prim eyelashes. Yes, I know, you can attach the lashes to your ear, your mouth or even your tits if you're patient enough. But in reality land it just never works and you finish up with lashes hanging off your face in the most disturbing ways. Sex in particular is pretty well totally out of the question. And by now you should all know that patience is very lowly placed on Tessa's list of virtues.
So PUHLEEASE! glasses creators (see, Tessa has got the jargon and will make an IT person yet), take notice of Miel and offer the ear as your default attachment point. Then even we white stickers can flutter our eyelashes.
Another odd thing about Miel. As you can see from the pic below, Miel's Genius Peepers are hi fash items well removed conceptually from the world of the Goth. And yet one of the options is to have them stuck together with tape. Weird! Yes, we're a Goth free zone. The thought of coloring our fingernails with the help of an ill-aimed hammer doesn't appeal so we jumped at the option of removing the tape and marvelled more than somewhat that it had been there in the first place.
Glasses Genius Peepers from Miel, hair Faye (surely SL's single most exquisite hair) from Mirone, another gift from Nippon to the rest of us
Speaking of Nippon, we've already mentioned our minor addiction to Nala. Nala are Japanese (and all that goes with that in terms of technical excellence, great design and low price), sculpted and scripted. The hair resulted from our recent testosterone surge which had us combing the sims for boys' hair. This lot is from Kmadd whose owners are well acquainted with the concept of androgyny. Great hair for girls and if you're a boy you can either wear it yourself or give it as a giftie to your VERY special gentleman friend
Glasses Alicia from Nala, hair Maddesigns Alex espresso from KMadd

Glasses Curio from Nala, hair Maddesigns Alex ferra from KMadd

Finally a word about today's pics. Yes, I know that I'm always carrying on about Tessa's scorn for detail and fine work. No brush is to broad. But a confession. She is obsessive about detail in her piccies and treats each one like a special baby. The problem is that SL has sucked like an emptying blowhole the past couple of days and, even at highest resolution, it's sharp corners everywhere to the extent that it just got impossible to remedy it.
Tessa abases herself before her AFs and swears on a stack of Korans that she'll redo all these when things have calmed down.

Sin Seoung

This is totally off the topic of this blog (Memo to Tessa: what IS the topic of this blog?) but Sin Seoung is so incredibly beautiful that I just had to blog this pic. Special thanks to Sin for braving the cold and goosebumps at 700 metres to take this pic

Please to Remember the Fifth of November

Look of the Day November 5
Originally uploaded by Tessa Zalivstok

Tessa contemplates what she'd like to do with the party poopers who banned fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day
Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Hair by Jenna Auburn from Exile
Glasses Ixis by Kalnin's
Jacket by Aoharu
Jeans by Skinny Pebbel Wash by Casa del Shai
Boots by Black Dune Maitreya

Nether Regions

Tessa has always like to keep her nether garments to herself. Mind you this doesn't exclude the possibility of a Special Someone's hand reaching over, softly undoing the buttons of her blouse, and running gently across the sheer material of her bra until it disappears into her....
Oh dear!
My computer has crashed. Such a placid little machine normally and now here it is, heaving, sighing and emitting little puffs of steam from those odd holes at the side. Let me give it a moment to compose itself.
Right! Enough of this
Tess got so excited by some of the more recent offerings from Insolence that she decided to show all. This nether outfit is "Iris" by Insolence. Apart from that special someone's soft hands, nothing gets closer to Tessa's LAQs and sculpties than Insolence. It's simply the best and this new corset seems to be following a retro trend which appeals to us. Note to dirty old men. If we find this being linked from sites devoted to the girdle fetish we'll be.... a little excited.
Insolence http://slurl.com/secondlife/Venom/93/133/28
We should also mention the hair. Yes, speaking of fetishes, Tessa is a leading devotee of the hair fetish and owns whole salons full of them. This one is Ciara, Blackcherry from Exile. We found Exile by the simple expedient of using Emerald, clicking on some hair we liked and using the "inspect" function. And what a find! Tess got so worked up that she briefly had to be sedated. We'll show you some of the twenty or thirty styles she bought over the next few weeks. At L$200 it doesn't break the bank either. Or rather it shouldn't if you don't get carried away like we did.
Exile http://slurl.com/secondlife/Covet/175/40/28
You can't really see the shoes but they're from Mrs Wetherby at her usual ridiculously low price of L$20. Never stop, Mrs W!
Wetherby's slurl? Who knows. You can try the one we gave you yesterday but this blog takes no responsibility for loss, generalised anger or even simple confusion which might arise out of using any such slurl.

Days of Our Lives

Like sands through an hourglass........
Yes, we'll fess up. We love a soapie as well as the next girl. Days of Our Lives. The lot. We even had a brief addiction to an Argentinian soapie (or was it Mexican - steak or tamales?) called Rosa de Lejos which was replete with the usual fingernail-biting endings, long sighs, male heros who have a chromosome at least questionable and sudden deaths as one or the other actor arrives drunk on set and has to be written out.
But nothing we have seen on the small screen could have prepared us for the great Wetherby's saga.
In our last episode.
Wetherby's, devotees of this blog will recall, is the child of Mrs Wetherby, aka Alejandra Jumanya. Mrs Wetherby is an excellent person who creates absolutely stunning and colorful dresses. She gives away a freebie every day (to those who've passed the IQ test necessary to get to them - customer friendly easy techs are not Mrs W's forte - see previous posts) and the next day they go on sale at ridiculously low prices. Dresses are L$100, matching shoes and bags can be had for an embarrassingly low L$20. It's couture for the masses and Tessa is nothing if not mass.
The predictable result of this was a store mobbed by masses of gushing females, and more than a gushing few fake females. What tha! It's SL and you can attach or detach a dick at will. Tessa was of course among the gushingest of the gushers and accumulated a substantial wardrobe of dresses and matching accessories in bright primary colors.
Part of the success was that the whole thing was so unbusinesslike. Mrs W is more of a mother hen to her brood than a hard noser. She gushes along with the best of them, asks about how the prim baby is pregressing, and nothing really works like clockwork. An example:
"Let me start by saying sorry for the confusion. Call it construction confusion.
Todays dress is #216
We re named yesterdays dress #215"
Reminds me of the famous correction notice in the Jakarta Times that yesterday's date actually should have been today's. But it's endearing rather than irrtiating and we take it in our stride.
Which was why we weren't all that surprised when we tped into Wetherby's sim one morning to get our daily fix.
No. It wasn't Wetherby's. It was an Indian Reservation. (Shhh Tessa! You'll never learn! They're only Indian Reservations when the lawyers are putting the final touches to the gambling franchise. When it's deeply spiritual like this place it's a Native American shaman spirit wampum exchange).
Just a screw-up as usual? We walked outside. External darkness and gnashing of teeth. Nothing. Not even thundering herds of buffalo as you might expect from the Indian shop.
Then the notice came. It appears that Mrs W had a close and constant companion by the name of Ratshit Arsehole or something similar. No. Let me check. It was "Junkyarddog Yao". Personally Tess would have taken that as a Key Performance Indicator and sought affection elsewhere. But I digress.
It appears that there was a falling out between them which resulted in JYD Y taking his toys and stamping off. From the look of his store, stamping off took the form of a war dance. No smoking the pipe of peace here. One of the said toys was the Wetherby's store and sim. Need Tessa say more?
So Mrs W was left destitute and there was sore weeping amongst the fashionistas, both female and fake female, of SL
Tessa is ecstatic to be able to report to her AFs that sanity has been restored and the show is almost on the road again. Well done to all concerned! Mind you the somewhat singular attitude to informing customers persists. The ever-braying message board is, as usual, full of plaintive cries for a tp to the new store. I know it's a State Secret, but in the interests of avoiding assassination attempts I will give the Slurl below. Meanwhile on her first attempt to find the new store, Tess was as usual hopelessly lost and was forced to ford streams and perform other tasks which are impossible in less imiginative worlds. See fording pic above
Please tell us if you can't find Wetherby's at http://slurl.com/secondlife/5th%20Avenue/142/204/22

Naked Fashion

There are places in more conventional worlds where "naked fashion" is considered an oxymoron. You know. "Naked fashion". "British intelligence". "Marxist economics". "Hong Kong society". That sort of thing.
But hey! This is SL. Before you even get to the undies there's the skin to consider. Unless you're a hopeless noob. you bought that somewhere too. Then there's the eyes. You need to get a pair that really sparkles. And the lashes which absolutely must be long enough to have their own fauna load. (Don't ask, don't tell. We've been there in the louse season.)
Which is why Tessa decided to, at least on the surface of it, reveal all in her latest shot for her AFs.
You see Tessa was absolutely blown away by Linka Demina's (as always) beautiful pic of some hair. http://www.flickr.com/photos/31383018@N05/4058960693/ So being essentially derivative, she hied herself over to booN.
booN
That's Noob to those sensible people who aren't in the habit of practising stset QI.
You've heard me many times before singing, albeit a little too loudly, the praises of Jap sims. Such a creative little people. And booN is no exception. Acres and acres of the most exquisite hair you could imagine. And being Japanese, it doesn't break the bank either. Tessa spent an unbelievable amount of her ever decreasing balance and walked out with no less than seven different hairs. At only L$200 a throw it's difficult to do otherwise. Would that one could do similarly in RL Japan from which Tessa always returns, happy but destitute.
To start at the top.
Hair is JPN670 from booN, color Sand
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Zapico/34/170/35
Glasses are *Curio from Nala, yet another quirky little Japanese curiosity which Tessa loves. Myopia has its moments.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Immidae/75/36/29
Skin? We tried desperately to go with the flow and persevere with Belleza. "Jesse" is nice but in the end is there any place which even goes near LAQ for skins? So here we are, exposing to the world our LAQ old dependable Imani. So glowing. It makes poor Tess look good even on mornings like this when she's consumed many more than the prescribed half dozen over lunch.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Laqroki/154/67/23
Nipples..... yes we're getting down and dirty now. We're nipple people, so we were more than pleased to discover these terrific nips. Our old ones had a sort of a base which had a tendency to show if you were anything but extremely meticulous in adjusting them, And Tessa is anything but meticulous. These ones are sort of cigarette butt shaped and you can adjust them in and out for those..... more intimately exciting moments.
They're 3D nipples mk5 from Bojana Fashion. See? In SL nipples are fashion items. Who said I was naked?
http://slurl.com/secondlife/CZESTATE%20Kau%20Lei/145/158/27
Eyes are Shine Lustrous sepia
In deference to her carefully cultivated public image, Tess stopped at the navel so we can't go in detail into her pubic arrangements. Watch this space for an expose of Tess's intimate fashion. It may well be classified under "bushcraft". Or possibly "runway etiquette". This IS a fashion blog after all. Only time will tell.

Look of the Day 30 October

Look of the Day 30 October, originally uploaded by Tessa Zalivstok.
Androgynous doesn't quite describe how Tessa feels today. But I was wandering through Bryce Designs and this boys' hair was just screaming to be bought. So I did. I prefer to think of it as more Princess Di than David Bowie. Be prepared for a rash of irrational and possibly self-destructive behavior.

Hair from Bryce Designs
Glasses Faust from Kalnin's (what else but Kalnin's would you put on your eyes?)
Skin Jesse Sunkissed from Belleza
Shirt from Cubic Effect

Urban

Isn't this jacket just the best in SL? It's from Aoharu. Hair from Dernier Cri, Skin "Jesse" from Belleza, Corset "Laure" from Insolence, Jeans a freebie, Glasses Danielle from Insolence

http://slurl.com/secondlife/AOHARU/112/125/23
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dernier%20Cri/111/105/28
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Venom/93/133/28http://slurl.com/secondlife/Belleza/128/128/27

Fall

Suddenly it's mid October. A cool wind blowing from the north and leaves turning deep red, then brown, then drifting to the ground. My green thumb is in its element. There's a particular spring in my step as I seize my rake and pile the leaves into neat rows in the gutter. My long suffering hubby disappears next door with a large crate of beer to distract and disable our greenie neighbors, a noted bunch of spoil sports and complainers. Then, as the laughter gets louder and more raucous, I sneakily bend over, light a match, and watch the white smoke curl heavenwards. There is no sweeter smell than the smoke of burning autumn leaves. May all opponents of leaf burning be condemned to rot away in a lower circle of Hell.
Of course my wardrobe has to take the earth colors too. That's a no-brainer.
Dress from Mrs Wetherby of course
Hair from Analog Dog
Skin Jesse from Belleza

How Green was my Thumb

Tessa is always out there in search of the perfect garden. Not an easy thing but we persist. We are homestead people so prim reduction is priority number one. And we really had to do something about our dependence on four prim cycads to fill out those empty spots in the garden bed. Just won't do to dedicate 300 prims to landfill when they could be so much better used for intimate poseballs.
Which was what led us to Maria's Garden Center.
Owner mariarowena Mayo claims to have "The biggest collection of 1 Prim Plants, 1 Prim Trees 1 Prim Flowers 1 Prim Tropicals". Also on offer is "Gothic Aquarium" - ewe! black sharks with blood dribbling down their cheeks? and Gorean Food. We don't claim to be experts on the ways of Gor but we had always cherished the illusion that they ate each other.
We quickly found our cycad and it was terrific. Much more realistic than our previous one although a real cycad tends to slightly squatter than the one we got (except in sprouting season of course). We tried to fix this by fiddling with the z axis but it just looked distorted. But all in all it was more than acceptable.

Then we went a little nutty. We bought several one primmers, a hibiscus which has now been converted into a hedge, a bromeliad (Tessa LOVES bromeliads) a sunflower, a sago plam and even a money tree just like the one that Tess's pilot has in RL.

Wow!
In a moment of folly I even bought a beehive which emits terrifying clouds of bees. No stings as yet.
Off-prim islands and mountains seem to be the landscaping thing of the moment and Maria has plenty, replete with appropriately seething waters and crashing waves. A castle wouldn't be a castle without one. Tess's sim is sadly littered with such items so she declined the opportunity to buy. But there were some interesting ones there including an enormous iceberg for only L$600. Tess had visions of Cap'n Jack Aubrey chasing through the Roaring Forties and once more walked away.
No wonder the Naiman guy, who is always bemoaning his fate, gets pissed. Still, it works in fashion and any other field of human endeavor. If you've worked out how to do something, so can everybody else. This brings prices down and guess who benefits? Yes, everybody.
A word about one prim plants. They're getting better all the time but am I alone in thinking that it's hard to beat the more conventional multi prim versions with flex. But the prims...................
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Marias%20Garden%20Center/63/119/21

How We Look and Feel, 17 October 2009

Now let's not accuse Tessa of goddess illusions. It was just that I was cruising through Liliana Bethune's fabulous Lilypili garden center and happened to come upon this scene of unbridled depravity by some obscure artist or other. (Memo to Tessa: DETAIL, Tessa, DETAIL!)It was lust at first sight and now it's in pride of place on the wall.
Meanwhile the Lilypili Garden Center is a riot of ever expanding color. They have gone the way of all flesh and replaced most of their multi-prim plants with sculpties. One result of this is that you can now fill your garden with four or five times as many plants as previously and become hopelessly lost in your own jungle (Memo to Tessa: find that freakin sculpty tiger you lost in the undergrowth before it's too late)
The downside is that, with several squillion plants, all sculpty, Mr Lag is in his element and movement is nigh impossible (am I seeing a theme here?). Tessa advises checking the position of what you want in search before rezzing and navigating blind. Works for me, should work for you. The owners are disturbingly New Age but this means that Tess got a fabulous set of Buddha gates in brass and gold and they are now standing at the front entrance to her house in the Better Half of Weekend Retreat. There is also a 15 foot statue (one prim) of the god Nike (no silly, the god of Victory, not the god of Sports Shoes) blocking my view of the ocean.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bbang/242/45/50

Look of the Day 16 October 2009

A slightly rough and ready look for today. Tessa's feeling frazzled and needs to assert herself a little
Hair Lykke from Analog Dog
Jeans, t-shirt and shoes, freebies from somewhere or other. Don't bother me with details. I'm feeling a little on edge.

That butch bomber jacket is Roll-up Riders (brown) with denim from Aoharu. While we’re at it, have a look at Aoharu. It’s very Tokyo, clean glass boxes filled with goodies. If it wasn’t for the absence of trees I’d imagine that I was there walking down Omotesando with a quivering purse. In fact one of my few criticisms is the absence of trees which makes it all look a bit windswept. Actually, to do it justice, if you walk back down the Omotesando-imitation boulevard (mind the sim crossing! Tessa seems to be becoming very familiar with the feeling of walking through the floor lately) there is a moderately pleasant promenade with the sea on both sides, a few scrawny palms and some nice lighting at night. Give it a try.

Why are the Japs so good at this sort of stuff? Why is it that whenever you find something quirky and nice at a good price, it has a tag in Japanese? We’re supposed to be the smart ones. They’re just supposed to screw things together and squirrel away the money. Maybe that’s yet another thing that the academic economists need to revisit. But wait! Wouldn’t that mean leaving their desks?

http://slurl.com/secondlife/AOHARU/112/124/23

W*TF 1

*
That's "why" btw.
I tp to my fave shop, hot in expectation of orgasmic shopping experiences.
Everything is grey.
Grey
A few grey boxes rezz.
I wait
I wait
I go and make a cup of tea
I have a smoke
I go back to my computer. Some promisingly fuzzy shapes have appeared on the boxes. I go into edit. A shape appears. Suddenly it's clear. But it's not what I'm after.
At this stage there are two possible scenarios. The first is in the imagination of the vendor. In this one I hang round for ages just loving the experience and waiting for the promised goods to appear. Along the way I buy several dozen other items. After all it's only cents. My goodness! Where did that hour go? Doesn't time fly when you're having fun.
The second happens in reality land where I swear profusely and sign in to the nearest lesbian club.
Moral.
You don't need to upload high resolution pics for your ads and vendors. Keep the pics as low res as possible. In that way they'll rezz quickly and you'll keep your customers. They look just the same.

Look of the day 15 October 2009

This is today's freebie from Wetherby's. Alejandra (Mrs Wetherby) has an eccentric approach to just about everything technical about SLCommerce. It's a bit like when you were a kid and people would give you a Christmas gift of a pea wrapped in 500 layers of tissue paper in an enormous box. If you're not careful, within a week or so you'll have boxes and bags littlering the whole sim. And sometimes it arrives in your invo, sometimes in your Objects folder. Who knows? Who cares? All part of SLife's rich tapestry.
But her dresses and shoes are just exquisite. And you don't have to borrow Mr Obama's ever growing debt to get them. A new beautiful freebie every day with shoes and bag for L$20?
In keeping with her unusual technical approach, joining her group to get the daily freebie is an IQ test. No. You don't just click on something obvious and join. First find the dress of the day. You'll rezz with your back to a wall. In a couple of hours when everything's rezzed enough to see where you're going, walk over to the three or four circular steps. Climb them. Walk past the gloomy looking staircase, turn left and continue on five or six yards up to where there are always several thousand milling screaming fans. This is the dress of the day.
In front of it, if all the planets are in alignment, you should find a ball hanging there expectantly and inviting you to join the group. Click on it. Then. Go to your chat history. At the bottom as the latest entry (unless you're particularly talkative) you'll see a link to her group.
Click on it. The group dialogue box will pop up like magic. press "join for L$0" and Bob's your uncle.
Now comes the interesting bit, actually getting the dress. Go back to the milling throngs. Make sure you have Wetherby's group active. Right click on the picture at which stage a touch circle should materialise. Touch. The dress, wrapped in multitudinous layers, should appear in your invo.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wetherbys/105/252/23
Speaking of faves, my hair is Lykke from Analog Dog. Don't you just love AD. I like the walking on water feel as you paddle lightly through and inch of water to get your prized hair. Thank God it isn't a shoe sim.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Analog%20Dog%20Hair/96/190/21

Vade Mecum

Sad isn't it?
Wikipedia tells me that vademecum is now not only merely a "type of reference work, or other collection of instructions, that is intended to provide ready reference" but that it is "now considered to be archaic and is not in general use any more".
Sad

I prefer its original use, the mediaeval Latin "go with me", a guide and companion not only to physical travel but to life. And that's what I intend to give you.
I'm Tessa, Palermo native, five feet three in my stockinged feet. I live in Second Life. I live a second life. I travel, usually by tp in a twinkling of an eye. I will show you what I see and tell you what I feel.