The Flea

Hi guys! We woke up today to dense fog and very warm temperatures. (70*) I'm back to wearing shorts. As I walked Mo the sun was warm on my shoulders and it felt like June. If the fog burns off it may be a beach day! I'll bring my wool applique, It's a Crock and enjoy "Indian summer".

Meanwhile here is a look at last Sunday's flea market. The Halloween/ first weekend of November flea is often very good, with real antiques and primitives, not just garage sale junk. This weekend the flea did not disappoint.

At the very first booth! ---who buys at the very first table? yeesh---was a wonderful dealer with good antiques. I was fast and beat out a woman who was also reaching for the stack of antique doll clothes on the front table. [she settled for perusing a set of pillow cases with nice lace and embroidered blue eyed kittens.]. Look! Great finds.
A chemise, perhaps not antique:

A lovely petticoat, handmade eyelet lace and a teeny tiny button and handmade buttonhole. All finished inside with french seams.

And exceptional pantalettes!

They too have good fine lace and a tiny button, but the best thing is they are made authentically with an open crotch.

Ladies in hoop skirts c. 1860s couldn't slide down their underwear to go to the bathroom [outhouse?] and instead their underpants were made with wide open crotch seams. Again beautifully finished, tiny stitches, french seams.

I was very pleased and surprised to find out that the pantalettes....

...and the chemise fit my antique 18"? china head doll perfectly.

Also this petticoat from a awhile ago, worn by a rag doll in progress, also fits the big china doll.

The new petticoat fits no one, but well worth the small price. Shown with a miniature doll 5" , who is the big doll's own dolly.

I am hoping someday to find an authentic dress for my doll / dolls. Though making  repro dresses for them is always on my to do list. Maybe this find will inspire me.

Then, buttons and bells, from a guy with what looked like someone's great granny's sewing stash.

The buttons are maybe for my Flag quilt. I am gathering vintage eagle/ military brass buttons for one of the flags.
[later: ugh. No.]

The bells may be for Christmas stockings, or angels...

and I have a notion to open one to see if it will make a good topper for a sewing strawberry, like this one.

pinterest

And a good haul of thimbles.

Three sterling. $3.oo/ 3,oo/ $5.oo.

One is junk, center.

T he nicest of the silver ones, here---

---is marked inside, and also possibly monogrammed. In the days when ladies sewed together in church or charity or social groups, they'd bring their own thimbles of course. Many thimbles are marked with names or initials. It wasn't vanity, It was a way to keep track of an important and valuable tool. [click to enlarge/ for details].

And one interesting odd gold colored, very worn thimble. On close inspection it says TOLEDO. Huh. Toledo Spain, or Toledo Ohio? Definitely a souvenir, but much used, bent into oval to fit, the top dimples worn nearly smooth. I found similar on the Internet; it's from Toledo Spain, made in the technique of their famous steel swords, with gold wire inlay that forms the word and flowers. The rest of the thimble is yellow wash--gold vermeil?--worn mostly away, over some sort of white metal.

It was very cherished and well-used.

Here is my collection so far:

What I didn't get---there was one booth that seemed to be a shop from Pennsylvania, judging by the license plates on their van. The dealer had some very appealing antiques, like blue painted wooden grain boxes and crocks and jugs, plus a great selection of antique / vintage pinkeeps / sewing make do's, and modern but charming primitives--cats and birds, crows, a tiny hen pincushion, quilt block pincushions, etc etc. I went to that booth and lingered FOUR times and in all my visits there was never once anyone manning the till, or overseeing the booth. Too bad.There were a lot of fun things, either to inspire my own prims or to share on my etsy space. Maybe next time?

The lady in that first booth gave me a little shopping gift bag for my doll clothes purchase and as I walked through the market, some of the dealers were offering Halloween candy, and would toss a treat into my little bag, along with the thimble or buttons I'd buy. It was so fun. I haven't trick or treated in many many years. And after walking the market for hours that mini Kit Kat bar tasted mighty good.

Bye for now! I'm off to the beach...

love

lizzy

gone to the beach~~~~~~~~~~~~~

w/ google enhancements:

November

 Hi everyone! It's November!Ah....November.

I LOVE November (despite the oh so annoying time change. Do we really want sunset at 3.30? Really?).
Am I the only one who loves this time of year?

(That said my marsh photos today are less than stellar. It was very windy so everything is out of focus. May be Santa will bring me a better camera this year?)

Anyway, back to the beauty of mid-autumn, blustery beautiful November. November is just about perfect here! Yes we have a few frigid nor'easters and the wind blows strong and chill. Kind of exciting? A definite change from hot sunny summer days.

Time to stay home and cook or sew. Stormy days are treasured here.

 But most days are warm-ish, with brilliant blue skies and amber sunsets; the nights are cold and perfect for sleeping deep and well. And the month includes that special-est of holidays, Thanksgiving---a day of family and friends together, with almost no commercial hype attached.

One of my best childhood memories is about November:
I was maybe seven. Every Saturday my mother would shop at a local market that had fresh produce and a traditional German butcher shop. I'd tag along---my parents weren't ones for spending the weekends shuffling us to soccer or horseback lessons, like some of my friends got to do. My brother and dad ''worked on cars'' and my mom and I did the weekly chores.

 In the butcher shop there was a rack of cheap toys: "impulse buys"--- and all fall I'd yearned for a tiny doll I found there. She was just a soft plastic or rubber doll, her face was painted on. But she had big blue eyes and  gorgeous long red chestnut ''saran'' hair, in a pony tail and she came with a tiny pearly blue brush and comb and miniature rubber bands. She was dressed in a yellow dotted swiss ''organdy'' dress and wore little white knickers; she had painted on black mary jane shoes. She hung there on that crummy rack with stupid finger puzzles and candy cigarettes, in a little plastic bag with a paper top. I even remember the paper being red and cream, once white I suppose.

Oh I loved her! I wanted her so bad. I just knew she was the perfect size---6"---for sewing tiny clothes.

Not only didn't my mom do soccer she was not one to give in to begging for special treats, even if they cost only pennies. [I bet back then that doll cost like 99 cents or less?]. We got lavish treats for Easter and Christmas and our birthdays. Period.
But that day---I don't know why---(had we gone to the dentist?) ---my mom gave in and bought me that doll. I LOVED her, and sewed for her for many years. She had a golden bangle bracelet, some sort of large washer I'd found. Yes I was a scavenger even back then !

I named her November. Because she came home with me on that brilliantly blue windy cold day, when the high clouds scudded over the prairie, followed by magical cloud shadows and masses of swirling red leaves.

I hope my mother felt vindicated, giving in just that once? Or maybe she neither knew nor cared. Maybe she was sad because I loved this penny doll even more than I loved my beautiful Madame Alexander "Cissie" and "Ginny" (though I loved them too). When you're seven you don't notice these things.



marsh mallow pods

A small thing. But special to me.

Did you have a favorite doll? Besides Barbie? Did you sew for her? Or maybe someone sewed the tiny clothes for you?

unpopped bittersweet

love

lizzy

gone to the beach....

 

Mo is cold, poor California puppy.
I had to turn the heat on for him!
Two months early, sigh.

School's Out!

Hi guys! The last day of school finally arrived this past week. I haven't voluntarily set foot in a school in many happy years but the Last Day is always an exciting day for me--- it was always my very most favorite day of the school year.

For years I took special photos of my kids: wearing shorts, a new backpack, and a hopeful face on the first day of school, then another of the gleeful child, again in shorts, usually posed by the iris or rhododendrons, celebrating that final day ten long months later.
Schools here start at the old traditional time of after Labor Day, but classes go on all through June. My school was old-fashioned, observed that farm tradition of the kids having to be off for the planting season. So my school ended the Wednesday after Memorial. Yay!
Three glorious months of freedom.

 

 

We---my brother and I---didn't go to sleep away camp, or even regular day camp, but my parents always made summer's beginnings so fun. Silver dollars for good report cards! And always some kind of goofy game, like badminton or wiffle ball, from our dad.

 
One year an ancient croquet set appeared. Another time the summer game was a hilariously in retrospect lethal thing with hula hoop targets and huge heavy darts with sharp steel tips! (Maybe called Javelin Toss?) They were hard to throw so everyone survived. Another year we got an equally scary archery set. Then when we were older a small sailboat my dad built during the winter, in the garage.

Mostly we ran through the sprinkler, or later enjoyed the pool at the ''swim club''. Or we rode our bikes and skateboards. We liked unplanned games, like abandoned-field baseball and catching lightning bugs.

My mom had other ideas, as she was the person at home with us mostly. A favorite tradition was our summer book she and I read together. My mother liked to nap, a concept that to me was entirely out of the question, so she had the notion that after lunch each day we'd retire to chaise lounges on the brick patio [made by daddy] and read a chapter of our summer book. The patio was to me beautiful, made with recycled old pink bricks, edged by flower beds on one side and enclosed with an old green wrought iron fence and gate, on the other. I thought the fence looked like Roman spears. In June that fence was covered in fragrant pink climber roses and honeybees.

When I finished third grade, our book of the summer was Little Women [Louisa May Alcott]. I don't recall it too well anymore but at the time I loved it. Imagine having sisters! Four of them!
We'd read a chapter then mom would doze off. After a week or so that bored me and I read the entire book by myself, much to mom's dismay. After that I was on my own: favorites I recall were the Narnia series [C S Lewis; fifth grade summer] and Little House on the Prairie series [Laura Ingalls Wilder]. I also loved my mom's vintage Nancy Drew collection, then things like A Gift from the Sea , by Anne Morrow Lindberg, though I suppose I didn't understand it; mysteries by Mary Stewart and Mary Renault, and classics like Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, by Daphne DuMaurier.

today's Gift from the Sea

Both my parents were good at teaching without being teachy. My dad taught me to embroider, then to machine sew, and to quilt; less popular were lessons in fishing and fence painting. My mother did art lessons with me, quite technical, shading for volume, perspective. Then my dad taught me to oil paint.

Probably what I loved best---and why I became a fashion designer?--- was the exciting treat of a trip into the city to a special department store which back then sold beautiful cottons and wools. I'd get a "good haircut'' [hopeless]; have lunch with Mother or daddy, then I'd be allowed to choose as many as six tiny 1/4 yard cuts of cotton lawn or calico, to make dresses for my wooden antique Hitty doll. No Barbie for me, sigh. I loved that doll and still have her in her old cedar trunk. The tiny clothes aren't made so well. But I was only 7 or 8, or ten.....

 

Later in the summer we'd dry lavender and make sachets. Yes, just like I make now, though since my mom did not sew we made tiny hanky bundles. We'd can tomatoes, make pickles. Or a pie. Most summers included cooking lessons: from how to bake a potato [''400 degrees for forty minutes''] to classic meat sauce or marinara sauce and eggplant parmesan. My mother wrote out each recipe by hand in a red gingham covered spiral notebook which I still have and use. [Basic cooking temps, how to prep a turkey. Potatoes Dauphine. Apple tartin. A fail: salad nicoise, eeew. Like I would actually eat fishy stuff? My dad's specialty was deep fried donuts! Imagine that. And one year we made deep fried onion rings with all the extra onions from the garden. Beer batter. Awesome.

powder puff clouds

Reflections of powder puff clouds

Reflections of powder puff clouds
I loved how the thin film of the receding waves
mirrored the clouds in the sky...

And so another summer begins. What will the long days bring to me this year? Let us hope better health than last year.

How about you? What is your favorite memory from from childhood summers? Do you enjoy summer now, or is it just hot and annoying? Tell me!

 

 

 

 

love

 

lizzy

 

gone to the beach............

 

Hitty- Her First Hundred Years  [I wasn't too happy to read that it has been ''updated'', rewritten and an oh so trendy Civil War chapter added. Poor Hitty! But I suppose I must buy a copy and see what ''they'' have done to my beloved story book.