posted by Lily on chatter, crochet, thrifted

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Julian had a stay at home day today.  I like these :-)  I feel so very indulged when I have his attention all to myself – Abby and Sacha were out adventuring!  We pottered around this morning, thought about tidying, decided not to, cooked a yummy lunch (Julian’s completely smitten with Hugh at the moment, especially his Meat book), and then ventured out into truly ridiculous Melbourne weather (atrociously gusty, pelting with rain, brilliant sunshine, more rain, hail, repeat) for some errands and shoppings.

One errand took us all the way to Kew – rather unexplored territory for us and we took many side streets along the way, awestruck by the mansions and leafy streets of Toorak.  And boy did we find a good thrift shop!  We treasured a collection of crystal wine glasses  - short for red (4), tall for white (5) …

… some clothes for Abby and I – mine are now on the table with yesterday’s piles awaiting some embroidery and perhaps some beading – and this dear little hanky.

Isn’t she so sweet how she’s been presented?  I took the photo partly to show you but also to remind me how to give my hankies in the future.  See, on our holiday, a visit to a very very out of the way embroidery store called Mandeni’s led me to discover the joys of crocheting the edges of hankies.  Oh my!  Talk about addictive!

I bought some lovely soft white cotton hankies with their edges usefully prepared (i.e. wee holes), a ball of Cebelia, the matching size hook (15mm – lordy, it’s so fine and yet not as fine as I should have bought!) and a very sweet little book – Paragon’s Forty-six Crochet Edgings.  :: sigh ::

It was all I could do to lift myself from the sofa whilst mid-hankie crochet.  And whilst my first finished hankie looks a little more like a bread cloth (too coarse a yarn and too big a crochet hook), it is very pretty and made a lovely wee Christmas gift for my mother-in-law.  Only Charlene, now I know how I should have presented it to you – see above!  Next time!

Honestly, there are so many gorgeous things to do with our days, aren’t there!  Look at that edging – it’s so frothy and delicate.  Another :: sigh ::  I should have been born during Jane Austen’s time.  To a reasonably wealthy family.  Preferably plain with an awkward manner – rich enough to find a suitable husband and bear some lovely children but dull enough for him to leave me to my children and needlework basket :-)  And then I could wear those modesty things stuffed into the necklines of my dresses – all with crocheted edges of course. No wonder the washing is still in piles all over our house, the front porch looks like it belongs to vagabonds and there won’t be any new camera lenses or laptop hard drives anytime soon!

Oh – and mid shoppings – we visited one of those Aladdin’s cave Asian grocery stores for a new chopper and sieve and I came away with this!

Mum!  Do you remember A & W!  We lived in Malaysia when I was a wee girl (1970s) and one of our favourite treats was to go with family friends to A & W for dinner.  Talk about sophisticated ;-) My favourite meal was the sausage burger, chips and an A & W root beer.  And look!  Here it is!  Same colour tin and all!  Awesome!

And as for that hankie lady – she reminds me of Phryne Fisher and boy, I can hardly wait for that to start! – I think she needs some fine crocheted lace added to her hemline, don’t you!