A mine of useless information ......

On the way into school yesterday one of the littlies picked a dandelion.

Yuk says I .... don't pick them you'll wet the bed!

One of the other mums laughed and says that's an old wive's tale ...... but is it?   I might be getting to be a bit of an old bat but I am a mine of useless information and told her that dandelions are in fact diuretics and do have other medicinal uses as a laxative and with urinary problems.  Maybe not so useless after all !

That got me thinking about some other sayings that we all take for granted and probably repeat without thinking of their origins.

Eat your carrots .... they'll make you see in the dark .... this is false and was probably started during WW2 when the Air Force put the story out that their pilots were so good at seeing in the dark because they ate lots of carrots ... this was merely to confuse the enemy and to hide the fact that they were using radar ..... of course you don't have to tell the littlies the whole truth ;-)

Can you think of any more ????

Well today is the day that I have been looking forward to for months.  It was the first day that the littlies spent all day in school so now, grandchildren excepted, I just look after my before and after school club which gives me lots of lovely me time during the day.  Today I came home from the school run and had some brekkie and then retreated to my sewing room to work some more on a king size quilt commission.  It was wonderful to be able to potter about, sit thinking quietly about my next round of blocks, pop back downstairs to have another cuppa and peek on here to see what everyone has been up to.  Would you like to see the WIP ....

apologies for the photo quality I couldn't seem to get rid of the fuzziness

I've been popping in and out of the local charity shops and went to a mid-week car boot this week and came home with a big grin on my face

This gorgeous Victorian set apparently came from a large manor house not too far away from me.  The lady who sold it said her gran used to be housekeeper there and was given this by the owners.  Can you imagine what a whole service would have looked like!

You will all know from previous posts that one of my fetishes is for vintage children's toy china .... nestled amongst some modern repro miniature teapots was this little darling .... it dates to around 1840 and even though the handle is missing I couldn't pass it by for just £1.50 could I?

the glass candlesticks where from the bootie too and the Johnson Brothers teaset came from the CS

I've also had a result via Freecycle when a kind lady offered some old framed tapestries .... I thought I would take a chance and was delighted to collect these

again she said her gran had made these and it reminded me of my own single attempt at tapestry which sits in our loft.  When I was pregnant with first born some 29 years ago my OH bought it for me to do when I stopped work and I finished it just in time .... it was a snowy winter that year and the scene was of a Swiss chalet with snow topped mountains in the background ... very appropriate.  Must get it down from the loft and dust it off.  Call me sentimental but I just couldn't part with things like these that belonged to my grandparents.  Speaking of which I unearthed these from the shed ...

This is them in use in 1963 at Billing Squadrome in Northamptonshire .... that's me on the left hand side and my grandparents are on the right ....

The wood is still sound so after a gentle rub down I am going to nourish them with teak oil and replace the canvas ready for next summer.

these were unearthed on a visit to a local guide group fun day .... the Enid Blyton Literary Society was formed in 1995 and this is the first series of journals that they produced.  There are some gorgeous illustrations and articles ... some fireside reading for the winter methinks.

Tomorrow is auction viewing day so guess where I will be!

Red Hot Hooker

After having the boiler serviced yesterday I succumbed and turned the heating thermostat up a tincy wincy bit this morning.  I hate going into a cold bathroom first thing in the morning and love warm soft towels to wrap myself in after a shower.  Shhhh don't tell the OH !

It was dark soon after half seven this evening and I've found myself curling up in the chair with a blankie, bag of yarn and my crochet hooks most evenings this week (plus the odd bar of Bourneville's finest).  Tonight I have Little Miss Chatterbox by my side (AKA Ellie) who is on sleepover with her brother who is asleep thankfully.

So what have I been doing with my hooks???

A ripple throw and hexagon patch cushion cover - both were languishing in a bag waiting to be finished and Little Miss C has claimed the throw already.

Another round cushion cover in a slightly different pattern to the usual and a knitted cable cushion cover

and this is the start of another cushion cover in a crochet bobble pattern

and some hand warmers which should come in useful over the coming months .... I think they are a terrific idea and perfect for bargain hunting because I won't have to keep taking my gloves on and off to inspect goods and find my purse.

Which brings me nicely on to today's bargain ........

I spotted this on the flea market last week but the seller had a £20 price tag on it and being the skinflint that I am I wasn't prepared to spend that much especially as I had already purchased the toy tea set.  So I sighed and walked on.  You can imagine my excitement this morning when I saw it was still there and this time the price tag said £12 .... I offered a tenner and the rest is history!  The enamel top is in very good condition and it stands on a heavy metal folding stand ..... I think the whole of Hertfordshire must have heard me clattering Jack's buggy over the cobbles with this on the top.

Now I have a dilemma .... do I take it to the Vintage Fair or do I keep it???  The jury is still out on that one.

Oh How I Love Doing My Homework ......

can I emphasise homework not housework!!

I've been on a treasure hunt today and came home having spent more than I should have but hey ho a girl has got to treat herself now and again.  Friday is flea market day in Hitchin and every week brings a different array of goodies ..... everything from modern collectables to boxes of grimy house clearance stuff.  During the summer hols I have been somewhat restricted because in capacity as childminder I have had far too many children to be able to concentrate on my favourite pastime .... delving through other people's crap ;-)

Would you like to see my goodies???

This one is to add to my own collection of toy china .... this gorgeous tea service dates to circa 1865 and although not marked was probably made by Cork, Edge & Malkin in Burslem, Staffordshire.  The design is called 'Girl with Goat' .... goats were very popular pets in the mid 1800s and this one shows a girl in period dress playing in the garden of a large country house.

The set has four cups & saucers (there is usually 6 in a set of this type), a very elegant teapot, lidded sucrier and milk jug.  I've placed a standard tea cup next to it here so that you can get an idea of the size of Victorian play china ..... these were of course only found in the homes of wealthy people and were often replicas of the adult tea services of the day .... it is thought that they were also used as salesman's samples because they were easier to transport around.

The design is applied by transfer and just look at the delicate detail which would have been etched out on a copper plate and then transferred to the blank ceramic.  This is in a brown colour but they were also made in Mulberry, Green and the most desirable of all in Blue.

This is the inside of the tea cups .... the centre transfer print only measures a couple of centimetres across.

Our American cousins love these and over the years I have bought and sold similar sets and sent them across the pond.

A little further on was one of my favourite stalls which just has box upon box of mostly tat but if you are nosey enough there are little treasures to find ..... this unassuming little leather case just shouted at me to open it

and just look what was inside

Everything in the boxes just a quid shouted the stallholder .... enough said !

Then as I turned round to the stall opposite this box of old knitting pins caught my eye

but the biggest treasure was hidden underneath them

This is an MP Handy Knitting & Crochet Guide .... first patented in 1936 ... it has two metal plates with a numerical card in between with markers for rows, a tape measure marked across the bottom and a needle guage down the right hand side.  I was fascinated and again couldn't resist and even though I tried my powers of persuasion on the stallholder but he wouldn't budge on a tenner for the lot but he was such a lovely friendly guy I caved in and handed it over.  There are loads of pins, stitch holders, stitch counters, crochet hooks in the box so I still think I got a bargain.

There was definitely a theme going today ..... a sweet old DP Tayler pin tin for 50p from a stallholder wearing a very fetching line in knitted tea cosies!

Where does the homework come in to all of this ???? I love to delve through my reference books and the internet to gain more info on the origins of my finds and of course an idea of their worth.

Next month I will be taking a stall at my first Vintage & Home Made Fair here

I am really looking forward to attending and meeting up with lovely blogger friends

I will also be here

and here

Saturday 9th October from 11am to 3pm at Potten End Village Hall near Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire

No bargain hunting for me tomorrow though as I'm off to get my eyes tested for some new glasses .... a certain black hairy creature going by the name of Ruby decided to make a meal of mine this week!

Have a lovely weekend yourselves whatever you are doing x

The Winner and I'm going to tell you a story .....

Good Evening Ladies

Using the Lala scientific random number generator (Mr Lala) a number has been chosen and I am thrilled to say that following my desperate plea there were 17 lucky names entered into the draw. 

And the winner is .......

Sue at Vintage from the Village

Congratulations Sue

please e-mail me on debra.brown11@virginmedia with your address and I will post the goodies to you in the next couple of days

Now for my story.   Around 20 years ago I started delving into the family tree and sat for hours with my paternal grandad listening to his stories and gathering information.  He always used to say that we are from the Greens & Catchpoles in Suffolk and that somewhere along the line we were related to the infamous Margaret Catchpole.  Who I hear you say!

CATCHPOLE, MARGARET (1762-1819), convict and pioneer, was born on 14 March 1762, reputedly at Nacton, Suffolk, England, the natural daughter of Elizabeth Catchpole and a farm labourer, although the baptism of a Margaret Catchpole on the same day is recorded in the register of Hoo, near Framlingham, some fifteen miles (24 km) from Nacton. Her early life was spent on the farms where her father worked and she became a skilled horsewoman. She had little formal education, working as a servant for various families until she was employed as under-nurse and under-cook by Mrs John Cobbold, wife of an Ipswich brewer. Here she was more a member of the family than a servant, and was three times responsible for saving the lives of the children in her care; here too she learnt to read and write.

She left the Cobbolds in mid-1795 and, after being seriously ill for months and unemployed, on the night of 23 May 1797 stole John Cobbold's coach gelding, and rode it seventy miles (113 km) to London in ten hours. She was caught and sentenced to death at Suffolk Summer Assizes. The sentence was commuted to transportation for seven years, but on 25 March 1800 Margaret escaped from Ipswich Gaol using a clothesline to scale the 22-foot (6.7 m) wall. Again her sentence was death, commuted this time to transportation for life. The simple weft of these facts is criss-crossed by the warp, fiction or otherwise, of her single-minded devotion to William Laud, sailor turned smuggler: she left the Cobbolds because of their disapproval of him, she stole the horse to help him in London, then escaped from gaol to meet and marry him, but Laud was shot dead on a Suffolk beach when Margaret was recaptured.

She was transported in the and ched Sydney on 14 December 1801. For some eighteen months she worked as cook for the commissary, John Palmer, and wrote to her uncle, 'i am well Beloved By all that know me and that is a Comfort for i all wais Goo into Better Compeney then my self that is a monkest free peopell whear thay mak as much of me as if i was a Laday—Becaus i am the Commiseres Cook'. To this letter is a postscript: 'i hav at this time a man that keep me Compeney and would marrey me if Lik But i am not for marring he is a gardner he Com out as a Botnes and to Be a Lowed one hundred pound par year'. Many have without question taken this to refer to George Caley who, although he was receiving only £40 a year, could not in any sense be called a gardener. A far more likely candidate is James Gordon, sent out as a botanist by J. A. Woodford of the War Office.

Margaret worked for various well-known families, the Faithfuls, Rouses, Dights, Woods and Skinners. The Rouses respected her 'as one of ther owen family', and left her to act alone as overseer on their property at Richmond. She was proud of leading a decent and industrious life, and in her last letter to the Cobbolds on 1 September 1811, wrote 'i am Liven all a Loon as Befor in a very onest way of Life hear is not one woman in the Coloney Liv like myself'. This theme runs through all her letters together with her longing to be pardoned and return to her 'owen nativ Land'. She was pardoned on 31 January 1814 but did not return to England, spending the rest of her life keeping a small store at Richmond, acting as midwife and nurse, and always helping others. Her last service was nursing until his death a shepherd, ill with influenza on the Pitts' property near Richmond; from him she caught the infection and died on 13 May 1819.

Margaret Catchpole's letters reveal her as a warm, loving, intelligent woman of great integrity. She was one of the few true convict chroniclers with an excellent memory and a gift for recording events. Her letters of 8 October 1806 and 8 October 1809 are the only known eyewitness accounts of the Hawkesbury River floods of those years; she described graphically the countryside, the Aboriginals, and the wildlife; she wrote of the first convict coalminers at Coal River (Newcastle) and of the savagery and immorality of the inhabitants of the colony, and by her writings added richly to Australia's early history. Richard Cobbold, the son of her former employers, in The History of Margaret Catchpole, 1-3 (London, 1845) provided the source of many plays, books and articles. He distorted the facts brilliantly, rewriting and, in some cases, originating in genteel and proper English Margaret's letters from Australia to his mother. He chose to attribute Mary Reibey's successful married life to Margaret, who did not marry, and to this day the lives of the two women are still confused.

Courtesy of the the Australian Dictionary of Biography

It was a fascinating story and while dusting the bookcase today I came across my copy of the book written by the Rev Cobbold entitled The History of Margaret Catchpole ... A Suffolk Girl.  My copy has a previous owner's name written inside the cover with the date 1912 so it is a bit of antique itself.

Where is the family connection?  Well in the photo on my side-bar of My Family shows Florence my great-grandmother  ...... Florence was a Green before marriage and her mother Caroline was a Catchpole who was born in 1820 in the Mickfield area of Suffolk and her mother was Elizabeth Catchpole who was not married at the time of Caroline's birth.

  Whether I will ever establish a confirmed connection is doubtful but I like to think that there I am in some way related to this remarkable lady!

Here come the girls .....

Lala is smiling again

Thank you so much for responding to my appeal for the giveaway,  sounded a little desperate really didn't I?  I know blogland is quiet during the summer months and I have to confess to not reading my favourites thoroughly and leaving comments during the summer hols but thank goodness normal service resumes next week when the schools re-open!

I have had a thoroughly enjoyable first day of the Bank Holiday weekend with a visit to an auction house general sale    ....  I haven't been for ages and was getting withdrawal symptoms.  I love them ..... piled high with other people's tut and house clearance but you know what they say ....... one man's trash is another man's treasure ;-)

We had an hour to view and this particular auction house has four different rooms, two with furniture, one with collectables & house clearnance and another with better quality items.  I eagerly marked off the lots that I was interested in and took my place .... when I first went to an auction I was worried to death that I would scratch my nose or do something silly and end up purchasing something I didn't want by mistake and I would shake when my lots came up.   As a seasoned old hand now I set my limit and don't jump in straight away .... I find it's best to let others do the running and then take them by surprise just as the hammer is about to fall.  One important thing to remember about auctions is that the house commission has to be added which in this case is 15% of the sale price and this is then subject to VAT.

I was surprised that in these financially testing times there seemed to be an awful lot of people bidding silly money today  .... one example was two boxes of textiles which had an estimate of £30 .... I had my eye on this one and would have gone to £50 but two daft bats went into a battle of the bids and it finished on £130 .... I was gobsmacked!   There really was nothing in there that warranted that sort of money and just shows how easy it is to get carried away.   The only lot I ended up with in this room was a group of framed prints of greyhounds which included four nice vintage ones .... mine for £8  ..... cheap as chips.

After a bite to eat we wandered into the main room ..... there were three lots of vintage dolls in here and I really didn't hold out much hope of getting any of them.  I set my limit and off we went ..... the first lot was a group of four composition dolls with an estimate of £70 and the second was two walking talking Pedigree dolls estimated at £50.  Someone must have been smiling on me today because the doll collectors appeared to be absent and I got both lots for £80.

Do you want to meet them???

Here they are in a naughty state of undress as the clothes they were wearing are having a gentle soak at the moment.

The two walking talking dolls are both Pedigree although the one with the funky hairdo isn't marked .... their mechanisms are in perfect working order and as the legs move the head moves from side to side.  Their 'mamma' cry boxes are also working.  They date to the 1950s and I confess now that when I was around 8 years old one of my friends had the black one and boy did I covet it .... I have a dilemma now ..... do I treat myself and keep her but having seen their current selling price I could cover my outlay on the whole lot and have some leftover if I sold her.

The others have no markings so I am still working on identifying them.  If any of you doll enthusiast bloggers recognise them I would love to hear from you.

Hope you have all had a good day too x

Disappointed :-(

Well my little bloggeroos.   Lala is somewhat disappointed at the response to her little giveaway so here are some things I've added to try and tempt you.

some vintage knitting patterns, Ladybird Learning to Sew book, an old wooden cotton reel with pins for French knitting, vintage knitting pins and crochet hook, a pair of hand embroidered napkins

a selection of vintage buttons

some more vintage buttons

an edition of the Home Companion from November 1954

A pair of vintage bunny print children's hankies

Please don't worry if you cannot think of anything for the 6 degrees of separation part ..... I just thought it would be a bit of fun and get you all thinking.

Don't forget that the draw will take place on Bank Holiday Monday 30th August at 8.00 pm

In the meantime I hope you all have a wonderful Bank Holiday weekend and that the sun shines for you whatever you are doing x

Nellie the elephant packed her trunk ..................

and said thank you so much Freecycle!

I just happened to be in the right place at the right time yesterday and spotted an offer for a vintage travelling trunk.  The brain cell start whirring again and I thought I would take a chance as it would be ideal storage and for display at the craft markets and I was so lucky to be the receiver of this magnificent specimen ...

It has the manufacturer's name plate on the side which is John Pound & Co of London who had shops in various locations including Oxford Street and Leadenhall Street in the late Victorian/Edwardian period.  John Pound was also a Lord Mayor of London.

The surface looks like hide of some sort and it has wooden battens with brass protectors (but no key sadly) and original locks  ... internally it is very clean for it's age and has a sectioned insert.

I need to do a little detective work on how to clean it up but I don't want to strip it of its age and character.

As for the initials I think they must stand for Not Enough Holidays!!!