Rain rain go away

Well, actually, don't, but could you at least let me get the washing dry?  I've tumbled-dried sheets and towels, but some things I just refuse to put in the dryer (who doesn't remember what the industrial-strength tumble dryers at the laundromat/laundrette did to your bras, back before we owned our own laundry equipment?) & so the back of our house looks like a chinese laundry... and none of it is any drier than it was when I put it out yesterday!


Apart from this:

which turned up earlier in the week from here, and although I know they're old and have been superceded by equal bouts of loveliness (actually, if I never have to look at that whole Wildwood collection ever again, it won't break my heart, you know why...) but there's something just so fantastic about the combinations you can make with them that I wanted to buy some to keep.  Forever.  

When lovely Clare from Lulu Carter visited me, we talked about how to keep favourite fabrics forever (hey, we could start a club, the 'FFF Wits'.  Nice...) and I commented that I'd seen it done on her blog and that's my plan, long term - pieces of my favourite fabrics, in embroidery frames, on a wall.  Nice.  When?  Who the FFF knows?

 

Thank you Miss Lulu for letting me share your image!

In other news from The House of Wet Washing & The Outlaw Josie Wales*, I made this:

which is going off to Brisvegas, for a lovely customer who lives in NZ, and I spent some time ogling these, which came from the V&A, one of my all-time favourite places in the world, as a slightly late but I wasn't going to mention it birthday gift from Doc Rosie and her other super-talented daughter, Miss Alix, who lives in London (hello, yes, April, not long now)...

  

Trouble is, when given ribbon as beautiful as this, you never want to use it, so you start hoarding.... (joke... 'start' was a very long time ago!)... and then you need a bigger house!

Now, off to break my fast, move my washing & sit in my lavender-scented Small But Perfectly Formed room, and make a dog!

Ciao!

*Mr Golightly spent yesterday watching Clint Eastwood movies.  What else would you do?

Addicted to love

Well, actually, I'm addicted to Etsy, I freely admit it.  I spend at least 30 minutes a day just browsing through the beautiful, the clever, the stylish, the ridiculous, the hideous and the incredible.  So what's a girl supposed to do when it's down for maintenance?  How am I supposed to get my culture fix?  Firstly, I whip through the main blogs I like to read, mostly previously mentioned here, and then I check out the Victoria & Albert Museum website, because they have the most amazing collection of 'stuff' I've ever encountered, and every single time I go to London I drag my poor long-suffering WH in there.  He says it reminds him of the biggest jumble sale he's ever been too, and I guess he's right... who'da thunk that some of the stuff they have in there would be considered valuable now?  You can bet your bottom spool of yarn that nobody thought wrought iron would be worth putting in a museum when they were hammering it out 200 years ago:


But how beautiful is this?  Imagine this as an embroidery pattern, then think "this is made of metal".  Amazing.

Then, when I've finished there, I have been known to spend entire days in the costume section...

Did you know you can order images from the V&A collection?  They're really nice quality & make fantastic cards or even items on your noticeboard... but I digess, shoe-wise...

The other thing I love to do is to check out Panoramio, which is a fantastic way of having a super cheap holiday - you can go to all the places you've ever dreamed of, and see what other people actually saw, rather than what the guidebooks show you.  Here's some examples:

Isn't this beautiful?  Wish I'd taken it!

© Franco Truscello

And this one

Fabulous.   Check it out next time Etsy is down & your're bored, there are pictures from all over the world!