The new project

Picked this up the other week at the 1st Birthday sale at old as antiques & collectables just thought I'd mention they're having an end of financial year sale this weekend.

Fell in love with it when I saw it online, and thought it would be gone when I went to have a look. Circled it a couple of times, pulled and tugged at it to check it's soundness, circled it again and then stood back and looked at it from a distance. (Diane will laugh if she reads this because that's exactly what I did lol). Then I went and threw myself on it (not really) and said yes I'll take it  - I have such intimate relationships with my furniture.

Now it's a bit rough, but structurally it's good. While it started life as a girl's bedroom dresser, I bought it to go into my Dining Room. 

It will display some blue china, teapots etc, the drawers will be filled with table linen.and I'll keep it white.

At the moment it's sitting in the Pergola, where I can see it from my kitchen window, so it makes me smile, because it really is a dear little dresser. 

Next weekend will be a trip to Bunnings to fetch a lead tester, then we'll go from there,

Jenny. 

  

Treadle is finished!

Hello all,
I've been restoring a Singer Treadle, well really putting two treadles together so I can display this beautiful 1907 machine. The previous posts about the treadle are here, here & here.
It's all back together (now there's another story) wearing a final coat of beeswax...

Must admit it's been finished for a little while, but I've been hard at work trying to clean up the chrome and metal parts. That will be an ongoing slow process. As you'll see in the 2nd photo the base plate is still very rusty, so I've been at it with some metal polish, and now some fine grade steel wool. If anyone knows of another way to remove rust from chrome please leave me a comment. 

All the other metal parts have come up really well after many hours of polishing, but it's been worth it in the end.

 Putting it together proved not as easy as we thought, as I hinted in the last treadle post. 

When the man in the house originally checked the holes on the new base with the cabinet, it seemed they would line up. When he put it together though, it was a bit of a tight squeeze, due to this base having thicker pieces at the top. My lovely ornate drawer was stuck fast! 

At first I sheepishly thought that the restorafinish I had used, had glued the drawer shut while it was drying, and I should have probably taken the drawer out, but no it was wedged up against the metal base. Phew! that was lucky I would have had to admit it was my fault lol.

With a bit of shaving down each side of the drawer, it's now fine. 

Because the base I had was not as ornate as other models, I planned to hide it with some quilts,

But I don't know, after working on it for so long, I'm kind of used to it now, so I think I'll leave it the way it is. I have more vintage knitting books, cotton reels, needle cases & sewing supplies in storage, so for sure some of those will take pride of place on this treadle before long.

NOW a lovely new project, also bought from Old As Antiques & Collectables here in Brisbane.

Photos in the next post - Jen.

A Vase Cosy Pic

The lovely Ellen on Ravelry has kindly let me put up a pic of her Vase Cosy. While her Mum had no need for a Tea Cosy, she still wanted to make one, so the clever one bought a vase and used the pattern for a Vase Cosy.

As Ellen said it hides the stems of the flowers from view, it's just lovely and how's that for Aussie ingenuity. Mum will always have fresh flowers in her room as well.
Thanks so much Ellen for letting me show everyone your photo - Jen.

Trying to finish this!

Started this Granny a few weeks ago and it's grown quite quickly. I wanted to use up some ugly yarn I bought. We've all done it, bought ugly yarn, gotten it home and then thought what was I thinking! 

I thought it would look ok knitted/crocheted, being purple, aqua, green & lemon, but I think it was the purple, lemon & green shades clashing together that did it in. I would not blame the aqua, aqua is divine and my all time favourite colour :-). 

I only had 2 part balls left so I added some plain purple and aqua yarn to stretch it out. 

Here's a closeup of the variegated yarn crocheted (it does look a bit better here than in real life).  

It was a spur of the moment decision after the 2nd block of colour, to start adding the round of black between each colour, but I don't think whoever it's donated to will mind if I missed the first border.

Luckily the purple and aqua brought out the nice colours in the yarn and took away from the yellow & green. It's 120cm square, so seeing I only had a tiny bit of variegated left (at the end I was searching for more of the stuff in my stash!), I didn't have enough to continue grannying along 2 sides to make a rectangle. So I'm crocheting & joining 3, 40cm squares to each end, mirroring the big square. That brings it up to 120 x 200 cm, which should be big enough for a blanket, and hopefully it will look good enough. 

Nearly finished, just crocheting the small squares together, then another row of black to do around the edge so I'll add the finished photo here when it's done - Jen.

Birthday Sale - Old As Antiques & Collectables

Old As Antiques & Collectables  are having their 1st Birthday sale this weekend -
16th & 17th June.

There's lots of piccies on their facebook page, if you're not on FB they also have a blog 

Old As Antiques & Collectables   
Judging from the beautiful sunny day today in Brisbane, the weekend should be perfect for getting out of the house and making the most of it. Busy day for us tomorrow, but hopefully we'll get there tomorrow afternoon for a browse as well :-).
Jen.

Nice Rock!

It is, isn't it!
Before the rains came, ruining our Queen's Birthday long weekend, we went for a wander up to Old Petrie Town, previously known as North Pine Country Markets (Park).

Showing my age, before the market was relocated to Petrie,  it was originally at Closeburn, one of the earlier "flea" markets in Brisbane in the 1970's/80's. Held in the Cedar Creek Hall, and spilling out into the paddock next door, it was a lovely Sunday drive just past Dayboro, attracting huge crowds. I remember there was always a bloke shearing sheep, and women inside the hall spinning, way before spinning became popular.

Back to my nice rock.
Bought at my spirit which has moved from Chermside to one of the beautiful renovated cottages on site at Old Petrie Town, my rock instantly found me as we browsed through the store. They stock the most gorgeous silver & gemstone jewellery, gifts & new age products.

The lovely friendly man behind the counter, (who even offered us a cup of tea or coffee - how nice) explained that it was Howlite, and it had actually been dyed. From some research, Howlite is more commonly a white stone with lots of veins, and is quite porous so lends itself well to dying, mainly shades of turquoise.
I was already visualizing how I was going to create a pendant with it, but when I got home and unwrapped it, it was nice and somehow fitting to find a note with it, explaining it's "qualities"

Howlite

Spurs you towards the ambition to reach your goals 

and assists you in eliminating hesitation from your actions.

Can be used to eliminate pain, stress and rage.

Calms communication and encourages emotional expression.

Looks like my lovely gemstone was waiting for me that day :-)
Jen.

My new round granny cushions.

I've been busy trying to get some "me" things done, in between other things.The scarf was one, these were also on my list.

A couple of my handmade applique/patchwork cushions have grown old (like me), bravely surviving my three little boys growing up.

Time for a change, so a couple of round granny cushions have replaced them. 

The granny mandala by Alice (& Raymond of course) over at crochethealingandraymond  is the perfect pattern and inspiration for these.

Mine are slightly different, from an old golden hands book, but inspired by Alice's beautiful Mandalas.
I decided to make them both different colours on the flipside, so when I get bored, I can just flip them over :-). The other side is done in the same colours as my Razzamatazz Cushion. It's a Family Room, so I can get away with some colour on the sofa!

Just two round grannies stitched together, leaving a gap for the insert.
They measure 45cm across (one side), I used 8ply, a 4mm hook and crocheted 18 rounds each side.

Because the granny round is quite open, in stitch, you'll need to use an inner cushion. I thought I'd seen round cushion inserts at Spotlight in the past, but none were there last time I looked.
Some colours look great against a white background, but I felt for these, a white lining would have taken away from the colours, especially the lemon/pink side, so I decided on a pale blue homespun to make the inner cushions. It blended in nicely with both colour combinations and didn't weaken the bright colours.
At least the Razzamatazz cushion on the other chair won't feel alone now.

If the colours look familiar, there are a couple of radical ripple tea cosies getting around in the same colour scheme. That's what happens when you leave yarn lying around after a project, it becomes a tea cosy! - with love Jen.

Silk Garden Sock Scarf - Crochet

Ages ago I bought some beautiful rainbow Mini Mochi from Yarn Over to crochet a hitchin-a-ride scarf for Winter.
Because I don't usually wear really bright colours, & I wear a lot of black in Winter (surprise surprise considering my past colour history on the blog), I wanted to make something a little more subtle to wear first.

So a couple of months ago I grabbed a skein of Noro Silk Garden Sock yarn from Yarn Over, in a pink/grey colourway.

Here's the scarf. One ball was enough to make a "wrapable" scarf, using a 6mm hook. 

 

This is a better brighter photo, do you like the colours? When the green started to appear it was a surprise, but I can't imagine it without it now.

Can you see the little brooch I'm planning on pinning it with, in the centre of the photo?

I made it when I was 12 (be kind, I was only 12). It was a gift to my Mum back in 1974/75.
It actually doubles as a pendant with both options on the back. She always wore it as a pendant.

The centre piece is copper enamelled. Copper enamelling was all the rage back in the 70's. You could readily buy copper enameling kits, consisting of Bunsen Burner, Gas Pack, Tripod & Mat, and an array of coloured powdered glass.You melted & swirled the glass on to the copper using a variety of techniques. There are still suppliers for the craft, things are more upmarket now with kilns etc, but after a google search, and writing this post, I'm now oh so tempted to start up again (what have I done)!

The best Primary Teacher I ever had (Grade 7), showed us how to enamel in art class. A very brave teacher she was - 20 eleven/twelve year olds around a fired up Bunsen Burner, a heap of molten red hot copper pieces, & all the boys trying to "get" each other with the hot ends of the swirling tools lol.
She also taught the class to knit, & because I could already knit I had to help teach the other kids. It was hard work when you're 11/12, maybe that's why I don't like trying to teach people to knit now.

Mum then bought me an enameling kit of my own, for my 12th Birthday - the most fun a girl could have - before discovering boys! 

A small shop, a couple of suburbs away (in Minimine Street if you're a Brisbaner), stocked all the glass, copper pieces and findings to make jewellery, so that's where most of my pocket money went for a couple of years. You can't see the colour well in the pic, but the background is mint green with blue, red & yellow swirled in the middle ugh!
Thank God I got a little better with colour over the years!

Such a small inexpensive piece of jewellery back then, but full of priceless memories, so happy it lives with me now.

Loved crocheting the scarf btw, here's the Mini Mochi to do the next one,

 It's going to be bright... it's ok I'll wear lots of black :-)
Tell me if you remember Copper Enamelling, or even the 70's (chuckle) - Jen.