I've learned a lot this week, starting with that I'm too old to stay awake for 36 hours at a time and still be expected to think. Damn you, midnight horror flights. I'd planned to sleep but unfortunately Qantas was showing Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law in the delicious Sherlock Holmes II and that took up the majority of the flight. Sleep is for the weak, I thought.
The second thing I learned is that the sleep deprived have little resistance to retail spending at 5.45 am in the airport, when you have 3 hours to wait for connecting flight #3. I found myself seriously thinking about buying Pandora beads, because it was that or eat Hungry Jacks for breakfast. I wasn't hungry but luckily, neither was I cashed up. I've done this sort of thing before and I'm well aware of certain...character flaws. Some would say why bother opening at that ridiculous hour, but I can assure you I was not the only one wandering around stretching my legs and browsing. I napped on flight #3 over Bass Strait.
After a nice cup of tea with the Sister, we adjourned to the local tip shop for a quick browse. I intend to make more visits because you can, to a tip shop. We located not one but two new op shops - well, new to me, here. I got some knitting needles (can't really take them on the plane, and I'm on holidays in a cold place - emergency knitting may be necessary) - and a Jo Nesbo book for holiday reading.
After 12 hours reasonable sleep - for me - we mooched to Latrobe, where there were some interesting little shops open. We spent quite a bit of time in Reliqueware - partly because its possible to just go round and round and keep finding more interesting things. The dolls and repros aren't really my thing but as sheer display they are fantastic. The handmade things were great. The free fudge on entry was a bonus.
The pop-up shop of my dreams is vacant, in the main street.
Bolstered by the sugar hit, we surged onward to one of the perennial favourites -the Antique Emporium. Again, the imports and repros don't do it for me but there are always bargains to be had and the owner, like me, is a fan of the rusty and dusty. The first thing which jumped into my hand was an Australian Monthly magazine - a kind of girly magazine from 1951 - but how can you not buy a mag with an article entitled 'Scientists explode bomb in woman's brain'? It did not disappoint.
Two bags of steampunk pocketwatch bits, pocketwatch faces, an antique frame, - oh the excitement. On the way out I saw some brilliant cameras and illustrations - I shall return with expendable cash. The Sister bought a lovely old tin car and a vintage Australiana tin - very nice.
The bonafide antiques were lovely, of course, and the prices are generally pretty reasonable but unlike some I know I don't want to have to ship furniture from one side of the country to the other. But then I've only been here two days.
Last week, I picked up a copy of one -well, two- of my favourite books for 50c. Today, I picked it up and re-read what is one of my very favourite opening passages ever:
"There is a photograph in existence of Aunt Sadie and her six children sitting round the tea-table at Alconleigh. The table is situated, as it was, is now, and ever shall be, in the hall, in front of a huge open fire of logs. Over the chimney piece plainly visible in the photograph hangs an entrenching tool, with which, in 1915, Uncle Matthew had whacked to death eight Germans one by one as they crawled out of a dugout.It is still covered with blood and hairs, an object of fascination to us as children....There they are, held like flies in the amber of that moment - click goes the camera and on goes life... " Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love
I love all things Mitford - fiction, biography, autobiography. I love them individually and as a group. I can read and re-read them and see them and hear them and forgive them their foibles. I have been sorting out some old photos of my own family, and the opening passage of the book goes on to talk about the qualities of those frozen moments in time and their sepia-ness.
My own old photos reminded me of the smells and the textures of my own childhood with surprising clarity. I found an old teacup in the opshop last week, a sad reminder of what was my favourite Auntie's best teaset: the one used for Sunday afternoon tea, birthdays and get-togethers. This teacup is well past its finest but just seeing it I can almost taste the scones and the sponge cake with icing sugar on top. I bought it and brought it home just to keep that feeling.
I have other bits and pieces, nothing valuable, but little fragments of lives. Another Auntie's brooch - I can't really remember her face, although I know what she looked like; but I can remember the sense of her, and being given the brooch by my Uncle when she died. It's not a valuable brooch, but there was a sense of being grown up when he gave it to me when I was about 8.
That one diamonte brooch is probably why I love vintage jewellery as I do. It reminds me of the Aunts, and great-aunts, of being taken to CWA meetings, of hanging with the cousins, and picking raspberries and real gooseberries and dress-ups.
I remember the Uncles, too, of course; the cardigans and the sheds and the pigeons and dogs. But they seemed somehow not to be the centre of things: the women were constant motion, food and talk and movement and kids.
In my case, the colour is not so much sepia but rather that strange intense colour of slides and photos from the late 50's and early 60's, drifting into the yellowish tones and uncertain focus of the 70's snapshot.
I have continued my fascination with all things Alice and clockwork with some new pendants featuring Alice and some vintage pocketwatch faces, some Alice brooches, and I am working on some drawings of Alice, and some nursery rhymes. Given the time of year there are also some bunnies in the bathtub. I'm having some trouble with loading images, so haven't spent too much time on images which may disappear. When I have some better photos and a more reliable way of leaving them up I will add some more.
Its simple. The whole work thing is officially cutting into my social life, garage saling, op-shop trawling, jewellery making, model building, and crap collection. Seriously.
This weekend was productive in so many ways. Op-shopping, check. Garage saling Saturday AND Sunday (o joy) - check. Grocery shopping, washing, housework,sort out back verandah, check. James Lee Burke novel - the first in the Hackberry Holland series -(discovered in an op-shop for $1)completed. Other acquisitions included pocket watch faces; records; a turntable which transfers records to USB; one of those shopping trolley things you can use to drag your stuff home from the supermarket; picture frames (various); two cute sidetables; a lovely and comfortable old cane chair; a table easel; and various other bits and bobs.
I don't usually use this blog to talk about other peoples' blogs, but I do have to mention a couple of sites I found this week, simply because they lead to other interesting ones.
Via Etsy, I found Pinterest.com.
Described as a place to catalogue the things you love, its like a massive pinboard of stuff on all subjects from anywhere. I haven't had time to truly explore yet but the little time I have spent has been most interesting. Kind of like random snippets of other peoples' likes...sharing everything and being able to re-pin the things you like. I sense considerable time wasting in the near future.
Seesaw offers 'daily inspiration' and covers all sorts of things, from DIY, art, fashion, furniture to their own handmade products. Again, some interesting stuff to distract one from the daily drudge.
The second thing I learned is that the sleep deprived have little resistance to retail spending at 5.45 am in the airport, when you have 3 hours to wait for connecting flight #3. I found myself seriously thinking about buying Pandora beads, because it was that or eat Hungry Jacks for breakfast. I wasn't hungry but luckily, neither was I cashed up. I've done this sort of thing before and I'm well aware of certain...character flaws. Some would say why bother opening at that ridiculous hour, but I can assure you I was not the only one wandering around stretching my legs and browsing. I napped on flight #3 over Bass Strait.
