Buying, Wearing, Doing

Hello! Hope all's good in your world.

On Tuesday, for swimming, a 'Spoons breakfast and a quick whizz around the town centre chazzas I wore a Seventies Soul Indian block printed maxi dress with a vintage Indian woolwork waistcoat and my Teva flatforms. The Evil Eye bronze and enamel earrings I bought from a swanky artisan boutique in Athens got lots of love.

About to leave one of the charity shops Jon spotted one of the volunteers carrying something out of the stockroom and sent me over to have a look.....

Be still my beating heart! A green cotton velvet maxi dress with Mediaeval sleeves to die for from the iconic British Boutique label, Quad, who created dreamy dresses inspired by history in the late 1960s. As always, I asked the volunteer if it had just been donated and if so, was there anything else from the same source, to my absolute joy the answer was yes....a matching maxi length hooded cloak, also from Quad. The cloak was draped in cobwebs, it's probably been in someone's attic for 55 years!

By the way, the chazza concerned was the £2.99 or less shop so the combined cost was £5.98! 

When we got home Jon cracked on with the decorating while I flitted between the Kinky Shed & the festival tent, filling the rails with stock. When Jon called me in for tea I discovered that I'd been walking back and forth for over four and a half hours and had worn a patch in the lawn... I slept rather well that night!

After almost a week of sunshine and heat, the weather reverted to type on Tuesday night and rained incessantly for the next 24 hours. I spent Wednesday morning ironing the festival stock. My mum, who was even less domesticated than me, enjoyed ironing and I do, too - which is just as well as, by lunchtime, I'd ironed over 200 garments! 

I spotted these Levi's "Premium Denim" Mile High Super Skinny jeans in Banardo's last week. Back in the early noughties I lived in my TopShop Baxter low rise skinnies which looked great but, not having much in the way of hips, I was forever having to hoist the damn things up. These ultra high waisted jeans fit like a dream and are absurdly comfy - they're currently £110 on the Levi's website, I paid a tenner. The Free People "Regina" Indian cotton bodysuit was a £15 Vinted find and originally retailed at $168! Free People can be very hit and miss, some of their stuff is amazing quality (like this top) while some of it is made in China and horribly synthetic, a case of style over substance. The vintage olive green velvet waistcoat & the handmade cowboy boots were also Vinted finds.

 William was due his boosters on Wednesday afternoon, something we were absolutely dreading. At home, he's the world's most chilled out cat, adores fuss and will chat to anyone listening but get him in a car and the poor lad turns into a nervous wreck, panting, drooling, wailing, throwing up and - not to beat about the bush - sh*tting himself. The staff at the vets know what to expect, on arrival we hand him straight over and they take him in the back, clean him up, check him over, jab him and hand him back as quickly and calmly as is humanly possible. The whole palaver from door to door takes just under an hour but man, it feels so much longer! Thank goodness it's just once a year.

Anyway, all's good. He weighs in at 5.6kg (almost double what he was when he adopted us last year) and the minute he was back home he'd completely forgotten the trauma, polishing off two saucers of chicken, a sachet of Felix and a handful of Dreamies before retreating to his catio.

The rain had finally fizzled out when I got up on Thursday morning and I dressed like it was summer despite it only being a feeble 13°C. I did wear my denim jacket over this poplin 1970s maxi dress but after swimming 50 lengths in just under 40 minutes I was glowing and stuffed it in my bag for breakfast at Spoons and the subsequent walk home. 

A permanent fixture in my wardrobe for the last five years, my vintage maxi dress didn't see the light of day last summer. Arpeja's Young Innocent was an affordable California label established in 1963 and popular with the young and hip throughout the sixties and early 1970s.

Whilst Jon continued with the decorating, Liz popped over on Thursday and Friday morning to help me crack on with pricing the stock and, needless to stay, she managed to bag some choice vintage clobber !

Although the rain's not made a reappearance, the temperatures have plummeted and it was back to layers on Friday morning. I'm wearing a vintage 1960s Ayesha Davar embroidered cheesecloth maxi with the embroidered £100 Free People linen jacket I scored from the Air Ambulance charity shop a few weeks ago for £3. 

This pleasingly massive glass pendant, priced at £2 caught my eye in a charity shop a couple of days before we went to Kefalonia. After some internet research when I got home I discovered that it's Murano and would have been quite pricey.

Although you can't see them under my dress, I've been road testing these leather Muck Boots today in preparation for Glastonbury. Endorsed by the RHS and worn by outdoorsy folk like Kate Humble, the British business is currently celebrating its 25th anniversary. Their boots are guaranteed 100% muck proof, exceptionally comfy and totally waterproof. After this week's deluge, our lawn is a quagmire but my feet have stayed dry and wonderfully comfy all day. I'm amazed the charity shop only priced them at £3, they're £££s to buy new! 

It's a Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK although I suspect most of ours will be spent on festival prep and decorating. We are out on Saturday night though, spending an evening in the company of this fine fellow! 

 See you on the other side!