#003: Cottagecore and comfort

Pop culture and home comforts for March, again

Mar 17, 2021

The front door

Do you ever get something stuck in your head and just have to spend a few solid hours immersing yourself fully into it? That’s been me and interior design the last few days, specifically plant-draped bedrooms and lounge rooms with rich tones of navy blue, forest green, splashes of rust orange, and gorgeous textures like linen and velvet, a beautiful Persian-style rug, old books, antique paintings and wood tones...

Every instinct I have for op-shop hunting is pushing me out the door to go spend big on delicious one-of-a-kind finds and a forest of indoor plants. Thus far I have resisted valiantly, but we’ll see how long that lasts. In the mean time I’ve been making endless online wishlists, Pinterest-boarding up the wazoo, and generally wondering why I’m so obsessed with these interiors. They’re just calming to look at… What is it that has them so hooked into my brain?

(That’s not a rhetorical question btw; if you have some insight pls halp.)

A bedroom with a large bed covered in pillows and blankets of various patterns and textures, soft-lookingcarpet, and a shelf above the bed lined with different kinds of houseplants — On stupid Am*zon

A lounge room with green velour couch, a sleeping cat, pillows and throw blankets in deep tones, two round wooden coffee tables, and several lush green plants — *drool*. Found here

A dimly-lit kitchen interior with orange bench seat, dark wooden table and two kitchen chairs, a worn rug underneath, and surrounded by dull green cupboards with a wooden bench on top — The kitchen from The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (probably where this malarkey originated)

Library

Books

The Mistake by Katie McMahon—I listened to the last few chapters of Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies on audiobook and also watched the TV show (brilliant soundtrack btw), and I can see why The Mistake has been compared to it. Tangled family and friendships, years and layers of miscommunications, personal problems, and difficult choices are peeled back, everything unfolding in flashbacks and memories and events as sisters Bec and Kate come to terms with what’s happening in their lives and family in the present. I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but I wrote a full review for Underground here if it seems like it’d float your boat. It’s not the kind of book I normally read, but it was nice to step out and try something new, and is the kind of novel that’s just ripe for in-depth discussion.

A book cover with a sliver of what appears to be a woman with yellow hair and a hot pink dress, standing in front of a very blue pool with a green hedge behind it, and the words ‘I absolutely loved this novel’ - Liane Moriarty on a hot pink sitcker, the title The Mistake, subtitle ‘Can one decision change everything?’, and author Kaite McMahon over the image — I heard that Liane Moriarty absolutely loved this novel

Lounge

Flowers—A fantastic British show, only two seasons and 12 episodes long, that somehow has buckets of humour, joy and intrigue despite being about mental illness in a dysfunctional family. I would go so far as to put Flowers on the same level of brilliance as Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag. In terms of utterly brilliant storytelling, rich character arcs, depth of detail, glimpses into moments of every kind of emotion, and the ability to somehow be a renewed story every time you watch it, this show reaches into you and plucks chords you didn’t know you had.

I could wax lyrical for several pages, but I’ll leave it here and just say that if you do watch it and want someone to discuss it with, please get in contact! Because, unlike Fleabag, Flowers has almost no media attention or fanbase that I can find, and there’s just so much to unpack and interpret in those two short seasons. If you’ve ever struggled to understand mental illness—your own or someone else’s—Flowers does something to bring it into the light. I can’t explain how exactly, but it really does.

A dark picture of four people facing the camera. L-R is a middle-aged man with floppy hair (Julian Barrett), a middle-aged woman with brown hair and a burgundy cloak (Olivia Coleman), a younger man in a brown jumpsuit (Daniel Rigby), and a younger woman with a heavy dark fringe and her arms crossed (Sophia Di Martino), and in the background a stretch of green grass and wall of stones — Grumpy family is a mood

Movies

Over-the-top heist movies!! In the last week we’ve watched Now You See Me, Now You See Me 2 and Ocean’s 8, and I’m here to tell you that heist movies—especially those that include stage magicians and the Met Ball—are their own kind of fantasy genre. Everything in me wanted to pick apart the implausibility of their plots, but that just makes them less fun to watch.

Watching this collection also reminded me of a show I got into in the late 2010s called Leverage, which is five glorious seasons of b-grade heist movies packed into 40-minute episodes for your vicarious viewing pleasure. Only watch it if you can suspend all sense of belief, because this show was not written with reality (or cohesion) in mind.

Five people face the camera, L-R a man with long brown hair in a shirt and waistcoat with his arms crossed, a woman with long dark hair and a shiny dress, an older man in a black suit with a stripy tie and his arms crossed, a young woman with yellow hair in a waistcoat, and a man with very short dark hair and a dark t-shirt — Suspend your belief, ye who enter here

Music

Queen by G Flip, mxmtoon—This is my pump-up song at the moment. I wake up with it in my head, I put it on in the morning before work, I play it at lunchtime to shake off that midday ennui, and I blast it to celebrate the victory that is getting through another day of work, then it comes up on my playlists when I’m chilling in the evening.

Two portraits side by side, on the left a woman with yellow hair and glasses in a black hoodie, on the right a woman with dark hair, a red heart necklacem and a white top — A coupla queens

Kitchen & Garden

Food

Taco Bell—Ok this is clearly not a recipe (and the Recipe section is now called Food, what is this topsy-turvy madness?!). My partner and I checked out the Taco Bell that opened near us a few months ago and it was surprisingly good. My favourite take-out Mexican is a solid burrito with extra guac from Zambie’s, but who can resist anything smothered in cheese and mince? The meals we tried were particularly subversive their approaches to texture—I got what turned out to be a regular filled crunchy taco with a soft tortilla wrapped around it, and in between was a layer of melted cheese holding it together. I also had a contraption comprising of filling wrapped in a toasted tortilla, but with corn chips inside that provided a pleasant crunch. Not at all easy to consume, but thoroughly delicious.

Tea

Chai according to Rohit—This is what I called the recipe when I hastily noted it in my phone as a colleague explained it to me. He saw me drinking a takeaway chai and ended up explaining the recipe that he and his wife make for each other every morning. So, with his kind permission, I am very pleased to bring you a delicious home-brew chai recipe:

Ingredients: water, milk of your choice (ratio is 30/70 water to milk), 1 tbsp red tea, ground black pepper, hand-ground cardamom, sweetener of your choice (he used brown sugar, I used maple syrup then switched to stevia—all work well)

Boil water, add the tea, boil until steeped
Grind in black pepper, add hand-ground cardamom (minus pods), and add the milk
Simmer 7-8 minutes, then add sweetener of your choice to sweetness desired

Plants

Houseplants—As per my previous comments on interior design obsessions, I’ve decided that I really like houseplants. I have exactly one plant in my office, a white orchid gifted by my partner several years ago, but have plans to acquire several others to create that ‘indoor jungle’ feel, so stay tuned.

Craft

KNITTING.

I said it in the last Brew, and I followed through: I’ve started a knitting project. In fact, the biggest project I’ve ever undertaken. It’s called the Yokey Dokey Tunic and is designed by Gudrun Johnston (pictured wearing it below). Gudrun is a Shetland-born knitting designer who lives in the US and she has some amazing patterns, but this will be the first of hers I’ve attempted. So far I’ve made the collar and started shaping the… bit below the collar, I’ve used four different colours, and have taught myself the Old Norwegian Cast On method and German Short Rows (thank Yoba for YouTube). Updates on this momentous undertaking as they occur.

A woman with red hair stands in the doorway looking at the camera, wearing a long grey knitted tunic with Fair Isle details around the collar and pockets — Would you believe I’ve only followed a pattern once before, yet I thought starting this was a good idea

And another thing…

Do you know what Cottagecore is? If not, let me introduce you to one of my all-time favourite things.

According to Aesthetics Fandom (which is apparently a real thing that exists??!!) ‘Cottagecore (also known under the name Farmcore or Countrycore) is an aesthetic inspired by a romanticized interpretation of western agricultural life. It is centered on ideas around a more simple life and harmony with nature.’

Cottagecore has hundreds of sub-aesthetics revolving around clothing styles, gifs, flat lays, settings, portraits, and practices that are in line with the definitions above. I won’t go into a full-blown explanation of it here, so I’ll just leave you with some images that capture the ideas surrounding it:

A picture of an old-style cottage in a field with trees behind it and grass turning into hay in front of it. Three white chickens with black around their necks and tail feathers face the left of the image — From Reddit

A picture of a bench with several objects on it including a cup of tea on a saucer, a trowel, a parfait in a glass dish, a book with a green cover, a pot plant, a basket, a green cloth with a pendant necklace on it, and several yellowing pages of text pinned to the wall behind with flowers — From Jaime Arlene

A sunny garden with numerous plants and flowers of many colours, in the middle an iron garden set of table and two chairs, a white cat sits on one of the chairs, a china tea set sits on the table, and a luscious velvet blanket is draped over the other chair — Kitty

The Brew is created and sent from the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation
and I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which I live and work, and pay my respects to the Elders, past and present.

The Brew