sophie makes: that evasive catchy title

The past couple of days were spent on a little jaunt to Manchester, cafeing, exhibitioning, shopping and dancing. What I like about Manchester is that the cool, quirky independent places are not so overpriced and pretentious as they can be in London. And there's quite a lot of vintage/handmade/unusual shops. My favourite is JUNK which is just like how my own dream shop would be. They sell handmade recycled/re-made and vintage stuffs (hence Sufu's dream shop) and the shop itself is made from reclaimed stuff; telephone receivers for doorhandles etc...aah it's rad.

I was very taken with this necklace in Urban Outfitters.

It's a little envelope which you can open and close with a letter inside. Normally I never go into UO cos the first time it opened here, I went in and saw scarves you can buy in any market for £1, being sold for £14, and the whole place seemed so hideously overpriced I have ever since rejected it. However, on holiday, I thought hey why not. Well this necklace is kinda cute but for £14 !!! Argh they are living up to my overpriced pretentious expectations. A quick search online and I've found quite a few, in particular, one for £8 (incl. p+p) but, the thing is with me, I get these random obsessions with things (owls, pocket watches) which tend to disappear as soon as I get my hands on them. So I can't decide whether to fork out for this one...?? So no purchases for me. My boyf got this red cardi tho...I love the colour..you can't really see in this pic but it has this cute top button detailing thingy.

We found this gallery we hadn't been to last time, Urbis, which was really great. They had this Manga exhibition, an advertising exhibition and an exhibition of fashion designer Matthew Williamson. (And yes, you could take pictures inside)