scanlan&theodore

I have a thing about Scanlan&Theodore. I remember when (oh, here I go again) the company opened their first shop on Chapel Street, South Yarra. I think that I was about 14 ... so 1998? Heavens, almost 20 years ago. I remember the large square label with a wreath on it that was their original tag and am sad that I don't own anything from that early on.














I just loved Scanlan&Theodore, I was totally besotted with their design aesthetic and longed to be part of it. Every season I searched for something that I could afford; I certainly didn't buy as much as I tried on but a few things here and there - a long ago favourite pair of straight black trousers, a black stretchy knit dress that I still have, another black dress, a dark blue pinstripe shirt, some t-shirts, a scoop neck black top, a red woollen jumper.

My thing is mostly a nostalgic one - I hardly shopped there when we were living in Sydney and when we returned to Melbourne I found that their prices had taken a market shift, upwards. Recent purchases are a pair of cream linen trousers and this print cotton skirt - Sacred Heart Mission $7 and Hunter Gatherer $34 respectively.

out-of-office memo

bollewangenhaptoet is on holiday in Sydney this week (and I left the camera at home - of all things). We will return to normal programming in a few days' time.

josies is my local

My local op shop that is. Situated here in Balaclava, around the corner at 255 Carlisle Street, I believe that Josies (tel. 9527 2929; M-F 9:00-4:00) is Melbourne's only Jewish op shop. Just last week they had a wooden musical box with a picture of Jerusalem's Wailing Wall on it. Not sure what the tune was though.

Josies is a small op shop - clothing, some toys, books, shoes, some homewares, some linen, some bric-a-brac, no furniture. I can't honestly say that their stock is great but I do mostly find something whenever I go in. (How often is that? hmmm, weekly.) Some good buys have been: a copy of Hanging Out with Cici by Francine Pascal* which I read as a child and am storing for baby bear; a fine knit cabled men's woollen jumper for Tim from Saba; a black wool Valentino skirt made in France and of excellent quality with a tiny waist that will be refashioned; and best of all, the boob trumpet, ah, that is, the breast pump. This device has been a life saver and cost me only $8 (they retail for around $90) - it does actually count as a best find ever. Kudos to my neighbour who spotted it in the window and alerted me.

So Josies is certainly worth a look - all that they are missing is an apostrophe.

* Yikes, I just learned that Francine Pascal was the author of all those Sweet Valley High books, which I didn't read. Cici will never be the same.

This entry is cross-posted at I op therefore I am, the op shopping blog for Melbourne - please visit!

black velvet

"Black velvet with that slow southern style/ A new religion that'll bring ya to your knees/ Black velvet if you please"






















Heavens, what is it about some (awful) songs that just stays with you for ever? Alannah Myles, 1989, apparently about Elvis. Anyway, moving back along to a decade earlier and again showing the influence of growing up in the 1970s - I love printed velvet.

The fabric above is from skirts that I have bought at the op shop with the intention of adjusting them to fit me. The skirt on the left consists of four tiers - I have removed the top tier which was plain black velvet because the waist was way too small. I already have a new tier cut out from some black cotton velveteen, the skirt just needs to be sewn back together. Somehow this seems like such a huge job though - I need to break it down into very small activity chunks. I don't plan to put in a zip but to crochet a strip of braid with button loops from black cotton and sew that along the side opening, then on the other side some maroon, vaguely heart-shaped buttons. Again, this is a ploy to avoid facing up to buttonholes or zips. I love the floral tier and the cross-stitch effect frieze on the bottom tier.

The skirt on the right is just the one piece of fabric, about a third longer than shown here. Originally the skirt was quite full and unattractively gathered at the waist (which didn't fit me anyway). So, off with the waist band and perhaps some darts will do the trick on this one.

On both of them I just intend to face the waist with a length of black grosgrain ribbon instead of a brand new waist band. The only thing about removing the waistband is that you often also remove the label which is one of the fun things about second-hand shopping (well, at least for me). When you second-hand shop a lot (and I do) you come across now defunct fashion labels time and again. And I love the design of them, and the daggy names, and the concept of leisurewear. This is the tag from the skirt on the left. When I finally get around to sewing it up I'm going to sew the tag back in, for old times' sake.

un-ravelry

I love the texture of crochet - it's heavier and denser than knitting. This is the finished bib over on the right, well, almost finished. I haven't manged to deal with the ends yet because I'm already a few rows into the next one. Crochet (particularly of small items) is very portable and I was able to do it standing in the train this morning. (I even did manage to catch the 7:40am - heavens.) Although difficult to discern there is a buttonhole there at the end of one of the straps and I will be sewing on a wooden button which I think will match nicely with the natural look of the cotton.

As mentioned before, the cotton is recycled from a jumper. Unravelling a commercially made garment is a fascinating process, it's very interesting to see how it has been constructed and where all of the ends are hidden and there is a destructive relish involved similar to that involved in pruning roses - it's all for a greater good. I have previously recommended Neauveau Fiber Arts' tutorial on unravelling a jumper but I do have a quick something to add on the topic of good seams.

A good seam has two sides, one that resembles running stitch and one that looks like a row of Vs - actually, it's a row of interlocking loops. To most efficiently undo the seam you want to orient the garment as shown in the photo, best begin with the V closest to the end of the seam, be it a hem or the juncture with another seam. Cut through both legs of the V with some fine sharp scissors or a quick-unpick but don't pull at the threads yet; instead, lift the stitch below up a bit such that it becomes free of the V that you have just cut, at the same time taking care not to let any of the cut threads pull through to the back of the fabric. Once the cut legs of the V are free of the stitch below, you should be able to pull at them and the seam will unravel all the way to the end (or to wherever it snags, but you get the picture, yes?).

Purchasing clothing at the op shop with an eye to recycling them, either for yarn or fabric, has become a new way of shopping. I now look for colour and texture and print, I look through the plus-sizes rack because really, if you're going to spend $4 on a jumper to recycle you may as well get as much yarn as you can! This pretty blue and white floral fabric is previously featured amongst my best intentions and is a Blazer men's shirt, 100% cotton. The size is XL so there is heaps of fabric there to make a summer dress and perhaps something else for baby bear. I'm thinking a pintucked sundress that utilises the existing button placket as the fastening in the back as this is a lazy way to get professional button holes (and to avoid learning to do them myself). Or maybe another smock - the pattern arrived in the post from the US a couple of days ago - love ebay!

I realise that all of my intended refashioning projects so far have been for children's clothes - yes, there is some lovely printed 1970s velvet in there that is destined for me. I'll post about that next.

locally - lulu

One sunny day, a couple of months ago, we bid at auction on an apartment in East St Kilda. Thank goodness it went for way more than we were prepared to pay and I could afford to buy a pair of Sissy Boy jeans at lulu on the way home instead (322a Carlisle Street, Balaclava; tel. 9525 8844; T-F 10:30-6:00, S 10:30-5:00, S-M 11:00-5:00). It's a great store for homewares, baby goods, accessories and more recently (umm, last couple of years?) clothing. Their stock includes Third Draw Down, Mozi, Blink Designs and iittala, and on the fashion front Penelope Durston, Indigo and Sissy Boy amongst others. A word to the wary - do not google Sissy Boy, just click on the link, unless you are looking for a men's XL sailor suit. This is a Dutch jeanswear label and I put the strange choice of name down to an unfortunate case of lost in translation (otherwise - what were they thinking?)

The baby ballerina top is coming along slowly - I've made it to the collar increases on the right front and dug out a circular 3.25mm needle so that I could work more easily on it while sitting on the train (saves elbowing fellow passengers with every stitch). Problem is that I have so far not managed to sit down on the train. Tomorrow we are going to try out a new arrangement - I'm going in to work early and Tim will take baby bear to childcare so I'll see how I fare on the 7:40am. Hmm, maybe the 7:50am. Do you think that the 8:00am would be crowded?

I have also been distracted by a lovely garter stitch bib that was worn recently by Baby C and knitted by his lovely mother over at Clementine's Shoes. Garter stitch drives me up the wall so I crocheted one instead, using left over baby bobble jacket recycled cotton and half-trebles. Crochet is great - so quick. Just the ends to deal with and we'll be ready for more adventures in independent spooning (baby bear's newest trick).

lieveheersbeestje

Today baby bear turned one. Happy birthday sweetiepie - hip hip hooray!

Ladybirds are one of my favourite things and I love the word in Dutch:

lieve = dear
heers = God's
beestje = little creature

lieveheersbeestje = dear God's little creature

What better leitmotif for a dear little girl's life? (Umm, yes, that is a container of Betty Crocker's ready-made icing in the background which I guess just makes me a ready-made domestic goddess.)

mccall's 3470

The universe and I would appear to be in harmony today - that is, I got my own way. After being disappointed that the only square neck smock patterns available on ebay were in sizes 3 and 5 when I really wanted a size 2, I did a search by the pattern title and found it as part of a lot of vintage patterns - in size 2! It's all paid for and could well be winging it's way to me from Missouri at this very moment - hooray. This will of course become the strawberry fields smock.

It is risky though to discover new things that you can search for and find on ebay. Sewing patterns, vintage sewing patterns - it hadn't occurred to me before. I bought another one too - McCall's 2403 which is an unlined child's coat. I will certainly not be making it in polar fleece which I am allergic to (albeit aesthetically allergic). This is the pattern that I plan to use to make a child's coat from the Romeo Gigli fabric that I bought a couple of weeks ago. The pattern and postage (from the US) is only US$5.98 which comes to less than the $10.95 (I think) that it would have cost me here. I'm delighted to have found these two great patterns that I wanted.

In other harmonious knitting news, I have completed the back and both fronts of the baby ballerina top, although I still haven't made it to Coles to weigh how much yarn I have left. I have started on the neck band and collar - perhaps I will finish this and then weigh the yarn in an effort to determine whether long sleeves would really be pushing the cosmic relationship.

strawberry fields

I'm not sure that there are actually any strawberries on this fabric, but that is what it makes me think of. I wonder where the it came from originally? I bought it at the Salvation Army op shop in Elsternwick in the form of a home-made wrap skirt. I'd be tempted to keep the skirt intact and wear it myself except it's not my size and doesn't wrap quite enough to protect my modesty. So, I'm thinking about cutting it up to make a smock for baby bear.

No-one else seems to be thinking about smocks though – I’ve had a look through a few pattern books and on websites and can’t find anything suitable. There are a few vintage patterns available on ebay, most of them from the 1970s - oh dear, can you tell which decade I grew up in? The issue is about choosing a square yoke or a rounded yoke. I had envisioned a square yoke but the older patterns appear to come in single sizes and the square-yoked smock pattern is larger than I had in mind. I have size 2 in mind.

reticella

For a couple of years there I was a member of the New South Wales branch of the Australian Lace Guild. Yes, there is such a thing! My interest in lace was sparked by my discovery of Irish crochet lace and quickly grew from there.

The fabric on the left is embroidered so as to remind me of reticella, an Italian needle-made lace dating from the 15th century. Reticella has "a characteristic geometric design of squares and circles with various arched or scalloped borders" (thank you Wikipedia). I have lots of books about lace including designs for reticella just like this - the white on black makes for a striking graphic in itself.

The fabric itself is a miniskirt from Fragile, a maternity and baby store for the, um, very well heeled. Yes, a maternity miniskirt (?!). I picked it up at Camberwell market a couple of weeks ago, not because I have any use for it myself, but because the fabric caught my eye. I'm thinking of a skirt for a slightly older baby bear, box pleated with the waist elasticised at the back.

best intentions

So what is it about motherhood that sparks your creativity? I suppose that children's garments are a smaller project than one for an adult so less intimidating. There is perhaps a bit more leeway with fit and not so much demand for tailoring. Also, if you're the sort of person who likes to express their love by making and giving then there is no more deserving recipient than your own little darling. And it is lovely and rewarding to see your baby clothed in something that you have made for her.

I have always wanted to have a practice, as in the sense of an artistic practice although I don't mean that I want to be an artist. Certainly I have tried my hand at a few things - drawing, painting, printmaking - and have all of the materials to attest to it! I mean a practice in the sense of an occupation, a creative practice at the least, perhaps even a textile practice. And I feel like I am developing that now. Maternity leave was enough of a break from work, a free space in the business part of my brain that I could really get thinking about making.

Then there's also the urge to make and get something done, to complete something, to actually get something finished in the face of the relentless domestic churn that child raising involves. Sometimes motherhood feels like a chronic condition.

I mentioned a week or so ago that I had been doing quite some opshopping, much of it with projects in mind, be it a complete remake or just some alterations. And I also thought it time to expand and get honest about the 'planning stage' section over there in the sidebar. There are some who blog about their piles but this always makes me think of something for which you might need a cream. So above I present you with an array of (semi-)recent purchases, all of which I have plans for. My first plan is to declare them all over the next week or so, in the belief that this will compel me to take action.

eight

1. My favourite colour is red.
2. I am married, to Tim. We met over eight years ago in Amsterdam and it turns out that we went to primary school together, just for one year.
3. I love foreign languages and at one time or another have studied Japanese, French, Italian, Latin and Dutch. Of these, I am most proficient in Dutch.
4. Career-wise I have variously considered becoming an architect, a speech pathologist, a police officer, an art therapist, a lawyer and a clinical neuropsychologist. I am a public servant which I'm very happy with and am currently looking into studying health economics.
5. Cat, not dog. As a child and even into adolescence I was very frightened of dogs. I have always adored cats and would love to have my own but Tim is allergic and I love him even more.
6. Spelling and grammar really matter to me - particularly the use of apostrophes and adverbs. This is dangerous to admit, just in case I make any mistakes here!
7. I have never so much as smoked a cigarette and intend to keep it that way.
   
8. I discovered yesterday that I have ancestors named Abraham Halinbourg and Antonio Giovanni Meriga - fabulous!

Thanks for tagging me Martine!

gattica

I remember when ... oh dear, am I really old enough to be saying things like that? I have lived here in Balaclava (with a couple of side trips) since I was 14, so that's almost 19 years. I do remember when the only place you could get a beer or glass of wine on Carlisle Street was the pub. And a cup of coffee? Ah, no.

Now the dilemma is not where to find a coffee (I use the term 'get a coffee' here loosely because as previously declared, I loathe the stuff) but where can you get a table. There are now more cafes on Carlisle Street than I can count and on weekends they are all packed. There are also a couple of bars and quite a few restaurants that serve alcohol. Hooray.

The issue for me though is where to find a good hot chocolate. What makes it good? Well, that it is hot and that it is chocolate. While these may sound like two self-evident features of a hot chocolate, it is amazing how many are a lukewarm cup of milk atop a layer of gluggy chocolate powder.

But not this one, this one is my favourite. It's served at Gattica (223 Carlisle Street, Balaclava; tel. 9525 8282) where you can also get good food and friendly service. The trick seems to be that they make a uniformly chocolate milk and then warm that thoroughly - yippee, no sediment. You'll have to ask someone else about their coffee though.

villette

Villette is quite possibly my favourite novel, and Charlotte Brontë is certainly my favourite author. I remember as a child - how old would I have been? - when my mother read Jane Eyre and recounted the story to me as she read it. I didn't read it myself until many years later and Villette only because it was a prescribed text in my 'Women and Fiction in the 19th century' course at uni.

I really enjoyed that course and several of the themes and topics that we discussed have stayed with me, including the origins of the urban myth that the Victorians were such prudes that they invented piano skirts to hide the instrument's legs (origins which I now can't remember).

Anyway, I don't think that I actually read Villette at the time (400 pages of Victorian fiction each week was a big ask!) and ended up instead taking it with me travelling, hence my well worn copy. I have since also read Charlotte Brontë's other works - The Professor and Shirley. I love her prose, the long complicated sentences, her way of stating things. In fact, my memory of Villette is so sweet that I dare not read it again, just in case.

Since becoming an avid knitter I must admit that I do not read as much as I used to. At one point there I made a conscious decision to read on the train in the morning instead of knitting which helped until I went on maternity leave. So, speaking of knitting - I have completed one of the socks for Tim's dad. I won't have the pair ready for father's day, alas, and the weather will probably have warmed up by the time the second sock is finished but they'll keep until next winter. I think that the trick is to not lose momentum and cast on for the second sock immediately.

Progress has also been made on the linen baby ballerina top - back complete, left side complete, right side cast on and 13 rows in. I'll have to make a detour to Coles tomorrow - when I want to know exactly how much my knitting weighs, I just pop it in one of those clear plastic bags and put it on the digital scales in the fruit and vegetable section. I want to check how much the left front weighs to give me an idea of how much yarn is left and whether it will be short sleeves or long.

And now that I am back at work two days a week you would think that there would be some reading time. But, as I suspected, sock knitting is very portable and you do get lovely compliments from other commuters.

the return

This week I returned to work on the 18th floor of a very large office block at a very large state government department. I returned to relentless fluorescent lighting, artificial climate control and olive green decor.

I also returned to uninterrupted lunches, cups of tea that I actually get to finish and the city - things may not be so bad after all! And it is only two days a week.

I think that Melbourne city is wonderful - I love the wide streets lined with trees, trams running down the middle, the warren of lanes hiding hole-in-the-wall bars, the bluestone and the concrete. I really connect with the city and find it a wonderful place to work and shop and explore. Earlier today I wandered past Piadina Slow Food, along Crossley Street past Crossley & Scott, Madame Virtue and Gingerboy, to the Salvation Army op shop on Bourke Street and felt like I had come home.

Adjusting my head space to being back at work has been a bit of an effort though. After spending a little over a year at home surrounded by a truly bonny baby, domesticity and various knitting projects, getting back into the swing of quarterly reporting, progression, performance and development plans and key performance indicators has my head in a swim. Coming back to work after a year's absence has been quite disorientating - it's like starting a new job and having to take everything in but I already know most of the people and my way around the office. On the surface nothing has changed but the deeper I look the more I find that is new, different, foreign. Everyone here is a year older (including me) although it's hardly obvious, and nothing like the incredible growth and change that baby bear has experienced in the same time period.

Tim likes to remind me that motherhood makes you smarter (apparently) and I must say that my ability to plan and multi-task has certainly improved. I also think that my creativity has soared since baby bear was born, endless ideas about things to make. Some women say that they are desperate to get back to work in order to use their brain again but I haven't felt that way, my brain has been plenty busy with creative pursuits. Now that I am back I hope that there is ample room for both.

And ah, the view.

janome 720

My Janome 720 sewing machine was purchased from Grace Brothers, Parramatta on 3 November 1983. Not by me, obviously, because I was nine years old at the time and at primary school in Melbourne. It was acquired by me some time when we were living in Sydney on hard rubbish night. Well, the day after hard rubbish night actually.

I always love hard rubbish night – it’s a great way to acquire pre-loved stuff and always fascinating to see what people are getting rid of. Disappointingly, City of Port Phillip these days has a system whereby you can book in to have your hard rubbish collected for free up to four times a year so there is no longer a hard rubbish night as such. There’s a wonderful film called The Gleaners and I by Agnès Varda in which the director discusses (the French equivalent of) hard rubbish night with a young man who simply considers it to be a shopping night of sorts.

Back in Sydney on this particular evening we had a very enthusiastic gleaning friend staying with us and went on a shopping tour of the neighbourhood. He found lots of computer cables but not much else. It was the next day when I came home from work that I saw a sewing machine case on the nature strip outside the block of flats next to ours. Really, my heart rate went up. And lo and behold, it had a machine inside - a Janome 720 - along with a box of accessories, the manual and original warranty card. I was a bit reticent at first and spent a good 10 minutes waiting for the owner to come back for it; perhaps someone had driven away, accidentally leaving it by the side of the road? Perhaps not.

The machine didn’t work of course but that same enthusiastic gleaning friend is also an electrical engineer and was able to pinpoint and remedy the difficulty which was a bent pin in the plug. Runs like a dream, not that I can actually claim to have used it very much but I do have many plans.

i op therefore i am

I thought it time to post an update on my Wardrobe Refashion progress, three weeks into my pledge to not buy any new clothing. I must admit how pleased I was when I explained to Tim that I was only going to buy clothes at the op shop and make things for two months and he responded, 'But that's what you do anyway'.

So, I haven't bought anything new in the past three weeks, haven't even actually bothered looking at new clothing at all but I have been shopping, oh yes. To say that I live to (op) shop may be overstating things a bit but it is definitely one of my favorite activities. Fuelled by my previously confessed tendency to confuse buying the materials for a project with actually doing the project, in the last three weeks I have acquired more pre-loved materials with which to work than I could possibly use in two months. Not to mention plenty of items for myself, baby bear and the house.

I am constantly amazed by what is available at the op shop - the volume of stuff, the incredible quality of some of the garments, the creeping feeling that so much of what is manufactured new just doesn't need to be because there is already so much stuff out there. To promote the joy of op shopping I have started a collaborative blog called I op therefore I am. It's a site for people to show the great things that they have bought, to find out where the op shops are and to alert others to great buys. If you love to op shop and particularly if you live in Melbourne, Australia and would like to join in (please do!), click on the link and take a look.

botanic gardens

Ah, it's been a busy weekend, none of it spent at the St Kilda Botanic Gardens unfortunately. These gardens are one of my all-time favourite places and particularly since baby bear was born I have spent a lot of time there.

I have played scrabble games here, hung out with play group, walked every path, just plain old lazed on the lawn, a bit of knitting. Pre-pregnancy this is one of the places that I would run to before breakfast (how pre-pregnancy). I was so proud of myself that I could run the whole perimeter without stopping. I came home and measured the park in the Melways to check just how far that is but can't recall the actual distance now ... it's that hazy! Port Phillip EcoCentre is also located in the gardens and they have a children's singing and music session on Tuesday mornings in term time. It starts at 10:30 and goes for an hour.

I have been working on my sewing projects, slowly but surely. I went to Clegs (did you know that they stock some Rowan yarns now!?) on Sunday afternoon to buy a pintuck foot for my sewing machine. The sales assistant wanted to know whether I had a low-shank machine or not - all I could tell her is that I have a Janome. I ended up buying two feet - one for a low-shank machine and the other one. For your information, a Janome 720 takes a low-shank foot. Have I told you the story of how I acquired my sewing machine? Ah, next time.

specklefarm

Oooh, found the photo:

Self-covered buttons, notebooks, Amy Butler fabrics (I think), cushions, storage boxes, t-shirts, ribbons, did I mention ribbons?

festooned dress

A while ago a girlfriend bought a lovely musk pink dress at St Vincent de Paul op shop with the idea in mind that baby bear could wear it first and then her daughter who is six months younger. Alas, the dress didn't fit baby bear very well but I thought that I would decorate it a bit before returning it.


I do love striped grosgrain ribbon (and a quick iron does make a difference). Here's a close up of the ribbon, the stitching and, oh look, matching thread:

I bought the ribbon from a wonderful little shop called Specklefarm (111 Bridport Street, Albert Park; tel. 9696 2477; T-F 11:00-5:00, S 10:30-3:30) which is conveniently located opposite Woolbaa - aaahh, knit heaven. Specklefarm is a little shop with a delicious array of grosgrain ribbons in a multitude of stripe and colour combinations, as well as some accessories including self-covered buttons made from the grosgrain ribbon. Very pretty. (There is also a small selection of striped grosgrain ribbon at The Button Shop, along with everything else under the sun.)

Specklefarm is also a couple of doors down from the Uniting Care Southport op shop (T 11:00-4:00, W-F 11:00-5:00, S 11:00-4:00). I have bought some wonderful things there, including the blue-green caftan top that I plan to shirr this afternoon - ok, I plan to practice shirring on some spare fabric and see how it goes.

(I've also posted about the pink dress across at Wardrobe Refashion - have a look at what people are making!)