happy valentine’s

You can never have enough hugs & kisses ! So here are some with pictures of hearts I took to make Valentine’s cards for our IWCP sale.

Make a Smilebox greeting

bright tuesday

I’ve been talking about sweet violets in my bare-faced gardener blog and I love violas and their beautiful little faces.

bright monday

I recently came across concrete and honey blog via blogs of note and thought how stylish it is. She has decided to make this week Bright Week, so I’m going to dig through my photos to see how I can brighten up gabigecko and perhaps give me some inspiration to get crafting again !

I added the orange clock the other day – makes my mouth water to look at it. I also love the clock I added to my other blog, it makes me want to touch it to feel how smooth it is, or perhaps it looks like a water droplet on something like an alchemilla mollis leaf.

Anyway, I digress : I snapped these two at the end of December on a day trip to Monaco. Some interesting pieces of jewellery (bits of fabric etc) in a glass display cabinet in an arcade next to the Café de Paris.



The second shot is a bit blurry because someone was coming out of the shop to see what I was up to !

love thursday : hearts

I have hearts everywhere. Perhaps it’s a bit twee, actually, perhaps it’s extremely twee (for American readers, ‘twee’ is excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty or sentimental the origin is British, representing a child’s pronunciation of SWEET. The latest heart is in a metal trivet bought today in a local brocante (on the bric-a-brac side of antique) as a present for a loved one.


Other metal hearts are found in a metal garden arch with a seat either side. Apparently from an old hotel near Cannes that had a walk way made from many of them (probably just sales hype). Bought in Surrey, England and then brought back here a few years ago.


The other is a small wire basket filled with treasures from the sea.


Visit the Shutter Sisters where Love Thursday originated.

other uses for seam unpickers

I now have three seam unpickers : my own relatively modern lilac-coloured one and two others I’ve just found in a bag tucked away with three thimbles – does anyone still use them ? three different sized sewing machine screwdrivers; a wonderful ‘poik-poik’ sewing machine oil canister. Mummy’s seam unpicker still with its top and what I believe was granny’s one that had disintegrated at some point in time and daddy fixed into a piece of wood to make a new handle.

For some reason today, I couldn’t find mine but luckily I remembered the bag and where I’d put it as I needed to do emergency surgery on L B’s eye.

I wonder what else they’ve been used for ?

glitter powder

Valerie gave me a gift-wrapped box last night, when I picked her up to go to Phillippa’s for her dinner party. I only opened it this morning : a YSL Palette Mauresque sun-kissed powder compact with glitter. Perfect for creating a sparkle when I next go out. I don’t know if you realise quite how appropriate it is. Thank you Valerie, I love it to bits !

aprons

Nicola has a thing about aprons.

She made lots of them out of a pretty provençal yellow with red pattern material which were worn on Saturday night at her party by the various young helpers. She also made tablecloths of the same material. The aprons were all hanging on the washing line but by the time I’d got my camera, she had taken them down, folded them and put them away. She kindly offered to hang them all out again for me, but I thought that would be asking too much with all the clearing up she has to do.

So instead, I have taken a picture of her wearing a de Cecco coffee apron, another pic of two more that are hanging in the kitchen and three more hanging in the garden toolroom.

The middle apron she tells me is made from a striped Laura Ashley fabric that she bought from the very first shop in South Kensington (oh, my, I remember it well !) where she worked for a while. The apron to the right of it was made by her Italian mother-in-law and bears the legend ‘la mamma è mia’.

A little while ago, Celia asked me if I would like an apron that had belonged to Justin’s late father. I said I would and that I would cherish it. It is made of a very coarse-woven white linen with just a few dark stains near the hem. I’ve put it on my craft pile and I will definitely be wearing it when I do my crafting.