Tarnished Frocks and Divas, a Visit to The Centre Of The Universe, and The Bridges of Matamata-Piako County

It must have been a little while since I last wrote, but I have a good excuse.  I have been away to the biennial Tarnished Frocks and Divas event in Tauranga with the lovely Wynn and friends, which was a wonderful girls' weekend away and a chance to talk ourselves to a standstill.  I am ashamed to admit that I made it no further than Paeroa before becoming distracted and making my way, as if in a trance, into Junk and Disorderly where I bought this article which is perfect in every way - it has flowers, it has a bird, it is twinkly and has a touch of gold and some pink.  What could be better?

In the summer time it will be just the thing for serving cool refreshing beverages.  (If summer time ever arrives of course, but we must travel in hope.)  And it looks so happy with the old cannisters in the kitchen too.

The weekend after Tarnished Frocks and Divas Mr Shoestring and I went to visit The Duke and Duchess of Ringloes in Napier (The Centre Of The Universe) but along the way we had to call into every op shop we could locate.  It would be rude not too after all, and a terrible wasted opportunity.  I do believe that op shops out of big towns have a few more genuine "old school" treasures on offer and I was very happy to find silk stockings with seams.  They are bound to be fragile after such a long time waiting to be worn but still will be just the thing for next year's art deco weekend even if they don't have a long life.  

The 1950s hat has a good wool felt base and I'm hoping that once I remove the plaited overlay I will be able to do something more 1930s-ish with it.  (What usually happens is that I lose my nerve though, or inspiration deserts me, so really must try harder this time.)  

We had a wonderful visit with the Duke and Duchess and they had cleverly found a deco book a bach for us all to stay in, complete with art deco kitchen, bathroom and decor.  We were as happy as kings and had a great time talking (over each other most of the time in our determination to speak before forgetting what we were wanting to say), eating out and relaxing, 

When Madame La Poste was last visiting Shoestring Cottage last she cast her eye over my shadow box (which only has a few treasures in it, sad to relate) and pronounced that it would benefit from having some old cotton reels displayed within it.  I wailed tragically, "But I don't have any!" so while we were in Napier I made a beeline for some in Decorum, and now the shadow box has the beginnings of a new collection.

Of course a road trip isn't complete unless one can add a priceless work of art or two to one's ever-expanding collection and I couldn't go past these magnificent landscapes

This one is an original but I was mortified when Mr Shoestring pointed out the last painting I bought featured a bridge as well and that I was on my way to a new collection.  

Of course they had to be hung together, which necessitated some reshuffling of the paintings on the walls and Mr Shoestring (possibly losing interest in the project) proclaimed that the bridges of Matamata-Piako somehow doesn't have the same ring as The Bridges of Madison County, but I think that was a little mean spirited of him.  (He didn't miss out entirely on our road trip, having made a beeline for this little knife to add to his collection of kitchen wares.  And I bought him the most beautiful silk scarf too.) 

I brought home a few more pretty old lace hankies as well, I want to put them all onto a muslin curtain one fine day and probably have enough now - just a question of time and putting in a bit of effort, sadly.

This weekend we finally managed to get back to Shoestring for the annual Cruise In.  I don't know whether I have seen so many vintage cars with matching caravans before, these two little babies particularly tickled my fancy.  I was fantasising about having my very own little teardrop caravan but as Mr Shoestring rightly pointed out, where would I take it?  I want to be always at Shoestring so probably not a practical plan.  Also Figgy may not be up to towing anything much larger than a rubbish bin.  They were very lovely though.  

In the garden I have been very taken with the acid colours of this geranium/pansy combo, so much in the spirit of spring.

but a lot of other things were looking a bit sad, having been buffeted by howling gales and torrential rain.  At least there are signs of the season in the offing, lots of lilies are through the earth and the climbing rose is promising a great season.

As Mrs Peaceable and I enjoyed a coffee and put right most of the troubles of the world I knew good things were just around the corner for us.  

The Colours of Spring

Intense blue and acid yellow always suggest spring to me 

I suspect that gardeners are destined to be disappointed in their attempts to control nature - she will always have the last word no matter how much we struggle and think we know better.  I was very happy to see these shy fragrant mauve double Parma violets flowering in the garden, but when I went for a walk around the wetlands there were sheets of violets blooming their hearts out, releasing their perfume and scenting the afternoon air.  So many of them that in a couple of minutes I picked the bunch below and you couldn't even see where I had been.

 So maybe that's why instead of being destined to be perpetually disappointed by our scruffy blossoms such as this slightly insect-chewed tulip, a sturdy rebloomer from last year,

we prefer to immortalise our favourites in stitching.  I was very pleased when I finally finished this canvas in the weekend and immediately selected another blank (bargain, op shop) one to go on my frame.  

And I have all the materials put to one side so I can make a cushion of my perfect tulips, more long lasting and sturdy than the one in the garden and not given serrated edges by greedy slugs and snails

The weekend was a brilliant success on the stitching front, because apart from finishing that pesky tulip canvas I allowed myself to start this swallow (soon to be) quilt using an old cream blanket and some blue wool scraps.  

I can't claim the credit for the design because it uses the templates from this wonderful project

from a publication which never fails to inspire me.

It is another one of those projects which will use up (hopefully) a whole swathe of leftovers because I have cut the large woolen piece so that it can be framed in the manner of a medallion quilt and will put all my leftover blues around it in the form of hexagons.  (I know, who would have thought it?  I hardly ever use them.)  

And one great thing about being a gardener is that even though we are always destined for disappointment and things not looking quite as we had planned, we do get the odd reward in the form of seasonal changes and plants and flowers which thrive and make us feel it has all been worthwhile - and that next season it will be even better.  

No reports regarding the activities of Mr Shoestring this week, he caught me yet again in my sewing room cutting up more fabric for my Lucy Boston quilt and he called me "incorrigible"!  How unsympathetic that man can be.

The Marvels Of Melbourne

(Please forgive the inordinate number of pictures here, I couldn't contain myself!)  

 Such magnificent tiling, which we don't see much of in our part of the world.  And it's a bit like a patchwork in some ways.

 So many art deco touches still to be seen on the exteriors of department stores

Such frankly bizarre ornamentation and lack of restraint - this is an old picture theatre and how great that it's still standing, if a bit the worse for wear and somewhat flakey in the paint department.  

Since I last wrote Mr Shoestring and I had the chance to go to Melbourne.  I love Melbourne, I think it is a very vibrant and interesting city (naturally with a lot of deco delights to offer) and I haven’t been there for about nine years or so, which made it all the more enticing.  The weather was pretty good, all things considered (Melbourne is the city the song Four Seasons In One Day was written for) and we had one day of beautiful sunshine which coincided with the day we went out to Rippon Lea on the tram, to see the costumes from the television series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. The first time I visited Rippon Lea years ago I was unaware that my grandfather had worked there as a gardener when he left England and travelled to Australia, before eventually moving on to New Zealand.  Each time I go there I am fascinated to think of him having been there all those decades ago, in fact almost a hundred years ago now.  I look at the working kitchen and know that would have been closer to his experience of the house

and maybe he saw the fitting which displays which room's occupants had rung for service

But he definitely would not have been able to enter through the front door and admire the imposing facade 

or enjoy my favourite room, one of the wonderfully deco bathrooms which still has its pink and green tiles and fittings

This one is pretty wonderful too, but I think the pink and green one is more atmospheric somehow

and of course it has the silk nightgown hanging there for that extra touch of authenticity

Having read some of the books on which the series was based makes Melbourne even more interesting because the specific laneways and locales are mentioned and you can imagine them being the setting for some of the lurid tales from the books.  

Before we set off I was a bit dubious about the costumes, suspecting that they might be more “made for TV”, a bit too colourful and garish and using a lot of modern synthetic fabrics.  But how wrong I was!  The attention to detail was mind boggling.  Marion Boyce used some fabrics from her extensive collection of original materials and even overdyed fabric which wasn’t the right shade, to achieve just the colour she wanted.  The hats were marvels of ingenuity including one which had been remade from an inside out 1950s straw hat in order to get the desired effect.  Having them all displayed at Rippon Lea was just the extra cherry on the top, because it was used as the setting for some scenes in the series and added that certain something to set off the costumes perfectly.  There were even cases holding Miss Fisher’s pearl handled pistol and a large assortment of beaded evening purses and authentic jewellery.

 Authentic clasps and buttons were used wherever possible, this one is particularly beautiful

 The yellow jacket is made from an original 1920s garment

 Original kid tennis shoes

The fabric in this dress was overdyed to achieve the desired shades, and look at the beautiful collar and buttons

Imagine sitting for breakfast in bed wearing this concoction - I suspect I would end up getting bits of boiled egg into the maribou feathers and being unable to remove them, somehow such a garment would be wasted on me.  The pyjamas were made from an old tablecloth!

 But I definitely could be trusted to take good care of these embroidered house slippers

 The attention to detail was superb, the covered buttons and tiny seam detailing on this garment is just one example.

I was in heaven and Mr Shoestring was very well behaved and gave every appearance of enjoying himself also, which was most obliging of him.  (On the same day we also packed in the David Bowie exhibition, Catherine The Great’s Treasures From The Hermitage and the Orry Kelly costume design exhibit, so by the end of it all we were all cultured out and had to revive ourselves with a delicious cocktail from The Gin Palace, where they stock no less than 250 kinds of gin and know how to make the most of each one, what a pleasant end to a busy day.  Mr Shoestring would have happily stayed there all evening.) 

We couldn’t go to Melbourne and not travel out to St Kilda and look at the amusement park, the old Palais Theatre (which seems to be under renovation) and is still in use

and the traditional cake stores.

On that same trip we went to the St Kilda Botannical Gardens which Mr Shoestring happened to spy coincidentally, and they were well worth a visit.  The trees were festooned with fabulous (and to our eye very exotic) sulfur crested cockatoos, some of them hanging upside down and putting on a great display.  

On our way back to the tram stop I thought I saw another one, even closer to town, and marvelled at the way it was so agile and moving about so quickly in the trees.  I was very disappointed to discover it was a white plastic bag which must have been blown up there, and now Mr Shoestring delights in teasing me whenever he sees a plastic bag.  “Oh look, a bird!”  If it happens to be a grey plastic bag he tells me it may be a gallah, but I take it in my stride because he was so patient and long suffering where costumes were concerned.  And also his memory is not what it once was, and he will soon forget to tease.