Sweet Liberty

Recently I bought a new sewing machine. I couldn't bring mine from home because of the voltage issues and different outlets, so I bought one here on Gumtree, which is like Craigslist. I made a few dresses for Lois last week--my first dresses with Sleeves! Granted the sleeves are with elastic, but still they are SLEEVES! It was so much fun making the dresses. I used Liberty fabric for this one and followed a pattern from Little Fish in a Big Pond on etsy. I bought the peasant dress kit a while back and made a variation of it for the Liberty dress. I can't wait to make more. Sewing is so neat!

Language Lessons

Last weekend was wet and chilly, but that made for a good opportunity to see some great rain driplets. I walked to the store in the rain, when it was just raining lightly, and noticed all the little round beads of water resting on leaves and flowers. They were so pretty that I decided to go home and head back out with our macro lens to get up close and personal with them. Macro lenses are so fun! Probably what I like most about photography is that you often see things you wouldn't normally notice, or you see them in a different way than what you're used to. To me, it's sort of like realizing interesting subtleties of a new language. I don't really know any other languages, but I know enough to know that certain words and structures of sentences have different nuances, subtle differences here and there that reveal something new, something you may not have known or noticed before about a particular word or phrase in your own language. At one point I was hunched over, down low on my knees, trying to get this first picture of the flower petal. A man stopped and said, "are you OK?" He didn't see my camera at first and was concerned that I was hurt! I told him I was okay and that I was trying to get a picture of the water on the petal, a petal that probably would have gone completely unnoticed to me had I not thought of it in pictures, my new language I'm learning. (And yes, I meant to call them driplets and not droplets just because I prefer the way it sounds.)

Picnic Dreams

It's another rainy weekend in London. We were hoping to go to Brighton to have a beach picnic--same with last weekend, but it was icky then too. So, we're nestled in the house, thinking of other things to do . . .  maybe a museum or a visit to the library? I'd rather just stay indoors in my PJs all day, fooling around with my new (used) sewing machine.  Ah, well, regardless of what we end up doing today, we'll get our picnic one day soon.  Picture from Love in the Afternoon.

The BIG Flea

Today I went to the Kempton Park Antique Market (Sunbury Antique Market, according to the web site, but I've only heard people refer to it as the Kempton Park Market, so that's what I'll call it). If only I had a truck, a ton of money, and a much, much bigger place! I love this flea market! It's the best I've ever been to. Well, this one and the Vanves Flea Market in Paris--those two are the best I've been to. What really makes this market so great to me is the variety and the quality of merchandise. You really don't even have to dig to find any treasures. And people are soooo nice at this market. Nobody had a problem with me taking a picture; in fact, most people were just flattered that I asked. I can't wait to go back next month. I might try to talk Andrew into renting a car. These are just a few pictures, but you can see more from the market from my last visit if you click here.

I love seashell boxes, and this dealer had all kinds. 

I would have loved to take home this sign. It was sooooo freaking heavy. It must have been cast in concrete or some such matter because holy smokes it was heavy. But I thought it would look great over my mantel headboard (yes! I finally have a mantel headboard, which I'll show you once I have the room more together). 

I'm often drawn to industrial fixtures and whatnot, and I loved this textile rack. I thought it would be cool  in a bathroom with towels and magazines on it, or good for fabric piles in a craft room. This is from Paul and Lucy's Vintage Industrial Furnishings. They have great stuff!

They also had a number of these fun spools, which can serve lots of functions. I have some that I use as candle holders, and they said someone bought a few large ones and planned to use them as towel racks. Neat! 

More cool spools. These were smaller but still really fun (good for sewing trims, etc).

Fabric! So much beautiful fabric at this market. These are piles of various prints, but a number of dealers had piles of linen fabric and white cotton linens, most of which seemed to be from France. 

Always room for more buttons!

This dealer had lots of maps and educational charts and graphs.

Never a shortage of doll heads at a good flea market. They're the universal symbol of "flea market" to me. Oooh, I had so much fun! Just wish I took more pictures!! I was too busy looking around again to focus on pictures. I'll try for more next time. I can't wait to go back, and here's the link again to see pics from my last visit. 

Inspiration Notebook

I love our new little place, but I can't seem to get things right when it comes to arranging and decorating it. That's in part because most of what we have just won't work in the space and in part because I'm just tired of the same old stuff, blah. Some of our furniture is too large, and some pictures too small or just not right for certain walls. It's been a little frustrating for me because I can usually figure out what to do with what I have pretty quickly. But this time a lot of what I have just doesn't work. So I've been looking for inspiration in my favorite magazines (and asking people like Lisa for advice, which has been really helpful). Before we moved I thinned out my magazine collection significantly and tore favorite pages out. Last week I finally made notebooks of those pages. I have notebooks for interior spaces, garden and outdoor spaces, crafts, and table settings and cooking. I'm so happy I finally did this, and now that I have the books started it will be easy to keep it up. Here are a few pages of inspiration, some clean and fairly neutral, some rustic and colorful. I wish I could get our place to look like any of these!! Unfortunately I don't know all the sources for sure, but most of these are from Country Living, except for the one with the more polished living area with the black and white chairs--that one is from Domino.