Wednesday 30 January 2013

My Wonderful Friends

Something lovely happened to me the other day, and it caused me think of all the lovely friends I have, and how much they have all contributed to me and my sense of well-being.  Mucho, mucho thanks for you all! 

The lovely thing that happened was my good friend Sam (female Sam) had returned from a trip to India and this is what she brought me back as a present!

This lovely fabric is actually a sari, but I am going to sew it into a dress.  There are about 6 or 7 metres of it!  The lavender and rust colour combination is really chic.

AND she also brought me this lovely shawl/blanket/warm wooly rectangle:


This is a reversible piece of fabric, one side is bright pink and violet stripes, the other is bright pink and green and violet stripes.  It is soft and wooly and great as winter chill-chaser.  I might make a jacket out of it, but more likely I will leave it as a throw/shawl.  Wonderfully cosy!

How incredibly generous of her to think of me when she was seeing all those fabulous sites in India-- each day being overwhelmed with colour and brilliant images.  And in the midst of all this excitement, she thought of me and took the time and effort to bring these treasures home for me.  How lucky am I??

As well, I have recently been wearing this wonderful brooch on my coat, and people have been remarking on it.  That too,  reminded me that it was a present from a dear friend who I knew in Canada.  Someone who still lights up my life with her entertaining emails. 



Such good taste my friends have! I used to have a pair of earrings that matched the brooch, but I lost one some time ago.  I love the 2 pewter faces in the gold-coloured ring.

How wonderful it is to have friends -- whether they give you presents or not.  Wouldn't you agree?!

Saturday 26 January 2013

Normality Returns (or as I know normal, at any rate)

Many thanks for the all your support, my blogging buddies, and for reading the fashion horror story in the last post.   As I said, I was unable to post photos for a while due to the computer images and the blog page not talking to each other.  But a nice IT person put a little word in my ear, and since then, viola!  They have kissed and made up and now are friends again. Harmony restored!!

So, it's much too late to talk about Christmas, but here it is anyway.  This is either way, way late for Christmas, or about 11 months early.  This is what I would have posted if I could....


At Liverpool Catherdral, in front of the altar.  The beaded handbag was a gift from Gorgeous Husband, although not this year.

Despite Vintage Vix saying that only 3 people went to church on Christmas, all those 3 must have lived in Liverpool and invited 797 of their friends to the service.  It was packed.

It doesn't really show that well, but I am about 20 pounds (10 kilos) lighter than Christmas 2011's photo.  I didn't exactly diet, but did "encourage" the excess to leave by being a bit more active.

In the run-up to Christmas, I got a delightful order from one of my customers.  He ordered perfume for his wife, and "anything else that would make up a nice Christmas gift" for her, up to a certain value. I volunteered to gift wrap the whole thing, and being a man, he thought that was a great idea.

This is what it looked like:
The products in their "nude" state.  Aloe Purifying Cleanser, Aloe Moisturizing Lotion, Aloe Nourishing Serum, "25th Edition" perfume, and Aloe lip balm with jojoba oil.

This is the products wrapped:

All in silver and white with the angel box containing the lip balm.


Then all of it put in this silver and white gift carrier bag.  It looked like a lovely white frothy confection.

My customer said that his wife was well pleased with the whole thing, and it was a marvellous validation for me that the husband had the confidence that I would produce something lovely.  It was a win-win! (And a nice lucrative order!)

Well, that's it.  No more Christmas photos til December 2013, I promise. 

Wednesday 23 January 2013

It's Story Time

Apologies for my long absence, but I have been having some difficulties with my blog lately, and hence I'm afraid I will just have text in this post, considering that my photos refuse to jump over from my files onto the blog page.  They are being extremely naughty, and will be dealt with severly (sooner or later!)

So, boys and girls, I will tell you a little story instead.  Seeing as this is a kind of fashion-y blog, it is a fashion "horror story" (of sorts.)

Without further adieu, and/or excuses, I present to you:



IT SEEMED LIKE THE END OF THE WORLD AT THE TIME


There had been a complete universal disaster.  No one knew how it happened, but overnight, denim evaporated.  No trace of to be found anywhere.  Every item of denim clothing gone. No jeans!  Whole wardrobes were decimated.  People called in to work sick because they had nothing to wear.  And they genuinely were sick.  Sick at heart that their denim crutch had been cruelly kicked out from under them with no warning.  Many were left with only their underwear.

            What would be the next new thing? Woollen trousers? Linen? Jodpurs? Lycra bicycle shorts?  What?! People would have to find a new crutch—and fast!

            At least the old folks, who were wearing denim in a deluded attempt to look hip and cool had some things in their wardrobes to fall back on.

            Everyone held their breath that fleece and jogging pants wouldn’t be the next to go, but it looked ominous, as fewer and fewer things that could be classified as “comfy” were available.  People began to stockpile leggings and jogging pants and hoodies.  It was no use, of course.

            One fateful morning, people woke up to another disaster.  Their fleecy, comfy, baggy pants had followed the same fate as denim and disappeared overnight.

            This WAS serious!  What would be next?  Surely to goodness, people couldn’t be expected to go back in time and wear the type of things available in “the olden days.”  In other words, about the time of the wars: WW I and WW II.  Dresses!  Tweeds!  What the heck was coming next? A return to wearing hats?

            Naturally, this opened up a HUGE gap in the market.  Vintage and retro were longer just a fashion option or statement.  It was practically the only game in town until manufacturers could come up with some miracle fibre that they hoped to God wouldn’t also evaporate into nothingness whenever it took the notion to do so.

            Suddenly, there was hardly enough vintage to go around and correspondingly, it became very expensive.  Antique dealers and those who were by nature hoarders of old clothes were rubbing their hands in glee. People were paying silly prices for old clothes practically in any condition. People wished they hadn’t de-cluttered.  Those lucky enough to have warehouses of clothes from house clearances -- stock that they thought  they would never get rid of-- began to see these old clothes as their retirement fund or a brilliantly performing stock portfolio.

            Because of the cost, people began to purchase fewer clothes.  Gone were the days of “wear it once or twice and toss it out.”  People actually learned to mend!  It was a revelation to the younger generation, and took to signing up for classes in how to do it.  It was “make do and mend” time again, only this time it was more than a slogan.

            Eventually, new miracle fibres were invented, but surprisingly, people were not as keen to embrace them as what had been predicted.  People seemed to have discovered individualism and were reluctant to get back into a universal form of dress.   Maybe they feared that these new materials would also go the way of denim and they’d find themselves with the equivalent of the Emperor’s New Clothes, as they had when denim died.

            For whatever reason, people began to wear their clothes with pride.  They walked taller and didn’t slouch along like robots in an invisible chain gang.

            Finally a fibre very similar to denim was heralded as the New Denim, but no one wanted to go near it: it was too stiff, too rough, and too much like wearing cardboard. It had no association with being young and cool anymore. Even people with long memories, who once wore only denim, could not be coaxed back. It was a complete flop and soon the manufacturers saw it as a financial dead donkey and stopped making it.  What supplies they had, they pulped into roof insulation for homes.

            More and more people fell in love with natural fibres, form fitting tailoring, and the whole notion of being well dressed.  It became not only desirable, but normal to dress in that way. It seemed the Cult of Casual had lost its stranglehold on the nation’s psyche.