... Shop Yourself Holy, 2nd July 2011

Woohoo!! Another catch-up post! It's so liberating (hee hee ... I typed 'liverating' --- WTF??) to post stuff that's been sitting, unedited & unloved, in my bloggy outbox :)

So, here goes. The Saturday in question was one of shopping yumminess. Rob had ventured out for a Saturday night of Foo Fighters, supported by Biffy Clyro, supported by Death Cab for Cutie, supported by (um) someone else. I wasn't jealous at all. Never mind that the tickets had been bought & paid for by his BFF in 2010 .... I wasn't jealous. not even 98% happy, 2 % jealous. Not. Jealous. At. All.

In an effort, therefore, to assuage my not-at-all-jealousness, I went shopping in South West London (Morden, Mitcham & Tooting, specifically) ... and found:

This 80s-tastic Dressmaking encyclopaedia,  £2

Add caption

A big black sari scarf/wrap and a gorgeous sarong/tablecloth/whoknowswhat, £6

Miscellaneous buttons (some still on their cards, SWOON)
and some supercool organisers, + some books £4

Stunning print, revolting 80s dress - REFASHION!
... and some seam binding, £4.20

Oh, how I LOVE these containers ...
my local pound shop stopped stocking them :(
£1.25 each in Tooting, baby!
(PS LOOKKIT Jack in the background :D)

I love Lidl.
If I'm going to buy (new) mass-produced stuff,
at least I'm skewing their sales stats by buying sewing gear :)
Elastic + Thread + Bobbins + Needles, £6

Some lovely stretchystripeystuff from one of the
many stalls in the two markets in Tooting (Tooting Market),  2m @ £4/m

In conclusion, y'honour, I'd like to say that South London rocks and it might be time to organise a group shop to the somewhat sticky streets of Tooting. Bookended by the two Wimbledon Sewing Machine shops (South Wimbledon & Balham), whose oddly interchangeable names have always struck me as mighty odd. 

OOOHOOOHOOOOH! And and and and the place in Mitcham that I bought the buttons & organisers from has the most STUNNING shop counter table thing ... um ... they're called .... um, a Haberdashery Shop Counter? Anyway. They have one, and the lady serving me mentioned that they were going to be replacing it soon as the drawers tended to fall onto the feet of the little old ladies serving customers (not nice, owowow!). Rob might leave me for this, but I gave her my number and practically begged ('practically'??? nonono ... 'SERIOUSLY') her to call me when they were ready so that I could buy the old one off them. HELLOOOOOO gorgeous!

Not the same one. But you get the picture.
(source) 

Shop Yourself Holy: eBay & etsy Catchup

Hello lovely ones!

I'm currently on a train heading back to London from a day working in Liverpool and I've been catching up on some of my favourite blogs during my train time. For reference, I was up at the crack of sparrow's fart* and promised myself that if I started work at 7am, I could have a lovely cooked veggie breakfast and read blogs until that time. YAY! Cleared yesterday's new posts and managed to add 3 new lovely peeps to my RSS feed for more iPhone bathtime lunchtime reading.

*an intentionally mixed metaphor from high school days :)

Anyhoo, reading so many lovely things written by all you lovely people - and seeing all the gorgeousness that you've made or transformed or just plain ol' laid-out-cash-for - made me want to upload some of the posts that have been lurking, unpublished, on Blogger. They taunt me, and I blow raspberries at them before hiding under the duvet. Honest.

So, anyway. Here's some stuff I bought on eBay & etsy, way back in the spring (sniff, sniff ...).



Haberdashery Loveliness: £5.90



I swoon. I swoon at the lacey loveliness: £3
Swoony swoonswoonswoon.
Swooooooon!!!

(Swoon)





I could not resist this set - natural buttons, and vegan-friendly!!
Buttons & buckle approx £5 on etsy



More loveliness to come soon ... and maybe even some sewing? Who knows.

weekly treasures, 04.06.2011

Weekly Treasures

On the way to meet up with my girlie for some Saturday yaks & a Mexican-themed 30th birthday bash in North London, I stopped in at my local charity shop & 3 (3!!!) others I'd not been to since we moved to our new house.

The stash now includes: 2x '80s basic blouse patterns + 2x zips + 1x point turner/button gauge +1x packet of cherry red seam binding + 1x pair of jeans + 1x pair of pillowcases = £6.40 (from the 'local').

While the other 3 didn't amount to much, 2 of them have very promising sections dedicated to patterns, buttons and other notions ... so worth a more regular visit. I bagged a belt buckle & a smaller packet of blue seam binding for £0.20.

A good shopping day all round!! now to put this lot to good use...

Oooooh! Lookie lookie!!

When I arrived home from Belgium on Wednesday night, there were several parcels waiting for me on the kitchen counter. As I'm sure you'll agree, there are few things as exciting as having unopened parcels (not normal, boring mail) enticing you to rip them open and unearth the untold treasures they may contain ... yarrr, me mateys! There's real gold in them caves, not fool's gold, but real gold!!

Ahem. In my case, I had to delay parcel-opening gratification until today - almost a whole week later! - as Himself & I went away for the weekend with our lovely friends and were, quite tragically, too ill-prepared for this trip to allow even the 5 minutes I needed to explore the goodies I had ordered! So. Look at what arrived in the post 'today':

1) The Clover Double Tracing Wheel, which I may have first read about here on Gretchen's blog ... but it's bothering me that I'm sure somebody else posted about how great these are for Burda patterns and I can't remember who it was! Anyhoo. I've been yearning for one of these puppies for months now and finally took the leap after my 'ugh' moment tracing the Burda 107.

2) How to Design Your Own Dress Patterns by Adele P. Margolis, which Gretchen blogged about ages ago, tempting fate. I had to have this book.  Plus, while I was searching for an image of the dust jacket to show you here, I spotted images of Gretchen & Carolyn & Sunni ... So clearly a well-referenced book, and IMHO, the best which Mills & Boon ever published!

So, after opening the post, I watched Julie & Julia this afternoon (and goodness me, isn't it wonderful?!) and then breezed through a couple of sections in Mrs Margolis' lovely book. Not only do I suddenly now understand slashing & spreading darts (whoda thunk it?) but I also want to hug the lovely lady who wrote a table entitled 'The Eight Bulges', and this lovely dedication:

"I want to thank particularly:

Nathan Margolis, my husband, for his encouragement and understanding (usual, I suspect, for husbands of career wives) and for all the finished art work of my drawing (unusual, above and beyond the call of duty for any husband). This book, literally, could not have been done without him."

So, on a 'Julie & Julia'-meets-Adele Margolis note, here's to the boys whom we all love so much. xxx

[original posting]