Rattling On...

What's cooking?

On Saturday I went out of town on the hunt for something in particular. A piece of furniture that used to be everywhere, going for a song. When I didn't want one. Now...

Anyway, in the window of a charity shop was a poster for a little local antiques and collectors fair, on in the church hall at that very minute. And it wasn't half bad. I got this casserole dish which I will probably use more as a serving dish. Nice.

Nicer was the sandwich, brownie and mug of tea I had with some older ladies who were visiting from Liverpool. I never got round to asking them how they found their way to a little village in Derbyshire.

Nicest was on the way out, a book stall manned by a laconic chap (all sold in aid of church funds on this stall) who just couldn't understand why I fell over myself to get into a box at the back.

Five for a pound. And even then he thought he was robbing me and wouldn't take any more. I'd paid to get in and bought lunch so I didn't feel too bad about it. You can bet someone else wouldn't have had qualms if I hadn't taken him off at the elbow.

I am now checking what to expect when summer arrives, as surely it must? The sun was out yesterday...

Reader participation...

The other day I mentioned the vintage bits and pieces I buy occasionally, Teddy now presents you with one such.

It's an oyster coloured silk satin little coat with tiny mother of pearl buttons. How proud someone must have been to show off their baby, in the coach built pram, sporting this little number. As it's buttoned left over right it appears to have been made for a boy.

The poor light yesterday doesn't do it justice at all in the photo, it's much prettier than it looks .Maybe I should just have said I was aiming for a vintage effect in the pictures and left it at that.

Teddy is wearing a rather nice vintage Viyella baby dress made of brushed cotton, like a comfy old nightie. I think my teddies will have to be hermaphrodites for the purposes of dressing, it'll depend on what things fit them and the season.

I have a friend  (a very no-nonsense Yorkshirewoman) who has two bears who go everywhere with her. They have outfits for every occasion and even went to her son's wedding in special clothes she made them which matched the whole theme. Very smart they were as well. If I remember rightly they have been to Vegas as well, and came back with cowboy boots.

After the last post about bears a couple of people sent me pictures of their own bears. So, in a while I shall be doing a feature on other people's childhood bears, with links back to their blog if they have one (doesn't matter if you don't). If you have a bear you'd like to feature then please do email me a photo. I shall obviously be getting my own bears ready for a photo shoot, although they have been on the blog before. I say my own bears meaning the ones I've had since I was a child.

No bear is too tatty or too strange to join in. In fact we embrace the unusual here. Please let me know if the bear has a name and anything else you think is pertinent. Pandas and other furry friends are included under the broad banner of Bears (I have a goat...). Style points may be awarded...

The new hobby...

Some years ago, it must be more than ten, I saw a small dark-brown teddy in the window of an antiques shop. I really wanted it, it called to me the way a certain thing sometimes does. For one reason and another I didn't buy it. It's one of those might have beens that have followed me around, that and a little mouse ornament I saw at a fair and would have meant spending the last tenner I had. Prudence reigned, but looking back I should have spent it...

When I was born my Across-the-road Aunty, at the request of my cousin, put his little teddy into the washer then hung him by his ears on the line to dry. My cousin then gave me his teddy which I kept until a few years ago. Following a lot of domestic issues my cousin found himself with three small children, two dogs, two cats and re-locating to be nearer family. It was at this point that he happened to mention that he had no toys from his own childhood to pass on to his children. Like a lot of men, he'd got rid of everything thinking he'd never need or want it again.

Obviously, I knitted the old bear a new jumper, spruced him up and gave him back. But I miss him, even though I was glad he was going back to his original owner.

All this is leading to me explaining my new hobby. Teddies, or the collecting of them. With a bit of a view to also possibly selling some, at some point when I've stopped just buying the ones that are calling to me...

Because, and I assume you knew this anyway, there are different styles of teddy peculiar to certain manufacturers. And I have a particular favourite, rooted in the love of Cousin's Teddy.

Thus I feel my Collection, should it ever be able to be glorified by that title, will probably consist of lots of teddies who look the same-like a family!

This little bear isn't quite in that category, though he almost is. the two pictures are supposed to be before and after. I'm not sure whether I took a crap first picture or rubbish second! The first shows him off better than he was and the second doesn't do justice to him.

He was rather grubby so I gave him a good wash. Very carefully, I may add. His hands and feet were mucky and now are much fresher. He looks perkier altogether, and smells really lovely.

I am going to be a sad git and make them some clothes, and dress them in vintage things I find, and have already found in the past but have had nothing to use them for. Sometimes I just can't pass a little frock or pram coat, I imagine how many people started their lives wearing it and wonder where it's been.

Like the teddies really. I just love the fact they have histories and have been around. I want to save them for future generations, so a bit of social history gets passed on. I like how they look sitting on my tapestry footstool. They are my friends.... no, of course I don't mean that bit!!

Anyway, I shall bore you from time to time with teddy bear tales. I would love to hear yours. Did you keep your old bear, did you never have one and wished you had? Am I becoming a sad old nutter....?

So, was it a bargain? And where did spring go?

Here is the putative bargain. A double width footstool with a rather nice tapestry (?) cover. This is it straight out of the car before I'd even run a duster over it.

I think the bird-poo-strewn path adds a certain something to the whole thing. Blame the starlings nesting over the front door. I do.

Now we determine whether it was a bargain.

The ticket price on it was £28 and I also picked up something for £7 (show you at a later date, linked to new hobby...). So that 's £35 on the tickets, but I've watched all the shows. The ones where they haggle dealers to near-death. So I felt obliged to ask 'What's the best you can do on that?'

I must have glanced at the Eftpos machine as she announced there was no discount for using cards. Not a problem, I informed her. I'm packing cash and I'm not afraid to use it.

Anyway, I parted with £25 in the end, which I felt was a good show all round. To celebrate I nipped into Wilkos and bought a new cat litter tray and some dog nail clippers.

I think this will live at the end of my bed. It resonates well with the old green rug. Unless I take up contortion my feet won't reach it though, which is the only negative I can see at the moment. Except of course...

That this morning I got up to this

It's -1 at the moment with winds gusting to 60mph. There's about three inches of snow already down and more is falling. The daffodils are flattened and another bit of fence has blown down. Good job I took those photos of the stool last night.

What a difference a week makes...

Slippers...

A weekend charity shop bargainous find. BNWT as they say, and my favourite shade of green. A size smaller than I would have expected to fit me, but they're perfect. I only tried them on just in case.

The rug they're standing on came with the house. When we viewed it was in the previous owner's studio, she designed and made theatrical costumes, and covered most of the room's floor space. I commented on it and jokingly asked if she'd leave it for me as I loved it. No, she said it was going  with them as she also loved it.

When we moved in, there it was. It's old and a bit threadbare in places but I still love it. 

Another 50p find...

Today's vintage find... a complete and boxed (albeit on the tatty side)Tala icing set. Think of the hours of fun this will provide in the half term holiday, now only three weeks away. Not that I live from break to break, but some weeks are longer than others.

And is it just me, or does this icer have a vaguely menacing surgical look about it? Ladies, you know what I mean...

I didn't knit this one...

Eldest daughter has been on the lookout for a retro style scarf. On my travels I have been snapping up anything I thought fitted the description she had given.

It's not easy to interpret someone else's vague ideas and there have been rejects. This 50s/60s long rectangular offering being just such a one. It was a...

Never having been there myself I can't say whether the scarf has an accurate image, or whether the palm trees are such a charming shade of blue. However, I have been to...

...on more than one occasion. And I can categorically state that I have never seen the giant jelly mould anywhere in the city.

I like it, I'm keeping it for myself!

Pinnies.

Remember this post, where I said I had ideas for things to do with some of the cloths I bought?

Well, I took the plunge and got out my new sewing machine, the one I had for Christmas. I say Christmas, because the delivery was messed up and it actually arrived in February. Still, I hadn't used it until last weekend, even though I really wanted (and needed) a new one. My other is one a friend was getting rid of when she had a new one.

I wish I'd done it earlier, it's a breeze to use and I really enjoyed doing some sewing again. I used some tray cloths to add to pinnies to make the pockets. The pinnies (aprons if you must, but I always call them pinnies) I made with some linen/cotton I bought at John Lewis, and the strings are cotton tape.

I like a pinny with pockets. I always stash ingredients in them when I'm to-ing and fro-ing from cupboards. I also always wear one in the garden, and need pockets for twine, secateurs, gloves and such. Maybe these are too nice for the garden at the moment, but old ones are usually relegated down the ranks to Gardening Pinny. 

I have lots of other ideas, but I think I'll make some more similar to these. My Mother wants to do a bit of a craft fair pre-Christmas and I think (hope) these would go down well. Whilst hunting through the Dumping Ground at the weekend I also found my bias binding maker, so I'm sure that'll feature somewhere as well.

P.S. Don't forget to enter the giveaway if you haven't already. Wish I could!

Vintage Knitting.

I have so many vintage patterns I thought it was about time I started using some of them. Particularly patterns for smaller things that will help to reduce the stash.

These are some quaintly named 'Bedroom slippers' from pre-decimalisation (pattern 9d). The yarn is some 45% cashmere I bought back with me from Russia, most yarn is really cheap there.

The slippers have a really mediaeval look about them, a bit court jesterish, and I really like that. They were designed for an average foot, which appears to be smaller than the same nowadays. I can get them on as they stretch, but really, if I wanted to wear some I'd have to make them an inch or so longer in the foot.

For some reason my Crapomatic won't capture the colour (a nice cherry red) at all. I've had this problem before, most annoying.

The pattern called for four needles to do the length to the toe (which is constructed like a mitten) but I can't bear using DPNS, so slow and unwieldy. So I just carried on on two, there is a join now but that doesn't really bother me. When weighed against the stress of knitting in the round, it all comes out in my favour.

These will go in one of the Christmas boxes I make up later in the year, they'd be good for an older child I think- a bit of fun. I'll be doing more retro patterns from my collection and will try to pick useful ones...

On Monday I'll be posting about a giveaway. It's quite a good one, if I do say so myself, offered to me by a third party...

How many tablecloths is too many?

Yesterday I went out early in the morning to what I thought was going to be a tabletop sale. It was more of a free-for-all jumble sale, selling really good stuff.

I bought so much excellent stuff and spent only £3.50. Included in the haul were embroidered items: tablecloths, tray cloths, placemats and such. About twenty of them.

I also got a beautiful vintage glass lampshade, which I'll show you later as I have a couple of others I can also show; and denim skirts. No, I haven't gone mad, but No1 wants to set up an Ebay shop, and these were all in wonderful condition, and cheap- so if it doesn't work out (and we all know how fickle teenagers are) then nothing has really been lost.

Most of the embroidered stuff is in good condition, a couple of pieces need a boil as they have tea stains on them, and an odd one is probably best for re-purposing.

Which brings me to the point. I have gazillions of cloths already. I now have even more. It's the thrill of finding them, I think, coupled to a real appreciation of the skills required to produce them, that leads me to buy all the good ones I come across. But one can only use so many...

I now have to think of something to do with them, like Emily does here and here. 

If I were really brave I'd turn them into funky clothing, as so many clever and original people seeem to do. However, I fear I'd just look like a loon and be pointed at by small children.

I need a new peg bag after mine burst its seams the other day, and this seems like a good, and easy, project to have a go at. And I have another cunning plan. Both these plans require me to get out the sewing machine and learn how to thread it. I'm ashamed to say I had a new one at Christmas and I haven't used it yet. It seems easier to go with the old one, even though it's crap.

Good news as well, the Nanny McPhee blanket is now finished, and I should have pictures tomorrow.

 

I'm just mad about Saffron, and Saffron's mad about me...

As part of the kitchen spruce-up I also painted these old shelves, home now to the treasured Hornsea ware. My Dad made the shelves for my bedroom when I was a teenager and they've followed me around.

Accuracy is not my Dad's strong point with carpentry (or anything else, really) he's more of a speed-freak. If you want a job done quickly, with major mess, then he's your man. You just have to be a bit unfussy about straight lines, ninety degree angles, or having to do a lot of cleaning up. Having said all that, I'm a stranger to the concept of dust sheets myself so something has rubbed off.

However, as I've mentioned before, I am a stickler for symmetry and geometry. Best, then, to look at the shelves from an angle...

I was out and about the other day and nipped into a charity shop I rarely go in as it's mostly clothes, but there on a shelf, all lonely and crying out to be snapped up was...

 

Oh yes, come home with me, baby. Join the collection. £2 of sheer Hornsea. This style is Saffron, and I know I'm a pattern tart (this is the 5th now) but I can't resist. I'll soon have every shade of daube from khaki to compost. Love it.

The top shelf...

...has the sugar shakers, but for some reason I cropped one of them off the picture. These are the more 70s-ish ones, so maybe it was s ubliminal cropping that went on. I love the lettering on these. It's one of those things that really dates a thing, the lettering style. You can tell if something's 20s, 60s or whichever.

I was at an antiques fair recently (that's antiques in inverted commas...more like a flea market with exorbitant entry prices) and saw two storage jars in the same design as the orange shaker. Mrs Woman was trying to tell me they were 50s. Never. And she was asking too much for me. But I do think about them..

valu

Meeting a reader...

In February Sue(blogless, why?)sent me some patterns that had been her Mum's. One of them was a crochet pattern for a bag I chose to do for the String-a-Long.

In a later e-mail Sue also mentioned there was a suitcase full of old patterns, and if I wanted to meet her at her Mum's house they could become mine. 

We arranged a date to meet up, and that was last Friday. My destination was only 67 miles away but it took two and a quarter hours each way. Traffic. And thank goodness for the invention of sat nav. I used to scorn them a little, but then bought my Dad one a couple of years ago. He uses it all the time and I, er, borrow it quite a bit.

Sue's Mum is 96 and makes a mean cup of tea. The suitcase was there waiting, along with some other things that I'll make you wait to see.

If, like me, you love old books and patterns, you'll be able to imagine how very much I love this case full of history.

There are pages cut from magazines, toy patterns, clothes, accessories, doilies. You name it and it's there. Crochet as well. Lots from the war years and onwards. If you click on the mosaics they should enlarge.

Something I really appreciate is the fact that when most of these were published people didn't have a lot of anything, let alone clothes. They're all so fashionable and the creation and completion must have been a much anticipated event.

The 'Woollies for the RAF' is fascinating. Anyone who's been reading since the beginning (you haven't ??) will know my stash contains some special vintage yarns, some of which were to knit service garments in the Second World War. Well, now I have the patterns to go with them. Strange that it's all RAF related.

There are also some patterns that I'll definitely be completing. Watch this space. But it will be in a couple of weeks as I've become obsessed with a particular crochet project. As you do. I can't put it down. At this rate it'll be ready to reveal next week.

Sue and I also went for a stroll with her lovely dog and had a good chat en route. When we got back her Mum was looking through the case of old photographs. I think Sue was pictured as a child wearing some of the woollies made from these patterns...

It was a lovely sunny day, and as I drove back there was a balloon very low in the  (plane-less) sky, I could see the people in the basket. No chance to get a picture, but somehow it rounded off a lovely day out. Thank you Sue and Grace.

Back to work yesterday, made slightly more bearable by the weather being cold and rainy. About ten staff members are stranded over the world...Spain, Sydney, Cuba...but not enough to present a crisis. Exam cover was stretched a bit.

Our department, four of us usually, was down to two of us. But things got done, somehow...

Fleur.

It's getting that I can spot a piece of Hornsea from fifty paces, I can almost sniff it out.

If you weren't keen on my last acquisitions then, surely, these are much more easy on the eye. I really love this Fleur pattern, and it's one I wasn't familiar with, though as I mentioned, I instantly knew it was Hornsea.

In a strange twist of blogging-fate, Sue left me a tantalising comment about a salt pot yesterday. I do not have a salt pot. I have shared all my small but growing collection with you. There is so much I do not have...

I am enjoying these pieces so much I've been looking for a way to incorporate some special shelves into the kitchen layout. At the moment they're on top of an old larder cupboard in the corner, but that's a bit high to see them at their best advantage. In my opinion.

I hope you are fully appreciating the artsy photo. It's very difficult to make three jars look alluring, and the coffee pot is balancing there without the aid of blu-tack!

I have high hopes of finding some jelly moulds this weekend. I could, of course, order one on-line. But that takes away a bit of the fun, and you never know, I may stumble upon some more Hornsea...

Wibble, wobble...

I used to have a lot of jelly moulds. A lot. But when we packed up to move house last time I thought enough was enough and got rid of, well, all but two. The glass ones were the gonners.

These keepers are both glazed ceramic. The one on the left is Victorian. The one on the right is a modern Burleigh reproduction of an old pattern, and was a present from MrH.

My Mum used to have the Tupperware moulds in various shapes, and also an aluminium rabbit mould. Long gone, all of them.

Which is most annoying, as I have been set a bit of a challenge where they would have come in very useful. More of the challenge at a later date, when I've got my hands on a couple of retro moulds, the funkier the better.

Time to hit the charity shops.                                                                                     

Psychedelic kitchen.

Believe me, I do understand if these aren't up your alley. A few years ago I would have been right there with you, but then I developed a bit of a thing for 70s retro.

These are some more Hornsea jars to add to the one I bought a while ago, though that one was green. The tea and coffee jars are Bronte pattern. The green Flour jar and the biscuit barrel below are Heritage pattern.

I don't actually put anything in them, they're just for display. I'm always wary of using kitchenalia if I don't know where it came from. More importantly, they're not as airtight as I'd like.

I wouldn't like a house full of 70s stuff mind you. No trippie wallpaper or orange vinyl three piece for me, but a few select pieces look all right with the general melee of kitchenalia I have. And it's not all out at once, I like a change every now and again.

Off now to iron my hot-pants and crimp my hair whilst listening to one of my 70s faves...