Granny's Attic Sylko Haul

Last week I went to one of my favourite shops, Granny's Attic. It's a house clearance shop in a little market town near me, and is run by a really sweet lady who likes to stop and chat. The shop is tiny, but crammed full of all sorts of lovely things (and some not so lovely, but that's the fun of the thrift/charity/house clearance experience).

I'm going to share a secret. Under one of the shelves, hidden away, is a big plastic toybox. I'm sure that the shop owner and I are the only ones who know about this box, because it contains a whole host of delights.

Sylko thread (original wooden reels), vintage mending/darning cotton in a rainbow of colours, fixings, poppers, hooks and eyes, zips, the list goes on. The best part? 39p each, and if you buy a few (as I always do), lovely shop lady will round the total price down.

With new reels of cotton costing at least £1.20 in my local fabric and sewing shop, this would be a bargain if I were just buying it for the thread. But obviously I'm not.

Hmm. Spot the plastic reel. And the Tesco one.

Those amazing jewel-like shades. Be still my beating heart.

The names of the shades are also amazing.

D. 417 - Gay Kingfisher

D. 45 - Turkey Red Shade

D. 206 - Pomegranate

D. 110 - Sevres Blue

D. 43 - Lt. Scarlet

D. 103 - Lt. Old Gold

I also have to confess that I bought two wooden reels with no cotton on them. Would it be too tragic to wind some new coats cotton onto them just for display purposes?

xxx

Busy Bee

Well I for one have certainly been a busy bee over the last couple of weeks, explaining the lack of posting and commenting going on.

All of a sudden all of the plums and courgettes and beans and carrots and raspberries and pretty much everything else are ready and not just waiting, but demanding to be picked and eaten/cooked/preserved.

So I've been trotting back and forth to the garden and allotment with basketfuls of produce, being eyed suspiciously by people in the street. First up were the courgettes, which I made into delicious soup, with some parmesan and stock.

Next was the mammoth and seemingly never ending task of picking plums. James' parents have four plum trees but no time to do anything with them. So we have been picking and jam-making and selling them. Incidentally I one first prize in the jam class at the village show, which was hilarious as it was pretty much the first time I had made jam on my own, and there were about 10 other entries from the local doyennes (is that the right word?) of preserving.

We are also in plentiful supply of other vegetables, and are eating them roasted with herbs

from the garden and plenty of oil almost every day.

I had a brief but unsuccessful foray into cordial making. I had seen a recipe for lavender cordial here and thought I'd try it out. I ended up not with the glossy, orange nectar that the photo shows, but some grey-purple liquid (not syrupy) that tasted like lavender, but not like cordial. BUT this was all me and not the recipe, because I left it in the pan once it had boiled because I didn't have a bottle on hand. So I think it ended up stewing and going yucky. Must do better.

As mentioned previously, I have also been super busy getting things together for our stall at the Bath Vintage and Antiques fair this Sunday (Green Park Station if anyone is in the area). I will do a post about all the beauties I have found and things I have made separately because I think people reading this will lose the will to live otherwise. Anyway, I had been fabric shopping to Phasepatch and bought some lovely fabric. (Their website only shows their patchwork fabric but they sell a lot of other cottons and things as well in the shop, and the couple who own the shop are the nicest people ever, and I just love it!) Totally should have ironed these fabrics before I took the pictures but hey ho.

Last but not least I went to watch James and his friend Matt play cricket in Bathampton. It was a lovely afternoon, I took my camera (but not my knitting, definitely would have if I knew how long the game was going to go on) and took a few pictures. I was a long way away so they're a little blurry.

All in all a lovely couple of weeks!

Is it a collection?

Can you call two of one thing a collection? If so I am now the proud collector of Laura Ashley dresses (circa 1980, floral cotton only). Last year I stumbled across a lovely red floral belted Laura Ashley dress in Oxfam. It was mid-calf length (the most unflattering length of dress ever made?) but fitted me like a glove. And was £3.99. So I bought it, whipped out the sewing machine and took it up.

Then last week I was wandering around the same Oxfam, and saw this blue beauty, perfect condition, same horrific mid-calf length, lovely slightly pouffy vintagey sleeves, for £3.99. I thought, this must be a sign that I should collect these dresses. The lady at the till looked at me as though I was a bit mad, not sure she understood why I was so excited. I rushed the hem a bit and didn't pin it enough, but I reckon I'll get away with it.

So, from now on, I am on the lookout for these dresses, they are lovely soft cotton and beautifully made. Anyone else have a collection of two?

xxx

Wedding Gift

In October, my boyfriend's gorgeous sister is getting married. I wanted to make her and her husband something really special that they could keep and enjoy forever. She is also a craft lover and so will appreciate the time and effort that goes into a gift like this (sometimes its a bit disheartening when you give someone something you've slaved over every evening for weeks (or even months) and they're a bit, you know, underawed). She doesn't read my blog (or hopefully not) so I'm going to show a few bits and pieces of it. I settled on a cross-stitched sampler, personalised with their names and the date of the wedding.

I love the pastel colours, and I'll probably get it professionally framed. I'm thinking of plain off-white, but not sure?

I google imaged some wedding samplers and took inspiration from various sources to create the design. If anybody out there has a Mac, there is a great free program you can download called 'Stitches' (just search the apple downloads site). You can design your own cross stitch, and all the colours on the program are matched to DMC thread. Clever eh?

I need to work some more on this, it's slow going. When I have finally finished there will definitely be a lot of showing off about it, blog-style. But I also need to find times to do it when I'm not distracted by other things. See the 'R' of cherish above? It's wrong. What can I say, I was watching mad men.

So Little Time.

Indeed, so little time and so much to do. Having worked late yesterday evening on a group presentation I'm now very sleepy. I have finally made a revision timetable, the final push! Every moment of every day is now assigned to reading journals and writing notes. And memorising, lots and lots of memorising. The two little dots on the bottom are the last of the exams, and come the 3rd of June I'm free from exams forever. A good feeling, but seems an awfully long way off.

In other news, James finally got back from Spain (circa volcanic explosion) via an epic drive through France, which he actually quite enjoyed. Also there was a stop off for a gift for me, these strange chocolate covered almonds which are made to look like olives (?!) from an apparently famous shop called la cure gourmande. Strange but true (and delicious).

Also, a couple of weeks back when I visited him in Cornwall, he gave me one of my birthday presents a bit early (21 on the 25th May!). Long story short, at that point he was going on a research fellowship to Israel, and thought he wouldn't see me around my birthday, but then he was offered a full-time position by an ecological consultant company near where we will be living. I was completely amazed by how he chose this for me. He could have knocked me down with a feather.

I'm writing a thank-you letter this evening, hopefully something that makes the recipient as happy as sticking that little stamp on and popping it into the shiny postbox makes me. In our neurodegenerative diseases lectures, a carer and/or patient often comes in for the last 15 minutes to give a 'real-life' account of the disease. Today we talked about Parkinson's disease, and Mary Shorter and her husband Peter (who has PD) came in. She was amazing, and talked as well as the lecturer! I really felt that she wanted to share with us, and I thought it was very (I want to say brave but that sounds patronising) of her and Peter to come in and stand in front of a hundred students to be studied. She is the chair of the Southampton Parkinson's disease society, and they run fantastic events for sufferers of PD, and also a group to provide support for the partners of patients. A lovely lady.

Finally, my only craft happening at the mom

ent is patchwork, because I can do it in bed when I finally fall in about midnight. The fabrics are all small samples from various shops (John Lewis do a fantastic service and send out up to 6 pieces about A4 size each. Cath Kidston also does small samples of selected fabrics online). In the true student spirit, this venture has cost almost nothing, the thread and home-made card templates costing pence. Once I've made them all, I need to decide whether to make more cushions (maybe a little dull) or be adventurous and go for a small quilt. Or maybe somebody has an idea for something a little different?

Well, off for a nice cup of tea, yoghurt for dinner :(