the blue rose of curio

Blue roses always make me laugh. They are just so not right. I don't care if they are breeding roses with the blue gene*. I think a glow-in-the-dark rose** would be fun in a night garden!

I've raided the shelves and pulled out piles of bark cloth to make a new style bag. A summer tote, bark cloth on the outside, vintage cotton on the inside and handles reinforced with cotton herringbone tape. The fabrics are 1950s through to 1970s, lots of strange and wonderful prints.

The bags are really reversible if you so desire.

I've spent this evening trying to move things around in the shop, putting out new stock and find somewhere to store the boxes of shop bags that arrived today. There is so little storage space in this building, I've ended up with a clothes mannequin on the landing.

I've also been checking what stock we have and, more importantly, haven't got. I'm shopgirl for the next two days and have reached the point of mild but trembling panic. I must keep my hands busy tomorrow. I'm not feeling like we are in the throws of Xmas yet, I can't decide whether this is good or bad. Do we have enough stock? Do we have interesting stock? Will people buy it? If we open the doors will they come? I have the 'birthday party jitters'. Ridiculous! It's about time to start burning the candle at both ends and in the middle.

*I was half asleep when I wrote this last night and I was thinking about the legendary black tulips and everything got mixed up in my head.... yes there are blue roses and delphiniums and sweetpeas..... they are just never quite as blue as all the roses depicted in my 1950s floral fabrics! That would really be creepy!

** And apparently you can buy glow-in-the-dark roses, so this post is really defunct and should be completely scrapped, although the bit about new bags made from vintage fabrics and the fact that I am panicking are both correct. 50% isn't too bad I suppose.