TinkeringTimes

a very vintage christmas

Christmas is a funny time of year. It was one of my happiest in a very long time.

It's also one of my saddest. However from sad turns of events came some glimmers of treasure. There are a hundred things I want to say about these items, but instead I am simply including the description I wrote to accompany each image on flickr. The rest of the thoughts and feelings will be roaming around my heart and my head for a long time to come.

Maybe a small spark of their specialness will translate...

Elsie's Jam Pot :: from my mum's mum, Elsie.

That my grandmas' objects are coming my way signals sad times. But all my family knows me to be an archivist; a hoarder and cataloguer; a filer and organiser; a collector, curator and historian. And as such they know these pieces will be well loved, well documented, looked after and treasured. I am flattered that they have been offered to me. Even the humblest of kitchen wares.

Great great grandma's trifle dish :: this stunning trifle dish belonged to my great, great grandmother (on my grandfather George's side). We don't know exactly how old but well over 100 years.

Needless to say I won't be making trifles in it. It's surprisingly flawless, I hope I manage to keep it that way for my great great grandchildren...

Lily's pencil box :: Another of Grandma's treasures given to me this Christmas (from my dad's mum, Lily). As far as we know this is the only thing still in our possession with her maiden name on it. It has slide-out rulers on each side, in inches and centimetres, a secret pencil drawer underneath, and a swing out top section.

And the most beautiful floral decoration. As far as I can work out it's round about 1930-32.
Thank you Lily.

Lily's recipe book :: One of my best Christmas presents, my grandma's recipe book from school. Dated 1929. Lily Pope as she was then.


:: To my Grandmas, both amazing, strong, inspiring women. My heroes ::

oh button box

what a happy bunny I am, ebay did me proud.
I am now the delirious owner of this display case complete with 5 drawers of quaintly sorted and labelled tiny boxes of vintage buttons. I don't know which I'm more excited about, the box or the buttons.
what joy...

I also love how misty and olde worlde the photos are too!

babe's room

the babe's room is coming on nicely - nearly done now. new additions:

gorogeous blanket and cushion from Quiltbaby



birdy mobile is finished and up

busy bees

we've been busy...
laying a new floor after a year of ugly cold floorboards:

 

hanging our new GORGEOUS concrete (yes concrete!) panel on the wall (made by ceramacist Alasdair Bremner at UCLAN as part of his phd research project into silicates and concrete) - its about 85cm square, bigger than it looks on these pics - but only 6mm thick (or thin!)... it's stunning





making birdy brooches

getting older

turning into my mother part 1...

I am in a dull hotel room for a week and my crafty fingers are really feeling itchy and twitchy - wish I'd brought some sewing - I do have 56 little birdy pieces at home waiting to have wings sewn on them for example, that would have been perfect.



Now I know why mum takes her knitting everywhere. Mum I am turning into you more and more every day...

office

Why is that only now, after being self-employed for 2.5 years, and when I'm about to stop work for 7 months maternity leave, are ideal little office spaces popping up all over the place?

Currently my whole multi-million empire (ahem...) runs from here:


Don't get me wrong I love working from home, who wouldn't? And I'm so very unnecessarily organised that only having a tiny space isn't actually that much of a problem - after all I can just sprawl across the house when I need to spread things out.

But I do keep thinking a proper office would feel more like going to work and would help me focus, not think about just popping out to water the plants, feed the homeless cat, nip down to the market etc... but Manchester is a groovy place and central office rent is sooooo high.

Except, it seems, now that I've stopped looking. Suddenly, now baby is due and I'm about to stop work altogether for a few months covetable office spaces at manageable rents are popping up everywhere. 10 minutes from my house what looks from the outside like the perfect thing is available - just a few mins from my house, in the middle of our little village, right by the train station, decent looking so I could actually ask people to come there for meetings, and astonishingly at a rental price I could actually afford on my own! In fact just found a picture of the very spot, see the arrow above the green car:



Then this morning another space was advertised in the city centre's Northern Quarter - the area that used to be disused warehouses so the artists moved in because it was cheap. Then it became cool because the artists moved in... and so rent went sky high... but now there is actually a lovely big office there for just a snippet more than the one near my house - and it's plenty big enough to share with 3 other people and still fit in a pool table in the middle (not that I would, but just as an illustration of space size you understand).

It must be a sign that the forces that be intend for me to stay home and look after plants, cats (and baby) and enjoy the beauty of the small alcove in the dining room for a little while longer...

Totally unrelated but have you tried these? Just had some last night - mmmmmm get some!

chairs

The perpetual design question came up again a few weeks ago while visiting Vitra's Joe Colombo exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery... why are designers obsessed with chairs?

I used to work at Design Museum in London where on every desk, without fail, a copy of 1000 Chairs could be found and conversation regularly revolved around our Chair Alley exhibition, and who was doing what with chairs right now, or the pros and cons of steam-bent plywood or tubular steel versus moulded plastics or compressed cardboard layers...

The obsession has stayed with me, which I love, but it does make it so very difficult for me when the time comes to buy a new chair. It takes me a good 6-12 months of researching every possible shop, boutique, website, antiques sale, warehouse... until I find the PERFECT chair - of course there is no such thing and really its just the chair that comes closest until I can find a better one!

So for the past year I've been looking for a chair which I can use to work from at my desk, and sew from at the sewing machine. or one for each purpose - two chairs are of course always better than one.

So - here's a round up of some of my favourites so far - a few completely unsuitable but just too gorgeous to take off the list just yet...




 

sorting

Over on flickr I'm part of a group called Mosaic Monday - it's just an excuse to stash lots of favourite images in one picture and share them. It appeals to my curatorial side and the way that other people group their pictures is endlessly fascinating. My project for last Monday was to seek out all the little collections of things around my house - there are a lot! But here's my final compilation:

shells from under the sea in Thailand :: pens on my desk :: shells from Cyprus :: heart shaped stones ::

foreign coins :: buttons :: vintage embroidery thread :: zips ::

cotton reels :: pendants :: earrings :: bracelets ::

cufflinks (& star wars patch) :: rings :: hairclips :: necklaces :

...in an assortment of tins, boxes, bowls, jars, pots... feel free to join Mosaic Monday and add your own, the more the merrier...


Then by chance today I found a website selling something I've wanted my whole life which also keeps the obessive filer and sorter in me so very happy - and great for anyone with lots of buttons, jewellery or other tiny posessions...

   


Available from The Old Printing Shop
I'll definitely be ordering one.

rearranging

Finally started rearranging things around the house to make room for baby so...

Step 1: This sofa, now fully reupholstered, packs away and moves into the loft.
Step 2: This sofabed comes down from the spare room and replaces the first sofa
Step 3: The cot goes up in the spare room, now baby's room
Step 4: Just because we're in the mood we finally also put the mirror up that replaces the one I smashed - oops!

And for extra detail:


1. Frances, Eyore, Elmer, Skini-Bear, Bunny, Mouse and George move into the cot (tho those with buttons and badges are on a short term lease, moving out somewhere safer when baby moves in)
2. Nik's dinosaur moves onto the window - at least whilst I decide if its shadows are too scary...
3. Nik sewed this plane, I love it and so it moves onto the window too
4. Gorgeous blanket knitted by my mum is laid out in cot all soft and cosy for the little person.

So we got through quite a lot in a Sunday and we're feeling very happy with the results!

Timorous Beasties prize

Ooh somedays I can't believe my luck, amazingly I won this specially commissioned designer light by textile and surface pattern designers Timorous Beasties.

It's the only one there is and even more incredibly matches our bedroom perfectly and fills the space that's been there over a year because we just couldn't find the right light. What are the chances?!

Here there and everywhere

What a busy few days... on Friday I went to the Pretty Crafty Things bazaar as part of my DIY Craft research. It was a great afternoon out of the office, really useful for my research, and really inspiring to see so many people setting up their own businesses in contemporary craft. It really spurred me on.

Ophelia Buttons at Pretty Crafty Things

On Sunday I had a daydreamy trip out into the Pennines in the sunshine to visit mum and raid her button box. Happy days - memories of rummaging through the box and tidying it out, sorting buttons into size or colour order. Finally so many of those buttons are mine after years of coveting the contents of that old blue tupperware box. Sadly mum had already thrown out the gorgeous Victorian ones I really craved during a tidy-up one day - gutted! She made it up by taking us for a big old country pub lunch. I can feel the hills calling me home and Nik's getting worried he'll come home to find a for sale sign on our home. Maybe one day, but not just yet...

And today I received the most gorgeous little parcel through the post. I bought some funky japanese bird fabric last week that someone else really liked too, Debbie Hill an illustrator who combines drawing, print and embroidery. I really like the way she works and amazingly she agreed to swap one of her new pieces for one of the japanese fabric pieces. And so this morning this gorgeous picture 'Yellow Drop' arrived.

 

This Saturday I'm off to another market for my DIY craft research courtesy of Miso Funky in Glasgow. There and back in a day seems a bit ambitious but I think I've cracked the quickest route and a glass of wine on the way home should help things along. Who knows, I may even find a little something to buy whilst I'm there - fingers xd!