VK's Christmas Giveaway!

I started this blog back in May 2010 and thought at the time that I would be lucky if I get a couple of Followers. Since then I've ended up with  you lovely lot, so I thought that's it's about time that I did my first giveaway to to say Thank You to you all for your friendship, support, comments, ideas etc.

The giveaway comprises one prize made up of the following:

• a 1950s December copy of Pins & Needles magazine;
• a kitsch blue reindeer tree decoration;
•  Barry M 'Vivid Purple' nail polish;
•  a 1970s  Woman's Weekly pattern for a blouse and a short/maxi skirt;
• a pair of earrings;*
• a silver-plated button ring;*
• a vintage Yardley glass jar with a metal lid, which once probably held talc but would make a great ring holder; and
• an  pair of 5mm knitting needles.

* made by me!

To make sure that you all have plenty of time to enter and that the winner will get their parcel before the last UK parcel posting deadline of the 14th December*, the closing date of the giveaway will be Thursday 8th December.

All you have to do to enter is to already be (or become) a Follower of this blog and add the words "in it to win it" to your comment on this post. The winner will be chosen in the traditional way of putting all the commentators' names into a hat (or other suitable receptacle!) and pulling one out at random.

The winner will be announced on Friday 9th December.

Simples.

Good luck y'all!

* This giveaway is open to non UK Followers too, although if you're the winner and are from overseas, you may not get the parcel until the New Year as I might miss the last posting date for international mail - sorry!

Keeping it in the family

It's been a great week for adding to my vintage knitting pattern collection. Firstly, the lovely Wend aka Ticking Stripes sent me a parcel of patterns, which includes this bird design:

Although I wouldn't knit the cardie in that style, I think I'll use the bird chart for knitting up a bag, as that will be really eye catching. Here's the rest of the patterns - there's a few classics in there!

Thank you Wend for these; its very kind of you, and if you can email me your address, I've got a little something to post to you in return. :-)

Although I've been on the charity shop prowl over these past few weeks, I haven't found much to show you. My only recent buys are from this week, as I found some more patterns...

...and a groovy floral sheet. I'll be using this on Monkeychild's bed, although if you pop over to see Loo at Jumbles and Pompoms you'll find that she's a vintage sheet fan too and has got an excellent plan for her sheet stash.

Another find was this fire screen. Made by Patrician Art Products probably in the 50s, it has Vernon Ward print pasted to it. Husband shuddered at it's "grannyness", but its not going anywhere - apart from in front of our ash strewn fireplace!

A year ago, I came across a lot of 70s fabric at a boot sale, most of which has remained hidden within my fabric stash. However, I recently gave some of the winceyette to Mum to see what she could make with it. Mum made the majority of my clothes when I was little and is a very dab hand at sewing. Although she gave a lot of her dress patterns away to friends and family over the years, she's kept some of the ones from the '70s that she brought to make my clothes. So, she dug out one for a dressing gown and ran up this cosy little number for Monkeychild:

 

Mum had enough material to make the dressing gown, apart from the hood lining. Luckily, she found some  winceyette that was left over from a nightie made for me when I was a toddler and used this for the lining. See, like mother like daughter - we never throw any material away!

Deep Purple

Thank you to everyone who commented on my last post offering pest control advice, cat loan offers and pantry compliments. Husband set out two traps on Thursday night and caught one lone rascal, but we've had nothing since then. We're going to leave them out for a week and if we have no repeat offenders, we'll hope that it was just the one that caused the mess.

Today Archie and I had a jaunt out to a vintage clothing fair held locally. It was really good with a nice selection of what I call 'proper' vintage clothing and accessories. I found three gorgeous maxi dresses at one stall: one made from black and green lurex with a design nod to Ossie Clark, a 60s black kaftan style dress with a diamante neckline and the one in the photos below. Needless to say that the first two didn't fit due to either boobage issues or just being too big; however this '70s does Edwardian' dress fitted like the proverbial glove. So there was one happy VK and one happy stall holder!

Its made from cotton with a suedette trim on the bodice and sleeves and apparently heralds from Finland - those Finns obviously had great taste!

I've accessorized it with a charity shop find pendant, a 70s purple suede bag that I brought from a jumble years ago and a pair of Fly wedge boots, which were an impulsive sale buy last year.

Doesn't Archie make a good backdrop for the photos? He's near enough the same vintage as my dress give a year or two.

There's a mouse in the house!

I had planned to sit down with the knitting this afternoon and watch The Lavender Hill Mob before collecting Monkeychild from school. I had the DVD player primed and decided to look for a pack of biscuits that had got pushed to the back of one of the shelves in the pantry; that was when I noticed them. Tiny dark brown pellets scattered at the back of the shelf.

Hunting around for more evidence I found what I was looking for when I opened a wicker hamper: shredded paper - lots of it. The mice had decided to set up home there and even Monkeychild's old baby-food jars that I was keeping for some jam making, were filled with a layered combination of rice grains and paper. Very snug. The little blighters had made a hole in a large bag of rice that we had on the floor (luckily we hadn't used it ourselves yet) and had smuggled the grains into their abode.

image source

So I had to leave the DVD and start cleaning the pantry from top to bottom. Although mice might look cute and furry like the beastie in the photo, they're proper little disease carriers. Mice are incontinent, depositing wee and poo pellets as they move along; this can lead to food poisoning from salmonella or E.coli if food becomes contaminated.

Everything was turned out of the pantry; foodstuffs binned which looked 'moused', shelves, walls and floor cleaned with sterilising solution, crockery put into the dishwasher at the highest temperature and everything else cleaned with anti-bacterial cleaner.

And I've only just finished!

Here's my ultra clean pantry, ready for Husband to fit draught excluders to the bottom of the door where the mice have been getting in and position some Little Nippers for any nocturnal intruders.

So much for my afternoon of knitting and lounging about. Now how does that saying go...the best laid plans....?