May's Vintage Finds and Summer Dress Progress

Yesterday, I went to Burnley for a visit to my family. I'd not been over since January, and needed to take over my Mum's birthday present, I was also being nosey to see how big my pregnant sister had gotten. I know she reads this blog, so hello Mum! My sister and I went to the fleamarket in the town centre, where I managed to pick up a few vintage gems!

Here is a picture of my ridiculous face before I set off for the bus. I had been up all night and felt drained, so decided on a Carmen Miranda look to brighten myself up. You can see my eye scar really badly.




The fruit theme turned out to be a good idea, because upon seeing me, one of the stallholders produced this lovely little pair of celluloid fruit earrings! She only wanted £3 for them too. They're clips, and I can't wear them on my lobes because of my stretched tunnels (see picture above), but I can wear them pinned into my hair or onto a sweater. 1940s - 50s?



I also got this sweet little daisy brooch from the same seller, not sure of the age but it was only £2 and goes with my other yellow accessories.



Another addition to my fawn collection! Withernsea Pottery 'Fauna' vase, £4. 1950s?



I have been on a little vintage necklace buying spree this month. This one was £1 from the fleamarket, 1950s. I love teal at the moment!



These two are 1930s uranium glass pieces from a Czech seller on eBay, I was so excited to receive them! The seller was a lovely lady trading as 'darrepack', I would highly recommend her for cute vintage Czech jewellery, it was beautifully packaged and quickly delivered.



I won the minty green one for about £5, and she included the little cut glass necklace for free! It's very sparkly and fits perfectly three times round my wrist as a bracelet. The listing included pictures of them glowing under UV light, I can't wait to go somewhere with UV so I can see them glow!



This milk glass one was also an eBay find, it's a bit tight though so I'm going to get a clip-in extension chain. 1940s?



My local charity shops have produced a poor haul this month, my only purchase being this kitsch plastic religious icon. I love how badly painted it is.



Aerospace Boyfriend has been revising for his exams all this month, meaning I've had a lot of time on my own, so I spent last Saturday putting together the dress I started in a previous post. I'm not totally happy with it, it sits oddly on the bust and for some reason the waistline is not even at all, despite me having followed the pattern and made the pencil skirted version of this dress numerous times. Saying that, I'm pretty sure that the wiggly waistline can be covered with a belt, and the bust issue is a case of finding the right underwear to position my boobs correctly!

My Perfect Summer Dress - Preparation!

For six months, I watched some fabric online, intending to buy it 'when I had the money' to make my perfect summer dress. It was lime green cotton sateen with huge orange and cream rose bouquets printed all over it - my favourite colour, very retro, and very over the top, ie. perfect. I went to purchase some last week, only to find it sold out and unavailable anywhere on the web. Gutted.

The next day, I went into my usual fabric supplier to pick up some millinery bits, and saw this in the window:



In reality the green is brighter, a beautiful shade of emerald. The print is marvellous, it was a bargain at £3.29 a metre, it's a lovely thin Summery cotton, and there were four metres left on the roll - exactly the amount I needed for my project! Aerospace Boyfriend said it looks like his mum's sofa fabric from the 80s, but he is clearly blind to its fabulousness and only reads this blog to ogle my outfit pictures anyway, so I'm not listening to him.

The pattern I am using is based on Butterick 6582, version C, except where it has only a flared skirt I'm making mine a full circle, and I'm dropping the neckline a bit as I find the high style of the standard pattern is unflattering on me.



There are lots of finished versions of this pattern to be seen here at the Sew Retro Blog. I have made the pencil style three times before; once in atomic barkcloth, once from sequin-covered fabric that killed my sewing machine and sliced my armpit to ribbons, and once with a modified wrap-over sarong front, so hopefully I'm practised enough at it for this dress to come out well!

I also plan to draft a pattern for a little bolero to go with it, and a matching hat too.

It needs a self-fabric belt, and I've bought this little buckle for it:



I'm not sure of the era, maybe 30s or 50s? I have some of the tiny vintage cabochons in my stash to replace the missing ones too.

I shall post a picture when it's done!

April's Purchases - Freddies of Pinewood and Vintage Homewares!

Usually I can afford to treat myself to a couple of things every few weeks, so as of this month I plan to do a regular post about the more interesting items I pick up.

Recently, I've been trying to refine my tastes. Peviously, I went for just about anything 1950s, whereas now I'm focussing more on more mid century modern and atomic styles in homewares and furniture. I'm also not allowing myself to buy things unless I need them or really, REALLY like them. Here is a little cruet set I picked up; I especially love the wirework and the little plastic spoon that comes with the mustard pot, it has a tiki bamboo style handle!



I found this coffee pot in a second hand shop in Manchester for £5. It is by Ćmielów, a Polish manufacturer based in a tiny town of the same name with just 3,222 occupants, whose factory dates back to 1790. After seemingly doing not much at all for forty years, the factory has recently begun production of elegant but rather expensive animal figurines from original 1950s moulds. I can find very little online about the factory or any of their products apart from the modern run of Henry Moore - inspired animal sculptures, so I don't know if what I have is a rarity? I love it anyway - the design is quintessentially 1950s and it fits perfectly in with the design and colour plan I have for my fantasy future kitchen!



In complete contradiction to what I just said, I also collect uranium glass , and bought this lovely ring bud vase this month. Uranium glass (also referred to as Vaseline or depression glass, though not entirely correctly) was produced commercially from the mid 19th century until the start of the cold war when uranium production was deferred to the arms industry. In the US, none was produced between WWII and 1958 due to the government's tight control of the substance. The heyday of uranium glass was the 1920s - 30s, and some wonderful art deco designs arose. My collection consists mainly of pieces from this era. It is oddly plentiful in certain charity shops! I think this piece might be early 1920s... it is the highest quality piece I own, being more of a yellowish hue and having cut rather than pressed decoration. Uranium glass glows an amazing bright green under UV lighting, you can see in the picture how it is fluorescing slightly in the sunlight.



I have around fifteen pieces, and that is the extent of my cheating on the 50s with other decades... then again, what could be more of a nod to the atomic age than radioactive housewares?

My last purchase in April was some jeans from Freddies of Pinewood who are having a huge sale at the moment - many of their fantastic retro styles are down to just £20! I got the 'Classics' in black. The design and quality of them is great and so flattering, but I think I do need to lose a little weight for them to fit correctly. I got their biggest size which is 38" waist, 48" hip. My measurements are 36/49, so they are a bit tight across the tummy. I am losing weight slowly on my diet of careful calorie control and occasional cupcake blowouts, so hopefully soon they'll fit just fine and I can simply adjust the waistband to take account of my large waist-to-hip difference. I would also love some of their pedal pushers!



Jeans - Freddies of Pinewood
Sweater - Vintage, eBay
Bandana - Vintage, Affleck's Palace
Cherry Pumps - Rockers England

Little Scamp dog is invading my picture!

Raspberry Cupcakes and a Giveaway!

Naomi over at Arthelia's Attic is having a fantastic giveaway of one of her crocheted 1940s snoods, a vintage hat, a tote bag, mug and a copy of her favourite vintage book! She has a lovely Etsy shop and her blog is full of interesting vintage fashion, cooking etc. so do take a peep for details on how to enter the giveaway!



Last week I also had another go at some vegan cupcakes! These were for my friend Steff's birthday, and I devoured the leftovers on Friday night with Aerospace Boyfriend and my friend Laura Lee with some blueberry and pink fizz bellinis!

Here they are going into the oven. Lurid!



The recipe was the basic vanilla cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World (link for the book in my previous cupcake post!) modified with two spoonfuls of raspberry syrup and a drop of pink food colouring.

Also, I was right about the cupcake wrappers; here is one of the American-sized ones dwarfing a British fairy cake case.



Here they are cooled and glazed with a Kirsch syrup:



I cut out a cone from the tops, and filled each hollow with a whole fresh raspberry and some raspberry coulis made by sieving fresh raspberries and adding icing sugar and raspberry syrup.



Here they are finished! In an obsessive cake-baking shopping frenzy, I purchased two new icing bags and lots of nozzles. This was done using the largest rose-shaped nozzle, with the icing bag filled with two shades of pink rasberry vegan buttercream frosting. The cakes are topped with silver balls, fresh raspberries and blueberries, and lots of beautiful edible glitter, which unfortunately did not show up at all in the pictures.



Hurrahs!

I won CHOCOLATE!

I recently filled in a survey from UK based chocolate company Montezuma's and was entered into a draw for a chocolate hamper, which I won! It looked like this one, with a few different items in it:




As well as being ecstatic because I had never really won anything before (and because I was getting free chocolate, obviously), I was additionally impressed that they allowed me to request that my hamper be completely vegan. I love the fact that they are very aware of vegans and work hard to create a good variety of delicious treats that we can eat, alongside their extensive non-vegan range.

My hamper contained a dark chocolate Easter bunny, three different bars of chunky dark chocolate with such tasty additions as ginger, brazil nuts and hazelnuts, a big bag of the most heavenly melt-in-the-mouth dark chocolate giant buttons, and an enormous 300g 'Choco:Block' slab dotted with huge chunks of pecans, walnuts and dates, all wrapped in a luxe black box with a ribbon tie.

They also included a 10% off voucher, to tempt me to purchase some more of their remarkable confections! Here is what I plan to put it towards:




Their vegan truffle collection, comprising sumptuous pralines laced with orange and cinnamon, coffee, lime and chilli, and pure unadulterated dark chocolate.

I suggest you all go take a look and have a drool! I for one will not be running low on treats any time soon.

Thanks, Montezuma's!

Massive Cookie Fail!

Along this week's theme of vegan baking, today Aerospace Boyfriend decided that he would bake some chocolate gingerbread cookies. I was reading out the ingredients as he mixed, and mistakenly told him to add the extra ounce of sugar that should have been reserved for sprinkling on the tops. After a hideous melty oven incident, this cookie beast is what resulted:



Yum. As you can see, it also had the effect of turning my boyfriend into a drooling cookie gremlin. It was tasty though!

Rum Cupcakes, Sushi and Spring Rolls: Vegan Yumminess!

This weekend has been a cooking frenzy! Aerospace Boyfriend has presented me with Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World which I have wanted for ages, so at his request, the first recipe I tried was Rum & Raisin cupcakes. You can find the authors' websites, full of scrumptious vegan treats, at www.theppk.com and http://vegancupcakes.wordpress.com.




Here they are after coming out of the oven. A word of advice here; American cupcake wrappers must be significantly larger than standard British cake cases, because the recipe states it makes 12 cakes, but we got 24!



Here they are topped with Rum Glaze and Rummy Buttercream Frosting (and sprinkles)!



Gratuitous cake porn, on the tiny saucers from my Ridgway Homemaker mocha cups:



Mmmmm.



This weekend was also my first foray into sushi making. It was really easy and everyone should try it! The rolls on the left are filled with fried smoked tofu sticks, cucumber, shredded spring onion, carrot, yellow pepper and vegan mayonnaise. The ones on the right (which were my first try and came out a little loose) are filled with vegan mock duck, carrot, bamboo shoots and cucumber.



I also made vegan spring rolls. They were filled with carrot, beansprouts, mushroom, green beans and bamboo shoots. To make them, I first simmered everything for two minutes in a broth made from water, soya sauce, garlic, sesame oil and Chinese five spice. I then placed the vegetables onto ready made pastry sheets from my local Asian catering supplier, adding a teaspoonful of the broth before rolling up and frying. Spring roll sheets can be found in most Asian shops or larger supermarkets, alternatively you could use filo pastry or samosa sheets. The key to these is cutting everything into tiny strips, and not overfilling them.



Here is the result of me trying out making California rolls. These were a bit more difficult than the standard rolls where the Nori (seaweed) is on the outside, and they came out too loose. They could also have done with some sesame seeds to stick on the outside. They were tasty though, with wasabi and soya sauce dips!