Knitting Wishing

Every time I attempt to learn how to eat it beats me - I'm certainly better at using the one hook and crocheting. But then I come across vintage knitting patterns like this undated Reynolds Designer Collection of sweater and cardigan patterns and I want to try and try and try until I could make something as pretty. Then again I want their hair styles and make up just as much. But being a good girl I'm sticking this on my etsy store with some other vintage knitting patterns in the hope they all find a new home with someone that can knit! 

Then again that red cardigan certainly could keep this Yorkshire girl warm in the -17 degrees C temperature we had here in metro Detroit this week - cold indeed! 

Vintage French

Flicking through an edition of Vogue Knitting from 1991 - it reminds us that vintage inspired fashions aren't a new trend, as everything they go round in cycles. Vogue took the fashions back to Paris - and while patterns and the images themselves are over 20 years old - like the curls and the locations they are timeless. Oh and the whole tights under shorts - clearly not a new trend either!

Blogging in Your Life

Image from weheartit. 

Not having a phone for over a week got me thinking about the place of social media - especially blogging within a bloggers life. Many may not agree with this post but I felt it important to share my views and just get my rant out of my system. This week life has been up in the air with an impromptu visit from the mother in law and Joe having extra time off - so for me blogging, twitter and etsy goes on the back-burner (ebay doesn't because that's where I gain my income from). And this I don't mind - i'd rather be spending my time with my husband, family and friends rather then constantly blogging and tweeting - for me it's great to have that time away and be able to back off.

Now the issue - for my rant steams from when people can't back off from blogs and social media and the line behinds to blur so they constantly say sorry for having a life, doing things and not blogging for three days or they haven't blogged three posts within a day. It might be Christmas Day but people still need to blog, they still feel the need to rant on Christmas Day how a certain advertising button application isn't working - It's Christmas day does it really matter? Granted I sent the occasional tweet on Christmas Day but I certainly didn't blog or read any blogs - I didn't even turn the computer on. I know and I do back off at important times. 

Maybe it's because the reason for the mother-in-laws visit up to Michigan was for a funeral and it got me thinking. I'd rather be spending time with those important to me then feeling the constant need to be virtually updating my life. Don't get me wrong I love blogging and I'm really chuffed to have the followers and readers I do - but I additionally hope they realize blogging isn't my life. Life comes first. 

Photography Compact

When compact manufactures brought out their powder compacts they often had matching items say cigarette cases, double mirrored compacts and often photograph holder compacts. The latter of which i'd never come across until we were in Northville for an estate sale last weekend. Hidden along some really old and nasty make up was this photograph holder - at first I thought it was a compact but opening it up not only revealed the photograph holder but additionally a collection, possibly of the houses former owners, wedding photographs. Pulling out to reveal 12 photographs in all, the images capture the brides day - from her mother doing her hair, the bride adjusting her fathers corsage to kissing her groom and cutting their wedding cake. By the details of the brides hair and dress it probably dates from the 1950's with the details stamped within the case although a little warn gives the name of a Detroit based photography shop. I may never have known the couple but I'm certainly keeping the photographs inside it. 

Birds

Moving to America and the differences in wildlife is in incredible. We're in metro-ville, and while we're over 10 miles from downtown Detroit, we're certainly another good 15 miles away from countryside and you'd known countryside in the UK. But that doesn't appear to stop nature. Once we saw a deer just happily walking down one of the roads near us by an industrial park, woodpeckers are now an everyday sight when we visit the Metroparks and more recently we've been seeing hawks everywhere. I lived in the middle of nowhere town in proper countryside in Yorkshire - I'd be lucky to see a bird of prey once a year. 

Apparently this bank has a hawk on security duty. 

Popping to the bank in suburbia and you don't really expect to see a hawk just hanging out on the telegraph pole. But there he was, just chilling out. What was even better was last weeks spotting of a bird of prey (I suck at knowing which is what) just on the snow opposite our apartment entrance obviously eating something - a matter of meters away. I quickly managed to grab my camera and take a few shots before it moved away. 

American wildlife, being able to get up so close just in the neighborhood is incredible. 

Change

You may have noticed my blogs taken a little turn in it's posts - predominantly a bit more vintage with the odd what's going on around me post. Many moons or years ago I use to feature a lot more vintage on LOTS - I guess changes in myself in moving pushed that to be back a little. I've always wanted my blog to flow and change as me and my tastes do and being surrounded in vintage stuff through estate sales, collecting compacts and selling vintage treasures is what my life is right now alongside being a cat lady and an English gal aboard. 

I know vintage, picking, and etsy stores aren't everyone's cup of tea - I can tell that because they don't get a lot of views and or comments. But I intend to get back into blogging for what I want it to be rather then pointless posts just to be fitting in with the crowd. That's not me and I wouldn't be being honest to myself or my blog if I was doing that. I refuse to sell out my blog to be popular - it's not worth it and working out that I wanted this change to happen is actually what's drawn me back into writing after my little lull towards the end of 2012. 

Plus i'm a girl who loves vinyl and hardbacked books - I don't belong in this modern era and I need to stop fighting my belief of having to fit in constantly.

Hopefully you'll stick along for the ride. 

Vintage Bangs

So I wanted to post today about one of the great vintage goodies we came across at the weekend - I'd seen it in the photographs for the estate sale but hadn't a clue what it was and a google search wasn't turning up any gold - that's until I got my hands on it and I knew I had to buy it. Published in 1957 this is a Robert Curley (think American hair style product brand) guide to hair styling. There's everything you could ever need to know about how to condition and set your hair yet alone how to set it into bustles, pixie styles and curls. If I could actually do something useful with my hair it would be a must to try. Instead I'm willing it away to a good home via etsy - hopefully it will find one. 

1960's Housing Advertisements

 

Going around estate sales if a perfect pastime if you love being nosey when it comes to houses and their interiors. Most of the houses are 1950's built, sometimes they haven't been changed in years - the same shag pile carpet, sometimes really old fridges and appliances. They are a great social history step back in time adventure. It always amuses me the amount of fully stocked and serviced bars people have/had in their basements with vintage cocktail glasses and bar stools.  A lot of the houses still do look like this advertisement feature that someone had cut out and kept within a pattern I found which dates to 1962 - the walls of glass, perfectly designed kitchen and walk in closets and bathrooms. They certainly give you great ideas for when we get our own place - I could certainly do with that amount of storage in my kitchen. 

Of course using my sociological head the women are all shown in their domains - the kitchen, in the bathroom applying make up and greeting guests. She is first and foremost a housewife. The man is in his territory - the basement, the man cave. But of course that is apt and fitting for the time. 

Reading

 
One of the challenges I set myself in 2012 was, like many, a challenge on Goodreads for how many books I could read in the entire year. My goal was 50, which I happily managed to achieve at the beginning of December. It was a great way of seeing just how much (or little) I read and actually got me back into reading after having a big break - which for me was weird, I was always the kid with her head in a book after the move I went months without even turning a page.

Luckily we have a really good library in our city and searching around on Goodreads I have a list of books to read that's longer then the day is long. But this year I'm determined to get through the huge mountain of books we have on our bookcase, and on top of the bookcase and now piling around said bookcase. Yeah books are another collection we have and picking up second hand hardback books from the 1940's and 1950's is a particular pleasure of my own. 

There's something magical about hardback books, maybe it's their smell or their bindings to being able to feel their weight - all the total opposites to the ever growing digital reading world we find ourselves increasingly surrounding in. Feeling their weight makes their stories feel more real, more presence then a screen. 

So my mission is to not only achieve another Goodreads challenge - this time 75 books in the next 12 months. This is alongside my mission to work my way through some of the lovely hardbacks we have - a Gone With The Wind edition dated to the 1950's, a gorgeous book on the history of Ballerinas to Wordsworth poems and Churchill's London in WW2.

Are you challenging yourself and your reading list this year? If you're on Goodreads add me - I love seeing other peoples reading lists.