Things I like

Hornsea Sunflower pot

I think this has to be one of my best charity shop finds ever, as normally when I buy anything Hornsea it’s from Ebay or collectors websites. I went into the Hospice shop in Ryde at lunchtime today and it was sitting on a shelving unit as part of the collection of retro bits they were in the middle of putting together for the mod / scooter thing going on this weekend (it had literally just gone on the shelf and didn’t even have a price on it!). I was drawn to it because I thought it was pretty and looked very Orla Kiely-ish. I was expecting it to be quite new as there is a lot of stuff in a similar style being made at the moment, but then I saw the Hornsea stamp and thought ‘wow’, and obviously then headed straight for the cash desk. I hadn’t seen one like it before so was unsure of the age, thinking it could be early 1970’s, but after spending about 10 minutes searching around on Google whilst eating my lunch, I found some other sites with photos / information about it. It’s from the ‘Sunflower’ range of the same pots in 5 different colour ways, and was made in 1965 (see here: http://retroselect.com/Hornsea/Hornsea%203.htm and http://eastgatenhornsea.com/display_item.php?451). I’m still feeling very chuffed about finding it, I think it will be for decoration only as it’s quite fragile and has a bit of crazing so don’t want to ruin it.

Arthur Woods pot with wooden lid

At the same car boot as the Snoopy finds, I found this Arthur Woods pot to add to the collection. It’s got a wooden lid and looks like it has never been used. It was only £1 so I was quite chuffed.

We hadn’t been to the Southsea car boot in about 6 weeks, as we seemed to always be away or working (Chris) and it had been pretty pants the last few times we had gone anyway so I didn’t feel like I was missing out. However, 2 weeks ago I managed to acquire a large number of Snoopy goodies, most of which I had been coveting on Ebay for a while. Prices spanned 50p – £3.

Snoopy storage jars

Snoopy Goodies

Snoopy juice jug and glass

Snoopy pie dish

Snoopy hot air balloon mirror

Snoopy mugs

My favourite is the juice jug. Most of it I got off a lady who has a whole room in her house devoted to Snoopy / Charlie Brown memorabilia, but was having to downsize so was selling the bits she didn’t want. I left behind some egg cups, which I’m regretting now but nevermind.

My camera is so crap that all my photos end up looking terrible, especially mirrors. Anyway, here’s some really awful pics of the owl mirror I treated myself to off the US Ebay.

Greasy fingerprints

Better but with some wallys in the reflection

The last time I bought something off US Ebay it all ended in tears (I bought a QChord, it cost lots of $$$, it blew up in my face when I put some batteries in it and then I proceeded to have an email row with the redneck seller over the course of a week, but I did end up getting my money back hooray!) so I was slightly nervous at the prospect of a mirror staying in one piece on it’s way over, but when it arrived it was wrapped up so well and was in great condition so I was very happy. I’m not sure where to put it yet and it’s very heavy so some planning is required.

Pattern freebiess

Fabric freebies

I turned up to one of my sewing classes last term and upon arrival there was a massive box of fabric and patterns on the the table. Someone in one of Leslie’s other classes had bought a load of bits in that they didn’t want, and Leslie offered me a pick of what was there. Seeing as how no-one else turned up for class that week I decided to help myself to whatever I fancied (normally I’d feel too rude, selfish and embarassed just to plough in) and I was quite pleased with my collection. The brown flowery fabric is actually a bed cover that seems to never have been used, however it’s for a single bed so wouldn’t fit ours. Not sure what to do with it, maybe a table cloth?

CRY charity shop finds

Found these in the CRY charity shop on Osbourne Road, the fabric is actually a very roughly finished towelling dress. I reckon with a few alterations and finishing off the seams it could make quite a nice little beach dress. Only for when I go on holiday though, as the summer has been so pants here I can’t even be bothered to go to the beach despite the fact it’s 2 minutes from my front door. I’m tempted to make the cape next term in my sewing class, I’ve got some really lovely teal suiting fabric that could look amazing.

T.G. Green - Candies

I got this from the wonderful Thrift-ola website (see here: http://www.thrift-ola.com/). I had never seen a T.G. Green ‘Candies’ pot before, and I guess there’s not too many of them around as apparently loads of other people tried to buy it at the same time as me – luckily it was a Saturday and I was on my computer when it appeared in my Facebook news feed, so I managed to pounce on it. Lucky me!

My chum Anna apparently has a white T.G. Green Spectrum pot with ‘Sill’ on it, which she says is Swedish for Herring. I’d love to find some other non-English ones. Although I still haven’t got over missing out on the butter dish so I’m keeping a beady eye out for that.

Conran - The Kitchen Book and The Bed and Bath Book

I found these two in my local Marie Curie shop – £2.50 each, which was an utter bargain as I saw the Kitchen one in Snoopers Paradise last year for a tenner. Both are extended and better versions of The House Book. I do love a good 1970’s home book to perv over, the more wood panelling and massive cheese plants the better.

I made this dress during my dressmaking course last term from Simplicity pattern 2967 – http://sarahdobinson.com/finished-my-latest-dress-not-that-keen-at-the-moment/ – and ended up hating it. I then washed it hoping that the shape would improve a bit, but it didn’t, so after a month and a half of trying it on and moaning about it, I decided to make some amendments (with Lesley’s help) in my first week back on the course following the Easter break.

All I did was put some darts in the back to give it a bit of a shape, and I changed the sleeves to three quarter length without the elastic cuff. Now it’s MUCH better, and I actually want to wear it!

Moody

Back of dress, with added darts

Having been very busy for the past few weeks and then away on holiday (went to Ölüdeniz in Turkey, it was amazing), Saturday was my first chance to get out and about round Southsea to do some hunting for goodies. In the Portsmouth & District Cat Rescue shop on Albert Road I spied this little beauty peeping out of a bag on the floor, waiting to be put on the shelf:

Kenneth Townsend tray

I must have had my radar half switched on because I saw the horses face and pulled it out of the bag, thought it looked quite Kenneth Townsend-y (but didn’t quite put two and two together) and liked it, so sent Chris off to pay for it – 50p! I thought no more until the evening when I suddenly remembered that on the Kenneth Townsend website I had seen some similar style trays with Beefeaters and various olde London chaps on them – and was then really delighted to find my new tray there too: http://www.kenneth-townsend.co.uk/pages/c_london.html.

The holiday coincided with the first two weeks of the Southsea Clarence Pier car boot and the new Sunday market on Castle Fields, so after getting home and coming back down to earth with a huge bump I kind of started to feel like I might have missed out on some exciting finds. However, after getting a grip and giving myself a bit of a talking to for being so ridiculous, we went on Sunday and (as per usual for the first few weeks of the car boot) I didn’t really find anything I liked. Predictably there was some quite average late 70’s items with a sticker already on them with RETRO written in large caps and some ludicrous price attached. The only thing I got this plastic drinks service for £1, it’s never been used and looks a lot better in real life than my rubbish camera and photo taking abilities make it look:

Plastic drinks set

Plastic drinks set

In the afternoon we sauntered off to the new ‘Sunday Market’ on Castle Fields. This, as mentioned earlier on in the year, is the replacement for the smaller car boot sale deemed ‘downmarket’ by the council. What a joke! The first thing I saw was some horrible vodka shots / WKD style mobile bar with a massive fence erected around it to keep out the kids, and the next thing I saw was a huge stall with massive banners all the way around the front and outside emblazoned with the words ‘MOBILE PHONES UNLOCKED’. I’m not impressed! Give me someone’s old junk any day.

Last week Chris had a week off work, so I took a couple of days off so we could do some fun stuff together. One of the things we’d been planning to do for ages but were waiting until the weather was better was a charity shop tour along the South Coast following the 700 bus route (the coastal bus that runs from Brighton to Portsmouth). We did a large portion of it in one go two years ago and it was excellent and very fruitful. Since then we’ve only done a few of the places en route, and not the whole thing in one go, as it’s basically impossible to do it all in one day unless you can drive and have your own car to speedily nip around between places. If you were to stay on the 700 bus from Brighton to Portsmouth for the whole journey it takes something like 4 hours, so it doesn’t leave you much time to properly investigate every charity shop in every town or village along the route.

With that in mind we decided to try and do the whole stretch from Shoreham-by-Sea to Bognor Regis. This meant getting the train to Shoreham in time for the shops opening and jumping on the 700 bus from there. There’s a few charity shops in Shoreham and one of them (Cancer Research I think) had an excellent ‘retro’ window display and large display inside but none of it was for me, it was more 40’s / 50’s / early 60’s. Fabulous for people into those decades though, lots of handbags, scarves, gloves, accessories etc.

In the Red Cross shop I found a box of dress patterns, priced at 50p each. I got this one:

Simplicity pattern 7529

I’m quite looking forward to making this – planning to do the sleeveless version. It’s quite similar in shape to the last dress I made, without the silly bouffy sleeves.

After Shoreham we stopped in Worthing. In the DebRA shop I was really chuffed to find numbers 1 – 18 of the Golden Hands knitting, dressmaking and needlecraft guides:

Golden Hands complete knitting, dressmaking and needlecraft guides 1 - 6

Golden Hands complete knitting, dressmaking and needlecraft guides 7 - 12

Golden Hands complete knitting, dressmaking and needlecraft guides 13 - 18

It was £10 for the lot, I’m pretty sure I probably have a lot of the content scattered across my other Golden hands magazine and books, but I was just so happy to find them in hardback and in such great condition! (Not so happy to have to lug them around for the rest of the day though!) The man who was working in the DebRA shop was really friendly and helpful and gave us a load of tips on where to find hidden or out of the way charity shops in the area. Most of these were back towards Lancing, Portslade and Brighton so I’ve mentally pencilled these in for a visit in a few weeks time. Since then I’ve looked on Google Maps and discovered a whole set of charity shops in Worthing that we missed too!

We jumped back on the 700 and went towards Goring-by-Sea, stopping off at the cluster of charity shops on Goring Road and doing a short detour to the couple of shops along the road from Durrington-on-Sea railway station, where we got these:

Wooden viking

Ravenhead Siesta tankards

I was quite pleased about the Ravenhead glasses as I’d been looking for more of the tankards and the only one I could find was on Ebay and someone wanted £5 for it – yes just the one! I paid 75p each.

Waiting for the bus in East Preston

Back on the 700 route we stopped off at Dizzy in East Preston, where we got the ludicrous mug with the beaver on (as seen below) and then carried on to Rustington. Rustington has got an abundance of charity shops, with a new addition since we last went there which was the most disorganised, smelly but fantastic shop I had been in for a long time but sadly it was not very fruitful for me this time round. I did however, find this ‘I Hate J.R.’ mug and a great handicrafts book:

Mugs

The Book of Handicrafts for all the family - Eve Harlow

Excellent giraffe from the handicrafts book

From there it was onto Littlehampton. In the Link Romania shop we found a new version of the Kiln Craft dinner set that we use. I had never seen this colour before so that was quite nice, it was a set of 4 plates, bowls, cups and saucers where the plates and cups have the pattern and the saucers and bowls are plain brown. Weirdly it doesn’t have the Kiln Craft stamp on the bottom, but I guess it must be by them:

Kiln Craft mug

So that’s the third colour we have of that pattern:

Kiln Craft trio

Chris also got a bag and a really nice late 70’s / early 80’s Pierre Cardin belt.

We got back on the 700 bus to Bognor Regis, and it was getting quite late so I wasn’t hopeful for any shops still being open there. However we arrived at about 4.45 and managed to find a few places still open, and it turned out that most of them were until 5.30. Scope had a ‘retro’ rail and display but again nothing took my fancy – they did have a lot of nice ice buckets, kitcheny bits, tea sets and shirts though.

If I hadn’t got the Golden Hands books then I might have felt a bit disappointed as we covered a lot of ground but didn’t get very much, however it’s such a nice day out and I’m already looking forward to the next time.