Kitsch for fun

Emporiums with; dusty uneven carpets and aisles of junk, plastic, material, metal and all manner of cheap who knows what to do with stuff? Yesterday’s visit to the thriving metropolis of Tauranga city was fun. First I had a list of needs. (I love it when I am intent on choosing something, picking it up, setting it down etc. – then, a crowd gathers and all of a sudden they need the same thing!) I managed to secure the sale bargains, I wanted, make three trips to the car, hauling large,red dotted bags with nuisance sticky taped strips saying,”Sold”, on their sides, up three floors in the adjacent car park building.

 After that, I went to the places of ‘like to haves’, such as the Emporium and a favourite, Asian, ‘The Importer’, store in Grey Street. Having a lucky Fairy Godmother on duty, helped; both shops had colour co-ordinated sale items, I could use, to decorate the dining room with themed Asian or Curry Lunch adornments. I should have taken a photo of Roger looking at my treasures. His face said it all.

Lovely Lace

I have a box of old sewing bits and pieces. I couldn’t help thinking about who wove the lace threads, half a century ago. Were they cottage industry workers from quaint cottages or did they sit battery hen style, in a draughty huge workshop in a smoggy Midland’s city, wearing grey smocks?

I wonder what garment, the collar came from? It has been in the family as long as I remember and I think my grandmother gave it to me. The laces are English in origin, for New Zealand was a colonial outpost, and we traded butter and lamb for fineries in those days.

I came across my French embroidery kit I bought in Saumur, from a petite lace and haberdashery shop near the river. (It is a pity my French is not up to scratch, as the instructions are very detailed.)

Days have gone too when we carried a fine handkerchief. Grub roses. Drawn thread work. Entirely hand stitched.

I wonder what I will do with these little threads of history?

Curry Lunch

Bring out the Bollywood props and dust off the curry recipes. June is our annual Curry lunch date. Everybody brings a curry and we share and compare flavours and vote for our favourite.

This year I am vamping up the decorations. I am going to contrast fuchsia with yellow and melon colours and make wow factor ‘Taj Mahinis’ with orange flavoured grappa as a base and cranberry and pineapple juice. One year I made the slices of dehydrated orange flower decoration. A month or so later we had a plague of caterpillars and found only the skeleton of the orange slices left. They had had a Bolly good feast.

Baby clothes

Some days are just that little more poignant than others, don’t you think? It is a perfect May Day with a radiant blue sky and a few puffy cotton wool clouds on the horizon. It is also a perfect day for sorting out the sewing boxes.

When I came across the 1950’s pattern my mother had given me, I felt sad. She would have loved to have seen her granddaughters all grown up and enjoying their lives. I dug out the little baby gowns she had made when my daughters were born and traced her delicate embroidery and smiled at the memory of her sitting at her tiny black Singer sewing machine, crafting these with love.