Some Vintage Finds

Here are some things I've found this past week at the thrift store. The first is a Haviland Limoges Cup and Saucer that was so thin, translucent and delicate looking that I loved it at first sight.

The next is an old Singer buttonholer that I bought to use on my old Singers. Although I already had a buttonholer, this one had 4 button hole templates that I didn't have, but wanted. Previously, the smallest template I had was for a 1/2 inch button hole and this one has one that is 5/16 inch and another that looks like it just makes a tiny round button hole.



Finally, I found an old mixer to replace my 26 year old GE hand mixer that just broke. The nylon gears in my old mixer failed. This one looks much more robust than my old mixer and appears to have been used very little if at all. I think it's from the 1950s.

Waiting for the Roses

While waiting for spring and all the flowers to bloom, I continue to go through last year's pictures and pick out some of my favorites. Here are some of my English roses that I grow. These are repeat blooming modern roses developed by David Austin, that have the look and fragrance of the old garden roses of antiquity.

The image above is of the rose Evelyn. It produces huge peach colored blooms that have a fantastic fragrance that Crabtree and Evelyn used in their soaps and perfumes of the same name. The Crabtree and Evelyn products actually smell pretty similar to the rose.

The rose pictured below is my first David Austin English rose, Mary Rose. It produces loads of medium pink blooms all summer, but I don't find it nearly as fragrant as Evelyn.


This semi-double rose is called The Herbalist. I'm guessing that they thought the rose was similar to the Apothecary Rose, which is another name for Rosa gallica var. officinalis - a very very old variety of once blooming old garden rose. I find Rosa gallica var. officinalis to be a deeper color.


This is the Alexandra Rose. While it is just a five petaled single rose, I find it to be one of the most beautiful in my garden.


I have many more English roses in my garden and hope to take some nice pictures of them this summer. The pictures above may show up as a set of cards in my TabbyToo shop.

The English Stash

My spouse went to England in late January for a business trip, and since I couldn't go too, I sent him on a mission to hunt down and bring back some fun stuff. What you see above is what he brought back: Maltezers (you need to see the YouTube commercials for these), Jelly Babies (just like on Doctor Who), Fruit Sherberts (a very intense hard candy with a soft center), Mystery Sweets, milk and dark chocolate covered Digestives (very very good!), some stuffed animals from Harrods, and assorted candies we still haven't tried yet.
While he was there, my spouse hooked up with the local Morris side, the Chippenham Town Morris Men. He even danced with them (he's the one in the vivid blue sweater that stands out like a beacon): Vandals of Hammerwich by The Chippenham Morris Men. There are slight, but noticable style differences between how our American side does it and how the Chippenham side does it.

My Spotted Old Garden Roses

I was going through some of the photographs I took of my garden last year and came across these photos I took of some of my spotted roses. These roses are once blooming old garden roses that I grew from seed about 15 years ago from the gallica Alain Blanchard. Alain Blanchard is also quite spotted and passed this characteristic on to my seedlings, although one of my roses ended up being even more spotted that Alain.

These roses behave as gallicas, they are short and sucker like crazy. They are also quite winter hardy with very little cane death even when winters go down to -20 Fahrenheit.


I really like the starry effect the spots have on this dark double bloom. The spots are quite variable - some blooms have quite a few more spots than others.

A Sticky Valentines Day

We made cinnamon buns for breakfast on Saturday, Valentines Day. Here is a picture just before the icing was dribbled all over them. These were made from a recipe found in the Rocky Mountain News. The recipe contained all sorts of good things like chopped pecans, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, butter, cream cheese and cottage cheese.

Dreary Days and Lazy Cats

It's another cold, dreary day here in Colorado. On days like this, the cats spend all day doing this.

A Treasury of Old Garden Roses

I'm still pining for my gardens so I grabbed another treasury on Etsy and filled it with items that remind me of my old garden roses - those big fat smelly old fashioned roses that bloom in such abundance in June.
This treasury will be up until Friday, 8:11 am.

More Blooming Earrings

As the muse hits me, I've been assembling more and more garden inspired earrings and putting them in both my Etsy shop and ArtFire shop.

There are soft pastel spring flower earrings in pink, yellow and white:


There are delicate little lily earrings in purple, lavender and blue:


There are warm brown gray earrings with dangley bits:


And finally there are earrings made with milky white opalescent moonstone glass and with some lovely green and amber beads that I'd had for years:

Poet Shirt with Lucet Cord

I finally finished the poet shirt I was making for my spouse Chris, as part of his Morris Dance kit. This was the shirt I was making a lucet cord for, which I posted about earlier.

Next, I'll be making my daughter a poet shirt for her kit, and maroon britches for both. Then I should be able to get a picture of the whole kit. This is different from the normal white shirt and white pants they usually wear. The white poet shirt and maroon britches kit will have a more Renaissance fair look to it and will probably be used at the Colorado Medieval Festival in June if we dance there.

Springtime Treasuries

Since I'm such in the mood for spring colors, flowers, romance, etc., I made a couple of treasuries on Etsy in those themes. The first one has items I found using the search terms pansy and petunia. I found some amazing artists and new favorites in that search. The second one on Treasury West was using the terms romance and pink. I found some absolutely beautiful things that way too.



The Pansies and Petunia treasury will expire Friday at 5 pm and the Romantic Pink treasury will expire Saturday at 5 am.

The next treasury I manage to grab will be all about old garden roses - those big fat smelly roses that I love so much.

Two Rowdy Kitties - video!

Last night we captured Donovan and Eric being rowdy. They sleep all day and then perk up right when we want to go to bed and get some peace and quiet.