Old Lady Hobbies

I have blogged about my old lady hobbies before now, such as my Jam making.  Well I thought I'd tell you about some more ;-) and some great Vintage finds!

Yesterday I met up with an old school friend of mine.  Nikki Strange, has been a friend of mine for quite a few years now, and we posses a great deal of embarrassing photos of each other in our awkward teenage phase haha.  I will spare you the horror of those!  Like me she graduated at the wrong time economically and found herself setting up as a freelance print designer, instead of chasing the jobs in a hopeless jobs market.  Since setting up her design studio she has done very well for herself indeed winning a heap of competitions and getting her printed silk scarf designs sold in prestigious London shops.  Her market is slightly different to mine (she's not as "Vintage" as me ;-)) but it's worth you looking at her website as you may know someone who likes that sort of thing, and she is very talented!  www.nikkistrange.co.uk

Anyhoo we met up yesterday for a good catch up and gossip which was lovely and on our walkabouts we popped into the charity shop in my Village.  Now my village is highly populated by old people.  This is great because a) it's quiet at night time in my neighbourhood so I can get my much needed zzzzzzzz's and b) they tend to pop their cloggs quite regularly.  This means their families have huge clear outs and send off their loved ones old possessions to the charity shop!  Some of the properties around where I live are very very posh so occasionally some well to do ladies possessions are in said charity shop.  The shop itself is run by some lovely ladies who are all volunteers and I think the proceeds goes to a local hospital or hospice.  Lovely they may be, but Vintage savvy they are not.  I am careful not to tell you which charity shop it is as if they caught onto the fact that they could charge A LOT more for the "Vintage" clothing, then I would have to pay more ;-).  So this charity shop has not become victim to the Vintage craze and is still really really well priced; some charity shops are charging way over the odds these days.  On the rare occasion you can pick up some real jems, and a few jems I did pick up yesterday!!!

My new bag and jacket :-)

The first and by far the best jem I have discovered recently is this lovely little faux fur jacket.

This little beauty was..........................................................................................................£6.50!!!!!!!!!



The lining is such a gorgeous shade of peach satin!

Now I don't know much about vintage 'labels' but I know a bargain when I see one, and I can generally tell whether something is genuine Vintage and when it is mass produced tatt.  So I was really chuffed with this!!!  And it was just my size, so I had to get it as it would have been criminal not to.  I did feel slightly guilty at only paying £6.50, but my next purchase was slightly overpriced I thought so they balanced each other out.

This little beauty is a brown leather handbag.  It was £10 which I thought was a little steep, it's like the prices were the wrong way around.

It is like the bag has never been used!  It is absolutely pristine inside which either means, the lady was very wealthy and had so many bags she hardly used it or she was very very careful with her possessions.

Again I have little knowledge of labels but it is nice to know that this bag is British made, just like my garments :-)

And so to conclude this blog post I must say that I did feel extremely guilty about only paying a combined total of £16.50 for these two beautiful items.  I payed £40 in a charity shop in Bournemouth for a similarly pristine Vintage handbag a few months ago and I dread to think how much these items would cost in trendy parts of London.  Even faux fur jackets similar in high street shops that are brand new are £60/£70!  But to justify not paying over the odds for these two items I can tell you that this particular shop I frequent regularly.  I buy old jigsaw puzzles that I do in my spare time to unwind (my old lady hobby) and when I have finished them I break them up and donate them back to the very same shop so they can sell it on again.  So it makes me feel a little less guilty as I do contribute a lot to them :-)

If anyone has any info about the above items labels, origins, date ect.... I would love to know more about them so drop me a comment!

Betty xxx