My weekend haul, my crazy classroom and a lickle competition

I really should be marking some work or editing some photos from an event on Saturday but I've been wanting to share my finds from Deptford Market this weekend - so the rest can wait for a bit.  I'm sitting cross-legged on the sofa watching Come Dine With Me munching on fruit and now I will share ...

So let's start with the books:

I've been intrigued by Haunted since it came out

This looked intriguing - has anyone read it?

I LOVE Mr Fry and have most of his books - but not this one -  well I do now!

This 1940s dog book is full of excellent images and adverts

Brilliant recipes for home-made wines

We are quite geeky and love to collect old AtoZs of London and then sit comparing how much has changed in the city!

I met Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell when they came to a school I was teaching at - so I bought these two books for my tutor group's 'book box'.  The Parliament of Blood intrigued me because it seems to be similar (slightly) to a novel I've been working on - BUGGER!

For some reason this book grabbed my attention and I have no idea why

... but I'm glad I opened it because it's the first Richard Scarry book I've found second-hand.  I used to love Richard Scarry books as a child and this one, despite being battered shows signs of being very well loved.

 Onto the paper ephemera:

I love these shaped birthday postcards - so cute.  I now want to find 1,2,5,6,8 and 9.  Not sure if there's a 10.

Cute kittens!

Random ephemera - a few photos for the Ghosts project we're working on.

I quite like drinking ephemera and this little Stones booklet is so cool - with recipes and games inside :)

Now the random shizzle and COMPETITION TIME!

What do you think this is??????????? I'll let you guess and reveal the answer AND the winner in next Tuesday's post.  I'll even send a prize (a box of random goodies) to the closest guess. To win you need to post your answer as a comment AND follow my blog. If a number of you get it right I'll put your names in a hat so to speak and pick out a random.   HINT: I'm going to take it into work tomorrow and show it to my Year 7 Media Studies class to show them how we 'used to do it' back in the day!

 I love this pair of peacocks made out of tin.  I don't think there is much age to them but they're adorable.  I have an art deco style peacock tattooed on my back and have a real love for them.  In fact this weekend I'll be spending the weekend in the company of a peacock as Ben's parents' have one :)  We've now got to find a home in the flat for them.

Did you ever have a flower loom as a child?  I did and I loved it.  I found this set for 50p :)  BARGAIN!  It didn't have the instructions but it did have some odd colour combination of wools and a really bad wool flower.  I'm guessing they tried it the once and gave up after that!  So I looked up some tutorials on the web and found this great one on Youtube.  The woman collects vintage flower looms and creates her own kits then sells them on.  This is a really good tutorial and as I've said before I find it easier to be shown how to do something rather than read instructions.  So - do you want to see the results?  Of COURSE you do!

Instead of using wool I had some old thin curtains that someone had given me and was never going to hang them up so I decided to rip them into strips and use that instead of yarn.

These ones were made out of a silvery/purple curtain the same person gave us.  They make quite cute rosettes for presents I think.

Well done you for getting this far with my blog post :)  I thought I'd also share a story from the crazy world of teaching.
I have a Year 11 class who are difficult to say the very least.  Basically it's a class where you have the worst behaved, most excluded kids in the year group, and I have to start and end my week in their company.  I've grown to like them in a weird way.  However it's now 4 days before they leave to go on study leave, as the course they're doing is 100% coursework they're slowly starting to filter away to other teachers during our lesson time in order to prepare for their exams.  Today was the last lesson I have with them and I was trying to get the 'strays' to finish as much off as possible so they can go off and do their Maths, English and Science revision.  One of the students took 1 1/2 hours to write about 5 sentences and THAT was with me sitting next to him to make sure he did it.
Anyway - I was updating the spreadsheet on the smartboard so that the kids could see what they had left and I heard a bit of commotion behind me.  Freakin' out thinking that a fight had broken out (not unusual for this class) I turned around and saw the same boy who took forever to write 5 lines, standing there with his flies and button undone on his trousers and the trousers lowered.  Apparently he was 'just sorting' his trousers out.  Seriously.  Well he's now on an 'early bath' (which means he only comes back for exams now) and the school is investigating the situation.  He just kind of stood there like there was nothing at all wrong in what he was doing. 
To say this is the worst thing that has happened in my classroom with boys and their hands down their trousers is, unfortunately, not true.  I'll leave the rest up to your imaginations.  Ahhh the youth of today eh?

Flowers that don't make me sneeze

I've been off work for 4 days with some weird sort of sinus/ headaches/ migraines.  Everytime I think I'm ok my little prisms come back in the corner of my left eye, I lose sight in the eye, headaches and nausea ensue.  Unfortunately some kick ass meds my doc wanted to give me reacted with something else I'm on so I'm relying on Co-Codamol to kick the butt of my headaches.  It's not been fun.  However around 1pm today I'd had 3 clear waking hours without my eyesight going funny.  I decided to celebrate by making a mess and trying my hand at some craftyness.

I'm in LOVE with fabric flowers - I have horrendous hayfever (I'm a sickly bunny) and I prefer fake/ fabric flowers to the real thing in the house.  These beauties had me salivating and reaching for my glue gun:

 

via: http://www.msawesome.com/blog

via: http://www.etsy.com/people/Snazziedrawers

via: http://diyfashion.about.com

As I said in my blog post yesterday I'm pretty rubbish at following any sort of instructions so most of the tutorials on the internet are useless for me.  So I decided I was just going to try trial and error - folding, twisting, turning, puckering the material that I have.

A while ago I found a large bag of fabric squares on the market which were once samples.  I picked them up for £3 and then waited and waited for inspiration to hit me:

I was thinking that perhaps I'd eventually use them for something patchworky then today I sat there with my squares; twisting, turning, puckering and created this:

Adding a little brassy button from my collection.  I kind of liked this but it involved sewing (to pucker the leaves) and I was getting everything in a mess and the headache was threatening to come back.  So I gave this a go:

Much much easier - folding and sticking - sticking and folding.  Minimal amount of sewing.
Now - I have boxes of buttons and can you believe that I made all these flowers but can't find ONE button I feel suits them?:

So if I'm feeling perkier tomorrow it's a hunt for buttons on Deptford Market I believe.  I do think I have another box of buttons hidden somewhere in binbagaggeddon (the name for our 'study') so I'll hunt for them before I go and buy more (maybe).

Anyway - honest opinions? I know the photos are my typical hipstamatic and not very clear but do they look ok?  Do you think I could get away with wearing one and not looking like a complete idiot?

 

ps: While I was waiting for the photos to upload I was stumbling and came across this here:

 

Thought it was appropriate for the way we organise ourselves here!

Edit:  It's now just past midnight and I couldn't sleep so I went hunting for my buttons that I KNEW I had somewhere (why I'm trying to talk myself out of buying more buttons tomorrow I have NO idea!).  I thought I'd add them to the flowers and take more crappy photos with my iphone:

Crafty McCraftsome

I want to be good at crafts I really really really do but I am SO ham-fisted (as my mum calls it) and so impatient.  Most crafts I try my hand up end up looking as though they've been assembled by a one armed octopus in the middle of a tornado.  That's not to say I don't enjoy giving it a go though :)
One of my junk market obsessions is finding crafty books.  As a child we had quite a few and my mum and dad made a LOT of my presents.  When I got my first Tiny Tears they made it a cot and bed linen.  When I wanted a Sindy dolls house they balked at the ridiculous price of a plastic piece of tat and made mine - along with a Princess Di style wedding dress for my Sindy.  Looking back, the best presents I ever received were handmade as they were made with love.

 Ever since I started teaching I've always tried to keep the learning styles in mind for my students.  I'm definitely a visual learner crossed with a physical (or kinaesthetic) style - after doing various tests etc. that we set the kids I come out strongly here.  Which means that books don't always help me unless they have absolute step by step images to instruct me.  So why the hell do I buy so many craft books? I have absolutely no idea.

Anyway I thought I'd share some of my crafty/ sewing books with you that I've picked up from various places:

Freaky 1970s square toys

I really want to give the kite a go

I used to have this as a child and found it on Deptford Market last weekend.  I love the illustrations.

Another one I found on Deptford Market that I used to have as a child

I had to buy this simply because of the illustrations.

If you click on the image you can read what I've said about the books.

When you go thrifting or junking - do you look for particular types of books?