Thrifting

I must have had some good thrifting karma coming to me, because the last 2 weeks have been amazing for charity shop finds.  You know how it goes - weeks and weeks of  nothing and then BOOM! you strike gold - your heart starts racing the minute you see it and you know it will be yours.

First, above, is the amazing dressing table Kevin and I found last week for...£35.  We'd been to Ikea the day before, looking for a chest of drawers for our bedroom. We don't fold much (ahem), but most modern chests seem to hold 1 pair of jeans or are way out of our budget. As we walked through the (endless) rows of flat pack furniture, I told Kev that we'd just have to wait for the right piece of furniture to come to us because there was no way in the world I was coming home with another piece of cheap MDF. Well, the moment I saw this little beauty nestled in the corner of the charity shop the next day, I knew it was coming home with us. The manager of the shop it was in (the same one where I found my spinning wheel) took great pains to show us how "damaged" it was. Kevin and I just looked at her like she was crazy - a few scuffs on an old piece of furniture is a given, no?

My second score of the week is this beautiful wool shawl.  It is a Hap Shawl (the kind upon which my recent design Alchemilla was based) with a central panel of  plain stitches edged by a ripple and lace border.  This one is unusual to the ones I have seen elsewhere, as the central panel is actually constructed on the bias. I spent ages in the coffee shop after buying it staring at the construction, gently tugging at the lace to see where the decreases and increases fell. It certainly feels like Shetland wool (and being in Scotland, this isn't so hard to believe ).  It is a beautiful piece of hand knitting - hours and hours of work...for the grand price of £5.

I didn't need it. I would easily have left it, but I simply could not walk away. I always feel quite teary when I see other people's hand work in charity shops. All of that hard work...*sniff*. And now I get a knitted shawl to replace the one I made that didn't suit (that is winging my way to my sister) - perfect karma, if you ask me.