I just went out to buy milk ...

... the other day, and came home with a small table and a sugar bowl and cream jug set... 

Does that ever happen to you?

The table is very small, missing one of its curled feet, and has a pattern on the top made with metal wire. It was mine for under £ 4! My initial instinct was to paint it white, but now I am toying with the idea of keeping it as it is, somewhere in the garden...

... or maybe white, after all? Help...!

Lust for rust...

Is there perhaps a subtle symbolism in my feeling a little blog rusty after a week's quarantine, or is there some other reason rust seems to jump at me wherever I look at the moment?

The car boot sale season has kicked off here in the UK, and even if last week's only find was an old Fortnum & Mason basket for £ 3, the steam fair offered a few more tables of glorious vintage patina (read: ravishing rust...).

These delicious dragons duped me with one rusty glance, and the fact that they are cast iron, VERY heavy, ex-stands for a belfast sink, did not deter this stubborn Swede. Smiling through clenched and slightly sweaty teeth, I happily carried them around the steam fair for another few hours.

Why? Because I am in lust with rust...

Rusty nails in blog revival...

Now, what is it about a rusty nail that makes me so excited?

And how can a scruffy old wooden box - found at a steam fair junk sale on Sunday - make my heart pound a little bit faster?

And how is it that two small shoe lasts from the same junk dealer NEEDED to come with me to the Swenglish house?

What has my life come to when I am nearly sobbing with delight over my new laptop, unwrapped five minutes ago and already glued to the palms of my hands...?

It must be the blogging bug that is holding my common sense captive, the junk junkie in me demanding more room and the blog addict whispering help, help from the silence of a laptopless (now there is an interesting-looking word...) home...

The Swenglish bird is back. And I have a lot of blog reading to catch up on.

Hello again!

Thinking inside of the box...

Two weeks. Two weeks of loveliness have started. Two weeks of no school, no child care, no mummy time, no going to the supermarket on my own and actually remembering what to buy. Do not get me wrong, I do love my children more than life itself. I just love them a teensy-weensy bit less in supermarkets.

Perhaps that is why the consolation prize seemed so much sweeter, and I so much more worthy, yesterday at the local garden centre, where their "Bygones" section seemed to hypnotise me to walk straight into its vintage arms. There it was, and at a bargain price. I do not like to think of myself as a materialistic shopoholic, but an old wooden apple box... does that count?

The infatuation was instant, and with it came a small lavender "tree" and a few more of the grape hyacinths I love so much (the larger one boasting to explode into two colours soon).

The series of images below may appear a little repetitive to those of you less besotted with the motifs, and to you I apologize. My delight in watching the delicate flowers against the rough wood, the blues and the light greyish-green againts the wooden brown, well, I confess I got a little carried away. Carried away times seven, to be precise.







Now, if only I could make my mind up what to do with this new woody friend of mine...

From Russia with love...

This stunning tin box arrived in the Swenglish household a few years ago, from a friend who, at the time, was residing in Azerbadjan. My Russian is a little bit rusty, shall we say, but I think it is a tin that once, a hundred years ago or so, contained chocolates.



A little scruffy, sadly devoid of chocolate, but with a vintage factor so high it almost makes up for the lack of chocolate.

Almost.

Peek-a-boo...

Just outside the glazed doors in the dining area, some of the newly planted pensees and violets form a nice little circle of potted friends, and we spend the days playing peek-a-boo with each other through the different panes of the door.

Some cousins, rather untamed and with a penchant for living a little on the wild side, peer at us from underneath a garden bench, and there are moments where I am quite convinced they arch their backs just a little bit extra to show off their natural beauty and rub their freedom in the noses of the manicured but restricted potted lot.

Oh, the colour of this little beauty, the perfectly rounded petals, the little face in the middle, giving it that shy and innocent look... Ah, Mummy Nature, you did well on this one!

And now to something completely different. Try as I might, I could not find a catchy - or in fact any link at all that did not seem grotesquely contrived -from the violet to this, my latest second-hand shop find. It is probably not as old as I would like to imagine it is, and I am not sure how I feel about the painted design, but with considerable contemplation, perhaps I could find a place or purpose for it. Any suggestions for a small still life featuring black kitchen scales, anyone?

A suitable case...?

This black beauty just sat there in the second-hand shop the other day, looking very black, very beautiful and as if it had more than one captivating story to tell. As I happened to be in a story-listening kind of mood that day, I quickly decided that this suitcase, once the property of someone with the initials F.I., would accompany me on my journey home. Named journey is about a six-minute walk, seven if the wind is against you or you are distracted by the bakery on the way, but Black Beauty did not seem to mind the lack of exotic paths or bustling stations.

I cannot help but wonder, though, where it has been before. What has it seen, where has it travelled? Has it seen pain or just happy holiday makers on its journeys?





The Coronet Cine Camera (found among the heirlooms of the man in the house) seemed to enjoy shaking leather with somebody of a more mature composition. I then invited a pair of antique spectacles and a few old Swedish books, and the geriatric party was well on its way.

None of us are getting any younger, I suppose... But dear old Mark Twain made a beautiful point: Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been...

So, wrinkly greetings to you all!