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.
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