Confessions of a Broochaholic

Can you believe it's March already? Never mind that January and February felt neverending at times, in hindsight they seem to have passed in the blink of an eye. It's all a bit of a blur though, so I'm glad of my blog keeping track of time, enabling me to look back and see how I spent my days.

It's almost beyond belief that I've been regularly churning out blog posts for 8 years now. When Beate recently went on a trip down memory lane to October 2015, she was surprised when I commented that I wasn't a citizen of blogland yet at the time. But yes, it's definitely true that I only published my first post on the 5th of March 2016!

But I'm running ahead of myself again, as here I am, ready for February's edition of our favourite indoor flea market on Sunday the 18th. 

It was the perfect day for it, as it was wet and very windy, which made the alleged highs of 9°C feel quite a bit chillier. It might, in fact, have been a tad too chilly for this purple and white diamond patterned vintage dress I insisted on giving its first outing and therefore required a couple of layers.

I'm rather partial to a purple paired with chartreuse, so I opted for a pair of opaques, a purple-edged cardigan and a triple strand necklace in the latter. 

On my feet, my super comfy caramel suede lace-up ankle boots. They're from a label called No Stress  and were a charity shop find in December 2022. They really do live up to their name: even lacing them up is stressless as they've got handy side zippers!

Vintage dress from Think Twice

Soaked in Luxury cardigan: charity shopped

Necklace: flea market find

Peacock feather brooch: charity shopped in Llangollen in June 2019

Opaques: high street sales bargain

Now on to the flea market!

We'd hardly walked in when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted this rather spectacular wicker tote bag. As I made a beeline for it, I realized I recognized the stall, which turned out to belong to Wannes and Ilona. We first met this lovely couple on a flea market in Antwerp in the early days of my blog, and their well curated stall always draws us like a magnet.

The tote bag is lined in a fabulous floral fabric and came with a surprise wash bag which was hiding at the bottom.

As Wannes was kindly putting it aside for us to pick up later, I scanned the rest of the stall and was captivated by this cute little lidded wicker bag, which obviously had to come home with me as well. In my mind's eye - or should that be ear - I could hear the IKEA coat stand in our bedroom heaving a big sigh.

I also found the first of the day's brooches here, which you'll get to see later on.

I shilly-shallied over the T.G. Green Cornishware Raisins canister. Although its asking price was a mere € 5, I walked away because it was missing its lid. We'd hardly gone a couple of meters when the seller came running after us bearing the canister and declaring we could have it for € 3. Well, who were we to say no? When I posted it on Instagram later that day, someone in the know told me it was an absolute bargain!

It was an excellent market for brooches, as I added no less than 10 of them to my collection. 

Below, clockwise from top left: enamelled mushroom brooch, wooden deer brooch (from Wannes and Ilona), wood look flower brooch and Edelweiss hiking souvenir brooch, both made from some kind of early plastic.

Below, from left: glass beaded brooch, diamanté and gold-tone lobster brooch and green and translucent paste brooch. They were all picked up from the heaped costume jewellery stall of another flea market habitué: a very chatty older lady who lives in the next village to ours.

The middle of the next row of brooches also came from her, while the other two, which are among my favourites, are from separate random stalls. The funky enamelled one on the left was the most expensive at € 12, while the souvenir brooch from the tiny but picturesque city of Dinant in Wallonia - the French speaking part of Belgium - surprisingly was only € 6.

After I've been asked more than once if I've still got space for all the brooches I keep finding and how exactly I'm storing them, I thought it was time I enlightened those readers who aren't already in the know. 

It all started innocently enough when the handful of modern brooches I already owned were joined by the first of the vintage ones I found on flea markets and in charity shops. Slowly but surely my collection was growing until the boxes I was keeping them in were starting to overflow.

When Jos mentioned my predicament to a friend, he came up with a fantastic solution in the form of several dark wooden drawers which were originally used to store his collection of coins. Soon, the original three were no longer adequate, at which point I was given another three, as well as the big black hinged box (below) in which I'm keeping my most fragile and precious ones. Contrary to the others in my collection, these are rarely worn for fear of damaging them.

Still my collection kept growing until it got rather cramped inside those lovely wooden drawers. 

In December 2018 my dream of finding one of those antique wooden chests with glass-fronted drawers, formerly used to display sewing threads in haberdashery shops, finally came true. Until then, the ones we had come across had been eye-wateringly expensive, so we were overjoyed to find this one for an affordable price as its top was slightly cracked.

That was five years ago, but apart from a brief lull courtesy of Covid-19, I obviously didn't stop collecting as, let's face it, they're rather addictive. They're such a fun thing to collect and generally quite affordable too. I rarely spend more than € 15  on a brooch and the vast majority of my finds were less than € 10.

To cut a long story short: I am yet again at risk of running out of space. But fear not: help has already arrived, as I've recently acquired another two of those wooden drawers and an additional hinged box ...

It was back to the office on Monday, and with the grey and rainy week that followed, it was at times hard to stay positive, particularly since work was relentless. 

Still, I was determined to find some things to smile about each day. 

As I was running an errand at Hema - a well-known Dutch chain of department stores - the sight of the row of Miffy cushions lining the escalators to the second floor made me whip out my phone. At the same time, they're emphasizing the demise of the restaurant which used to be up there, and which was inexplicably closed at the end of last year.

Another smile came in the form of this Tiffany-style owl lamp which came to live at Dove Cottage on Wednesday, a gift from Jos's youngest daughter An. Isn't he fabulous?

I only worked half a day on Friday - we were the 23rd by now - which was nothing short of a blessing for more than one reason. Regular as clockwork, a neverending succession of concrete mixers are turning up at the Art Deco tower building each Friday, making one hell of a headache inducing racket.

Although I've got to admit that those candy-striped mixers do look quite the part from our 5th floor perch ...

The overnight storm called Louis, with lots of rain, had brought the temperature down to 8°C by Friday.

It was still drizzly and miserable, so I didn't wear my pink suede boots out. However, as they turned out to be a perfect match with my outfit, I insisted on wearing them for that day's outfit photos.

And no, my dress isn't grey but the kind of green my camera refuses to register. Its fabric is sprinkled with multicoloured hundreds and thousands.

I guess it won't be a surprise when I tell you the dress came from Think Twice? However, I did replace its rather nondescript buttons with vintage green ones with a bit of pink in it from my stash.  

Both my pink plastic ring and the pink belt edged in green plastic stitching were found on the high street, the latter a sales bargain from Mango in the Summer of 2022. The pale pink beads are from a long-gone vintage shop, and the pink and white metal peacock brooch was a charity shop find in May 2016. Without the aid of my blog, it would have been impossible to keep track of those things!