It's fun to shop at the E.B.A.Y

Just one word, fellas: HOT PINK TREWS! Yaaass!

So for ages and ages I was all 'I'd really like a pair of hot pink kegs but I'm worried I'll look like a tool' and Husband always nodded and said 'Yes, that's absolutely what you would look like.' And we agreed, and did a special handshake and everything. So, you can imagine Husband's delight when he came home and I was wearing THESE bad boys! 'WHAT. AM. THOSE?!' he shrieked manfully. Husband's grammar tends to desert him when he's surprised. 'THESE AM MY NEW KEGS!' I yelled back in ecstatic delight. 'I LOVE THEM WITH MY ENTIRE FACE! Plus, I am thinking that hot pink is now a neutral because these fellas go with everything!' Husband was not as thrilled as you would expect, and started going on about money and other irrelevant whitterings so I just thought about my new trews until he was done. And then I said:

'I Got Them On Ebay!'

I Got Them (It) on Ebay, or as it shall now be known IGTOE (partly for speed, partly for megalolz) is a phrase that Husband hears a lot from me. It is normally in response to the question 'How much was (were) that (those) item (s)?' and tends to be followed by 'That's because no-one in their right mind would buy that (those) from an actual shop' but he is WRONG and also FALSE because I am totally the last person on this EARTH to start wearing brightly-coloured leg garments and I told him that and he said 'right then'. So I won.

Until we had this conversation:

Me: Husband, I'm going to invest in some rubber footwear. Rubber footwear is useful for many reasons and I have prepared a brief powerpoint presentation to highlight these reasons.

Husband: *wearily* Can you not just buy them without telling me the reasons?

Me: Probably, but I've prepared the powerpoint and everything now so.....

Husband: Can you summerise the reasons?

Me: If y'like. ONE - They are waterproof, so extremely handy for gardening and also living in Scotland. TWO - They are comfortable, allowing me to wear them with anything, to any occasion. THREE -  even though they come in a variety of colours, I have chosen a neutral pair because I am sensible.

Husband: You are a grown woman, buy whatever shoes you like with the money you work very hard to earn (Ha! Husband would never say this, he only says things like 'oh, we have to pool our money to pay the mortgage or we'll be homeless' and other such trivialities)

Anyway, you can't say he wasn't warned. I put a lot of effort and research into this AND STILL Husband was less than thrilled when I came home with:

Vivienne Westwood Melissa Lady Dragons, which are made from bubblegum scented rubber. You tell me, YOU TELL ME, that these are not THE MOST amazing shoes you have ever seen with your own two een (EEN: A Scottish word meaning 'eye' or 'eyes' for those of you who are still developing their Scottish lexicon).

Husband said 'WHAT. THE. RUDE WORD. ARE THEM?' and I said 'I told you I was buying them! We agreed! They're SENSIBLE!' and he said 'How much?' and I said 'IGTOE' and he said 'Oh, right. I love them, you made totally the correct decision. Well done!' (FALSE)

Anyway, he's been proved wrong because I have worn them several times. And it has rained non-stop in Scotvegas for the last twenty years so it's handy to have shoes you can wipe dry. But the good thing about all the rain is: the garden is SPLENDID! So yesterday I donned my sensible rubber footwear and went out and picked a pile of these:

Sweet peas. Oh, nice!

I've been eBuying

Bumbaleerie Mansions was built in 1932 and I love it with my whole soul. As soon as we stepped over the threshold, I felt that the house had been waiting for us. Probably to paint over the lurid yellow the previous owners had in the living room, but that's neither here nor there. It still brings a tear to my eye, the memory of finally shaking hands with Steve 'Wide Boy' Estateagent, making small cuts on our index fingers and becoming blood brothers with the bank, signing our names in tears on the contract and skipping merrily to OUR (original 1930s) front door.

It's hard to say when the obsession with buying 1930s stuff happened. LIES! It started the minute I saw the house for sale on RightMove! Hahahaha! So now I'm on eBay roughly every four minutes, bidding for what I call 'Nice Stuff' and Husband calls 'What is this doing in my house?'

Here are some things I have bought from eBay for Bumbaleerie Mansions:

A sideboard for a FIVER! 

(Husband says I should tell the truth about this magnificent bargain. And I AM telling the truth, but he wants me to add that we had to pay £70 to get it shipped from Wolverhampton or somesuch so it TECHNICALLY didn't only cost a fiver. But actually, it did.)



Four Govencroft Jugs for a varying number of bucks. Don't want to be too accurate because I don't think I ever told Husband how much they were, and I really am too fatigued to get into THAT now.

Handy, isn't it? It's a bookend, a knitting needle holder AND a jug all in one! It's the Optimus Prime of the jug world.

A picture of a dog, from I think 1935 which turned out to be not only hideous but also very scary and sinister. It is now in the loft.

A postcard from Blackpool, dated 1932 from one lady to her friend. I love this very, very much due to my obsession with handwriting and also with 'things what are old'. It is the perfect combination for me.

Anyway, the point of this is: if you, like I do, simply type '1930' into eBay and gleefully scroll through twenty bah-millzon pages of unadulterated BLISS then sometimes you find yourself bidding on what others might call 'have you lost your senses?'. BEHOLD:

 Or, to put it another way:

A hundred million old hankies! Some with roses:

A lot with lace:

A couple of mad ones:

and a very special one INDEED:

a KING GEORGE VI CORONATION ONE!! FROM 1937! Can you even IMAGINE my excitement? I was BESIDE myself. I immediately summoned Husband, who refused to acknowledge the magnificence of the moment, apart from nodding and muttering 'Oh nice', which I don't even think he meant.

Listen, I have to confess, I was a bit worried about coming across an eighty-year old bogey but it didn't happen. They were all as clean as an eighty-year old handkerchief would be.

Now! Some making news! Due to not being able to start myfriendsnephews quilt, I decided to crack on to making a hexagonal one. Ooooooh, I hear you say, a hexagonal quilt? You must have nerves of steel! You are the bravest person I have ever even HEARD of! Yes, that's true, I am.

Well. I'm also pretty lazy. Making a proper hexagonal quilt takes ages because you have to cut individual paper templates, then pin them to the fabric, then tack in the seams, then overstitch them BY HAND, over and over and over again. And I obviously COULD do it if I wanted to, OBVIOUSLY it's not that I COULDN'T do it, which I COULD but maybe I think life's too short. So I am machine stitching mine. And I am cutting the fabric in piles. And I am not top stitching anything. Here's how it's going so far:

 The sharp-eyed will have noticed that there is not a picture of the hexagons sewn together. That is because the sewn together bit possibly does not look as good as the rose-tinted vision of perfection that my inner eye conjured. But it might if Husband irons it, which he is refusing to do.  I tried to explain that probably no-one had ever thought of doing this before (not true - there are millions of tutorials online, but Husband doesn't know that), and PROBABLY even just ATTEMPTING such a project made me some kind of VISIONARY in the making world, and PROBABLY HRH Michael Parkinson HIMSELF would want to come out of retirement just to interview me, but he won't have it. And it's not going to iron itself, so it is resting quietly in the sewing room until my next bout of creative genius.