Saving Grace

When you think back to when you were young (for some of us that is longer ago than others I know!) did you like the same stuff that you do now? It's quite an interesting question really. When I was 17 & I left home I went to Wellington to the School for Dental Nurses. For the first year we lived in "The Glen", a wonderful old brick building in Kelburn that had been housing trainee Dental Nurses for over 50 years. Sadly, we were to be the final draft to live there. I loved living in this gracious building.

   Even then, I filled some old tin cans with dirt & ferns from up the back of the hostel & kept them in my room. And there were flowers to pick from the gardens & two old fat cooks that made wonderful old-fashioned meals & who snored so loudly they never heard us sneaking in to the pantry in the middle of the night for leftovers...especially the bread & butter pudding that was made in huge baking trays!

I would walk for hours around Wellington hunting for vintage finds & old fabric in my jandals (thongs, flip, flops) & on the weekend I would head off to Victoria Street Market looking for loveliness, wandering through the Botanical Gardens on the way & stopping at the wholefoods shop & fruiterers. Many times I would carry a banana box all the way home, up & down a million stairs, until I thought that my arms would fall off before I got there! After buying the essential item of an old potty I then bought a Singer treadle sewing machine. It only went forwards but the stitching quality was so much better than the modern machines will ever be.
Of recent months, through my engagement with Pinterest, I have been quite intrigued to find that I still love exactly the same things as I did back then. Through the years it has been fairly thrashed into us in one way or another that we should always be thinking of others first. I really wish someone had told me sooner, that the more we work out who we are, the more content we are likely to be & more able to give of ourselves to others. I have become quite fascinated with the huge personality variations that I see expressed through something as simple as a personal online scrapbook. Even the titles of people's boards tell a story...I laughed & laughed at "Yo Momma is Pinteresting"! I think it would be a worthwhile exercise for anyone to have a go at Pinterest even just for a week or two & would certainly help a child to figure out a bit better the things that interest them & even maybe their passions...chances are those things won't change that much through the years.
Before Pinterest I began making scrapbooks..you know the old-fashioned sort where you rip stuff out of magazines & stick pictures in to a blank book. No wonder I had kept an article entitled "Saving Grace" from a New Zealand magazine from a year or two ago. The story still makes my heart sing!
It is the tale of a wonderful woman from Nelson called Sue Bevin, who, when she was four cut up her bedspread & shortened her curtains when she was supposed to be having a nap! When Sue's only son Marcus died at the age of 29, suffering from severe back pain & insomnia she began to sew. She says "I was drawn to create so I took clothes from my wardrobe & from op shops then renovated & lavished decoration on them".

Soon after her son died a friend asked Sue if she would foster a needy baby. At first she said no, but eventually caved & has since fostered 11 children. What a lovely combination, salvaged clothes & rescued children. Many of the children's dresses she makes have 3 or 4 layers & she likes to put "something exciting"- a secret pocket, a snippet of embroidery, a hidden swirl of lace - on each layer."

As a teenager Sue wanted to be an artist but her mother told her that artists were beatniks. So she went nursing instead. In 1989 Sue did some Volunteer Service Abroad in Samoa assessing needs & running sewing classes. "In the villages there were sewing machines donated by the United States Navy after WWII. By chance a Burmese engineer was stationed in Apia & he taught her how to take a sewing machine apart & fix it & make new knobs from Coca-Cola bottle caps".
 The beautifully dressed girls are from left to right named Porche, Ella & Madeleine.

Earlier this year I found this divine 1950's dress on trade me. It doesn't actually quite fit..oh you mean that size 12! But I adore it non-the-less.

 A sudden very cold spell, much snow in other parts of the country, gave me just the excuse to wear my lovely old velvet spring green coat last week.

I have been saving one or two pretty cups to make in to pin cushions but then I saw this cute idea on Pinterest..a cup in a cup. Works nicely.

 A rather sallow "English Garden" but still valiantly blooming through the winter.

 Winter roses (the other kind) immediately droop if picked with stems but will happily float all week in water like this.

 The angels enjoyed a wash & hanging about on a sunny Thursday afternoon.

 What a delightful find this lovely picture was yesterday out at The Mart in Havelock North.  

Yes indeed, my love of vintage things has surely been my saving grace too.

I am so glad for all that I have right now...more would truly not be more.

Lovely to see you.

 Hope that your week is filled with simple beauty & contentment.

 ♥♥♥♥♥

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