Rescue Me

The past few weeks have been immensely hectic but also very rewarding and fun.

I am thrilled to announce that both Mark and I are now PADI Rescue Divers, huzzah!

The course consisted of one classroom session, three pool sessions and the open water grande finale at Dogfish Reef, Loch Fyne last Sunday.

To say that the course was physically demanding would be an understatement, there were times when I was seriously wondering if I'd be able to get through it. 

To surface an unresponsive diver, giving rescue breaths and towing him or her to the shore whilst removing their and your own gear, then dragging them onto the shore before performing CPR and instructing others to contact Emergency Services (or having to do this yourself) is a TALL ORDER! However when you succeed in doing it, you feel totally flipping awesome.

The Rescue Diver Course made me realize the utmost importance of personal fitness and also that I still have to gain a fair bit of diving experience before I get to grips with the Dive Master Course.

So the aim for the coming months will be to go diving whenever the opportunity presents itself.

There are plenty of great dive sites to explore here in Scotland and with any luck we will have a great summer of doing just that.

I'm also hoping to do a few more courses with Aquatron; the Search and Recovery one is at the top of my list.

Last Saturday it was time for Frocktasia to roll out the rail again at Judy's Affordable Vintage Fair. 

This time the fair was held in the fabulous Wasp Artists' Studio in The Briggait, which is a tremendously impressive, wonderfully light building and hands down the best venue we've ever had the pleasure to trade at.

Much like the last Judy's we did, we were kept busy pretty much from the beginning to the end and our complimentary necklaces and lollipops went down a treat.

I'm not sure when the next Judy's will be held in Glasgow but the fair floor manager on the day said that there might be one in Edinburgh during the festival and hopefully by then we will have a car.

Here is my May (thus far) in pics...

The first thing we sold at Judy's last Saturday was the 90s knitted RAVE hat.
May it go forth and have a wicked summer on the head of the wee girly that bought it.

The obligatory SIFOS (seller in front of stall) pics.

Cut-offs are evidently still going strong. I remember tutting at the prices of these when Vix (VOTE VIX) and I went to the London Fashion Weekend in 2010, I think they've come down in price since then?!
Tallula Vintage had some exceptionally pretty frocks up for grabs but alas I am still on a buying ban. 

Tania was our delightful stall neighbour on the day. Her fabulous Etsy shop is stocked to the hilt with eclectic vintage finds and upcycled discoveries.
The fetching retro print curtain in the £3 bargain bag of another seller made me think of The Queen of Curtain Couture (VOTE VIX).

I had to take a sneaky-snap of this fabulous shopper because I loved her psychedelic print mini frock and hippie head-chain get-up.
So much vintage and retro finery under one roof...truly something for everyone! 

I wish every day was a Judy's day :)

What I Wore: 70s psychedelic print dress (Chiswick car boot sale), 70s suede waistcoat (Vintage dealer friend), layered tights (99p stores & Aldi), African mask necklace (Princess May car boot sale) and suede pixie boots (gift from my mum-in-law).

On Sunday I brought my camera to the dive site in the hopes that I'd be able to take some cool snaps of us after the Rescue Diver Course but as soon as we left Glasgow the sky ripped open and it poured down pretty much the whole time we were at Dogfish Reef, so no luck there.

To be honest I was too shattered afterwards to even entertain the idea of acting photographer or even pose for pics...Yes, I really was that tired ;)

We managed to take a couple of pics in the morning before we set off.

This is what the house looks like the day after diving. Drysuits & BCDs in the bathtub and a plethora of gear drying out on bath towels scattered throughout the flat.
It makes me feel very proud to see these pages of my training record signed off and I think Mark and I will have yet another wee celebration when our PADI certification cards come through.

Before wrapping up, I'll just share a little picture medley from when we went to see Maiden Scotland play here in Glasgow, they ROCKED! 

Last time we lived in Glasgow back in 2000 we had a band together with Dave who is pictured with his lovely girlfriend Emma and Allen who now plays bass for Maiden Scotland.

Hope you are all doing grand and if you haven't already VOTE FOR VIX!!!

I'll love you and leave you with the soundtrack for the Rescue Diver Course :)

All the best,

Jennie

xXx

My Awesome April

Time for a wee catch-up folks...

April was a really jam-packed month for me. 

I did my scuba review with Aquatron in readiness for the Rescue Diver Course, stayed with Mark's mum in Ballachulish for few days to give her a wee hand with the spring cleaning, then we had Little Birds Market, I attended a Social Media Event with Business Gateway, hooked up with lovely Sara of Hello The Mushroom and Lynsay aka Miss West End Girl in Edinburgh, went back up to Ballachulish for a days diving  in Loch Leven with Mark and Ben, studied HARD for the Rescue Diver Course, went to the first ever Aquatron social evening and started the Rescue Diver Course.

In between doing all of the above, I've sandwiched Frocktasia's online selling activities, although I have to admit that they did suffer somewhat last month with everything else being so full on. 

Never mind, onwards and upwards is the motto for May.

I've got loads of frocks waiting to be added to my Etsy shop and this month we've also got another Judy's Affordable Vintage Fair to look forward to.

The Rescue Diver Course is going very well, so far we've done the classroom & two pool sessions.

There is still one pool session to go and then it is the grande finale at Loch Long on the 18th, the day after Judy's. Mark and I are going to be well and truly cream-crackered after that weekend I can tell you.

I've been wanting to do this course for ages and although it is hard work and a lot to take in, I am thoroughly enjoying it :)

Here's a medley of April pics...

It was fab hanging out with Sara & Lynsey in Edinburgh, the weather that weekend was AMAZING!
We popped in to Armstrong's to peruse their fabulous selection of vintage & retro attire.

This was the day after Edinburgh, like I said we were blessed with some truly stunning spring weather. This was our first ever UK saltwater dive, so far we've only done open water diving in freshwater. It was also the first time we dived in our Scubapro drysuits. Was it cold? In the water...you bet :)

The visibility in the Loch wasn't all that great on the day but I still managed to see crabs, sea urchins and loads of brittle stars. After the dives mum had cooked us a wonderful meal of yummy veggie chilli and rhubarb crumble that we devoured in her garden.

Last Friday I went to the first ever Aquatron Social Evening to listen to Annie & Martin talk about tips & tricks for underwater photography and videography. These guys are so knowledgeable and enthusiastic. I'm so pleased for Mark that he gets to work with such a fab bunch of people. Then on Saturday the Rescue Diver Course started with the classroom session, behold my neat freak course work and Annie's adorable wee dog :) 

To round off a pretty perfect month, Mark and I decided to go walkies on his day off. 

Tuesday felt like the first day of summer here in Rutherglen, so we made our way to the Linn Park and the fabulous White Cart Walkway...

My awesome Hello The Mushroom tote bag got its first outing, thank you Sara :)

I'm so chuffed that we ended up living within striking distance of so many awesome parks. 

It makes the outdoorsy part of me jump with joy.

A celebratory cartwheel display...

Hurrah, spring/summer is finally here :)

Hope you are all doing grand folks?!

I will leave you with a cover tune that makes me smile from ear to ear and throw some odd shapes, enjoy :)

Loads of love,

Jennie

xXx

The Pigs Might Fly Post

Hello again :)

At the beginning of every month I think to myself...

"This month I will start blogging again!"

but so far this year it has all kind of fallen by the wayside.

Stocking my Etsy shop & just generally trying to get into the swing of running Frocktasia as a proper business has been an all consuming pursuit for the past wee while. A painfully slow crawl up a very steep learning curve but I believe things are finally starting to slot into place & even make a bit of sense.

Frocktasia had a fabulous outing at Judy's Affordable Vintage Fair at Glasgow Student Union last month and it was by far the busiest market we've ever done. We will definitely attend every Judy's here in Glasgow from now on and hopefully (once we get a car) branch out to the one they do in Edinburgh too. The next one in Glasgow is held at Wasps Artists' Studios on the 17th of May the day before Mark and I are off to Loch Long with Aquatron to do our final day of the Rescue Diver Course and hopefully bag our certificates.

Mark is working at Aquatron Dive Centre now; what started as a Dive Master Internship turned into full-time employment and he couldn't be more thrilled if he tried. 

The move to Glasgow has been a marvelous thing for both of us so far, long may it continue :)

Our wee pitch at Judy's Affordable Vintage Fair last month. A wheel came off one of our bags en route to the venue so we were pretty flustered by the time we got there. We had some jolly nice stall neighbours on the day though, Scott and Ross from Breaking Pop Vintage.

Last Sunday we were back at Sloans for another lovely day at Little Birds Market :)

Vintage scarves & ties have turned out to be a big hit with our market and fair customers.

One thing I really miss about London is its awesome car boot sales and markets. I'm running a bit low on scarves at the moment so I thought I'd check out the local car boot sale but it was pretty dreadful in comparison to the ones that I used to frequent down south. Maybe it will get better once the fair-weather sellers come out in force, if not I'll just have to jump on the bus and go for a cheeky wee boot sale buying weekend in London.

 There is an absolute glut of charity shops here in Glasgow but I'm yet to find a real treasure trove.

My shopping lust soon fades when all I'm faced with is rails upon rails of second hand F&F, George & Atmosphere.

Don't get me wrong it is not like I'm running out of stock or anything, I have a storage unit full of fabulous threads to "shop" from for the foreseeable future :)

I made these necklaces to give away to our market customers last Sunday as 'Rock Up Early Rewards'.

To this months Little Birds Market I wore a fabulous 70s frock by Susan Small and a pair of suede pixie boots that my awesome mum-in-law gave me when I went up for a flying visit last weekend.

This was lovely Palma's Blithe Spirit Vintage Jewellery stall at Little Birds, I loved those fabulous cut-outs...

Palma has a well stocked Etsy store where you can peruse and shop her spectacular collection of vintage jewellery.

That pretty much wraps it up for this time and if my past track record is anything to go by my next blog post will happen after I've done Judy's at Wasps Artists' Studio, my Rescue Diver Course and my first ever proper dive in Scottish waters but who knows I might surprise you all and blog more frequently from now on?!

....and then again pigs might fly ;)

Here I am diving (and looking freaky) in Wraysbury lake last year, hopefully the water in Loch Long has slightly better visibility.

Until next time folks, enjoy!
Jennie

xXx

Frocktasia Towers

I promised in a previous post that I'd give you a tour around our wee abode and today I finally got round to taking some pics. These past few weeks I've been very busy with market preparations and writing my business plan. Starting my own business was never really a doable thing when we were living in London. I did try but the horrendously steep living costs were too much of a prohibitive factor. Any attempts came to an abrupt end as soon as rent day loomed.  It was never going to happen in London but I think Glasgow might be just the ticket. 

Last Sunday Frocktasia made a splash at the lovely Little Birds Market & on the 23rd of this month we're testing out Granny Would Be Proud. I was so impressed with Little Birds so I've already booked a stall for the March event and we'll also be doing a turn at Glasgow's Affordable Vintage Fair on the 15th of next month.

I thank my lucky stars that Mark spotted that Can't Buy Me Love poster  last year and then gently twisted my arm into doing it, that initial plunge was a game changer. Meeting Leslie was another pivotal moment and exhibiting at The Dandy Lion Market boosted my confidence no end. I'm chuffed to bits how things have turned out.

Right I stop harping on and show you our pad. It is tiny compared to what we left behind in London but then again we are not paying £1000 per month any more. Much like our last flat this one is a bloody fridge but thankfully we are getting some insulation put in at the end of this month. Hopefully that will mean, no more wearing all your outdoors clothing indoors, fingers crossed.

Here's our home...

Hallway featuring Iggy the plastic iguana.

This house gave me good vibes from the first moment I stepped in the door.

I love all the wood paneling, it makes me think of cosy ski chalets in the Alps.

The bedroom is also Mark's playroom. Our beloved plants seem to dig the house too.

This is my playroom or should that be Barbara's room perhaps?! We have a storage unit that is the same size as this room that holds my vast collection of clobber. I am so glad it's not kept in the house anymore.

In our last flat we didn't have a shower so for twelve years I was a bath girl but this tub is tiny so I'm fast becoming a shower convert.

My mum sent me this cute cross-stitch to keep above the toilet. It reads "You can sit here in your own thoughts until somebody else comes knocking"... in Swedish it rhymes.

Our wee tiny micro kitchen. This was the hardest thing to get used to. The kitchen in our last flat had a huge couch in it, loads of cupboard space and the door that led out to our beloved balcony and our gorgeous pigeon friends. It's definitely not a kitchen for a cooking enthusiast that's for sure. I'm learning to live with it but I will never love it.

So there you go, you've now seen Frocktasia Towers. We do have a small garden with a shed too but it's too bleeding freezing to go outside today so that'll have to wait until a sunny day. We do get a lot of garden birds which is lovely and there are three pigeons that come regularly. A couple that we've named Laurél and Hardy and a white speckled one that we call Motley.

To finish off just a little medley of pics from last week...

I made a handcuff belt from a 50p set of furry love cuffs, I also bought two new wigs on eBay and took delivery of Frocktasia's new business cards and rubber stamp from Vistaprint.

It's amazing how happy a rubber stamp can make a person, I felt like I was five years old playing post office again.

Our stall at Little Birds Market at Sloans. We shared the fabulous Snug Room with  Blithe Spirit vintage jewellery stall run by the very lovely Palma.

That's all for this time folks, hope you are all doing well & keeping warm.

Loads of love,

Jennie

xXx

Costa del cloud

Surprised to see me back so soon? 

I did promise to blog a bit more frequently, didn't I?! 

So here I am with my second blog offering of the year which (I hasten to add) will be significantly shorter than the last one (sigh of relief ).

Firstly I'd like to say thank you to the awesome peeps that took the time to leave such lovely comments on my last post, you all gave me a real shot in the arm after my extended hiatus. To be honest I hadn't planned to take such a long break from blogging but our move saw one week seamlessly glide into the next and before I knew it almost five months had gone by....it happens, that's life! Any road it is very heartwarming to feel welcomed back after a long break and it makes me feel even more excited about getting back into the saddle.

This week we borrowed a relatives's car while she's away working in London and we've been making good use of it. On Monday we swung past IKEA for their sale, on Wednesday we did a quick restock run to the storage place where we now keep the majority of our clobber and yesterday we drove out to the coast to snap some pics.

We stopped off in Largs for a poke of chips that we shared with the gulls...

According to Wikipedia (and my mother-in-law) Largs is a popular seaside resort on the Firth of Clyde in North Ayrshire, roughly 33 miles from Glasgow.

Like so many of our beloved British seaside gems it is probably much more exciting when visited during the summer months, yesterday it displayed a definite vibe of hibernation.

It made me think of a ' The Lightening Seeds' song called 'Sense', there is a line that goes "Feels like I'm living in a town closed down for winter"...it felt a bit like that.

Hanging out with the gulls on the shore, was definitely where it was at!

Yesterday was the first day in ages that it wasn't pissing down or blowing a hoolie, so I made sure that I was out of bed before noon so that we could go for a spin. We'd planned to have a photo session up in the Highlands over Christmas but severe dreich weather conditions scuppered those plans. Despite it being a wee bit nippy yesterday we still managed to shoot a couple of frocks with the stunning Firth of Clyde as a backdrop. I'll share this little photo session in the next post as I've yet to edit most of the pics.

We took some fannying about pics too...

Mark wore his favourite Pachamama top that I bought for him at the Holloway car boot sale.

My get-up:
Vintage 60s psychedelic print dress
Plain and net layered  tights
Faux-fur trimmed PVC coat
DM boots
Frocktasia bag
Necklace bought in Greece
Retro sunnies

No doubt we'll return to Largs in the summertime, perhaps even daring to bring a couple of beach towels, who knows?! 

Hope your weekend has got off to a fabulous start peeps.

Have a good one :)

I'll leave you with that tune that was spinning through my head yesterday...

Loads of love,

Jennie

xXx 

I can see clearly now

Some of us live our lives filled with perpetual longing for something better, sometimes battered by discontentment. Some are lucky enough to have found a place in the sun where they feel truly happy. A place where the dramas simply melt away and the first thing spotted in a cloudy sky is a silver lining. Some people are just swept along with the flow, content with not having to swim too hard.

Who am I? 

I often wonder that myself.

When I was growing up we moved three times before I hit fourteen. First when I was six, then ten and then again at thirteen. Moving was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it probably gave me a more varied base of experiences than staying put in a small backwater village in southern Sweden ever would have been able to but it was also a curse cause it left me feeling quite rootless and like everything was just temporary. My relationships were never allowed to properly cement before it was time to haul the anchor and drift off to another place where I had to fight tooth and nail to be accepted yet again. I suppose I got used to change though cause after five years in the same place I couldn't wait to fly the nest and move away. 

I left Sweden when I was eighteen to work in Spain for a season and then I moved to Scotland where I stayed for three years. I sloped back to Sweden for a year to study English and law but soon realized that living in the old motherland felt akin to wearing a badly boil washed woolly jumper and because of that I made a speedy return to Scotland where I met Mark. In 1997 I  lived and worked in Malmo in Sweden, Onich in The Scottish Highlands, Cambridge, Wisbech, London and then back to The Highlands for a short stint in Fort William before returning to London again. I lived my life out of a 90 liter backpack and anything I couldn't carry when it was time to move again was left behind. It was a liberating feeling not to be locked down by possessions and to be able to just pack up and leave at a drop of a hat.

We spent all of 1998 in London but still managed to move three times within the city that year.

Then in 1999 we moved up to Ballachulish to look after mum's house while she went off to be a Buddhist nun for a year and after she got back home Mark and I hitched to Barcelona for a summer of busking on La Ramblas. In early September we got a bus back to London, worked in a pub in Balham for a few months, saw in the new millennium with my sister in Copenhagen before moving to Glasgow.

We stayed there for one year before yet again returning to London and then out of the blue all the toing and froing came to an end. It happened on a December day in 2001 when we walked passed a estate agents. A rental notice in the window really grabbed my attention cause it said really wonderful things like "spacious rooms, plenty of storage, large balcony and nearby park" all of which really appealed to me, so we arranged a viewing and a week later we had moved in. Twelve years on we are still here but not for much longer cause change is afoot.

I never in a million years thought I'd stay somewhere for twelve years but I guess that I'd finally found a place where I was happy to sprout a root and my normal "ants in her pants" tendencies where replaced by "albatross adoration". Each year every room became a little more cramped with stuff until one day we were no longer able to just up sticks and move. Sure it's nice to come home to a familiar setting sometimes, flick the kettle on and see that well entrenched butt groove on the sofa where I have been perched year in and year out for what now seems like an eternity but equally sometimes the longing for those freewheeling vagabond days of my youth make me want to cry when faced with all this staid familiarity.

The anchor is no longer making me feel safe, it's making me feel chained down and all the stuff that I once regarded so highly is suffocating me.

Don't get me wrong I still love my frocks but over the past few years I've realized that there is something I love even more and that is excitement, adventure and really wild things! Right now living in London with a house full of frocks there is very little of that variety forthcoming. I want to be able to don a backpack, travel the world, work as a divemaster (although I'd have to become one first) & do marine conservation volunteering. I want to feel like my life has got substance and meaning. It has been ho-hum for too frigging long. Change is where I want to be!

Sheer 70s Hippie frock, satin slip,  suede waistcoat, Buffalo clogs, odd earrings, sunnies and Tibetan prayer bangle.

Just in case you've been wondering what I've been up to since I last blogged...

We've started making that change happen by selling off my vast stash of clobber at The Princess May Car Boot Sale. We'll be there every Saturday and Sunday for the foreseeable future. It will take a little while but we are bashing away at that hoard like nobody's business and making good progress so far.

Here's Jimmy Cliff to sing us out, enjoy :)

Hope you've all been doing well.
Lots of love,
Jennie
xXx

Fiesta frock

In 1986 my mum took me to Mallorca on holiday, Magaluf to be exact. 

In the morning mum would cover herself in Hawaiian Tropic dark tanning oil, slither onto a beach lounger and stay there for hours reading her books in the baking hot sun. I soon got bored with lounging on the beach and took my inflatable lilo for epic paddles along the shoreline and beyond. On one occasion I got back finding my mother livid with worry cause I'd been gone for several hours. She gave me an almighty bollocking for not being more considerate and told me that I could forget about the fiesta dress that I'd been lusting over in a little shop near the hotel. As a child in pursuit of excitement, adventure and really wild things I became blinkered to other peoples concerns I guess. If my mum had known about all the other perilously crazy stunts me and my little pals got up to at home, she would probably have put me under permanent house arrest until I turned eighteen. We returned to the hotel in a huffed silence to get ready for an outing. That evening we were going to a 'medieval fiesta' held at some fake fort on the outskirts of the resort. Do people still go to these things? Everyone wore paper crowns and colour coded tabards to correspond with each seating section's individual knight. During the medieval banquet tournaments were held. The cheap Spanish plonk (and lemonade) was free flowing and there were lots of  jeering and cheering going on. An opportunity to shake a leg was also given towards the end of the evening, with a great many vermillion-faced holiday makers dancing to the ever so slightly annoying birdy song. 

Needless to say my mum didn't stay cross with me for very long and she even let me buy a fiesta frock before we went home. I actually wanted a scarlet lace one but mum thought it was far too sexy for a twelve year old so I was only allowed to get the much more virginal white cotton & crochet trimmed version. Sadly the white frock no longer dwells in my vintage wonderland but whenever I come across a similar dress all these memories come flooding back to me.

The hydrangea pink fiesta frock that I'm wearing today was cheekily borrowed from the Frocktasia stockroom cause it just seemed like the perfect day for it ;)

80s Mexican fiesta dress, ethnic mirror and embroidery embellished tie belt, 80s Pierre Cardin sandals & Leslie Works button bracelet.

I'll love you and leave you with The Pogues, enjoy ;)

Take care,

Jennie

xXx