Discovery in EC1

Last week, I went to the Leather lane market, wehre every Thursday and Friday, there is a man selling art, fashion, and architecture magazines amongst others, for 1 pound rather than the normal price fo up to 10 times that. The secret is that those magazines may be a month or two old, but as I am not really setting trends, what do i care? I sometimes find inspirational magazines on a particular subject or monographies or an architect...

Last week i did not find any i particularly liked, so what i did was walk towards the charity shop to see if they had any nice fabrics... Lately, the ladies complain too much. As if they did not like that the fabrics are sold well, and fast, and sometimes, rather than taking new stock out they wait for weeks... So i did not find anything either.

I was heading home when suddenly i noticed the fabric lady of the market itself, who is generally so busy that i never get close enough to be able to asses wether i like or not what she sells... This time it was driziling so i had a chance to have a look, and i found three good fabrics. All were 1.5 m wide and 2 or 3 pound the metre... depending on the material... I was so impressed that i though I mentioned it as a reference.

Txakurra

This is my second toy for the Toy Society´s Christmas project... I am not sure what would this be used as, but i thought that would be nice for a hard working mom to find it and maybe use it to pin her needles :-)

I also made a Daruma san fro my friend SHunji and his fiance, to bring them luck in their new life together...

"A few years ago, whilst i was in japan, there were elections. One of the candidates was holding a gigantic Daruma san whilst another one handed him a marker for him to paint black the one eye, that this doll has white.

I asked my husband about this, and he explaiend that people buy or make daruma san dolls to ask them a wish. When you ask for the wish, you paint an eye, when you are granted the wish , you paint the second one, and you burn the doll."... http://plumasdeperro.blogspot.com/2009/10/pretty-things.html

Customizing

I am getting into the idea of changing things i dont like.

For start, I have plenty of cloths which are not "perfect" and that would most definitely benefit from a change.

Earlier in the year I changed a jacket which was far too large for me and by making a few (reversible if needed) changes, I now have a jacket which I have used quite a bit.

At the time, i was considering to bring another one to the charity shop, but hanged on to it on the hope that a success would encourage me to take action with that one too.

Today i have pinned and basted the jacket, and even had a crazy idea to do with sorting out an awfull ribbon/belt-wanna-be/bow... See the images and feel free to comment if there is anything that may bennefit the progress. (I have to confess that I am a bit nervous about my mom´s reaction ... :-)

Also, yesterday, I bought my first "vintage" jacket.... which looks good enough to accept a few changes like the buttons, which I would ideally like to change for some leather ones... I am going to do a bit of research to give iot a twist.