spray painting!

Belinda and I got tired of waiting for customers to brave the 2 stairs that lead up to our emporium of quirky clothes - so we got the rickety ladder from the farm workshop (held by one nail on its way out) and I wielded the spray cans and shakily inscribed the legend across the shop front! Still a bit shaky and with pounding heart in case the landlord came to shout (I HATE being shouted at which is why I am such a boring, good girl)we then went a little over the top spraying hearts and dots all over the building.
Doesn't it look fabulous?!
And then Belinda modeled a quirky outfit to inspire our shoppers (um - where are they?)
So now EVERYONE knows what we sell in there.
And all they have to do now is... come in and shop!

New Look for Rummage - very smart!

Rummage is closed for a for revamp until 3 May...

We are not the world's most avid shop keepers I fear and so we have shut the shop for two weeks for the holidays! Even shopkeepers need a holiday.
But I intend to use the time off to hunt ALL my secret haunts for more fabulous old clothes to grace our shop when it opens.
And while we are shut, Sebastian, the lovely carpenter who works in the video shop in his other life, is building us PROPER shop rails with a long shelf above the rail to balance handbags and groovy things on. The rails will go along the two longest walls and we think things will look a lot more organised and less ramshackle this way. It was a bit crammed before, really!
We are going to re-open with a bang on 3 May - all chic and organised and gleaming! Hope you'll come and shop with us.
Here is the old stuffed-to-the-gills shop look - to compare later with the new spacious revamp...

We had our market and it was fab! We had lovely people selling chocolate brownies with hearts stencilled on in icing sugar and other lovely people selling wooden heart artworks and perspex jewels and others selling milk and honey creams and others selling bric a brac and others selling hand-painted t-shirts and others seeling groovy handbags and some children selling their old toys and dress-ups and Belinda and I sold our groovy recycled clothes as always. There weren't hoards and crowds sadly, but some of our dear regulars turned up and we all had a friendly happy day outside under the tree in the shop's garden and inside our tiny shop too.
Here are some pics which say more...

And so we drift along...

Not being very up to date with these blog posts, I fear, but have great resolutions to do better. (If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, my road there has mosaic on the pavements!)
But the life of the small shop on the farm is running smoothly. We do have some customers, which is always a good thing, and apparently word is spreading, which is an even better thing.
But today I was sitting in the shop all alone (Belinda had a day off) and I did think that perhaps we should speed up this slow process of letting people know we are there, so I have made some little posters and some tiny black and white flyers that we must now distribute. Maybe even a mail drop! Eek! Getting quite serious now.
And we are going to have a market in our shop garden next Saturday (9 April) to entice new people in, and also to give some of our friends a space to sell their wares.
I'll post pics of it afterward. So far we have Gabi selling her pure wool children's jerseys, Sue selling her groovy bags, Zelda selling her delicious food and her mum's charming knitted toys, Leigh selling her necklaces and her fresh muffins, Shire selling her collectibles... and hopefully even more people will turn up with their wares. It's not every shop that has a garden so we intend to use it!

Chitenje Board Shorts?

Billy the tailor copied these for me from my son's Billabong boardies - and did a pretty good job I think!
They all sold except for one last pair - so I'll ask Billy to make more when I get back to Malawi. I'll try to find some really bold, brighter chitenjes for them - and make some bigger ones too.
(Chitenjes are the local cloths, sold in lengths of 2 yards, which women wear around their waists and over their western clothes. They also wear a length as a shawl in colder weather and carry babies in a chitenje sling over one shoulder. I buy them from local markets and they are printed in Malawi on polycotton and in Tanzania on 100% cotton. Perhaps the polycotton would actually be better for boardshorts - quicker drying?)

Ben and his friend Chulu are modelling them for me.

And here is an unrelated but nice pic of the main vege market in Lilongwe, Malawi - isn't it lovely?

Two weeks in...

ebony leopard hooks from Malawi

brooches from 'a life of sundays'

ebony charms and glass beads

chitenje stuffed heart decorations

phone wire chokers

chitenje cloth pencil/makeup/sunglasses bags

porcupine quill bracelets from Malawi (found quills, no porcupines killed in the making of these bracelets!)

lacy nightie and button necklace made by women in empowerment group

some crafts made by the Waldorf school mothers

love all the colours and patterns

Belinda's bags and Malawian sling bags

clothes on rails at last!

Not very good at this updating, it seems, but we have been open two weeks and it is so lovely to have that space to work in and hang our finds in. About 4 people a day wander in, many of them mothers from the Waldorf school down the track, and usually everyone finds something to buy.
Here are some pics of what we have inside...