It is a truth universally acknowledged .....

.... that a car boot sale is an excellent form of exercise.  I can confirm this because I know that this morning, at my two usual car boot sales, I took 19,425 steps, travelled 12.84 km and used 1,824 calories.  Who needs the gym, eh?   I know all this because Northern Man's well-publicised lack of a romantic side took over when it came to my birthday in January and he gave me a Fitbit.  Once, we had covered the 'does this mean you think I'm too fat' question, I became a little obsessed and now find myself making sure that I get my 10,000+ steps in every day.

Of course, the steps taken don't show the effort involved in carrying the goodies I buy, so car boot sales must be good exercise for the arms too!  Not that it took much effort to carry today's purchases ....

Vintage toy dogs ....

....a velvet table runner, and other must-have lovlies.

There's not a lot of weight in little bits of painted wood ...

.

.... or in an embroidered hanky holder, but I must have used up a few calories carrying this plant pot back to the car!

This morning I bought a what-is-it .....

Today was the first truly enjoyable boot of the season:  the sun shone, the ground was dry and I managed to buy some things which make me want to smile in a manner that would make a normal person think twice about getting into a confined space with me.

But first, the what-is-it?  I know that there are many types of what-is-it? and that they come in all shapes and sizes.  My what-is-it? has beading around the front and back, a curved decorative detail on the top together with a handle for carrying and a clip on the side to keep it closed ....

It is beautifully painted on the front ....

and on the back ....

It has shelving inside ....

And a reassuring label ....

So, what-is-it?  The padded lined section at the top (which could have been added later) would indicate a sewing box but it seems a very strange configuration of shelving and why would a sewing box need to be heat resisting?  If anyone has any ideas, I would be delighted to hear them.

I also bought ...

A vintage velvet donkey and another knitted one ....

A wonderful velvet covered chocolate box decorated with what seems to be part of a dead bird....

A glorious velvet covered doll's chair and a knitted sailor doll ...

Embroidered pictures and a box of filthy wooden building bricks and wooden jigsaw bricks.

What a wonderful morning!

Catching up ....

I have a job to do today:  I have to proof read Youngest Child's dissertation.  As my brain is unused to anything more challenging than a good thriller these days, I am finding the responsibility burdensome and am employing various avoidance tactics to get away from it.  It is amazing what you can find to do around a fairly cleanish house if you have to:   I have cleaned the front room windows, scrubbed out the cats' bowls and washed down the kitchen floor.  I still 79 more pages to go so the house will be immaculate by the time I get to the end!

So that is why I am sitting down to write a long overdue post.  Northern Man and I have not been sitting still for the last few months.  During October half term last year we went to Jordan.  I have never been anywhere where the kindness of strangers was so evident.  We lost count of the number of times we heard 'Hello, where are you from?  What is your name?  Welcome to Jordan!' .  This was, you understand, always from men and children - women were silent and covered from head to foot.  It is, however, amazing how they managed to reveal so much of their fine figures while wearing long, black, tailored coats!

We visited Petra and clambered around for hours over the huge site. 

We shunned the offers of donkey rides up to the Place of High Sacrifice and The Monastery ...

.... choosing the satisfaction of completing the climb on foot.  Many of the young sloe-eyed Bedouin men who make a living on the site offering donkey, horse or camel rides,  were made up as Captain Jack Sparrow.  I haven't yet been able to discover whether they were the inspiration for the Johnny Depp make-over or whether they have simply adopted the look from the film.

In February half-term we went to Dubai.  As we sat on the run way with the plane rocking from side to side in the in-coming storm, we wondered whether we should have spent some time putting the furniture up on bricks before we left and how Only Son would cope should the water start coming up through the floor.  As it was, we needn't have worried:  the building up of the banks at Maidenhead and the wonderful Jubilee River (I won't hear a word said against the Environment Agency) saved us from the Thames.  Although the house must have been almost floating, there was no ground water flooding and we stayed dry.

I found Dubai a strange place:  being English and used to cities, towns and villages which have developed organically for over a thousand years it was odd to go somewhere so very new.  The attention to detail and quality of the infra-structure are amazing:  there are block-paved pavements everywhere despite the fact that it is too hot to walk outside and the flyovers are painted or have decorative motifs on them.   Despite the huge number of road traffic accidents every month, many of them resulting in fatalities, we only saw one car that had a scrape on it.  The body repair shops must do a roaring trade!

It was nice to see some old there amongst all the bright, shiny, new ....

These beautiful wooden dhows load up on the creek against a back-drop of skyscrapers.  They carry everything and anything:  cars, air conditioning units, American-style fridge freezers and childrens' plastic chairs.

In between, I have, of course, been knitting.  I have mentioned before the lovely Osborne and Muir books of knitted dogs and cats.  In an idle moment I picked one of these up again and had another go at a dog and, once again, I was disappointed with the results.  I am very happy to believe it is me, but the patterns never seem to turn out as nicely as the photos in the book.  I thought about it for a while and decided that my main problem is the gusset that most of the patterns have so I set about producing a pattern which had no gusset.  It took me a while:  I knitted the tummy first, then joined in the simplified legs, knitted the tail as a piece of the body, cast off the back pieces together to make a nice clean join and then knitted the head, again without a gusset.

Now I have to wait for my next fair to see what people think of them.  Unfortunately, I will not be at The Vintage Bazaar in Hartley Wintney on Saturday 29th March (it is Only Son's birthday weekend) but, if you are in the neighbourhood I recommend a visit.  Good luck to Lizzie and all her stall holders for the event.

I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes, yarn is all around us and so the knitting grows .....

It is a time of year for finishing things off.  Northern Man has a problem with finishing things:  if he does a DIY job the tools sit where he last used them for weeks;  he has an issue with using up the last of the mayonnaise from a jar and he deserts a tube of toothpaste with at least two or three good squeezes left in it.  I was not surprised, therefore, when I found several almost-but-not-quite-used-up bags of potatoes in the fridge last night when I went to make the shepherd's pie.  The first was a bag of Vivaldi potatoes - we know who he was.  The second was a bag of Chopin potatoes - we know who he was.  The third was a bag of Maris Piper potatoes - who was he?  Is there such a place as Maris or was he a non-geographically-specific figure from Scottish history, heard piping mournfully across the Highlands at the end of the year to welcome Hogmanay?  Perhaps he followed the lead of Scottish football teams in not being named after his place of origin - Queen of the South (Dumfries), Raith Rovers (Kirkcaldy), St Mirren (Paisley), St Johnstone (Perth), Hibernian (Leith), Queen's Park (Glasgow), Albion Rovers (Coatbridge), Heart of Midlothian (Edinburgh), etc, etc.

Every year we have to move the The Box in order to make room for the oversized Christmas tree that Big Girl and Youngest Child insist I buy.

 The Box, which stores the-things-I'm-going-to-do-something-with-one-day, has to be partly emptied and this is when I come face to face with my own inability to finish a project.  I decided that this holiday I would finally put this right.


A knitted gargoyle has been in a dismembered state for  at least two years .....

A knitted devil who was completed all except one foot!  Why?  What can have been so important that I got distracted at that late stage and left him?

These knitted dolls have been partly knitted and partly put together for months.  I had a problem with the hair which I feel I have solved and with the face, which I have not.

And finally, the knitted dragons produced off-spring ......

Happy New Year and every blessing to you all.

Fortune telling and glue gunning ......

This morning I went to Chiswick car boot sale, not to sell, but to wander in the hope of finding a thing or two to buy.    As I was passing one stall I heard a lady ask the dealer if he had any books on fortune telling.  The dealer looked her straight in the eye and said 'Next week'.  I can only hope that she can see far enough ahead not to go back next Sunday in the hope that he is a man of his word.

I was tickled to find a professional sign writer there with beautifully painted things.  He had a collection of vintage saws for sale.  They were painted with opulent scroll work around the words 'Tattoos Removed'.

I have indulged myself with the purchase of a hot glue gun, Who knew there was so much fun to be had?  Everything is getting a stick-on make over ....

Sets of painted drawers with crochet flowers ...

Baskets, boxes and a hat box with crochet flowers .....

and a pretty vintage basket with knitted and crocheted flowers.  I've taken this basket to lots of fairs and it has refused to sell.  Add a few flowers and it disappeared first thing yesterday morning!  This could be the future .....

Summer's lease hath all too short a date.

In the knowledge that we are almost at the end of the car boot sale season, I went fair distances on Saturday in search of things to buy.  My route took me across country along lanes and byroads and, as it was still very early, wildlife was out in large numbers.  As I swerved around the tenth or eleventh pheasant, I mused on the joke nature played on them - delicately camouflaged so as not to be seen by predators but so stupid that they cannot stay hidden.

Here are some of the things I collected today ....

Lovely painted paper mache coffee filter paper holders. I don't understand why anyone would want a coffee filter paper holder, even one as beautiful as these, as it seems to me that they are the ultimate dust collectors.  However, I didn't buy these to sell - they are staying in my collection.

Pretty trios and a very damaged but charming porcelain flower box.

A velvet hat box with the strangest porcelain flower decoration glued to the top and vintage crochet gloves.

Carved wood panels and vintage wooden shoe shapers ...

Isn't he great?  No hint of camouflage here!

I welcome little fishes in with gently smiling jaws!

I was reminded of this poem on Wednesday when the doors of the hall were opened and 160 new year 7s, with shining morning faces, poured through to begin their secondary school education.  The full poem, as you will likely know, goes:-

How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in

With gently smiling jaws!

But rest assured, I have not yet been known to feast on any part of a year 7 student ....

On to other things.  The nasty boot, which has been my constant companion this summer, has gone, the bandage has been removed and my battered, puffy, scarred foot is once again in daylight.  It was an interesting experience wearing the boot:  complete strangers struck up conversations in queues, on trains, in restaurants and at the car boot sale.  People got out of my way, apologised for bumping into me and offered me seats.  The assumption was that I had done something to my foot by accident and I had to explain that, actually, I had decided to put myself through the last, very boring, six weeks of inconvenience.

We did have some amusing times together, the boot and I, particularly with the business of keeping clean.  One hotel in which we stayed had no bath (didn't check in advance - lesson learned) but, luckily, did provide little plastic bags to dispose of STs, etc.  I discovered that the plastic bag was a lovely snug fit over my foot and its bandage so that was how I showered for several days.  We also had a few days at the Scottish estate and there is no bath there either, only a shower with a waist level barrier around it.  I knew that I would have to shower with my foot over the barrier in order to keep it dry and I was so focused on this that I forgot to take the shoe off my good foot.  Once I noticed the squishy feeling, I was so suprised that I immediately put my bad foot down in the shower to get my shoe off!

In two week's time, on 21st September, it will be the Vintage Bazaar at Hartley Witney.  There will be lots of exciting stall holders there selling lovely things and I shall be there too. Here are some of the things which will be coming with me ....