Sunday 6 December 2009

Still Life of Cat in a pan with Socks . . .

The picture says it all really! Where Honey likes to sleep at night when the pan's still warm from sitting on the stove . . . and yes, that's where we put the smalls to dry . . .

Positively the LAST hat. This one's for a penpal.

Car booty from this morning. It was only £2 as damaged, but someone had loved it well enough to get a tinker to put some tin strapping around it so it could still be used. I'd do the same I think, it's lovely and will soon be hanging on a beam here.

A beautiful quality Ridgeway jug showing Tam-o-Shanter with the Witch grabbing his horse by the tail! HERE'S A LINK to the original poems by Robert Burns. You will all know a line from the poem I am sure: "But pleasures are like poppies spread, you seize the flower, its bloom is shed."


Close up of the Ridgeway stamp on the bottom, and the very precise date of 1st Octber 1835.

Well, I couldn't leave these behind could I? The first 4 I got for £1 - not each, they were just 25p each! and the little leather-covered gilt-edged-paged copy of Coleridge's Christabel and Other Poems was £2 and will be a stocking filler for eldest daughter, along with The Coming of Arthur.

7 comments:

  1. Old jugs have such character ... if only they could talk

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  2. I would feel so at home in your space--where cats are "allowed" to be themselves! Its no good providing a "cat basket"--as a rule they decide where they want to sleep and that's the way it will be.
    Wouldn't the pattern of that blue and white jug make a lovely quilt fabric?
    "The Open Road" is a wonderful book title--one that would lure me into its pages.
    How have you found time to knit warm fuzzy hats with all else you've been doing? Surely you're a bit of a wonder woman?

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  3. I'd love some old books in my stocking! not shiny, stiff ones that smell chemically. Pre-loved is best!

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  4. MM - The hats knit up quickly - I knit them if I'm not driving and we're going somewhere, or pick up my knitting every time I sit down and they soon make up. I can start one on an evening and finish it by the next and I wouldn't say I was a particularly fast knitter either.

    I thought exactly the same about the pattern on the blue and white jug. I'm still waiting for my dear husband to hang 4 for me, but he's been trying to finish off a cupboard door on a big Victorian cupboard/glazed top pitch pine book case which is going into auction early in 2010.

    The Open Road is poetry, and has some wonderful ones in it including quite a few by William Barnes, the Dorset dialect poet. I will type up one or two in the days to come.

    Kath - I agree with you. My eyes fair lit up when I saw the nice old (dented!) china and the boxes of books on this particular stall . . .

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  5. Your cat looks so funny, sitting in the pan amongst the socks ... very much 'in charge', I would say!

    The blue & white jug is lovely - I'll bet it has a few tales to tell!

    Willow x

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  6. Is the green book Rupert Brooke?

    You did well today BB. I love the blue and white jug. Someone obviously thought a great deal of it.

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  7. Sorry Angie - didn't mean to miss you out, and yes, what a tale they'd have to tell - and more!

    DW - In the bathroom, I have another big old high Victorian blue and white teapot which got broken clean in half and then stapled back together again! And yes, Rupert Brooke. I was reading it last night and getting a whole insight into his writing (gosh, but he was a bright boy). From the photo of him as a young man inside the cover, you can see the little boy still in his face - on the cusp of manhood . . .

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