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.    

The Treachery of Templates

A few years ago I bought a book about an amazing English patchworker called Lucy Boston.  Not only was she a dedicated patchwork maker (in the days before patchwork fabrics were available and hence she used fabric offcuts from dressmaking and curtains), but she was still stitching into her 80s and making about 20 stitches to the inch, which blew me away.  She created many quilts which gave the impression of not optical illusions exactly, but by utilising simple blocks such as an elongated hexagon and lots of fussy cutting she made wonderful effects which defy description.  I had always wanted to make my own Lucy Boston Patchwork of the Crosses quilt and showing off a bit I described the quilt to my mum (my mum hasn't entered the spirit of the computer age), and I gave her a lot of printed templates.  She soon used these up in her enthusiasm and asked for more, and when I visited her this weekend I was mortified to discover that I had originally given her a slightly enlarged template, thinking it would make her job easier because her blocks would be bigger, but somehow the next time I gave her a minimally smaller version so that the blocks wouldn't fit together without some clever manipulation.  To my horror I then realised that I had duplicated the same trick on myself and now I will either have to create two Lucy Boston Patchwork of the Crosses quilts to use up all my papers and fabrics, or discard a whole lot of them.  So there has been much gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair at Shoestring Cottage this weekend.

Another thing which has been driving me mad has been the fact that I spent a very long time cutting up the contents of my scrap bag to make the pieces for the said quilt, and was very pleased to see the rubbish bin in my sewing room full of discarded pieces too small to be of any use, only to find that my scrap container seemed to be as full as ever when I jammed the contents back into it and put it away.  I begin to suspect that the fabric is somehow multiplying at the bottom of the bin just to confound me.

I cut hundreds of elongated hexagons for the Lucy Boston quilt

 and with the scraps lots of even smaller hexagons for other projects

in fact I was in my sewing room for so long that Mr Shoestring felt compelled to come in and tell me that it was time to come out, and I saw that I had a blister on my thumb from the dressmaking scissors.

Outside some spring flowers are blooming and on Sunday afternoon there was the soft feeling of a changing season in the air, I certainly hope so because I shouldn't be kept indoors with the scissors for too much longer or there could be trouble.

A Welcome Winter Break

This weekend turned out to be such an enjoyable one that even the prospect of going back to the salt mines on Monday morning seemed bearable.  I spent Saturday out and about gadding with Mrs Peaceable who is an expert at discovering wonderful shops and cafes to visit.  She gave me the VIP treatment and let me into the secrets of her favourite haunts.  I have to admit to having a little bit of a spend up and we had such a happy day that it was almost  shame to get back to Shoestring Cottage dragging my treasures with me.

I blame Mrs Peaceable for encouraging me in my sinful ways, and it was she who insisted this little vintage case would be the perfect receptacle for placing on Figgy's back seat

and of course she was right.  It will look much better than the ever-increasing array of disintegrating zip lock plastic bags I trail around the countryside with.

But there was a pleasant surprise awaiting me on my return.  Mr Shoestring had been very noncommittal about the possibility of completing reinstalling the bath while I was out, and lo and behold it was in place and looking magnificent, all plumbed in and ready to be christened.  What a delicious soak in the bath I had, just the thing after an exhausting day shopping and talking and drinking coffee!

Mr Shoestring likes to do everything himself and even resurfaced the interior and repainted the exterior. The resurfacing project required a special product he recalled having once seen at a large home handyman emporium and eventually we must have visited every branch in the North Island trying to track it down.  A couple of times we even rolled up to find the shop permanently closed in the town we were visiting, but Mr Shoestring was determined and eventually he did locate the product so it was all worthwhile.  He is very pleased with himself, I am happy to report.  

My obsession with all things avian has continued unabated and I was very envious of my sister's paintings I spied when visiting her, and so grateful when she tracked down this one for me which is by the same artist and will be treasured forever.  

We spied this kereru in her tree visiting her, it comes to call twice a day and wasn't at all bothered by curious humans so close.

New birds in the laundry (or bird room as it would be more fittingly known)

I even found a swallow-embellished notebook while out and about with Mrs Peaceable, to round off a perfect day.

On Sunday Mr Shoestring and I went to Thames to visit our daughter who lives there and spent a very interesting time at the School of Mines Museum where our guide was so knowledgeable that it felt as though there was nothing he didn't know about the history of the gold rush and gold mining in Thames.  The museum premises have been kept in their original condition and even though its cases of specimens with the pretty chalky painted signwriting are chock full of unlikely and mysterious stones

I thought that the enormous map of all the old claims was the most fascinating thing.  The names were so picturesque and the odd shapes of the claims were testament to the way that the prospectors were determined to use every available piece of land they were legally allowed to, and also to prospect in the areas they believed a seam of gold would be located.  

The dotted and dashed lines indicate known seams of gold

The prospectors tended to name the claims after former successful strikes, hence some recycling of older names (Shotover for instance), but then there were obviously sentimental names as well.  One was called "All Nations" because of the many varied nationalities of the stakeholders.  Also there was a determination to record events for posterity (or possibly to publicise the discovery of gold) and so the first day of workings was diligently recorded by a professional photographer, and then another photo was taken a year later to demonstrate progress.

The School of Mines was in use right into the 1950s and it is still in its somewhat ramshackle and charmingly scruffy condition, right down to cupboards full of old mining publications.

Fired up with enthusiasm after that visit we went to the Thames Museum which also housed a lot of interesting and curious relics, though not specifically mining oriented. 

Of course I was drawn to the town's recreated millinery shop complete with its display counter

 and the general goods store with its colourful old tins and advertising

but my favourite thing (and one which seemed very sensible as well) was a bandage which was printed with various methods of using it for different types of injuries, a bit gruesome but fascinating!

As we left Thames the air was noticeably colder and we could see a roiling black cloud coming across the Hauraki Planes towards us.  We were surprised to see localised hail storms had hit parts nearby as we travelled home and some areas were blanketed with very thick hail which had fallen in pea-sized pieces, it was good to get home again safe and warm.  

And so back to the working week and the "real" world.  Sigh.