Stopping by the park on a snowy day

Saturday the 13th of January was a dull and grey day, on which the mercury climbed to about 3°C: a small but noticeable improvement on the negative temperatures we had been faced with during the week.

After our usual fruit & yoghurt breakfast, I caught up with Blogland, and fiddled around with collages for my next post.

Then it was time to step outside for outfit photos!

The dress I was wearing is an old favourite, which made its debut on the blog when I first started out in March 2016 (see here for a trip down memory lane).

It's one of my dresses from the Finnish "Karelia" label and its heavyweight textured polyester fabric makes it perfect for days like these.

I picked up the green(ish) bits in its pattern with my accessories, all of which were either flea market or charity shop finds. The chunky caramel cardigan is by Esprit and was charity shopped last Spring.

The afternoon saw us driving down to the two-floored charity shop in Mechelen, where we'd last been back in November. 

Among the rails of mediocre offerings, I spotted the red Norwegian style jumper, which is by H&M, and a close cousin of my green one, which by pure coincidence was also found here. The multicoloured striped faux-wrap jumper is by C&A's Clockhouse label.

By then my lurgy, which had reared its head a couple of days earlier but until now had been reasonably well behaved, had decided to up the ante. I felt bone tired all of a sudden and was glad to be able to crash on the sofa once we got home.

Sunday treated us to temperatures barely above freezing point, grey skies and some snow – which thankfully didn’t stick – in the late morning and early afternoon.

My wool knit skirt with its gorgeous jacquard pattern was picked up for a pittance from Think Twice in November 2019. It's by Hess Natur, a German label which has been promoting sustainable fashion since 1976.

I combined it with a blue polo neck jumper I've had for absolutely ages, with a charity shopped cropped faux fur gilet layered on top. The hot pink belt was recently found on the high street. 

It was that cold that even the beads on my necklace were wearing crochet jackets! However, by the time we were ready for outfit photos, it had stopped snowing.

As more of the same had been forecasted for later that week, I dug out my stash of warm woollens and,  after searching high and low for them, was finally able to locate my snow boots, which are vintage and were a pre-blog Think Twice find.

As it turned out I'd already spent the day's energy quota by then, the rest of it was spent on the sofa, riding out the waves of my cold. 

Lack of remaining daylight after work still prevents us from taking outfit photos during the week, but here are some flat lays I did later.

The plaid skirt is Gor-Ray and was charity shopped in December 2018. I wore it with a striped jumper of many colours - an old sales bargain from New Look - one day, and with my new H&M jumper the next. To the latter I'd pinned a vintage poodle brooch found at the indoor flea market.

I didn't venture outside much during my lunch breaks that week, but still managed to snaffle a wide orange suede belt at half price from haberdashery and accessories shop Veritas.

The sky on Wednesday - we were the 17th by now - was granite grey with the promise of snow, but it turned out we were spared the worst. Unlike in other parts of Belgium, there was only a dusting of snow at home and none at all in Antwerp. 

Thursday wasn't a good day, health-wise, as it was filled with lots of coughing and generally feeling unwell. The weather was a mixture of grey skies and sunny spells, with some flurries of snow, and temperatures still flirting with the freezing point.

The sun was out in full force while I was waiting for the tram to take me home. As you can see, I was in luck, there'd be one in just 4 minutes!

Friday dawned sunny and blue-skied with the temperature still stuck around zero degrees.

I'd taken the day off which allowed me to take my time standing in front of my wardrobe(s) and selecting my outfit.

I picked another dress which has been with me forever. Yet another old Think Twice find, I fell head over heels for its colourful Paisley-esque pattern. With its fabric's generous wool content, it's a firm Winter favourite.

The shaggy orange cardigan I wore on top was charity shopped in the Autumn, and the eagle-eyed among you might spot that I'm wearing the orange suede belt which joined my collection only a couple of days earlier. My necklace and brooch were found in a charity shop and on the indoor flea market respectively.

The weather was simply too glorious to hunker inside nursing my cold. In fact, it was the perfect weather to clear those clogged up sinuses and my congested chest.

Casting around for a walking destination, we decided to drive down to the charity shop in Duffel, leave our car behind on its car park and try and cross the road to the park. I said try as due to extensive road works we hadn't been able to get there for nearly a year. Last time we looked, we were faced with a muddy mire and turned heel. That day, however, we were not only able to cross the road, we could even park our car in a side street leading up to one of the park's entrances.

The sight that met us when we entered the park was truly enchanting. Apparently, even if it is only a mere 8 kilometers from where we live, it had snowed here much more intensively than it had back at home. And although some of the snow had already melted by now, there was still enough of the white stuff left to satisfyingly crunch through with my snow boots! 

Layered up against the cold, I was wearing my beloved Princess coat, a chunky knit and fringed sage green scarf and a turban-style knitted hat to which I'd pinned one of my flower corsages.

Happy to be back there after such a long absence, we walked to our heart's content, circumnavigating the various ponds, which were still frozen solid.

A pair of Egyptian geese was ice skating on one of them, while a heron sat scratching its head wondering where all the fish had gone. No happy meal for him or her that day!

Powdery snow had come to rest on one of the park's benches, daring us to sit down and stare at the wintry scene, the cloudless sky dyeing the snow with a blue rinse and the sun making the ice crystals sparkle.

There was a small stretch of open water near the bridge, where all the park's waterfowl seemed to have gathered for a swim, bickering among themselves for the best spots.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian geese were still stoically practising their ice skating routine. Joining the hoi polloi ducks and lesser geese was obviously beneath them.

We passed the Brutalist fountain, only recently relieved of its crippling layer of moss and weeds.

Hibernating in the middle of its frozen pond, it was looking deceptively insignificant now that it had been temporarily silenced.

Just gone mid-afternoon, and the sun was already sinking towards the horizon, a  blinding orb caught in the branches of the trees, when we made our way back to where we'd parked our car. 

Time to call it a day and answer the call of the sofa.

So, it's goodbye from me, and goodbye from Her Royal Highness. 

I'll be back with more Winter walks and rummaging adventures soon!

January blues

As at the end of January my blog has only just made it to its beginning, it's clear that I've got a lot of catching up to do.

But first things first: I would like to thank you all for your well wishes! I'm glad to report that I've been feeling much brighter this past week as, physically as well as mentally, I seem to be on the mend.

For the sake of continuity, I will have to relive it all though, starting with my first day back at the office on the 2nd of January. Although I didn't exactly relish the early wake-up call, my days of leisure had apparently managed to recharge my batteries even if that pesky cold had done its best to throw a spanner in the works.

The amount of work waiting for me at the office was more than reasonable and as the builders renovating the Art Deco tower building were apparently still enjoying their holidays, it was a haven of peace and quiet for once.

Determined to keep things positive, I ignored the rain which kept falling down in buckets all day, and walked to the nearest Think Twice shop for a browse. The shop in question is in a cul-de-sac with one of the entrances of the recently restored Stock Exchange (Handelsbeurs) at its dead end. 

The ground floor with its beautiful central square is open to the public, but lately only during the school holidays. I instantly abandoned my original plan when to my delight I noticed one of its doors standing wide open.

The original Stock Exchange was opened in 1531, and it was the first one ever built specifically for this purpose, becoming the model for other exchanges all over the world. The original building, which was designed by the Antwerp architect, Domien De Waghemakere (1460-1542), burnt down on two occasions, in 1583 and 1858. 

The architect incorporated a courtyard surrounded on four sides by unusual Moorish arcades. It was originally open to the sky so that God could observe the transactions, but was later roofed over to protect the merchants from the harsh northern climate.

After the last devastating fire in 1858, a new stock exchange was built. 

The current opulent neo-Gothic building was designed by architect Joseph Schadde (1818-1894), who incorporated many of the original building's features, and was completed in 1872.

It went on to serve as a stock exchange until 1997 when most of the business was moved to Brussels. 

Until that time, the courtyard was also used for book markets and events - I remember going to gigs and parties here in the late 1970s  and early 1980s - and the renowned Antwerp Fashion Academy held many of their famous end of year student fashion shows here. Access to the courtyard was eventually closed off for safety and security reasons in the late 1990s, after which it stood empty for almost twenty years.

But then a miracle happened: the city finally found the necessary funds to renovate the building, which took place between 2016 to 2019. 

It was re-opened to the public in October 2019 and if you ever find yourself in Antwerp during the school holidays, it is well worth stepping inside to admire the Moorish arcades, the walls decorated with world maps, the stunning stone columns and the 56 wooden stockbrokers offices.

The figure of the 19th-century architect looks down on the courtyard from a first-floor balcony (below, bottom left).

The metal roof structure has been repainted in its original green rather than the rusty brown shade it was painted in prior to the renovation. This serves to bring out the best in the floral motifs in the roof. They symbolize the goods which were once traded here: barley, grapes, oats, hops, tobacco and cocoa, among others, and thus refer to the original function of the building. 

Here, the architect was well ahead of his time: with their striking ornamental character, these wrought iron structures could be considered a forerunner of Art Nouveau!

The photos were taken on two consecutive days, as it immediately became apparent when I visited on Tuesday that my phone's camera wasn't up to capturing all those magnificent details. I therefore returned on Wednesday, armed with my proper camera.  

As for that browse at Think Twice, I did manage to nip in on Tuesday and find this floral pussy-bow frock.  

It was on the Wednesday that our bosses walked in, paying us a surprise visit from Miami. Although inevitably somewhat exhausting, these visits are usually quite enjoyable, as they are both really nice guys. This time, however, things went a bit pear-shaped, as my colleague and I had quite an unpleasant altercation with them just before they left on Friday. For obvious reasons, I won't be able to go into any kind of detail, but let's just say that my anxiety levels went through the roof and I was down in the dumps for days.

I definitely wasn't feeling up to much on Saturday, so needed lots of colour to get me through the day.

As by now the temperature was on a slippery slope towards freezing point, this thin knit dress of many colours, charity shopped in February 2022,  couldn't have been more perfect for the job. I layered a green long-sleeved t-shirt underneath and was wearing opaques in the same colour, although you need X-ray eyes to see them.

The green wooden necklace is from the Belgian Les Cordes label via the charity shops, and both the darkest green textured leather belt and the waffle knit orange long-line cardigan were old charity shop finds as well. 

Only my tan boots and the little yellow bird brooch were once bought brand new on the high street.

We spent the morning dismantling the tree and banishing it to the basement for another year.

Although initially clearly showing her disappointment, Bess eventually took it into her stride and was happy to have her scratching and climbing posts back where they belong.

Sunday had a dull and grey start, but as the mercury took another dive towards freezing point, the weather gods regaled us with sunny spells and a clear blue sky later in the day.

Both my patterned blue velvet midi skirt and red and navy jumper were found at Think Twice, albeit with several years between them. I couldn't get over how well they got along together!

I can't remember whether the brooch - a girl wearing blue and white and holding a posy of diamanté flowers - was a flea market or charity shop find, but the red beaded necklace was definitely the latter.

The half-elasticated belt with its massive square buckle was picked up from a high street shop near my office in the Autumn of 2022.

As we do every Winter, we have been supplying the winged visitors to our garden with free food. We had been wondering why the left side of our little feeder seemed to be emptying much faster than the one on the right. The mystery was solved while we were having breakfast that morning! In order to avoid the greedy wood pigeons from eating us out of house and home, we have moved the hanging strawberry bucket elsewhere, but still they keep finding ways to get at the feeder.

We went to Jos's son and daughter-in-law for a family get-together in the afternoon. As is the tradition here in Belgium, our 2 and half year old grandson Cas was "reading" his Nieuwjaarbrief (New Year's letter). Children here are expected to write a letter with New Year’s wishes for their parents, godparents and grandparents, which is then read out loud in front of everyone. Obviously, at his very young age, Cas can neither read or write, so it was his Mum, Carolien, who did the honours, with a little help from Cas.

As a reward, he was given presents, ours being puzzles and a Playmobil road sweeper which Bompa (granddad) Jos and Nana Ann dutifully assembled.

In order to close the gap between my blog and the present, I am fast forwarding to the Friday of the next week, the 12th of January. 

In the run-up to the 1st of April, when I can finally start my official 4-day weeks, I am trying to ration my Fridays off so as not to eat into my holiday quota too much. That day, however, I took the afternoon off, to take a rest from what had been an exhausting week and nurse my newly emerged lurgy.

The week had been sunny but cold, with temperatures well below freezing point even during the day. After I had been wearing skirts and jumpers all week, I deemed it time for a dress. 

This Crimplene one, its fabric a mix of polyester, wool and angora, is an old favourite snaffled from a consignment shop several years ago. It's got its original self-fabric belt, which this time I exchanged for the same belt I wore with the dress of many colours. Again, I layered a long-sleeved top underneath.

Apart from my green suede boots, the rest of my outfit were either flea market (ring and bird brooch) or charity shop (cardigan and necklace) finds. 

So, that's all I've got time for now. I'll be back with the rest of the weekend and part of the next one in a handful of days. See you again soon!

Twixmas tales - Part 4

 It feels a bit strange still to be blogging about our Twixmas adventures during January's penultimate week. At the same time, however, my constant lagging behind has been a blessing in disguise as I'm not sure there'd be much I could tell you about otherwise. 

Right up until last weekend, we hadn't gone for any walks since the one mentioned in this post and, apart from the briefest of rummages last weekend, trips to the charity shops have been far and few between.  I'm fully aware of the fact that this is very unlike me but, to be honest, my mind's not really in a good place right now. Let's call it a mixture of the January blues, a more than average measure of work-related anxiety and my current lurgy which has turned out to be the gift that keeps on giving.

So, it's with great pleasure that I'm inviting you to take a seat in the time machine and join me on a short trip to the near past: Saturday the 30th of December.

Let's start by having a look at what I was wearing that day! I was adamant to give one of my latest Think Twice finds, the vintage wing-collared orange jumper, its very first outing. I didn't have to think long and hard about its main companion: with the orange stripe in the plaid of this chevron-patterned skirt it was actually a no-brainer! The latter was well worth wrestling off a charity shop dummy in January 2022.

After having been neglected for the better part of last Winter, I've been wearing my green suede calf-length boots quite a lot lately. They are the perfect length for offering a glimpse of my - obviously orange - opaques.

My accessories were a tiger-eye in a nest of gold metal necklace - a flea market find back in January 2019 - and a tiny Léa Stein bird brooch picked up on a trip to Middelburg in August 2022.

As the weather forecast for the Christmas break had been pretty dire, we couldn't have been happier when it turned out the weather gods sent us a parting gift of a handful of dry and sunny days. 

Combined with the 10°C declared by the thermometer, it would have been downright silly not to take advantage of the glorious weather by going for another walk. 

Only 10 minutes up the road, in the neighbouring village of Aartselaar, leafy Solhof Park is the perfect place for a short head-clearing walk. As we walked towards the park's entrance after parking our car, we passed some partially flooded meadows as a result of the relentless rain of the last couple of months.

The narrow paths meandering through the trees in the park itself were relatively mud-free, but I was still glad to have changed out of my suede boots and into my old walking workhorses.

The Wedgwood blue sky offset the starkness of the bare Winter trees and the satisfyingly crunchy deep-pile carpet of leaves at their feet. The wet but relatively mild weather had woken up the first of the catkins while a family of fungi had taken up residence on some of the dead wood scattered on the forest floor.

First outing for the purple and lime coat I charity shopped earlier that week, and which I wore accompanied by my purple mohair beret and my fringed sage green scarf.

Whenever we walk here, our feet lead us into the direction of the gazebo which, at this time of year, is clearly visible on its yew-clad knoll (below, top left). The knoll is home to an old ice house, which is said to be in excellent condition and one of the rare remaining examples in the area. Firmly padlocked, it is now a place of hibernation for a colony of bats.

 

The knoll can be climbed by way of a narrow, yew-hemmed path spiralling up to the top. It's not exactly for the faint-hearted as it's quite eroded in places, and I'm always glad of my walking stick, which helps me keep my balance.

At the very top, the gazebo awaits, its conical roof resting on gnarled and graffitied pillars. There's a view towards the white stuccoed manor house, originally dating from the late 19th Century but now much modernized and turned into a featureless hotel.

Back on solid ground, we continued our walk, taking note of the high water levels in the moat and marvelling at the monumental trees, some of which are at least 100 to 150 years old.

If you go down to the woods today ... be sure to watch your step as there are strange creatures lurking between the trees!

And then the year's final day dawned, which is when we realized we still had a little project lined up.

After we'd brought these two ladies home from the indoor flea market's December edition, they had been patiently awaiting their fate. Now was the time to introduce them to their sisters - and little Mexican brother - on the spare room's mantelpiece! 

The rest of the day was spent not doing much at all and resting up in anticipation of our New Year's Eve get-together with our friend Inez. 

No longer used to staying up after midnight - which is well past our usual bedtime - we were fully expecting to nod off on Inez's sofa before the clock struck 12!

We didn't - if only just - and had a lovely time eating, drinking - alcohol free bubbles and wine - and being merry.

We had Jos's homemade minestrone - which we brought along in our soup maker - as a starter, followed by Inez's main course of mince, feta and spinach filled peppers with new potatoes.

Dessert was a delicious ice cream Bûche de Noël, also supplied by Inez.

We found Inez's frock at Think Twice during one of our cappuccino fuelled catch-ups, while mine was a charity shop find in December 2020.

It's by the German "Ein Fink Model" label, and I'm including a close-up of its fabric of golden yellows and oranges threaded with Lurex. 

The brooch, a white metal scroll with dangly little chains ending in tiny pearls, is one of my oldest in terms of ownership, and may well have kick-started my collection.

We drove home in torrential rain and were in bed by 1.30 am, which of course we had to pay for the next day. In spite of a generous lie-in, I felt out of sorts all day.

There was plenty of Lurex in my New Year's Day dress too, although it isn't very noticeable in the pictures. I picked up this purple and lilac patterned dress for next to nothing in the Think Twice sales back in December 2017 and up-cycled it by changing its buttons. 

My purple pleated belt as well as the chunky orange long-line cardigan are old charity shop finds, while the orange metal flower brooch was a gift from my lovely friend Kezzie last February.

The necklace, with its purple, pink and orange wooden beads was found on the high street back in the mists of time.

Having finished Kate Morton's Homecoming, I selected the year's first book from my TBR pile. For some reason Jonathan Coe's latest offering is making me crave chocolate ...

I'm hopeful that, with a little more time on my hands in the near future, I'll be able to increase the number of books I'm reading. I didn't exactly count them, but it can't have been much more than twenty or so in 2023, which is quite shameful.

I wonder what else will 2024 bring? 

I've no idea, but Bess is looking forward to a future filled with cuddles and treats!