One Swallow Does Not A Summer Make ...

"One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy."  Apparently it was Aristotle who said this, which rather surprised me as I had supposed it must be a much more recent proverb, perhaps from Victorian times. 

Whoever said it, I am here to tell you that they were wrong!  My summer has been made wonderful by the gift of this beaten copper swallow (crafted in Africa, no less) which will grace some part of Shoestring Cottage. 

It was presented to me by that wonderful Mrs Peaceable and I was bowled over by such a thoughtful and felicitous gift.  How did she know swallows are my favourite?  Well, apparently it is fairly obvious and thinking back I realise there are a fair few clues to my partiality. 

 Hanging in windows

 Decorating plates

 Adorning quilts

 And doilies

And yet more doilies

Even on jewellery such as a favourite brooch and a bracelet.  

Sometimes when we think we are opaque it turns out that we are at our most transparent!

But thank you so much Mrs Peaceable for the perfect gift, treasured and always much appreciated. And to be able to give a perfect gift to a friend sometimes is almost as pleasurable as to receive it, because how clever are you to accomplish that?  

Winging My Way Back To The Blogosphere

Well I have to admit that I have been severely chastised of late because of my lack of blog posts and now that I look back it seems that it has been a good three months, which is very surprising to me. This will be put right immediately here is a picture festooned blog post to make up for lost time. 

Since my last missive winter deco has been and gone (sigh).  It proved to be a roaring success (well, how could it fail to be, Napier never disappoints) and as well as the usual suspects we met two charming ladies from the Deep South who were an inspiration.  They are shy creatures who would not like to be named in the public domain but suffice it to say that they were the picture of sartorial elegance and generous in sharing ideas for deco-ficication of clothing and accessories.  By the time winter deco was over I almost looked forward to returning home in order to start planning costumes for next year, which is no small thing.  

Shortly after returning from winter deco I was given this glorious original parasol/umbrella in rich burgundy tones.  It is of no practical use, as the fabric is perishing and going into holes in places, but folded up it looks most impressive.  

I had already been hankering after an ox blood red costume and at winter deco obtained an  ox blood coloured pair of leather gloves.  I already had a leather clutch bag, courtesy of St Vinnies (not too badly priced at $2) and one pair of shoes, but found another pair with a finer heel.

These things should all go together nicely to be the basis of a costume for next winter's deco - it is always so good to have a project on the go to keep one sane in between the deco days!  I have a couple of hats, (a fedora and a cloche), to work with, and a heather coloured tweed suit.  As The Dancing Queen reminds me, the hat can be the most difficult part so it is a good thing that isn't a worry this time round!

In case you should think I have been entirely taken up with my personal appearance I can report that a very good haul of priceless art works was obtained on the journey south.  This wonderful landscape features two cows which somewhat resemble dogs and also a sheep which looks rather like a blob of cotton wool and I was very taken with it when I spied it in the Taupo Salvation Army shop. Fortunately it was reduced to $4, so it was within my slender budget

and it looks very good with the other similarly toned landscapes it hangs with.  

But I think this one is my favourite from that excursion.  The colours and subject remind me of Rita Angus for some reason and I fear I will soon have to call a halt to this collection - the walls in the small rooms at Shoestring Cottage are groaning under the weight of them and there is very little space left unadorned.

Even so, I am very pleased with the look of them all together.  

At the same Sallies store I lashed out and bought this one too, thinking it would look good in the rose-festooned boudoir at SC.  When I got it home though the "white" roses were very blue and looked better in the bathroom.  No matter, that was one room which did have a bit of space left for paintings so it all worked out well in the end.  

These had recently been given to Mr Shoestring as a gift and they had the same "feel" as the painting in terms of vintage, so they sit directly underneath.  

This little doyley from 1922 is still in good condition and was languishing in Putaruru, just waiting for somebody to take it home.  The hand made lace around the edge is particularly fine and I can imagine a young woman toiling away on it for her glory box.

Mr Shoestring didn't come home empty handed either, he found a treasure trove of old postcards depicting his beloved Te Aroha, most of the buildings seen here are still standing.  

He is becoming rather discerning now and eschewed several of them for his own obscure reasons and after buying several declared that he had enough of them and would stop collecting them!  If only I had the same self control.  We were surprised to see that most of them were only addressed to a particular street with no street number added, maybe the posties were more knowledgeable and the populace less transient in those days!

Lest you suspect that Mr Shoestring has been neglected during all this feverish shopping I have to tell you that he obtained a magnificent fair isle vest for next winter deco in suitably muted tones

 but best of all I presented him with a wonderful smoking cap (here kindly modelled by Maud)

The leather label on the inside proudly proclaims that P Cohen, tailor, mercer, clother, hatter etc of 92 Willis Street (surely that must be Willis Street in Wellington) was the supplier of this wonderful item.  Next time I am in Wellington I will try to see what is at 92 Willis Street now, I doubt that P Cohen is still keeping shop at that location.

Also Mr Shoestring was presented by my mama with the lovely leather suitcase you can see to the left of the picture below, which still has its original luggage labels festooning its sides and top.  

And I couldn't resist showing off the cushion-made-out-of-a-teatowel which I have stuffed with feathers from an old down duvet.  Featuring Hawkes Bay of course.

Last weekend at Shoestring Cottage I put together some left over crazy quilt blocks and made a pinboard for the sewing room but now that it is finished it seems a shame to cover the embroidery up by sticking things all over the front, so it could well end up being yet one more picture hanging on the groaning walls.  

In the sewing room I am making superhuman efforts to keep things tidy because I recently located this in an op shop and with the help of Mr and Mrs Peaceable it was transported from Auckland to SC.  It wasn't quite the right colour for the sewing room, which had to be repainted and all in all a lot of trouble and bother followed on after the purchase of this "bargain".  It isn't even very practical, because the glass fronted cupboards mean that you can only really store pretty things in that part of it, nothing unattractive or utilitarian.  

 But how pretty it is!

 All the depression glass had to go in there, also the nice tins and containers with mother of pearl buttons

 the nice pieces of crochet and lace awaiting use

 all the labels from ties which are going to be used - for something - some day

and the prettiest floral china plates

I have in fact become a reformed character where my sewing room is concerned - no longer messy and untidy, as long as you don't open the doors on the cupboards, in which case you could be swamped by an avalanche of falling fabric.  

Outside spring is almost upon us and the garden is waking up again.  I have to confess to having carried out yet more inappropriate planting - this time it was something which purports to be a Himalayan Daphne, just like a daphne bush but growing to tree-like proportions (2.5 metres x 2.0 metres).  On the strength of two blossoms (which did indeed look like daphne and had a lovely fragrance) I have given garden space to this incomer - no doubt it will die a long, slow, lingering death in the garden while I anxiously nurse it and fret over it but such is the life of a gardener.  But being ever optimistic a gardener will always hope for the best and imagine the new plant creating a cloud of scented blossoms which will scent the entire garden, possibly the whole neighbourhood, and bring joy and delight to all.

Hoping you are keeping up with all the things which bring you delight even if you don't have the advantage of a deco obsession!

The Last Swallows Of Summer

It looks as though it has been a while since the last communique from Shoestring Cottage – missing in action, there has been a lot going on.  Of course another wonderful art deco weekend in Napier has come and gone, though we were sadly down in numbers this year with some old chums not able to attend.  This time I paid a visit to the wonderful Rose from Decadia Vintage, whose tender ministrations to my coiffure and maquillage left me feeling truly deco and pampered, darlings.  Her skill with hot sticks has to be seen to be believed!  And she can put on your makeup so that it lasts the whole evening instead for half an hour or so before melting off leaving you looking as if it had never been applied, a very useful skill to possess in the scorching hot weather we had this year.  One wonderful (if slightly odd) thing I acquired at Napier that same weekend was a strawberry blonde marcelle waved wig, which came from Charlston Chic, Lee-Anne Freeman’s wonderful shop located under The Masonic Hotel.  It did feel very strange, having gone through all the angst and torture of letting my hair grow out and go a rather dreary grey shade, to be donning my pre-styled coiffure but what an amazing response it got!  Here you can see it peeping out demurely from under a hat, along with the cunning silk collar made from Madame La Poste's kind gift of cream silk - which made an old brown silk dress look 100% deco and received many admiring comments. 

Upon being stopped in the street several times by people asking if I slept in my hairpins to achieve such a successful wave I was gratified that they couldn’t tell it was a wig, but I wasn’t complaining, oh no siree!  Now the wig has been packed up until winter deco and it will be a lot more comfortable to wear in winter time; I have to admit summer in February is a trifle warm for wigs but we must suffer for the sake of our art as The Dancing Queen will willingly attest.  It does look forlorn, wrapped up in its hairnet in the hatbox.  

These fabulous shoes would never look forlorn though, they were another purchase from Charlston Chic and it is hard to resist the urge to wear them for every day wear and forget that art deco weekend doesn't go on all year round.  

This weekend there was in the air at Shoestring Cottage that slightly melancholy feeling that summer had to be finally coming to an end.  Despite the fact that it was very warm and sunny the mornings are cooler and the autumn seasonal changes are starting to be noticeable.  Sitting in the sunshine at The Peaceable Kingdom feasting upon freshly caught fish and scallops though, we were in no hurry to meet the autumn and the delicious cake for pudding topped it all off nicely. 

I think I must have posted a photo of the black/floral tumbling blocks quilt I recently finished and boasted that it was going to be the start of something big, and that all my half completed projects were out of the attic and ready to be finished.  Well, this one nearly did my head in.  Its original reason for being was that I wanted to use up favourite scraps from dresses I made for one of our daughters 20-odd years ago.  In the centre of most of the hexies is a little scrap from this fabric, and around the edges are fussy cut fabrics to “frame” the hexie.  

But what was I thinking when I decided to put miniscule triangles and diamonds in between each block to set them off nicely and prevent them from all merging together?  It was a labour of love and as time went by I made more and more ridiculous errors which meant that every weekend I would vow that this would be the weekend it was finally ready for quilting – only to discover that no such thing was about to happen and that it would need another week of furious stitching to get to that stage.  The whole floor and my current prize possession, the reupholstered sofa, became covered with pieces of cotton, bits of removed template paper and cold cups of tea and instead of this more comfortable scene 

we ended up with this - it looked as though a hurricane had uplifted all the papers, left over hexagons and scruffy old pieces of thread and thrown them all around the room.  

Madame La Poste wisely counseled me that if I really wanted to get it over and done with I should just be satisfied with a smaller sized quilt, but oh no, I was determined to make it big enough to cover the queen sized bed in the gypsy room.  It got to the stage where I would down tools from time to time and go and visit the tumbling blocks one just to reassure myself that completion was a possibility, if only I kept on and didn’t lose heart.  

This was particularly hard on the weekend when I sewed an entire row of blocks on upside down.  But here we are at last, all ready to make the quilt “sandwich” and begin quilting in time for the cooler weather.  I am going to copy Madame La Poste here and try using a variegated crochet cotton and make larger quilting stitches in order to save time (ha, a likely story but it is always good to have a plan) and get the task over with more speedily. When it was finally all put together I had to audition it on the bed to see what the final effect was likely to be.  Sadly, I think I may prefer the floral tumbling blocks but when the quilting is done maybe things will be better.  

I was about to vow and declare never to take up a needle in the quest of quilting again and remembered all the times men have said to me over the years, "So let me get this straight.  You get pieces of material and then you cut them up into tiny bits and sew them all together again, is that right?  What for?" Fortunately I remembered my most recent purchase from the flea market, this golden toned marquetry picture which cost me all of $3 and which I couldn't forego no matter how often I walked away. Surely this would be the "boy" version of patchwork?  Somebody (and I would bet it was a boy or a man and not a girl or a woman) got all their different pieces of wood and chopped them up into minute pieces and then put them back together to make a picture - is that any more sensible than patchwork quilts?  I think not!