This Life

It's been a week of doing the usual stuff, swimming, shopping, selling and so on and you'll be relieved to know that I've been wearing clothes whilst doing them.

On Monday, for a trip to Lidl via the post office, I wore my vintage Mayur Indian cotton gauze midi dress, Afghan coat, 1970s navy blue wool felted hat & cobalt suede boots by The Jacksons were all bought secondhand. Can you see the daffs starting to appear?

Another good week for Lidl bargains! The individually wrapped mini malt loaves were reduced from £3.99 to 20p, so we bought two packs. In the Waste Not box we got bananas, pomegranate, grapefruit, three mangos, tangerines, pears, cherries, Brussels sprouts, baking potatoes, tomatoes, onions, carrots, apples and a lettuce - all for £1.50!

Tuesday was a morning of swimming, 'Spoons and our annual Specsavers eye tests. I wore a 1970s Ritu Kumar for Monsoon Indian cotton block printed dress with my vintage sheepskin hat and secondhand Clarks boots.

 I'm still waiting for a diagnosis for my suspected glaucoma, but reader Fran suggested I booked in for a OCT test (an additional £10), which I did and lovely optician, Chloe, was able to explain the findings. My prescription has changed with my distance vision not being as perfect as it once was (the joys of ageing!) but, in the absence of anything funky and fabulous in Specsavers, I'm on the hunt for some suitable secondhand frames for them to reglaze.

The rest of the day was spent listing stock on eBay. The early Crocus in the lawn were out....yay!

My talented artist friend Elaine, who you'll know by the interesting comments she always leaves, alerted me to a tutorial for a Granny Square folk collar on the V&A's Youtube channel which, once I'd got my tasks out of the way, I spent a large chunk of the weekend following. Thanks, Elaine, I'm thrilled with how it turned out especially my crochet pom-pom trim!

On Wednesday we went charity shopping to our favourite Black Country town. I wore my vintage 100% Cotton Hand Embroidered in India (that's what the label says) dress with last week's Clarks boots and another of my sheepskin hats along with my V&A folk collar. As usual, loads of people said lovely things about how I dressed.

We swapped swimming days, opting to going out stock hunting on Thursday instead of Friday. I wore my latest Dilli Grey maxi with a vintage suede waistcoat and the amazing 1960s purple suede lace-up boots Gisela had sent me.

Friday's outfit was my favourite of the week and consisted of two of this week's charity shop finds,

Although I'd never heard of the brand, C.Doux, the style and the leather soles (stamped Made in Spain) just screamed quality plus the elasticated gussets meant that they fit my skinny calves perfectly. My online research revealed that they retail at £319.95 - I paid £4!

I gasped when I spotted this 100% silk patchwork midi dress by Jigsaw nestling amongst the Primark and priced at just £3.49 (this would have originally retailed at £350). Founded in 1970, according to British Vogue, Jigsaw was the first premium fashion brand to sell stylish clothes in inspiring surroundings at affordable prices. Those rich spicy colours make my heart sing and I LOVE the mushroom coloured panels with the dobby gold embroidery, wonderful Indian craftsmanship. 

Just the thing for a romantic (!) late lunch date in Spoons - it's Valentine's Day every day round here! If you're wondering, Jon had fish and chips with a pint of Shipyard whilst I went for the burrito salad with a large glass of Pinot Grigio and the bill came to £20.

Talking of charity shops, here's the rest of this week's finds.....

Clockwise from top left: 1970s Scottish Highland Industries Tam O'Shanter; Linea embellished & quilted Indian cotton jacket; 1980s handmade wool long-line cardi; 4 x Cowboy shirts and cowboy hat; 1950s Elysee Model llama wool coat; Adidas trainers; 1970s Aylmer, London-tailored wool blazer; 1960s Burton Borg-lined corduroy coat; Vivienne Westwood "Anglomania" tee-shirt (2010 collection); 1960s Keynote fully-fashioned cardi; Boden lilac corduroy blazer and a 1980s BHS button-thru' denim midi.

Clockwise from top left: 1980s Indian woven denim waistcoat; 1980s acrylic tank top; Karen Millen cotton knit popper cardi; 1970s Marco Polo all-wool jumper; East with FabIndia block printed Indian cotton midi; Topshop fake leopard coat; Brava Fabrics organic cotton cord jacket (on their website for £130); Warehouse chiffon & foil tiered maxi dress; Zara metallic chevron strip pleated midi; Luca Vanucci, made in Italy cotton sun dress; West African dashiki; Ikat handmade in Indonesia shirred crinkle maxi dress; 1980s Hot Shots Scottie dog sweater and a West African waxed cotton maxi skirt.

As part of Clarks’ sponsorship of the V&A museum’s 2015 exhibition on the history of footwear – Shoes: Pleasure and Pain – the two hundred year old British brand was granted access to an archive encompassing four centuries of everything from clogs to high-tops and released a number of limited edition footwear designs. Jon snaffled these suede fronted beauties based on the Brothel Creepers worn by the Teddy Boys in the 1950s. (I've got the high heeled Wallabees from the same collection HERE).

One of the chazzas had a box full of these bendy rollers still in their original packaging.I washed my hair and slept in them overnight (poor Jon) but my hair's really thick and it was still damp when I removed the curlers fourteen hours later. I shall try again with slightly drier hair over the weekend otherwise that's a whopping £2 down the drain.

We buy vinyl (and books) most weeks but Jon's always put them away before I've had time to photograph them, this time I beat him to it. I loved Lene Lovich, both her music and her incredible style, I bought her singles on 7"vinyl back in the late 1970s (and still have them in my collection) - 12" singles were an expensive luxury! I think that's where my love of plaits and blue eyeshadow came from.

It's been TV heaven in our house this week. The Staircase, Litvinenko and Nolly were fantastic but Happy Valley was the icing on the cake - I don't think I drew breath during the final episode it was so compelling.

After finishing the excellent Spring Tide, the Scandi Noir I started at the weekend (written by the husband and wife team behind the Beck detective series and the TV adaptation of Henning Mankell's Wallander) I got stuck into A Curl of Copper and Pearl, based on the life and times of Alexa Wilding, Dante Gabriel Rossetti's muse. If you love the Pre-Raphaelite artists, the author has a wonderful blog HERE , another of Elaine's recommendations.

I finished Iris Apfel's autobiography in a couple of hours. Thanks so much to my dear friend Lynn who very kindly sent it my way, I absolutely loved it! Like Iris says, I don't like a minimalist look for myself. I like stuff; I like being surrounded by a lot of things that give me pleasure to look at. Well said, that woman! Whenever I've got a bit of free time I get enormous joy from my wardrobes, assembling potential outfits or just rummaging through the rails, shelves and baskets loving the clothes I've collected over the years.

I was starting to get a bit overwhelmed by choice so last weekend I picked out twenty eight dresses, ten blouses, six skirts, four coats, six jackets and ten waistcoats and put them in a separate wardrobe - a sort of capsule wardrobe on steroids. Trouble is I'm allergic to rules and I've already shoehorned in another couple of dresses!

Goodness me, it's almost rum time. Have a fab weekend and see you on the other side!