I wish I was a rich girl #4

Today’s shopping is all about cats as a tribute to our 13-year old cat Frida who we had to put down yesterday. Her kidney had stopped working so there was nothing to be done. She was a remarkable little cat who lost her sight when she war around seven, but didn’t allow that to stop her. I think she saw it as a challenge, not a limitation. She was easily the cutest cat I have ever seen and the smallest too- she was absolutely tiny. Despite that she has left a big hole in our lives. No more bellowing at my feet when I cook, in case I would forget to give her something nice to eat. No more demands to my darling that he was to make the bed NOW and then lay down on it so she could take a nap in his chest. We’ll miss her a lot, even if we still have four cats and a dog to keep us occupied.

Living the vintage lifestyle?

This is something I have been thinking about, from time to time, since I started this blog. When reading this thread at The Fedora Lounge about what it is that attracts you to the vintage areas, I started to think about it again.

Min boudoir

I guess my Swedish speakers already know about this new magazine, but if not, then I think you should. Min boudoir. To quote the website it’s “A Swedish magazine for all things retro/burlesque/vintage/pinup in Sweden (incl Finland, Norway and Denmark)” The founder is the beautiful Tifa De Leone.



The first number is out and as I understand it is meant to be a quarterly magazine. 60 pages on high quality paper which made it very nice to handle. Well, the reading was very nice too. Interviews, shopping tips, music and fashion, beautiful photographs, btw, which made for a good reading mix in my view. I especially enjoyed to relationship column which had two answers, one appropriate for 1956 and one for 2011. And not t be missed- my hairdresser Retroella gives hairstyling tips in every issue.

I really hope this will take off as I think it's such a great idea. There are similar magazines in English, but I think it’s great with one in Swedish. There is a growing scene for vintage and burlesque in Sweden and it’s nice to get a Scandinavian angle. And Min boudoir is no slapdash magazine, it’s obvious that a lot of hard work has been put into it.

(Picture borrowed from http://www.minboudoir.se/)

I wish I was a rich girl #3

When I was a kid, hair combs were brightly coloured pieces of plastic. Not very pretty at all. It took me a while to realize that many of those pretty hair ornaments that you see in old movies and pictures are actually combs and forks. Here is a collection of Art Deco and 1940’s combs for your pleasure.

1940’s celluloid tortoise comb. I really like the shape!

Brown skirt

Not the best of pictures, but this skirt have been finished for a while and it seems next to impossible to find daylight and someone to take a pic at the same time right now. The patterns is the skirt part of one of my 1940's dress patterns. An A-line like the grey skirt, but this one fits much better. The fabric is a wool blend, a totally hateful fabric that just didn't want press properly. Apart from that I like it. The blouse is the Betty blouse from Puttin' On the Ritz that I bought at the same time as my coat.



Also me in glasses- totally non-vintage one and what I ususally look like when I haven't curled my hair. Which DO happen. :)

The good china

When my maternal grandparents got married in 1943 they bought a new, smart set of china to have as their “good one”. In time my grandmother collected several sets, but this first one was in use all of their life. And eventually I inherited I use it as my good china too. The set is called (Blå) vinranka (blue wines) and was designed in 1939 by Arthur Percy for Gefle porslinsfabric. It became quite popular and was in production until 1969. My grandmother used to call it “flytande blå” (flowing blue), which seems to be a quite common nickname for it, due to the way the blue floats out. Percy also designed a red version which was much more distinct, but never seem to have become as popular.

Agatha Christie

(Picture source: http://teawithmarykate.wordpress.com/)

I couldn’t very well ignore Agatha Christie, could I? The 1940’s was part of her Golden Age; she wrote 12 novels during that time, though her whole career span over 50 years after debut in 1920. If you are familiar with her works through the very excellent TV adaptations of Poirot, with David Suchet and the visually beautiful but not quite as good adaptations of the Miss Marple mysteries, then it may surprise you to that not all the Poirot- books takes place in the 1930’s and not every Miss Marple is set in the 1950’s. And not all of her stories feature her two most famous sleuths, of the 40’s books, six are Poirot novels and two are Miss Marple.

I started to read Christie’s crime novels when I was around 12 and I still re-read them. It’s true that she often uses stereotypes instead of fully rounded characters and if you read enough of her novels you learn to recognize them, like the handsome never-do well man with just a little to close between the eyes, the vamp, and the straight-backed military man and so on- but you can never count on who is the murderer. Of course, having read them all, I know who the murdered is, but I enjoy reading them anyway. Christie had a knack for describing atmospheres and they don’t have to be spectacular to appeal. Try reading 4.50 From Paddington when you feel sick to death on household chores. I promise, when you have followed Lucy scrubbing the kitchen table, you can feel her enthusiasm. It helps that she does so looking stylish too.