Making Good Use

Imported Yankee Twaddle

My Dad particularly disliked Halloween and always referred to it as 'imported Yankee twaddle.'  I tend to go along with him with this sentiment - when exactly did Halloween get to be so big in the UK?  When I was a child there was no such thing as trick or treat - though there was a local ghost story about a statue of a woman that stands on top of an old barn (Sally on the Barn) who would come to life and walk the surrounding fields every Halloween.  It used to scare me half to death as a child (but then, I was a very easily scared child!  Just ask my sister, who would torment me with shouting out things like 'Cybermen' (my personal Dr Who monster bete noir) or 'Green Noah' (a particularly scary Jackanory story that I hated) everytime I went upstairs on my own!!)

There is something I very much dislike about trick or treating - like it's begging but with menaces.  At least with the old 'Penny for the Guy' routine (and surely Guy Fawkes night is what we should be 'celebrating' at this time of year - being English and all that) children had to have made a decent looking guy before adults would cough up any money (and they had to sit around on freezing cold pavements for hours on end to get any decent takings, too.)  When I was in Switzerland the other week, I noticed signs of Halloween creeping in there as well - and Halloween was a totally unknown concept in that country until very recently.  No doubt it's all down to 'globalisation!!'

I doubt we'll get many trick or treaters bothering us this evening - we rarely do - but those that do ring the bell will get rather slim pickings here.  I have wrapped up some pink and white marshmallows in white kitchen roll, secured them with elastic bands (courtesy of the elastic-band dropping local postie) and drawn some ghost faces on them.  They're nothing wonderful but I'm darned if I'm going to lash out on buying a bag of Cadbury's mini chocolates at an extortionate price just on the off chance that some kid in a fright mask will ring the bell (especially as I can't eat up the chocolate that's left over these days due to ye olde gall bladder problem!!)  If any more than four children come to our door, then they'll have to make do with an apple or a banana.  Not sure they'd see that as a 'treat'!!

Fabric Finds

Thrifting finds have been somewhat elusive of late - what with the boot sale season now being finished and me not having been very well so haven't been perusing the charity shops at all - and, oddly enough, most of the items I have come across in the last week or so have been fabric finds.

There was an Autumn Fayre at a Methodist church on the outskirts of Southend last Saturday where I found a nice pile of vintage linen tea towels - several of them unused.

Plus an unused vintage souvenir tablecloth from Torquay - with gorgeously evocative illustrations and colours. 

At the same Autumn Fayre (and not fabric related) I found a really nice pair of Hotter sandals for my Mum, which had been hardly worn.  They were only £1.00 and I was so pleased to have found them as they retail at £55.00 new.

Then at the 'Coffee and Jumble' on Monday I found a bolt of unused 1940's satin brocade upholstery fabric.  I paid £2.00 for the lot and had no idea just how much there was until I got it home - 18yds plus!  Wow, no wonder it was so bloomin' heavy to carry!!

Schweiz

We only had a whistle-stop visit to Switzerland last week and as there were members of P's family to meet up with and a couple of business appointments for P, there wasn't really much time for 'seeing the sights'.  Nevertheless, we did manage to fit in a couple of small trips to some very impressive places.

First up was a visit to the monastery / church / abbey at Einsiedeln.  The outside was pretty impressive but the inside was just amazing.  Photos weren't allowed but some of the pictures in the above link give a good impression of the 'wow factor' interior.  I have never seen such a rich and gilded church in my life.  It was high baroque meets mittel-Europa Catholicism with amazing amounts of gilded gold bling thrown in for good measure.  Truly jaw-dropping in all its rococo glory.  Makes the good old C of E look very plain by contrast.

Einsiedeln itself was a pretty little town, high up in the mountains, with some gorgeous old houses.  Only downside was it was unbelievably cold that day (note the snow on the mountains) and neither P nor I were dressed warmly enough.

The cold and snowy weather followed us all the way back to P's home town and the view of the snow-topped mountains made the motorway journey something rather special.

Next day we had only a very short trip into the hinterland about 5 minutes drive from P's childhood home.  It always amazes me that people really do live in these classic Swiss chalets - they are so pretty and cosy looking - they always remind me of the little weather houses where a female doll pops out one side to indicate one type of weather and a little man doll pops out the other to indicate something else.

This was the view onto the Todi - the highest mountain in the canton of Glarus - from up there.

And there were a lot of these very curious Brown Swiss cows about too.  They were really friendly and this time I found the sound of their cow bells really rather comforting (as opposed to really rather irritating!), especially when you can hear them at night.

And, finally, I'll leave you with a view from the living room window at P's childhood home.  This was the final rays of the evening sun just hitting the top of the mountain.  Beautiful.

A Loo With a View

 

Hard to believe,  I know, but this stunning vista is the view from the loo in P's childhood home.

And this one is from the same window but with the camera pointing in the other direction.  Nice, eh?  

Switzerland was, as always, breath-takingly beautiful.  Only downside was, both P and I have come back with awful colds and chest infections.  I'll be back with more photos from rural Switzerland just as soon as I stop hacking and coughing and feeling somewhat scheisse.

You Just Never Know What You'll Find

Our local charity shops have been less than stellar lately - with the exception of the denim skirt I've spent all summer searching for and finally found on Monday!!  As I had to go to the High Street anyway this morning, I though I'd just have a quick nosey as I was passing their doors.  Well, whadda you know, I came across vintage sewing pattern gold.

There was a huge box of patterns and they were only 20p each.  I spent some considerable time going through them and eventually came away with 20.  Quite a few were of the not-so-flattering 1980's variety and some were obviously missing vital pieces but many of them were just gorgeous.

Here's what I came home with - most are from the 1960's but a few are even older - and some never seem to have been used at all.  There are women's, girls and boys patterns and  I was  very very pleased with my haul, I can tell you.

I'm off to Switzerland at the weekend to spend some time in P's home town in the mountains.  Es ist eine sehr schone landschaft (I think that's the correct phrase) and I'll be taking my camera so watch out for lots of photos of mountains, lakes and small-town Switzerland next week.

Simply the Best

Saturday saw the bestest jumble sale in Essex take place at the scout hut in Shenfield.  By gum, those Shenfield scouts always have a humungous amount of items at their twice-yearly jumbles - and an appropriately large turnout of punters in response.  Despite a horrendous half-hour drive to get there - seemed like every idiot driver in the area had taken to the road at the same time as us - it was well worth the effort of going there, as always.

Amongst two huge bag loads of 'stuff' I came away with some much needed face wash and another unopened Body Shop body butter for myself.

A Sammy vintage gents scarf and three pairs of ladies fancy evening gloves - all found lurking in the bottom of a cardboard box that everyone else seemed to be ignoring, so I had a good rootle around in it and was most pleased with what I found.

Another jigsaw for my Mum.  They had piles and piles of jigsaws but mainly of the 1,000 or 2,000 piece variety so this was the only 500 piece one I thought Mum would like.

Some rather nice vintage linens.  I also snaffled a pair of lovely Habitat embroidered placemats for me and a gorgeous vintage Christmas tablecloth which has a bit of a stain on one edge that I'm trying to get rid of.

A pair of splendiferous Danish cufflinks for P which I don't think have ever been taken out of their box.

An unopened Accessorize vest and pants set.

An unopened long stitch embroidery kit.

I also came home with a huge stack of books, four T-shirts for my nephew, a Hackett mens suit and a vintage maxi-length Indian block-print wraparound skirt which needs a teensy bit of a repair before it can be ebayed. 

Then today, as the icing on the cake of a splendid thrifting weekend, I found THE denim skirt I've been looking for all summer in a local charity shop.  It cost me £2.75 and fits like a dream.  Pity it's the wrong season to wear it but it won't eat or drink anything in the wardrobe until next summer!!

Cheerio Cathode Ray Tube, Hello High Definition

After seven and a half years, our clunky (check out the depth of that thing) old cathode ray tube telly finally bit the dust last weekend.  It was incredibly cheap when we bought it and replaced a portable tv that we'd been peering at from across the room, for which you practically needed a microscope to see the screen.  When we bought it we were very pleased as it was a huge improvement on what we'd had before.  But in those seven and a half years tellys have improved in leaps and bounds and for the last three or four years we've been longing for it to finally konk out so that we could - conscience-free - buy a new HD widescreen tv.

Financially-speaking we could have ordered a new widescreen telly whenever we'd wanted to but neither of us felt comfortable with jetissoning something that was still working just for a whim (which probably explains why we're still driving round in a 23-year-old car too!!)  Both of us have the somewhat old-fashioned notion that if it ain't broke, we don't fix it.  Which was fine, but didn't stop us from longing for the telly to break.  I may even have cheered when it became obvious that the 'tube' had finally gone for a burton and was only giving us pictures in eye-popping green and red. 

After four telly-free days when I discovered that you can actually watch BBC TV 'live' on the BBC website (who knew, I certainly didn't!!), and a marathon Rummy tournament (yay, I won!!) which brought back many happy memories of playing cards with my family when I was little, a super-duper, all-singing, all-dancing brand-new HD widescreen tv was delivered yesterday afternoon.

By gum, it's fantastic.  We hadn't realised just how bad the picture on our old telly was until we watched the BBC HD channel yesterday evening - it was a-may-zing.  At long last we get to see ALL of the action, read ALL of the titles and credits and, for P, manage to see the football at ALL times during a footie match.  And, as an added bonus, this new slimline telly even makes our very ancient mid-century modern coffee table - which is what the tv stands on - look likes it's got a new lease of life too.   We are thrilled, absolutely thrilled - it may even have been worth waiting seven and a half years for -  and are now going to (eventually) rewatch our entire DVD collection in glorious HD widescreen technicolour!!

Sweet

For several reasons it's been a really good 'sweet' weekend.  I've had my second best ever ebay sale (only bettered by selling a Christina Aguilera concert ticket that I'd won - and that was some years ago), it didn't rain on Sunday so I was able to go to the boot sale, and there was an unexpectedly good jumble sale on Saturday morning.  I didn't buy a huge amount but I was thrilled with some of the items I found.

Like this 1950's rose-print dress by 'St Michael.'  The label says it is a size 22 but no way on earth would this dress fit a modern-day size 22 - it's more like a 16 or 18.  It is literally 30 years since I last found a 1950's dress at a jumble sale (and on that occasion I found about four of them which my sister then wore for a long time afterwards.)  I rarely come across any vintage clothing but on Saturday I found quite a bit.

There was also this gorgeous Mad Men-esque shift dress and matching three-quarter sleeve jacket.  Somebody handmade this suit and made a beautiful job of it too.  It's also quite a large size so I'm guessing it may have come from the same place as the rose-print dress.

A much smaller sized 1970's Missoni-esque print dress in very eye-catching colours.

And a 1970's Canda (C&A - took me years to work out Canda spelt C and A!!) bubble-gum pink showerproof mac.

At the boot sale I bought a set of five red and white striped ceramic handles / knobs.  They were originally priced at £3.00 for the set and I was tempted but as I put them down again the woman on the stall said I could have them for £1.00 - so I did!!  I've nowhere to actually use them at the moment but they were just too nice to leave behind.

Plus, I bought myself an across-body bag in some gorgeous autumnal colours - also for £1.00.

And, as the icing on the cake of a very good weekend, our crapulous old 21 inch telly finally, finally bit the dust.  We have been praying for that thing to konk out for years so that we'd be able to buy a widescreen TV.  A 32-inch widescreen HD with integrated Freeview has now got our name on it and should be delivered on Thursday.  Yay, at last we'll get to watch the whole of a programme and not miss half the titles and credits and a good portion of the action!!