Last Friday I went into town to go to the fabrics market. However before we went there we popped our heads around at Dille & Kamille. Dille & Kamille has 26 shops in the Netherlands and Belgium full with all kinds of wonderful things. It's very 'lifestyle' oriented and has everything from food to garden to kitchen to toys to homewear to stationary and back. However, I know the Dille & Kamille because of their little 'guest soaps' in little figurines like a car or a duck or frog or -my personal favourite- a bear. These little soaps are very much a token of my childhood. EVERYONE used to have these... My aunt actually collected them and occasionally donated some of them to me and my sister. Naturally the bear was my favourite because it was pink (and yes, I was a pinky girl). I believe my sister was quite fond of the frog...


Unfortunately I didn't take one with me (but will definately next time!), but I did take with me these French knitters (or spool knitters.... Little Dutch lesson: we call it punniken...). The small one is for thicker yarn and the long 'Geisha' one is for thinner wool. And yes, as you can imagine, childhood memories are flowing through me. The other French knitter you can see in the pictures (the one with the nails hammered into them) I got way back in the day from my grandma. I just used to make a very long string with it. And when I was done, my sister continued the string until we made our own ball of wool. And then we threw it away because we didn't know what to do with it (and it had rolled into dust and then my sister accidentally spilled some of her lemonade on it and... well, you can imagine how it looked like).


To finish this walk down memory lane: yesterday when doing the administration my mum found these old newspaper clippings from my dad when he was about 19 years old (yes we're very organized. Well now we are at least). My dad used to be (just for the record still is but ya know...) a very good cyclist and competed in matches and whatnot. It's sometimes funny to be reminded that one day your parents were also young and thriving (not that they aren't young and thriving now, but ya know... I love ya dad!).



Anyway... We indeed got quite a lot of fabric from the fabrics market. I love it when it's the end of the season and everything gets reduced to the minimal of minimal. We got some industrial fabric for 1 euro per 2 meter. That's 0.50 per meter... I mean, how? Such good quality opposite such a low price, it seems impossible. Nay, improbable. Because we indeed have taken a good few meters home with us.

I also got carried away with some fun printed fabrics in the sale (they're actually children's fabric, but who cares!!). Now I only need to find the time between my French knitting, my crochet, my -regular- knitting, my writing, my photography, my drawing, my reading, my collage-ing etc etc etc and we're good to go sewing.... ;)

Love,
Dominique