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Market entrance at Old Spitalfields Market East London
Old along side the new….typical London. LOVE IT!
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Dear Reader
You can firmly place the blame at the foot of DD1 (Darling Daughter 1). She’s a teacher you know? A so called professional yet she deems it appropriate to totally encourage the Bank of Mum to get down to the Old Smoke (London).
As if my previous Walthamstow jolly wasn’t enough I have (confession time) had another complete spendathon. Not as big as last time BUT a bender nevertheless! How many concealed zips does one woman need? Well at 20 pence each LOTS I hear you join me in chorus :0)
The intended purpose of visit to the wonderful East End was to do a reconicense mission as we intend to take a stall at a vintage fair at the Old Spitalfields Market in November and try to sell our wares (of which I will tell more when I actually have something to show you). It’s called Judy’s Affordable Vintage Fair and is held once a month at Spitalfields.
My recent haul of totally poptastic vintage buttons, lace and trim from the 1920’s, 30’s, 40’s and 50’s are to be turned into a variety of hopefully desireable items. Wherever possible we will also be using vintage fabric’s when we find them. Partly to cater to the vintage lovers market but also in a nod to the Planet, upcycle something that may have hit landfill and turn it into something beautiful and of course unique!
They say an army marches on it’s stomach and this army truly does. When I saw the cost of a good old bacon sandwich in this boutique area decision made to go off road… 4 wheel shoes intact we trundled off down Brick Lane. There are many asian restaurants here, apart from the fact they weren’t open at this time of the day, I don’t eat spicy food, so onwards and upwards. On our travwls we saw some incredible street art. Brick Lane is clearly an area where the talented come.
Just by chance we stumbled upon a little place whose name I didn’t get….DANGIT! They had bagels in the window. By now my tummy thought my throat had been cut so food is food and in we marched. It was packed with locals (always and excellent sign, my darling Father in Law taught me this tip). Hot Salt Beef????? Never heard of it but in for a penny, in for a pound. Ordered up 2 rolls with hot salt beef and mustard. While waiting I was mmore than slightly dazzled by a beautiful smiling face coming across the road toward the shop. As this beautiful mixed race man walked in, still smiling as though the smile were for me and me only I was lost in the warmth of this lovely face. I am a firm believer in credit where it is due and as he walked past us in the queue I told him ‘what a beautiful face’. “Thank you” with an extra flash of smile. Could this experience get much better? YEEEEEES, by gum the hot salt beef and mustard roll was just GAWJUS! I am a convert thats a fact.
Given that this part of the mission went well and we were if I do say so myself uber efficient there were choices to be made. Choice 1. Sensible but boring, go back home Choice 2. Go check out Goldhawk Road in West London (many fabric shops).
Now for those of you who are not familiar with our fantastico capital. It’s small, really small compared to other capitals of the world BUT it is build on a foot print hundreds of years old. Therefore, best way to travel is by foot or tube. Tricky when you have your car with you!
SatNav at the ready, our 8 mile journey took 50 minutes. Not that this was a problem. Excellent car company and superb views from the traffic jams. Our architecture in London is phenomenal. We arrived to another micro climate having had mizzle in the East End it was bright and pretty darn warm in the West of London. Enthusiastically we dove into the shops, less than 30 minutes into our jaunt we looked at each other……. it was apparent that this was not matching our Walthamstow experience. At thhis point my expectation of DD1 was to be the grown up and say Mum we’ve had a lovely time lets go home now but NO! The single most dangerous question ….. what do you want to do now. Well quite frankly I’d say that is blindingly obvious. Drive all the way back to the East End to Walthamstow. Planet friendly NO, lunatic friendly hell YES!
Yep, you’ve got the drift. Another excursion, SatNav chose a new route for us strangely but it was cool, new stuff to look at in the traffic jams. So all in all traffic jam quality was excellent.
Walthamstow was superb even those we had to do it at double pace as time was a ticking. An amusing sight for on lookers as I have a full hip replacement so have an interesting gait but motivated by fabric I can be speedy gonzales albeit I pay big time for days after (who cares when booty has been bought)?
Given we have been very recently it helped tremendously as we knew exactly which shops we wanted to head for. Mateen, superb selection, wonderful staff and even better prices! A couple of stops in between but a no brainer for our last stop. The lovely Jay at New Fabric Shop. He has lots of end of stock and the like, but in a demonstration of how we buy from people nearly as much as buying the item, Jay is such a cool, easy guy…. it would feel rude to go to Walthamstow and not visit him!
All in all an excellent day, productive and not too costly. Today however my hip is paying the price, small price to pay I’d say!!
sewinloveuk 
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