Sweet Fabric [Search results for I SPY] 

Click image to enlarge & play I SPY.

A great theme this week from Leah.

I have quite a few collections but this is my most carefully displayed.

Op shopped pillowcases. Always my first point of call. I love this collection.

A little game of I SPY to keep it interesting.

Something Lark made
Cherries, a giraffe & a ladybird too

Angela's kits
& something by Pip

An autumn leafed tree
& Brooke's bag to make tea.

2 thimbles, a hedgehog & hearts that are blue

I love I SPY & I think I'm going to give it a regular "spot" on my blog.

If you had a crack go & check you got it right here.

I had reason to be at The Mall in West Heidelberg yesterday. A place I haven't been since about 1985.

I stepped out of my car and as I took my first steps towards Cambridge Arcade I felt my scalp tingle and every hair on my body stand on end.

I could hear Non's Italian heeled shoes clip clopping beside me and I could smell her sickly sweet perfume. Max Bygraves was singing somewhere in the distance. Non's knitting was spilling out of the hessian bag I was carrying for her. I smiled knowing that she'd not be wanting to waste her 15 minute tea break just sitting in the tea room and chatting to the storeman.

I notice that the heavy steel grate that we'd struggled with had long been replaced but the terrazzo stairs are still there and I gasp...remembering how strangely scared I felt when I had to take those stairs alone.

I leave Non in the arcade and take the front entrance into the store. I feel tears welling in my eyes and a lump rising in my throat. Surely the store was bigger than this. It's a discount store now. Gone are the bays for holding yarn and the wall that divided the shop front from the "warehouse". There's been no refit though. The same peg board lines the wall where we used to keep the laybys and the floor and wall paint remain as they were.

As I walk toward the back of the store I spy the door to the tea room and a faint waft of International Roast coffee fills the air.

The shop which now occupies the space at the end of Cambridge Arcade is fittingly called The Family Store.

And this morning I went back to snap myself some memory anchors.

(or what goes around comes around). There's a photo of me aged 12 in our family photo album. It's 1986.

I'm sitting on a fence at Tooronga Zoo wearing Faberge Stretch Jeans, Dunlop Volleys, a sloppy t-shirt, a quilted jacket very similar to the one pictured & a rather awful sneer.

Apart from the quilted jacket which I'm yet to spy at Shoppo (but have seen glimpses of at Rummage), it could easily be a photo of my big girl. From a fashion only perspective though, she's always smiling.

Yep...we all know it's cyclical & I've got a fabulous leotard with built in overshirt I'm just dying to haul out of the dress up box.

Click image to enlarge

an umbrella
a whale
& an easter egg foil

a paper cut
a pen lid
& an embroidery floss bow

cherries
a heart, a bow
a flower & a star

a lioness & her cub
a match
& a pin

a candle for cakes
a balloon to blow up
& a tiny red bead

If you played along the answers are here.