Collecting for over 25 years:
As some our spheres already know,David and I have been very avid collectors of all things Vera Neumann for over 25 years of our relationship.
Linens,dresses,blouses,scarves, , fabrics tableware,gift items and much much more.All resulting in a very comprehensive collection indeed.
COVID lockdownhas given is the opportunity to finally set about curating ,organizing and photographing everything in the collection. This is a very abig project,but we are so thrilled to be able to eventually present our in-depth documentation of the collection as we prepare it for eventiual sale .I will be blogging about the project on our Verasphere.com website as we go -stay tuned

One of my all time favorite animation series has to be  Fantadroms , it  is a Latvian children's cartoon by the production company Studio Dauka. was created in 1985 by Ansis Bērziņš in Soviet Latvia (Republic of Latvia after 1991) and distributed by Studio Dauka It first aired in the Soviet Union in 1985. The show has no dialogue and drama unfolds through pantomime and expressive noises such as grunts, groans, and laughter. This allows the show to cross language barriers.
The eponymous hero of the show is a yellow shape shifting robot called Indrikis, who usually takes the form of a cat. He flies through the universe mediating various disputes between the other characters. One recurring dynamic in the show is the love triangle between Indrikis, Receklite; the flying purple cat-octopus with whom he is in love with, and the rat – who is in love with him. Other recurring characters include a cow, a (human) woman, and an amorphous pink blob.
don't miss the VIDEO BELOW 
The episode "Salt" won the Lielais Kristaps award for best animation in 1985, and further episodes were made sporadically until 1995.
In the early 1990s, Streamline Pictures was planning to release Fantadroms in the United States, but it was scrapped because the company thought the series was too bizarre for American audiences and that the person representing it did not actually have the rights to it. (Source Wiki)

"The Contest" is one of my personal favorites . I attempted to buy a dvd from a n official Latvian  site that had carried the dvd but it has been unavailable for qiute some time now ,but you can  still find many of the 13 episodes on youtube 

  Julie Driscoll
  with Brian Auger & The Trinity , Covers the iconic  song "Season of the Witch "Originally written and performed  by Scottish balladeer Donovan .
This particularly mod era  clip is from a 1968 German TV Special  called "Idea"the program featured  a band called The Bee Gee's
(a Brit rock,balladeer band turned disco sensation )
the rotating sets and props are creations of true pop art
also the editing is fun to figure out .
​click picture to go to the video  

Back in 1968, Julie Driscoll was riding high in the charts with Bob Dylan's song "Wheels on Fire." She was a member, never the leader, of Julie Driscoll & the Brian Auger Trinity but the media loved her and singled her out from the band. Extremely photogenic, 'Jools' was as much a sixties icon as Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy but she neither sought nor enjoyed the attention. Look her up in image searches ,you will see the charismatic essence of art dance and song ,with a striking visage of dreamlike worlds.
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In 2010, with Ghosts of Gold, Tippetts began a partnership with Sheffield-based multi-instrumentalist and auteur Martin Archer. Three other fine records have followed--Tales of Finin, Serpentine and Vestigium -and the duo begin work on an album in 2017 ,released in 2018 .
If you are interested hearing in any more music from the "Psychedelic" era , check out Psychedelicized   for some very well researched rare music of the times . 

 If you would like to see a Quintessentially MOD  British TV special "Groovy" from 1968 -(I think the sound could be better , guessing it was vintage monoraul television sound.) That said  Julie waxes somewhere between folk blues Dusty Springfield jazz smoke and ether with Brian Auger & The Trinity.
Visually: the half hour film is beautifully shot in high contrast Black and White with pop imagery film clip inserts.Worth a look for sure .

I have had this great little “Fiesta” radio for quite some time.
​I didn’t find anything about the radio online and there is no label or ID tag inside the housing . Sadly the insides were fairly gutted so it just sat around looking cool.Then I ran across this little Bluetooth speaker in a thrift store for $2.00 (which is what I paid for that radio when I found it. $1.99 to be exact) .There are just enough parts with the original interior metal base to maintain the Proper weight of the radio so it’s not a flimsy lightweight plastic shell ,and no more wires ,it just took some time for things to come together.

More from the Analogue Asylum Archives:
Warrior TS-558 - Transformable Radio Warrior, Robotic Radio.
Made in Taiwan. 1984

What’s your sign ?  “The Mystery of the stars simplified “
Includes a new guide for happy hour Astrology Talk !

REPOST:
​in April & May 2019 Verasphere completed five DIY Costume / accessories workshops at the Harvey Milk  photography and Rec.Center in San Francisco.Many thanks to Nicola Bosco for giving us this amazing workspace .beautiful natural light ,windows that open to fresh air ,tables and chairs enough for almost thirty participants

REPOST:
I ​ran across a photo of one of my favorite models from an early age.”Mod” Garbage Truck scale model by the Monogram model company .Finally those big eye kids in the Margaret Keane knock-offs painted by the artist known only as “Lee” that were stuck home in their rooms dancing to records wearing the coolest clothing on the planet 

​had grown up formed a band and embarked on a kooky kooky lifestyle that would lead them of course to a comically mad romp filmed all over Europe in said truck.This was all due to the modest success of their sugar coated pop song “Bigeyes” followed up by the massive hit “I’m Keen on you”which was so popular that it ended up in the back of Sugar Smacks cereal boxes .
As advertised on Saturday Mornings between the Banana Splits and The Bugaloos"imagine that, and it really played .
I was dancing to it myself in my Mod clothes, that I got from the Sears Roebuck “Put-On “ shop,
Wasn’t everybody else in Wichita Kansas? What is wrong with these people anyway?
​The band would end up living above a psychedelic clothing Boutique in the Mecca that was “Swinging London” (a place I had lived in not so long before the “British Invasion“ hit the U.S.) there would be a branding crossover with the Doctor Who franchise in which the band helps Doctor Who defeat the Daleks by playing their  "Dalek Breakdown". Naturally everything ends with a big dance party no marriages and no kids in the storyline.
 Well of course that is  all total fiction you know ...
Other boys were saving up for a football and I saved my pennies to get this and other wacky scale models including...

Addams family Haunted House complete with glow in the dark "ghosts". that gimmick consisted of a scissor like mechanism on the base of the house that propelled said spirits through the house. Of course they were so small you couldn’t see them inside especially in a dark room as I waited for the magic of “glow in the dark” at least the luminous plastic on my”Thing “ mechanical bank’ was big enough to see in the dark.