Thrifty finds… sewing machine, my first Pyrex & a lost bear

Life lately has been a little hectic… but I’ve still found time to squeeze in some charity shops and a little car boot sale-ness…

Now as lots of you know I have a lot of old china and teapots etc so recently I’ve been searching for novelty mugs instead. Partly based on this mug I found for my mister… I’m hoping to find a Zoe version. (If anyone ever does find one, let me know!)

Anyway, I came across this Scotland mug in a charity shop and thought it was quite stylish for a tourist mug! Scotland, I’ve been there!

Then early one car boot sale morning, we came across this baby… a boxed Singer sewing machine. (I was starting to think they’d all gone thanks to All Saints’ window displays!) We cautiously asked how much it was, trying to be all nonchalant of course and probably failing!

And oh my word, she wanted nearly nothing for it. So much so that I temporarily felt bad that we were paying so little. But then the thriftaholic in me took over and kept quiet… (Yes, thriftaholic me is hard-edged!)

And here my Singer is… ain’t she pretty? And she works perfectly too. Even just turning the handle is deeply satisfying.

Now in the last while, I’ve developed a bit of a thing for old cameras (some of you may have noticed that!). And especially instant cameras.

But I’ll be honest and say what first attracted me to this camera was the box… yip, look at the rainbow arrow! So colourful! (These sort of things really stand out in a grim, grey car boot sale!)

Now the funny thing about this camera is that it’s huge… you lift it up and it completely obscures your face. That gap on the right hand side there? That’s the handle. Yes, you know something’s a bit cumbersome when it need a handle!

Oh yeah and it can’t stand up. Put it down and it sort of drops to one side. Yeah, you can kind of see why they don’t make these any more right? Which isn’t to say that I don’t love it.

I do. Especially as it had one piece of instant film left in it… which my other half accidentally took a ghostly shot of me in the kitchen with.

I like to imagine some 70s family being really excited to own this camera, only they were saving that very last shot for a special occasion. (Yes, if we’d know there was one left, we’d have maybe tried to take a better shot!)

(Um, this is to prove that I have a bit of a camera obsession going on right now… see that little white Instamax on the top right? It was a present from us to us in Japan. Ridiculously cheap. So sort of counts as a thrifty find right?!)

But this… this photo negative envelope is currently my favourite camera-related find.

It’s just rather glamorous… and so far away from the Boots disposable cameras from my childhood!

Even inside is just brilliant… “What to do with your best snapshots? Have them enlarged… and make them into real pictures”. Only your best snapshots mind you!

Yes, I’m a sucker for old packaging. Even this bit gets me. So pretty!

I also picked up my first piece of Pyrex. Now ages ago someone tweeted me to say that Pyrex always reminded them of me and I had to tweet back to admit that I have none. (Oh the shame!)

But now I have these three triangular little dishes… which I suspect where originally six dishes to hold veg/accompaniments in?

They’re surprisingly handy, so much so that I’m keeping an eye out for another three to complete the set.

And this is my 40p jug that a car boot sale man dissed me for buying!

I have a sort of thing for milk glass and I thought this was rather cute… and you know, jugs are pretty useful really. So I handed over 40p then moved on to the next stall where a man tried to convince me that my new jug was worthless and I should really buy the brown jug he had for £14 instead.

Um, no. I’ll stick with my little floral number instead thank you very much!

And nearly my most random find (I think the next one takes the title) are these old National Geographic magazine maps. Technically they came with the magazines… so I had to flick through a HUGE pile to find the ones with maps (and not just big pull-out posters of scary looking spiders! Who wants those? Who?!)

No idea what I’m going to do with them… but I’m sure they’ll be involved in a future craft project.

And here’s the title for my most random find ever… this little knitted bear!

Yes, one night when walking home I spotted this wee guy lying in the street. I took a snap of him (yes I am a total instagram addict!) and then popped him on wall in the hope the owner would come back for him.

The next night, I was taking the same route home and there was this bear, now lying in the road, looking grubby and kicked about. So I took him home and tweeted his picture but no-one claimed him. Instead I just washed him and  he’s  been sitting about the flat ever since…

Until the day our fox-owl-cat decided that the bear belonged to her. (Again if you follow me on instagram, you’ll know this is a cat that likes cosy things!) Isn’t this possibly the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? I think I ‘awwwwed’ for about 30 minutes on seeing this!

So that’s my lot recently… well, apart from the uber cute little telephone table I picked up. But that’s a story for another day!