"It Was a Cold November Day and She Had Dressed Herself Up in Layers of Cardigans..."

 

On Tuesday morning I wrapped the eBay sales and Lord Jon dropped them off at the post office, doing a grocery top-up shop on the way back whilst I spent most of the morning listing party dresses on eBay.

Liz called round on the way back from her booster jab and we had a coffee and a catch-up before bagging up some of our leaves for her to take home. 

Propping up the bookcase in a Dilli Grey Indian cotton midi dress & Toast boots (both secondhand eBay finds) and my Rhodes Town turquoise beads. 

Jon was still suffering from his cold so had a lazy afternoon on the settee with Day of the Triffids & Stephen Squirrel. I left him to it and, after several attempts to take a photo using my camera's self-timer, I give it up as a bad job and read my book. After jacket potatoes with cheese and coleslaw we spent the evening watching more of The Americans and Who Do You Think You Are? which was really interesting despite neither of us ever having heard of the "celebrity", some social media influencer, whatever that might be.

On Wednesday, I decided to walk into town as I'd not been further than the postbox on the corner for days and Jon, feeling slightly better, offered to join me (taking a lateral flow test again, just to make sure). After dropping off the eBay parcels at the post office, we had a rummage in the town centre chazzas and found a few interesting bits.

Two vintage waistcoats with snazzy covered buttons, a 1990s Komodo denim jacket (one of the first ethical fashion brands), a leisure shirt which we discovered was actually a Xmas shirt (I blame Jon's cold for adding his brain), a fleece shirt, some cat print Super Socks, a reversible sari skirt with Kantha embroidery, a pair of Converse, another cardi to add to my collection and an Indian block printed cotton maxi dress from Monsoon, still with the £59.99 label attached.

WEARING: Vintage 1970s Mayur Indian gauze dress (Facebook selling page), vintage felted wool hat (charity shop), Toast cowboy boots and wool cable knit cardi (eBay)

Do not adjust your screens, I'm wearing another cardi (secondhand, obviously!)

After lunch, I laundered the finds and sewed tassels on my new-to-me dress as the ones I'd ordered from eBay had arrived in the post. I was intending to dye them black but rather liked the unbleached cotton when I pinned them to the dress so left them as they were.

Wednesday, as always, was rum 'n' cola night and we watched more of The Americans. By the way, those fairy lights have absolutely nothing to do with Xmas, we have them up (and on) all year round.

These teak candlesticks are re-purposed antique spinning bobbins from an Indian cotton mill. I bought one for Liz & Al for Xmas last year and promptly decided that we needed a couple in our lives, too.

On Thursday, after my usual morning routine of a Wii Fit workout followed by a flurry of eBay parcel wrapping, we had breakfast and took delivery of a new duvet. We've upgraded from our cheap and nasty ten-year-old synthetic duvet to 100% wool. Despite always having the window wide open, the heating turned off & sleeping naked I get really hot in bed whereas Jon feels the cold. According to my research, wool is a regulator, not an insulator and regulates your body temperature the same way as it does on the sheep. As the body temperature rises the wool has the amazing ability to transfer heat and moisture along with every fibre and release it into the cooler, drier environment, and when it is cold it keeps the heat in. The truly amazing thing about wool is that it will actually regulate the temperatures of two different people in the same bed. 

I put it on the bed immediately and shall let you know how we get on!

With Lord Jon feeling much better, we drove over to one of our regular chazza shop haunts for a rummage and came back with a rather lovely vintage Irish Tweed coat, a 1980s suede jacket, a Harrington, a limited edition Adidas Originals sports top, a 1950s St Michael Scottish-made mohair & wool scarf, some wonderful waxed green leather boots (far too small for my huge trotters) and two ceramic planters, destined for the bathroom.

The Black Country town we visit always seems to have vintage glass in at least one of its charity shops and over the last few weeks I've managed to amass a collection of 1960s & '70s bud vases (never paying more than £2 a vase). On their own, they're nothing special but lined up on the window ledge with the light shining through they're rather lovely. The yellow one was today's acquisition.

It was a chilly morning. I'd had to chip the ice off the wheelie bin to get last night's cola bottle in it before the fortnight recycling collection. Yesterday's charity shop cardi (worn under my suede coat) kept me lovely and warm when we were out and about.

WEARING: Vintage Treacy Lowe pure silk Indian screen printed maxi dress, Aldo trilby, Betty Jackson leather belt, wool-mix cardi, tribal copal beads (all charity shop finds), Lotta from Stockholm Calou Moa boots (eBay) 

After lunch, I repotted my spotted begonia, which this time last year was a poorly looking thing, rescued from B&Q's clearance shelf. 

It shares a corner in the hall with my brass lizard pattern water jug, made in the Black Country by Joseph Sankey & Sons between 1890 - 1910, which we found in a charity shop back in August. The Art Lustreware bowl is another local piece, made up the road in Burslem at around 1910 and found by my Grandma at a jumble sale in the 1960s. The handsome chap is a maternal ancestor. I don't know his name but Mum always said that he ended his days in an asylum. 

A few years ago I submitted his image to My Daguerreotype Boyfriend and nearly crashed the site. Be warned, if you click the link you'll probably lose hours on there.

Wondering about my blog title? 

Barbara Mary Crampton Pym (2 June 1913 – 11 January 1980)

It's borrowed from Barbara Pym's Jane and Prudence, “It was a cold November day and she had dressed herself up in layers of cardigans and covered the whole lot with her old tweed coat, the one she might have used for feeding the chickens in.” 

See you soon!