Fash Mob »

• Flash giveaway: one night B&B plus Crafternoon Tea for two at Carton House

  March 13, 2012 @ 3:30 pm | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  

  It’s a St Patrick’s Day to remember! You and a loved one / friend / frenemy / other half (etc) can experience all that Carton House has to offer this Friday night with one night B&B and tickets to Saturday’s Crafternoon tea. Say wha? Well:

  Carton House in Maynooth, Co Kildare will be celebrating St Patrick’s Day with crafternoon tea – combining craft workshops and locally-sourced gourmet treats. There will be a knitting clinic hosted by the experts from This is Knit in Dublin’s Powerscourt Townhouse, along with pottery workshops and handbag making, with materials supplied. Cathal Kavanagh, executive chef, has created a menu of traditional Irish fare, which will be served in the kitchen bar. Crafternoon tea costs €15 for adults and €10 for children; under fives go free, See cartonhouse.com, tel: 01-5052000.

  

  This competition will run until 6pm, Wednesday, March 14th, 2012. To enter, leave a comment below saying whatever you want, but be sure to put a real email address in! And if you’re having trouble commenting, refresh the page and then try. Often does the trick for me!

• Friday giveaway: Countdown to Christmas with the Zip Yard

  December 9, 2011 @ 5:25 pm | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  So this Friday giveaway is a little late – and I haven’t even pulled the winner for last week’s giveaway*, my bad! – but this one is a doozy: the Zip Yard is offering 10 €30 vouchers for you to nip and tuck your party dresses (or trousers, or tops, or . . . you see where this is going).

  

  At a time when we’re all spending less, the answer to what to wear tonight might already be in your wardrobe – it just might need an experienced seamstress to give it the makeover it needs! The Zip Yard has 11 locations nationwide and will tend to your every fabric-related need, and with 10 of you in with a chance of winning, making over your wardrobe has never been so easy.

  

  (For the record, I don’t think Fergie should have altered this D&G numbah!)

  For a chance to enter, simply leave a comment below! Only one entry per person; no correspondence will be entered into regarding the success (or lack thereof) of your entry. Bon chance!

  (And as usual, the competition will run from today until Wednesday, December 14th, at midnight!)

  * I will do this ASAP, I swear!

• Care ‘n’ share: making your clothes last longer 1

  November 24, 2011 @ 8:30 am | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  Lately I’ve been faced with that familiar conundrum: how to make those things you love last longer – because no one wants to bin their number one dress of 2011 as soon as 2012 rolls around just because it’s frayed and faded and bobbled up under the arms.

  

  Image via Black Milk

  When I think about clothing care, a few anecdotes spring to mind. The first, from when I interviewed Sheana Keane a couple of years back about her cashmere collection (swoon!) and she made a point about the jeans she wore for The Afternoon Show. She told me that she had a pair bought for the show that she loved so much, she bought them for herself – but the ones she washed herself in the machine looked about five years older than the ones used in the show, which were dry-cleaned about once a fortnight. She showed me the two pairs, side by side, and the difference was astonishing. So that’s the bad news: if you love something, dry-clean it. It will last way longer.

  The second bit of information was gleaned from a stylist’s tip in Elle; she pointed out that we wash our clothes far more frequently than is necessary, and that we should only wash clothes when they’re dirty – not just because we wore them all day and feel like they kinda should be washed. Since reading it, I’ve taken it on board and not only is my life a lot easier (three washes a week as opposed to five or, more often, six) but I’ve realised how fussy I was being. Now I try to air my clothes instead of washing them; I just hang them in front of a window or in the airing cupboard overnight and the smells that would, 24 hours earlier, have warranted a spin in the washing machine, have disappeared.

  So the two points really boil down (ahem) to one: don’t wash your clothes as often. Think about how damaged they’re getting by being spun around in that machine and try to air them, brush them (H&M do clothes brushes by the till for less than €5) or, if they need a good clean, send ‘em to the cleaners’. What are your top tips for getting the most out of your clothes?

  This is the first in a series of posts on how to care for your clobber.

• Pop-Up Big Top Rail Sale at Airfield House, July 2nd

  June 23, 2011 @ 11:30 am | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  So what are you doing next Saturday? Because me, I’ll be here, taking a table and a rail and selling my worldly goods (not quite) in aid of Diabetes Ireland and the Bubble Gum Club.

  

  I’ll also be keeping an eye out for fashionable frequenters so I can do a few street-style posts (and if you can’t find ‘em in Dundrum, where can you find ‘em?) so why not come along? Better yet, take a rail or a table! You don’t have to donate your spoils to charity (although it would be the charitable thing, innit) – you can use it as an excuse to recoup some of your sartorial losses.

  So how about it? Do you resell or donate to charity? When was the last time you cleaned out your wardrobe? (I do mine about every two months and usually drop my duds into the nearest charity shop, although for the last couple of weeks I’ve been saving up for this!)

• A DIY project – glitter shoes a la Louboutin

  May 13, 2011 @ 4:16 pm | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  Well you’ll imagine my surprise when, following my post on Christian Louboutin this morning, I saw this sweet and oh-so-effective DIY project posted by one of my friends on Facebook!

  

  

  Start off with a pair of old, but in-good-nick fabric-covered shoes. It helps, says Lynn, if they’re shoes you never want to wear again – but I’d totally go into Penneys and buy a cheap pair for the end result. Next? Cover the shoes in PVA and glitter. Yes, regular glitter. The result? After the jump (because I’m mean like that) . . . (more…)

• A stitch in time . . .

  December 8, 2010 @ 12:30 pm | by Rosemary Mac Cabe

  We’re forever getting told that knitting is the next big thing (even Madonna is doing it, for crying out loud!) but so far it’s one bandwagon I haven’t quite been able to get on. I do have a grudging admiration for people who knit on the bus or Luas, but the larger part of me just feels as if (a) I wouldn’t be able to knit anything that I couldn’t buy a nicer version of, and (b) I just wouldn’t find the time.

  

  But there are thousands of you out there who are big into knitting, and I hear two of the biggest issues are (a) sourcing wools (yes I heard this from my mother who is currently knitting a blanket-that-was-meant-to-be-a-cardigan) and (b) the fact that it’s quite a solitary activity. Here’s where Stitch comes in.

  It’s a café and knitting supplies store in Dublin 9 that runs knitting and stitching classes, as well as providing a friendly space for people to come and practise their hobbies over a cuppa.

  

  For Christmas, they’ve designed this gorgeous knitivity, as well as kitting the store window out (top). What do you think? Has knitting seen its day or is it something you’d be interested in starting, or continuing?