Lovely weekend

Friday was such a fun day. My very dear friend JJ came over from Brighton to spend the day with me. She came over in her little Snow Drop ( the dinky new car ) and she was nice and early! Early for JJ, that is. After a coffee, we set off and spent an hour at my favourite wool shop ( droooooooooooool ), and came out with one or two hanks of wool from the sale section. Lurvely yarns! No photos of the yarns yet, but I'll show you a pic of the pattern I am going to use the yarns for. It is an African Flower Hexagon Square! I am pretty useless at reading a pattern done in symbols but my wonderful friend explained it all to me and I managed to make a square with bits of left over wool from my granny square lankie, all by myself, hurrah! This is it -


Now imagine this square done in the loveliest soft colours, silver grey, the most beautiful sea green, a lovely sand and a gentle aubergine. I am so tempted to get started on it straight away, but I haven't even decided what to make with the yarns yet, lol. I think it might be an idea to sort that out first.

We also had a rather lovely lunch in a little cafe with the loveliest back garden. Goats cheese flan and salads goes so well with a good old natter. Hmm, after that, we managed to womble through a few more shops, made a few more purchases, and finally got back to my house well after 4pm! We needed serious refreshment after wombling about in the summer heat, so for a little while we just sat in the garden with a delicious ginger ale float and relaxed. Aaaaah, bliss!

After that I got my lesson in reading crochet patterns, see above, more natter of course, and, heck, I don't know what else, lol, time just flies when you have fun, and before we knew it, it was time to part again.

And so on to Saturday. My faithful companion on many boot fair trips, DS No. 3, came with me again to the lunchtime bootfair. It was rather disappointing, only about a third of the size it usually is. So, not surprisingly, this time I didn't come home with a huge trolley load, lol. Here are the few things I did find -

A small bag full of vintage trimmings in really lovely soft, muted colours, perfect for fabric collages -


and another small bag with lots of bias binding in all sorts of colours and sizes -


I have to admit that I was more excited about my next find though, lots and lots of wonderful droolworthy ephemera from the early to mid 40s. I find these things absolutely fascinating and can spend ages looking through these things -


Look at this piece, for example, just a few sentences about the lives of this couple, but my imagination goes into overdrive and a whole life story develops in my mind -


Even the next piece, this innocent looking little book, had the same effect on me. I remember many years ago, when I first came to England and had my very first own home and mortgage, the insurance man came to the home to discuss policies with you. It wasn't done on the internet in those days, and it wasn't done on the phone either (like today, when you finally get through to a real person after playing question and answer with a machine for 10 minutes ). It was still very much the personal touch. Boy, did those guys have to be clever -


I find these bits of social history ever so fascinating.

Books, aaah, books, you have probably realised by now I have a thing about books, have done ever since my grandmother taught me to read. This is such a lovely bound book of Cassell's Magazines -


Isn't this just too cute? -


And that was almost it, except for this thing, a thin book for newspaper cuttings -


The cuttings were gone -


but the paper, aaaahh, the beautifully aged paper, 60+ years old and mellowed to perfection -


so lovely for journals.

And that is all, not the best haul ever, but enough to keep me happy! My last post for two months will be tomorrow, mostly about today's boot fair finds. Until then,

Toodlepip xxx