I love the charity shop hunt. I don’t know if it is the biological hunter/gatherer instinct or a conditioned response from flea markets and garage sales with my father as a girl, but Monday I hunted and gathered.
This particular Monday brought me to Tooting, London. A name that always brings a smile to this California born girl. There was a charity shop across the street and I had a few minutes before I’d be missed, so I tucked into the shop. It was a gold mine for me. I rarely find hat books at Charity shops, but this was a good day. I discovered a fun book on felting and making hats, Fabulous Felt Hats by Chad Alice Hagen another was a child’s book The Hairy Hat Man’s House by the Letterland Storybooks and just as I was about to leave, high up in the window display was a wonderful conical straw hat. I’ve been on a bit of a Conical (aka Coolie) shaped hat kick lately. My computer desktop is full of images and my pinterest Hats pinboard is all about conicals right now.
A hat and two books later, I return home to discover that the latest edition of The Hat Magazine has arrived! The first thing that must be done is to flip to the back for the Workroom Technique section. This issue is, “How to Work with Feathers” by Edwina Ibbotson and it did not disappoint.
In addition to the Monday, Good Hat Day, I’ve had two “finds” and book shops lately. My eldest daughter is a book junkie. She can’t pass a book shop without wanting to go in. And seeing as I am like that with fabric and hat shops, I can’t fault her. So I end up in a lot more book shops that I would on my own. Over the previous week I discovered two books, The Panama Hat Trail by Tom Miller at Travelling Through and Hats by Colin McDowell at Skoob Books. In true Leanne-form, I have started all of them, but the only one I’ve properly read all the way through is….yes, the children’s book. I am a slow reader, so this back log of books should keep me busy for the remainder of the year and into the next.
Back to the “Good Hat Day”, I then went into work, where I work on the computer doing the marketing, social media, website updates, invoicing, and anything else that needs to be done, while surrounded by beautiful hats and intensely creative skilled people. And to top it all off, hat class, where I could work on my own Conical shaped hat. Three layers of sinamay and I’ve wired the edge so far.
AND THAT is a Good Hat Day to me! Have you had a good hat day? Tell me about it in the comments, and sign up for my mailing list.
