Finds

I have had some lovely op-shop finds lately...one op-shop in particular seems to be yielding some real goodies. I found this sweet little set of Irish, hand-embroidered linen, still attached to its packaging, with this beautiful wee inscription on the back...

A wonderful old book, The Modern Woman's Home Doctor, full of all sorts of information and illustrations from - I'm guessing - the 30s or 40s (given that there is information on air-raid-proofing your home... The book was a dollar. Strange, strange pricing in op-shops sometimes.

And a bag of theatre programmes from 1950s Melbourne. Most hardly touched. I suspect the owner worked for one of the theatres, because there are multiple copies of some. The price for the bag? Two dollars.

Once more with felting

I bought a needle felting kit on Ebay months ago and I needle felted one forlorn little teddy bear head and then promptly forgot about the whole thing. On the weekend I just felt like making something and after rummaging around for a while in all my crafty stuff, I came across the kit. By Sunday afternoon I had this little guy! I really quite like him.

Flower Fleur Blume

Spring has now well and truly arrived. The weather has been grey and indifferent for so long, I had forgotten how warm warmth can be! The front yard, as I mentioned in my last post, is literally bursting with all of the flowers that began their lives under my grandma's careful nurturing many years ago and which now appear every year as a beautiful testament to her and her deep love of plants and gardening.

It's funny but these photos I took remind me so much of the playing cards that she bought for me when I was a child. They were flash cards of a sort and each one showed a flower and gave its name in several languages. Although she loved the Sturt's Desert Pea and also the flower of her home state, the Waratah, European plants and flowers were her first love. And so I often spent my visits to her house identifying alpine flowers from far distant lands. 

More music today...pretty, meandering and a little strange. Just the way I like it!

Gentle Spring

Pussy Willow, picked on a Sunday drive to Warrandyte

Spring is starting to show itself. The front garden is beginning to bloom with all of its lovely self-sown flowers (they are the children of plants my grandmother planted many moons ago) and the air is warm and sweet. As it gets noticeably warmer, I have to remind myself not to fear the hot summer days that will follow Spring, but to enjoy what is here right now.

A trip to the op-shop this morning yielded treasure in the form of three Beatrix Potter books - The Tale of Ginger and Pickles, The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes and (of course) The Tale of Peter Rabbit. I bought them to sell online, but now I'm not sure if I can part with them. That's how our house has ended up full of books!

This is such a pretty song. I thought you might like it. 

Disappointed Cat says...

I made this little guy a day or two ago after seeing a similar idea for a felt brooch in Pip Lincolne's Meet me at Mike's book. At first, I didn't like him because I didn't think he was very cute. But now I kind of like his rather affronted expression. Sort of like Grumpy Cat but more...Disappointed Cat.

I found two lovely looking cookbooks at the op-shop this morning - The Vegan Table and The Joy of Vegan Baking, both by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. The recipes look delicious and easy, two things that I have wondered about the possibilty of with vegan cooking in the past. I have never cooked vegan before. Have you? Any tips?

Underground Overground

I once read that the more you try to diet and restrict the intake of a particular food, the more likely you are to crave that food above all else. For example, chocolate (possibly doesn't hold true for cabbage). So it is that, several weeks after declaring a major household purge on all items that are neither beautiful nor useful (thank you William Morris) or are simply too numerous, I find that I am trawling Etsy and Ebay to sate a few little obsessions, looking for more stuff to fill the house with.

Namely, Wombles and Kiwiana (NZ kitsch - like Australiana).

Suddenly I can't get enough of Tomsk, Tobermory, Great Uncle Bulgaria and the rest, nor paua shell and hei tikis. I suspect it's the thrill of the chase, more than anything. I have resisted the urge to buy so far, holding myself to a cooling-off period instead.

Do you have any little fascinations on the go at the moment?

Two womble pencil toppers found at - http://www.etsy.com/listing/159533883/retro-70s-womble-pencil-toppers?ref=col_view&atr_uid=8174340

Wombling free - http://www.etsy.com/listing/120372772/vintage-womble-stuffed-toy?ref=sr_gallery_2&ga_search_query=womble&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=ZZ&ga_search_type=all

Not many toucans in NZ, I don't think, but oh well - http://www.etsy.com/listing/100671739/paua-shell-toucan-or-paua-shell-pelican?ref=col_view&atr_uid=11126389

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/230973656336?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

This Charming Man

 In case you want to go back to the musical source, this lyric comes from The Smiths song "Sheila Take a Bow"

I love it when someone does something really clever but it has to be quirky clever - that's the best clever of all. I'm on Facebook, sometimes against my better judgement, and as The Smiths tragic you now know me to be, I have 'liked' a Smiths page. On that page yesterday was a link to a truly wonderful site - 'This Charming Charlie' (http://thischarmingcharlie.tumblr.com/) which is a play on The Smiths song 'This Charming Man' because this site brings together the words of The Smiths with the figures of the Peanuts cartoons. Putting the serious, melancholic lyrics of Morrissey into the mouths of the perpetually sunny Peanuts kids (with the possible exception there of Charlie Brown) is such beautiful fun but also such beautiful pathos as well as being somehow so apt. Genius! I contacted the very talented creator of This Charming Charlie, Lauren LoPrete, and she very kindly gave me permission to post some of the images from her site here.

Lucy and a line from "How Soon is Now"

Schroeder and "Panic"

Lucy and "That joke isn't funny anymore"

Sally ponders the imponderable - "How Soon is Now"