Mamas Little Babies

Ooo, the mail fairy came to visit me today!

I love the mail fairy - and I especially love it when the mail fairy visits me at work. Opening a little surprise package just puts a shine on things. And what nice packages these are too! The attention to detail is wonderful: the ribbon, the little charm attached to a safety pin - beautiful.

And look what was inside: two necklaces. Two! What a luxury.

One is of a baby in utero, with a woman's hand (at least, I presume it's a woman's) reaching in to cradle the ankle gently. ..... or is it? Might it in fact be reaching in to yank out the child, who almost seems as though it's curled up in an effort to protect itself? Hmmm.

I think I like this one because it appeals to my fetish for weird medical paraphernalia - it's got quite the scientific aspect to it in respect of the detail in the picture, don't you think? But there's also a certain tenderness that I also find very appealing. And the sinister hint? That's just the icing on the cake.

The other one is a lovely colourful piece, which reminds me of threads of saffron, and spices, and the colours of the Middle East. I think it's very energising and feminine at the same time.

These come to me from Mamas Little Babies on Etsy ... a store I found when I was browsing one day aaaages ago. As I tend to do, quite regularly. Have I mentioned how much I love Etsy?

I added the store as a favourite and now (almost six months later) I've actually purchased something. I feel bad that it took me so long! So this should give you hope, if you have an Etsy store like I do with lots of hearts but not a great deal of sales, that they might still come good for you. You never know.

I love these pieces, they're so different from one another but they're both gorgeous. They're made of printed plastic, so they're very light, but also very strong. All of her work is very whimsical, but has this interesting 19th century flavour as well. Gorgeous! I highly recommend you check it out.

I'm going to wear the one with the baby in utero to work tomorrow. It should generate some interesting comments from my colleagues .....

Beautiful buttons by LouLou

I woke up this morning and one of the first things I did was caress my lovely blood transport box.

I'm going to line it with pretty paper and use it to store my silks in. Who else do you know will use a human blood carrying case to keep their pretty things in?!

I bet the previous post surprised some of you. It's a lesser-known facet of my personality ... but for some of you who know me well, it won't have come as a surprise at all to see the arch side of my soul emerging for just a moment.

But time now to leave my fascination with medical objects to one side. I will return to it, I'm sure, but right now I need to show you the beautiful things I bought at the Made N Thornbury market from Saturday. You can check out the wrap-up from the day over at Curlypops, she has done a wonderful job of capturing the event!

I have a rule when it comes to markets, and it's this: NO BUYING ANYTHING BEFORE LUNCHTIME. It seems to work ... that way I get to do the rounds of all my lovely neighbour stallholders, and I can spend some time ruminating about all the gorgeous items I'd love to purchase.

I was *very* restrained this time around. I desperately wanted one of the mini totes from Pepperberry & Co, but My One True Love and I are trying to enforce the New Frugality (it's an epoch, believe me), and I knew what he'd say if I came home with yet another gorgeous bag.

So I limited myself to a selection of mini beauties from ButtonsbyLouLou ... (because they're tiny and I knew I could bring them home without them being noticed). Also, my new short crop demands pretty hair ornaments. World of small clips and bobbypins, here I come.

I think my favourite is the badge at the very top. It's so fresh and bright and feminine - the perfect thing to wear to the office on a miserable Melbourne day when everyone else is coccooned in their safety layers of black. Not me, though! Colour ahoy!

Today for example, I am wearing a skirt and top made from a silk cotton I bought in Beijing on holiday a few years ago. It has a yellow base, with blue and red houndstooth print. The skirt is A-line and has a centre pleat with yellow button highlights.

I've teamed it with a cream top underneath, a blue bauble necklace, and low blue heels in exactly the same shade.

Overall, the effect is quite stunning, and usually has *exactly* that effect - it stuns people I work with in the corporate office - and not always in a good way. Some people are frightened of anything other than black, navy and grey.

But not me! I don't do neutrals that well. Colour ahoy, I say, colour ahoy!

Not for the squeamish ....

Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod, this is so COOOOOOL!

So cool in fact that I have to postpone my post-market Made N Thornbury post that I had planned, because I've got to blog about this object first. I am metaphorically jumping up and down with excitement. It's a giant trunk - and yes, it says what you think it says:

"Human Blood - Handle with Care".

It's my newest acquisition and I love it even more than I thought I would when I spotted it through the heaving crowd of people at Camberwell Market this morning.

Ostensibly I'd gone to the market with My One True Love to buy buttons from the lovely button ladies there, as well as some new soaps for my next market stall. I did that (pictures of buttons to come later), and found two fantastic succulents and grabbed those as well.

Then, rounding the corner, I turned my head and it was like a beacon of light shone down from the heavens and onto this trunk, which was crammed into the back of a van deep at the rear of one of the stalls. It was as simple as that - I turned my head, and my eyes locked onto it.

This trunk is a combination of the things I love. I love tins of all kinds. I love tins with text. I love giant storage boxes. I love hinged lids. I love heavy buckles, and big handles.

But most of all, I love love love medical paraphernalia. LOVE IT TO DEATH! (Sorry, I'm excited - I didn't mean to yell. And please pardon the very bad and wholly unintentional pun.)

I don't know why, but I do. I think I can trace it back to the time my father gave me a pair of surgical clamps his dad used to own. They were smooth, and cool, and so deeply and darkly medical. Almost sinister. But clinical, at the same time. Such a lovely contradiction of health and harm, those clamps were.

I've still got them, of course. And I've added a collection of apothecary jars with ground glass stoppers. My button collection lives in the huge one marked with a Benzoic Acid label. And I've got pharmaceutical bottles of different colours, including sought-after collectables, and a green one with the lid fused shut that says Pheno-Barbitol.

Ah. There's something almost calming about them. I wouldn't call it a fetish per se, but it's certainly a sharp interest.

And this new acquisition is a fantastic addition. I'm going to store fabric in it (of course, what else would I use a blood box for?), and I think it's going to live in the sitting room where I can see it every day.

Eventually it'll go into the sewing room I'm planning in my head, once we've sadly farewelled the Amateur Actress and I've commandeered her room.

But until then, I'm leaving it out so it can be seen in all its hinged and wondrous glory. And I will feast my eyes upon it.