Hello again

Thank you for your patience while I finished revising my latest project, which I finally wrapped up a few days ago. As anticipated, the excerpts from it did not make the shortlist for this year's Emerging Authors Dagger, but I am in very good company there and those who did proceed are a very impressive group! 

Meanwhile, check out what's been happening outside, while I hunched over my keyboard:

Admittedly as I type this we're having another very chilly grey day, which I appreciate and am using to cool down the house because our a/c is broken again and I somehow doubt we will be able to book and complete a repair before next week's hot weather. But - and there is always a but - there is no mistaking we are in blossom season. 

Also, rainy season! We've had so much rain the last few weeks, and the puddles have been spectacular. I keep trying to capture the mirror effect when they reflect the trees above them.

Probably I should keep my day job... or at least, focus on enjoying all the perks of our super pretty walking route.

On the wildlife front, the bees slurping around our lilacs this year are as big and bumbly as ever, and we have a new bird in the neighbourhood. A huge black one that's probably a crow but might be a raven? The signs are mixed. Maybe I just missed it every other year we've lived here, but I don't remember that deep solitary call being part of the usual chirpy dawn chorus. I would like to befriend it. Sadly, I don't see myself putting in the work with sitting quietly and dishing up mealworms, so don't expect interesting video encounters anytime soon. 

I got my sewing machine out the other night to put a couple of darts into a pair of men's jeans for a friend who isn't a man, and kept it out to put darts into a few other things myself. 

Darts in menswear are such a great solution to women's clothes not straying into dangerous territory. Like, it's such a trauma apparently for a woman to have shorts that hit the top of her knee! Or have pockets big enough for a phone and maybe a sunscreen stick. Whereas it's so easy to buy long men's cargo shorts, throw in some darts at the back of the waist so they stay up, and get on with our lives. 

 

Speaking of which, I'm extra excited to have my current writing project on to the final polishing stages because it leaves me free to pick back up again with another I was really loving. I know, I know - it's like I'll never get back to crafty work, right? But I do love writing best of all. And I'm so much better at it than mirrory puddles, ha! 

Hope your weekend is a delight - see you next week and thanks as always for stopping by.

New To Me and Hand Painted China

Hello all and thank you for checking back in with me! I am still hard at work writing but I took a break for some thrifting at my favourite local jumble sale this weekend. So many treasures again this year, but I'll spare you (most of) the book haul in favour of two platters.

They're both from Grindley and... well, I just really liked them. And I didn't want to see them get broken up and used for a garden table mosaic if nobody else bought them, when they're in great shape with no crazing to keep me from using them to hold rolls or neatly folded meats at a lunch buffet. Assuming I ever host a lunch buffet. Stranger things have happened!

As an aside, I also acquired these beautiful cotton/linen tea towels recently, via eBay. They are I think about two feet long! which is welcome when you are doing a lot of hand-drying, let me tell you.

Back to china. I scored this fantastically huge bowl which is impossible to photograph so I hope you can make do with this pic:

It's about 14.5" wide across the top and has deep embossed circles in it. Only pressed glass, and it's got many bubbles and imperfections, but I absolutely love it. Mind you it's a commitment. I don't own a cupboard big enough to stash it in, so it's going to have to be out all the time, and I'll have to think of different uses for it to get through all the seasons. 

I am up for that challenge.  

Books were of course a primary focus for me at the sale and I was thrilled to pick up a bunch of 1950s Bobbsey Twins stories for a friend who collects them (not pictured.) My own obsession was vintage Agatha Christies and I did get quite a number of editions I don't already have, plus a collection of her plays (pictured!)

The spritz cookie press is so amazing, isn't it? This is a less recent acquisition - a friend picked it up as a present for me at a different jumble-y sale, and I was blown away when I opened it. It has never been used, for one thing. And who could resist that box cover art? Plus, I did actually use a spritzer just like this with my mum when I was little, so that was very moving. I will have to reanimate my passion for spritz cookies and put this lil guy through its paces.

 

Okay there is one more thing I want to show you, and it is the item I bought home at the last minute when the extraordinarily nice lady at the china table said, "I think this would be really fun at Christmas, don't you? You should get it!" and I could not disagree.

When I got it unpacked and washed, it puzzled me. The trademark on the back references Limoges, but the front does not look like Limoges. More like... 2012 dollar store reproduction? I looked it up, and apparently there are made-in-China reproduction Limoges, and also fake Limoges masquerading as the real thing. This could be either of those less than ideal options. Still, something about it still didn't fit. Yes, there are paint splodges on the back of the plate around the rim where somebody got careless, but there are also some age marks on it that I've seen on some of my older dishes. So I did some more digging and you know what?

Given the trademark on the back, the plate is probably circa 1905. 

And the lines look a bit uneven because it was hand painted, possibly by an amateur. Because, and this is the ultimate New To Me for today: around that time, a hobby sprang up around buying blank china pieces (as from Limoges) and painting them, either alone at home or in groups at a party. Some people even set up as a commercial enterprise. I gather there were standard sorts of designs you could buy to work from. Perhaps this is one, but I couldn't find any other examples of it online so maybe it was done freehand. 

 

Apparently I am slow off the mark on this one because my friend Jan already knew all about it when I told her. It's kinda cool though, right? While we use up our spare time knitting stuff, we could be hand-painting china tea services. All that gold paint, though... musta been messy.

Either way: I am so glad I brought this home to give it another twenty or thirty years of admiration. If I'm right about somebody painting it in 1905, it's survived a few generations of owners before landing at the rummage sale. It would've been a real shame if it went into the bin after all that.

 

And now it's time for me to get back to the rest of my writing retreat. Another three weeks - see you here again on May 31! Have fun in the meantime and thanks again for dropping by.