Sunday 31 October 2010

I am a wee bit excited

Well, quite a lot excited, actually. The lovely Alexandra, whose blog Cottage Dreams I adore, suggested a swap a little while ago, and I jumped at the chance of course. I have just about finished putting my bits and pieces together, ready to be posted, and I couldn't help myself, I so wanted to share a few little snippets of whats going inside the package. I am just too excited about the swap not to show a teeny bit at least. It won't give anything away, I should think, but Alexandra, if you don't want to see anything at all, then stop right here, lol. And what theme did Alexandra come up with? Why, FRENCH of course!

Hmm, I'll just put a pic of something totally irrelevant here first, so that she doesn't see any swap pics by accident. I could share a couple of those postcards I found last weekend, couldn't I? That should do the trick and you may be able to use them for something in your projects.


And a beautiful illustration from one of the books I picked up recently, isn't it ever so romantic?


Right, now on to the little snippets of some of the swap things -






I'll post proper photos when I know that Alexandra has received her swap package.

No boot fairs today, sob sob, so I am just pootling about, doing this, that and the other. Not much of anything really, lol, I seem to be just shifting stuff from one room to another. Might settle down with my crocheting and put a movie on. Or perhaps I ought to be a bit more of a housewife and do some dusting and hoovering and all that nasty stuff........

Toodlepip xxx

Wednesday 27 October 2010

Busy fingers

Not quite as busy as I would like them to be, they get too easily distracted by other stuff, but this is what they have been playing with -

Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK in scrumptious colours

I am making a little lap blanket with the african flower squared hexagon pattern -

I also made a few more tags -





I have also been busy putting together some bits and pieces for a swap with a lovely German blogger. I am having soooooooooo much fun! I am going to get back to that as soon as I have posted this!

Toodlepip, xxx

Tuesday 26 October 2010

Tesco to the Rescue!

Sunday didn't start too well. We set off for what we think was supposed to be the last regular boot fair for the year, but alas, it was cancelled. It was a gloriously sunny morning, but it had rained the day before and the field was too wet. Wimps, lol. As if a little bit of mud mattered. So we turned round, went home, and had a cup of tea and another look at the paper. And there it was, a little ad saying that there was going to be an afternoon boot sale in the Tesco's car park. Hurrah, maybe the day wouldn't be a complete loss ( boot fair wise that is ). I had only been once to a boot fair there, they are not on regularly, and I wasn't all that impressed with it. Still, anything is better than nothing to a confirmed car boot enthusiast, lol.

My goodness, it was heaving! It had started somewhat earlier than advertised, and because all other boot fairs in the county seemed to have been cancelled due to the weather, it was packed! Great news, of course. It was mostly what I had expected to see, lots of modern stuff like toys, clothes, general modern family stuff, but at least there were a few stalls with older bits and pieces, and I managed to find a couple of sweet things. Nothing that I was really coveting, like lace or buttons unfortunately. But here we go, I'll just show you.

This was the first thing I bought, a really lovely old Maling ware soap dish. I haven't seen this combination before, with the two bowls, I can only think that the smaller bowl was for the soap and the larger one for a flannel perhaps. If anybody knows, please do tell me -


Next was a stall with lots of bling bling. I spent ages there, because the lovely old coot who's stall it was, was sooooooooooo slow taking things out of his little boxes to put them on the table, and he wouldn't let anybody near the box in his hands, lol. I picked up a few bits and pieces, some of them missing a couple of stones, but that doesn't matter too much. I have badly broken bits which I use to repair other pieces with. I picked up three beautiful old medals as well -


I probably spent even more time at another stall, because the stallholder had THREE shoe boxes full of postcards! Most of them were very recent ones, but I did find a couple of cabinet cards and a bunch of lovely old postcards, mostly from 1910/1920s -


The next one really surprised me because it is a French piece, and the last time I was in France I picked up a very similar pen rest and inkwell set, but with the Louvre in the middle. This one has the Sacre Coeur as the centrepiece -


My next find made me smile. It was the perfect colour for the kitchen in France ( light green ), and metal! I hate the plastic ones. What am I talking about? Dustpan and brush set, of course.
This one has a smiley face, isn't it just so cute -


I went back to the first row again, to have another look at the bling bling stall, but there wasn't anything which took my fancy. However, next to that stall was the stall I bought the Maling set from, and I noticed that the soup tureen which I had admired earlier was still on the table. That was it, it was obviously meant for me after all. It had sweet little rose decorations, how could I resist that? It even has a little rose decoration in the bottom of the bowl. Condition was really good as well, and when I turned it over, I saw that it was Wedgewood! Needless to say, I snapped it up and brought it home. Another lovely piece for France.


Bit of an eclectic collection of boot fair goodies, lol, I know.

I also went to a jumble sale on Saturday. There is a good reason why I don't go very often. These sales are the hunting grounds of young mothers with pushchairs, and old ladies with shopping trolleys, in VERY confined spaces. And they develop killer instincts when they are at a jumble sale. They push and shove and elbow you as if their lives depended on it, and getting to a table is nigh on impossible, lol. I only picked up a couple of bits and then beat a very hasty retreat to safer ground outside.

A silver plated tankard, very heavily tarnished, but it had the sweetest engravings, not sure you can see them properly -

Silver plated and monogrammed soup spoons -

A sweet little dressing table ring tray with rose decoration -

This is a bit kitschy, but it appealed to me somehow -

A very old dictionary with beautifully aged pages -

And an autograph album. No autographs in it, but the pages are beautiful, gilt edged and the prettiest pastel colours, pink, blue, yellow and beige. They'll be lovely to use in collages etc -


That's all, folks. And now I am going back to crafting for a little bit. Toodlepip, xxx

Sunday 24 October 2010

Crafting on a Sunday Afternoon


Well, the sewing machine is out, the fabrics and laces and bits and pieces are piled up, and I have managed to ignore all those things so far, lol. Instead, I started messing around with paper bits. I made another Eiffel Tower tag, bit different this time, and then I decided to make a few little label thingies to use in paper collages and gift tags. Sigh, glueing and stamping is so much fun.

Don't have much to show for it, but I am looking at the little label thingies as a kind of preparation for bigger things, ahem. You can see where this is going, can't you? Another short (for me) post, yay!

The Eiffel Tower tag-

The little label thingies -

The car boot fair this morning was cancelled, btw, despite it being a gloriously sunny day. Just because the field might have been a wee bit wet from the rain the day before. Humph, not a happy bunny.

See? Short post. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday (or your Monday morning if you are that side of the world). Toodlepip, xxx