Very Vintage Vie...

As I mentioned last week, I've been inspired by finding some lovely new bloggers who have taken Vintage to their hearts, and who decorate themselves and their homes with the results...

Check out Vintage Vixen and Helga von Trollop across there in the sidebar if you wish to see, please?


My most favourite amie in Blogworld (and other worlds!) is Sara of Fab, Feisty and Fifty (she is!), and she always made me dream with her tales of searching for Vintage clothes and items, and selling them online from her Sara's Attic on Etsy.   I envied her her style and taste.   I still do.

And, at the same time, there is something about this day and age that we are living through.   ~ When  folding cash is thinning in my purse;   When it seems obscene for me to covet new things for my home, when I've always been drawn to 'stuff that has lived'...   I love old things.

When I was younger, I always wanted my home to be filled with half-modern, half-antique furniture.   It is.   I don't think it's necessarily well co-ordinated, and it is far from finished, but I do love to search Thrift, Vintage and Antique emporiums looking for bargains and loved, needful things.   I just don't do it that often, and the north east is a bit short of good places to find stuff, it seems to me...

However, I think the growing numbers of lovely ladies across the world, who are making a small living, and making their homes and themselves look beautiful, quirky, fascinating, unique by drawing upon discarded fashions and once-trendy labels are little crackers one and all.

And why not?

I only wish I were thin enough to wear the fashions.   A plus-size girl can still dream though...

(Postscript:   Thank you to my friends who, stopping to leave a comment recently, said - Go join a patchwork class if you can't find a patchwork quilt that you love;   Go find someone to teach you crochet, when you've got as far as buying wool and a hook.

Inspired by you, I've signed up for the next batch of crochet sessions at a nearby wool shop, Treacle Wool - I never knew they offered them.   And I've checked out and signed up to hear about quilting classes at a more distant barn, formerly a farm, beside the sea.   I'm not there yet, but I'm working towards things - And if you hadn't told me to get my act together, I would not have done it.   So, to you, ta muchly!)

What did Napoleon have to say again, about England being a nation of shop-keepers??!

I've been a bit busy this week.   Crazy, that is, since I gave up work on 4 March 2011!

Then, if you hadn't already noticed in the sidebar, I made the BIG decision to give up my voluntary job too about a fortnight ago.   I had planned to leave at the end of May if I hadn't found work.   That deadline was set in my mind as the date on which I would receive the last of my redundancy money from my former job, and I would have found myself another (probably part-time) job.

I haven't! 

So, awash with tears at leaving some dear colleagues and new friends I felt I had to leave the youthwork charity to sort of concentrate full-time on finding a job.   I also have the friendly jolie laide Jobcentre breathing down my neck...   Then I came down with a dreadful viral infection which put me in bed for almost a week and then turned me into someone who coughed like they had had a lifetime Woodbine habit for the next week.

Bleedin' typical of Fhina's luck that is!   'If it wasn't for bad luck'...etc.

So, I have recovered myself somewhat.   My sense of taste is back with me again - Yay!   How my lovely grandfather survived for forty years of his life without a sense of smell, I just can't imagine...

I am still knee-deep in jobsearch.   It's not a good market in the north east of England just now for anyone looking for work...

I am, however, chock-full of ideas.   I am also somewhat risk-averse.   That was a good quality in a Civil Servant.

It's not a good quality in a budding entrepreneur!

Yesterday, feeling far less than flush, and inspired by the lovely Vintage-loving blog-ladies who have just started to appear in my sidebar, I flashed my plastic Marks & Spencer card in a British Heart Foundation charity shop (thrift/goodwill).   There was very little Vintage to be found, that did not have a hefty price-tag and a 'Vintage' label on it already - They must have some savvy shop-staff...

However, I did buy around £20 worth of pretty boho/hippy colourful clothes I'd never fit into, for a young woman probably twenty-five years younger than me  -  "Ideal Summer Festival Wear!" 

At least I think it is...

I'm headed for e-bay to have a go at being a seller.

Do you have any tips for me, mes bloggy loves??!   I'd love to hear them.

Missed Opportunities...

Thank you muchly for your recent kind recommendations for digital cameras...

Armed with the extensive information, I chose the time period 'two hours before flying to Paris' to try to procure a marvellous Nikon Coolpix camera.

FAIL!

I am now the proud owner of practically the only camera that Currys could offer me, which is a Canon Ixus 105. The lovely lady in the store advised us helpfully that the worst time to buy a camera is the day before you go on holiday, as you are likely to spend the entire time trying to work out how to use the damned thing.

GULP!

Needless to say, the practical instructions (or should that be 'destructions?') remain in their tight cellophane cocoon, and GJ and I did manage to work out the machinations of the camera nonetheless. Photographic evidence of our Parisian sojourn will be displayed at a later date, for reasons that shall become clearer in time...

You see, the trouble with buying a nice piece of kit, such as a digital camera, is that you spend most of your holiday trying to prise it out from the paws of your ever-so-techie other half, while he pretends to be a slightly younger and a tad porkier, blond version of David Bailey...

You will also find, that the very moment you need the camera - as you visit Paris around the time of Paris Fashion Week - to capture the fleeting image of divine French designer, Jean-Paul Gaultier, who happens to be crossing the road before your very startled prying eyes, your other half is trapped inside a hermetically-sealed, hygienically self-cleaning, public loo (GRATUIT!), with said camera in the inside pocket of his yachting jacket.

Just saying...

Six Word Saturday...

Segue-ing into Summer...


Winter finery beckons...



And if you want to participate in Six Word Saturday yourself, please go see Cate...

A Series of English Eccentrics. A Blow for Isabella...

"England does "eccentric" better than any other country. From the upper class eccentrics like Edith Sitwell and the Marquis of Bath, through the middle classes by way of Vivian Stanshall and Jarvis Cocker, to the working class eccentricities of Billy Childish or Wilf Lunn, the one thing that they all have in common is their "Englishness".

They could have come from nowhere else. English Eccentrics have contributed hugely to global culture..." ...Dauvit Alexander

I've started something now, mes bloggy lovelies... Don't ask me how I got to this point, maybe it was Sandy Denny, and my sort of reclusive neighbour, John, but I am set on a course to tell you about some English Eccentrics who I find particularly interesting or intriguing.

I hope that is all right with you, mes bloggiest lovehearts, but as I seem to be a bit of a troubled eccentric meself, I just can't stop myself...

Stuff is going on outside in my life just now that no doubt I shall blog about later when I have it resolved, (if ever...), so being here is like a little hide-away for me, until I can see my way clear to stepping out into the light again - Chill-axe, it's nothing deadly, but relates to family fortunes, and so your very lovely wishes and awards and Memes are sitting in the wings, waiting for me to pick them up, answer them and dish them out once again...

For Wiki's sake, I feel like Norma Desmond! But here's A Blow for Isabella, instead... It's a trifle bizarre morceau de vie, and tres, tres triste, very sad, so do beware mes dahlinks!

Isabella Blow (19 November 1958 – 7 May 2007) was an English magazine editor and international style icon.

The muse of hat designer Philip Treacy, she is credited with discovering the models Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl, as well as the fashion designer Alexander McQueen.



Blow often said her fondest memory was trying on her mother's pink hat, which led to her career in fashion.

In 1989, Blow married her second husband, art dealer Detmar Blow, in Gloucester Cathedral; he is a grandson (and namesake) of the early 20th-century society architect Detmar Blow.

Philip Treacy designed the bride's wedding headdress and a now-famous fashion relationship was forged. Realizing Treacy's talent, Blow established Treacy in her London flat, to work on his collections. She soon began wearing Treacy's hats, making them her signature. In a 2002 interview, Blow declared that she wore extravagant hats for a practical reason:

"...to keep everyone away from me. They say, Oh, can I kiss you? I say, No, thank you very much. That's why I've worn the hat. Goodbye. I don't want to be kissed by all and sundry. I want to be kissed by the people I love."

Blow had a natural sense of style and a feeling for future fashion directions. She discovered Alexander McQueen and purchased his entire graduate collection for ₤5,000, paying it off in weekly ₤100 instalments. Spotting Sophie Dahl, Blow described Dahl as "a blow up doll with brains", and launched the model's career.

Blow was the fashion director of Tatler and consulted for DuPont, Lycra, Lacoste and Swarovski.

In 2002, she became the subject of an exhibition entitled When Philip met Isabella, featuring sketches and photographs of her wearing Treacy's hat designs.

Part Deux follows demain, je vous embrasse, mes dahlinks! Mwah! Fhina doesn't wear hats that often, although she once had a bizarre dream about ladies who lunch who were all wearing shoes as bizarre headgear - So this means she can get 'up close and very personal' with her amours, so here goes, Mwah! my pretties, Mwah!