A late May recap.

I am really crap at this "frequent blogging" idea. It's mostly sheer laziness, but a smidgen of part-time employment on the weekends that has pretty much ruined my attempts at blogging. Huzzah for getting paid and haroo for losing my weekends again. Que sera.

Back in late May, my Mom and I did our annual pilgrimage to the Christie Antique show, and we both did pretty well from it. Every year there seems to have a trend, something that every other vendor seems to have. Last year was old school creel fishing baskets. This year, luckily for me, was vintage luggage. It's a relatively innocuous thing these days, everyone and their brother has got a suitcase from the 50s or 60s, but the big advantage of everyone having one is that they get cheaper. I picked up this beautiful mustard yellow carry-on for a whopping $12.

 Yep. $12.

Still has the mirror, a comb and some beautiful, intact interior.

My other great find of the day was the tooled leather handbag pictured above. A wee bit of haggling netted me this purse for $22. It's in pretty much perfect shape with a floral motif on the front and an Incan (?) wheel of calendar death on the other side.

Pretty bitchin' eh?

 And this is an old friend from last year. I'd imagine he's a tough sell. The trident was a nice touch.

He's so friendly!

In other news, BBQ weather is back in the Tdot. There will be some posts shortly about adventures in outdoor cooking to try and fill some of recent gaps.

Wedding bits!

Before I get to the wedding stuff,

I'M DONE MY THESIS!!!!!!!

This is also the reason why I didn't post last week, too busy celebrating!I'll post a link to the library listing when it goes up. Kinda excited about that.

On to the wedding bits.

My best friend is getting married next month! I'm super excited and happy for him! It also means I'm really an adult now, my friends are getting married. Weird.

Gift buying time! I got something small off their registry that I could add some more personal gifts too. I'm also sure that neither of them read this blog, let along know it exists, so I can put pictures up with no concern for spoiling the surprise! I lucked out with the tea pot on the registry, totally appropriate for me to give them, and it was on sale when I bought it. It's a really lovely cherry red, which seems to be their accent colour for a black and chrome kitchen. I decided to add a more personalized gift to the tea pot by adding these beautiful antique, French tea towels.

These lovely things from GoshnPoche on etsy are linen in a creamy colour with beautiful stripes on them. They may not make it the wedding. Just sayin'.

Now, for the more important aspect of the day, my outfit (ha)! I have a dress I want to wear, but doesn't quite fit. I bought a beautiful black and blue vintage dress from the Clothing show years ago, and it fit back then no problem. Sadly, my master's degree happened, as well as about 20 lbs of weight gain. I've lost some of it... enough that the dress almost fits again. If I can drop an inch or so off my chest (ha) by the first week of October, I'm good. I've been trying to exercise more and eat better anyway to counteract the master's degree. Fingers crossed.

Should that not work, I did just buy this!

Eshatki is a website I've been looking at for a while, but have been a little apprehensive about buying anything from. Lovely stuff, but a bit expensive for my unemployed self. However, many of the bloggers I follow have made purchases from eshatki, and can't stop raving about the products and customer service. When I was perusing them this past week and found this dress on clearance sale and still in my size, I figured this was a good time to try them out. Now, I just have to wait for it to arrive. The accessories and shoes I've picked for my other dress choice should still work with this one no problem. Should I lose the weight for the that dress, I will wear this for my convocation, which is two days before the wedding.

The only issue I now have, is which petticoat do I want to get to go with it! I know, I'm weirdly, really into fashion and vintage fashion right now. Too many vintage fashion blogs. I'm torn between two colours in the Domino Dollhouse range.

Black, more versatile but now sold out in my size...

or Peacock blue, really fun, fairly versatile with my current wardrobe, goes beautifully with the black dress and available in my size.

The pros are stacking up for Peacock. I met a girl at a bar recently who was wearing a Domino Dollhouse dress, and was able to stalk her and ask about their fit. She raved about them and confirmed that their measurements are true to size, unlike my Torrid problem from last year.

Decisions!!

Even more antiques! Aberfoyle Antiques Market

Antiques again! Yes, I know. Don't care. Planning on going to the St Lawrence antique market on Sunday morning.

My Mom and I hit up the Aberfoyle Antiques Market last week and were blessed with some beautiful weather and some great finds! I was even able to replace the small pyrex bowl my roommate accidentally broke recently. By far the best find though, was a daguerreotype that didn't cost an arm and a leg. Haggled it down to $35! The case isn't in the best shape, and because I haven't photographed it yet, I will show you that later, but the image itself is really clear. I was pretty happy with that find.

Every Sunday from late April until the end of October, the Aberfoyle Antiques Market never fails to impress. This market focuses more on furniture, knick knacks, jewelry, kitchen and housewares. There are a few clothes vendors, more so this years than previous years, but this is a "housewares" market more so than clothes. Prices are generally lower like a flea market, and haggling is almost mandatory. Both my Mom and I have gotten many treasures over the years, slowly redecorating rooms and adding to collections. The field where the market is hosted is really well organized, and has actual bathrooms. Huge bonus so far as I'm concerned.

More antiques at the Junction flea

Last weekend I got up far too early on a Sunday to go to the third installment of the Junction Flea Market near Dundas and Keele. I figured with all the pictures from Osheaga and The Little Shop from last week, this little market needed its own post to not get lost.

 
The Junction Flea is a brand new little market in Toronto, featuring a "curated" selection of vendors of vintage, antiques and new designs from the neighborhood and surrounding environs. I managed to catch the second market last month, and there is one last one this summer on the 9th of September, so see you Sunday!

Held in a vacant lot just east of Dundas and Keele, the Junction Flea features antiques, vintage clothes and accessories, Toronto designers, a few food options, a fortune teller and a great business called The Tintype Studio. Run by a graduate of the PPCM program and some friends, the Tintype Studio shoots tintype portraits for a one of a kind likeness.  I stole from photos from a Globe and Mail article about the flea, and the studio, since I didn't take that many while I was there.

The two above photos are by Kalpna Patel, and were stolen from this article.

The last market netted me some wonderfully kitschy tea towels and a photograph of a bear from the 60s, and this month's found a very large cabinet card of a bride and her bridesmaids from probably 1900. I'm looking forward to the next flea, and Aberfoyle this weekend!!! Pictures to come of one of my favorite markets ever.

Osheaga Recap

I just sent in another draft of my thesis. If this one doesn't cut it, I may have to stab myself with something. Entirely with frustration, not grief. This pack of 40 odd pages of drivel is slowly driving me nuts...

Moving on!

Osheaga was awesome! I managed not to get sunburned and got some shopping and museuming into the weekend. Complete success. Picture time! And a super heavy picture post for the bonus.

First, the festival. The weather held out for us until Sunday afternoon. I had packed my rain jacket and umbrella, which sadly didn't do much for the mud that ran all the way up to my thighs by the end of the day. It was like Glastonbury North (I'm going on what other people tell me about Glastonbury, having never been). I barely took any pictures since I was rocking out most of the time. Highlights were definitely Florance + the Machine and Metric, especially the lullaby acoustic version of Gimme Sympathy. Amazing.

 Fuzzy Florence!! She doesn't hold still much.

Snoop Lion made an appearance.

 Osheaga Hill.

Little muddy after the rain...

M83, very late at night.

As per usual with vacations like this, the much better photos of the festival were taken by my friend Rob, who got a press pass this year and was able to bring the good camera. Check him out, but don't steal his photos, on his flickr feed.

Museum time!

The McCord, one of my favorites.

 The Mary Pickford exhibition, that was actually in Toronto at the TIFF, but I completely missed it due to school. It features posters, playbills, artifacts, costumes and several clips from her movies in a telling of her life, before, during and after the screen.

Moose. And some trees.

And then there this place. The Little Shop was fairly unassuming as I came around the corner from the Metro. But holy crap the inside...

It... just kept going! Vintage and antiques as far as the eye can see! That first picture is from inside the bathroom. You have to push through a lot of stuff to get there, but there is a working bathroom. A stuffed first floor, crammed basement and an overflowing top floor has been under the watchful eye of Jill, the Little Shop's owner, who will get you to sit down for some teas and cookies after your purchase. I think I was still in shock of much of a handle she had on everything in there. A stylist came in while I was there looking for specific material, and Jill found it for him in a second. The Little Shop is open Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, from 2-5pm on those days. Exclusive much?

I lucked out with a dress, a walrus broach made of either bone or ivory (not sure which), and Fred. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with him, but he had to come back to Toronto with me. I don't think he liked the suitcase very much, but my options weren't great for return travel.


 And this is the only food I took a picture of. I kind of suck at this. Bite Me. We were hungry.

And this is Rob and girlfriend being cutesy with their PDA. Just makes you want to barf in the corner doesn't it? I love you guys.

Christie recap

Oh, the random stuff you can find at an antique fair! I had a great time at Christie, and only managed to get a minor sun burn on my shoulders for a full day in the sun. Both my mom and I got some stuff, she was mostly looking for some supplies for a few crafts she's had in mind for a while now. Fortunately, both of us got small stuff, so the drive back to Toronto was nice and easy. Here are some of my spoils!

 It's a paper photograph,

 mounted in a brass matte,

 mounted onto a carte de visite. AKA, the chief reason I bought it. I have never seen this before. I could understand and almost expect a tintype in there, but the paper is different.

 And speaking of tintypes, check out this super bent number! My mom thought it looked like someone had run over it with a tool or something since the bends look really uniform and part of a pattern. I was just impressed that the emulsion held up so well to being attacked like that.

Cheese box! Bit hard to resist, and so utilitarian. Practical antiques!

Thesis induced insomnia...

I cannot wait for this thesis to be over with.  Ugh.
I'm pretty much done the draft of the chunk I need to hand in to my reader tomorrow... I need to pack for something far more important now.

The Christie Antique Show!!!
This is one of the biggest outdoor antique and flea market shows in Ontario, held twice a year and I have never been able to make it for the past several years. I've been either out of the city/country or been working and not been able to get out of it. I'm so excited to finally go. I'm heading out to the parentals house tonight so we can drive in in the morning from there.

Pictures all lovingly stolen from an Apartment Therapy post about Christie, which can be found here.

I'll try to actually take pictures of my own for once at these types of things...

Slight twist

I really do need to update this more often, or at least consistently at specific times. Maybe once a week, I could probably handle that.

Moving on. I had the rest of the week planned so far as dinners go, except tonight for some reason. So, a-scavenging I go! I had wanted to make my paneer potato fry-up, as posted here, and here (sort of), but not had I run out of onions and potatoes, my leftover paneer was decidedly funky. So, I used a spare sweet potato I had from a pizza recipe I tried earlier.

In other news, My mom and I went to the Aberfoyle Antique Market over the weekend! I love this place, it's a great combination of antiques and flea market finds. The prices are fairly reasonable throughout, and you can always find something, as can be shown by most of my antique camera collection. I didin't get too much this year, but I did find some tintypes in really good shape. They were super cheap so I got two! I also found these.

I think I'm good, but they did seem well priced.

In other, other news, a few of us are heading up North to Muskoka for a weekend at the cottage. By 'the' cottage I mean my friend's co-worker's cottage, who kindly rents it to us during the summer. There will be photos of the obscene amount of BBQ that happens over the weekend to come.