Silver Apples

We went to Manchester to visit our younger daughter Rosie and see her lovely new flat which is at the top of a tall old house. (It's a few streets away from where I lived as a student, so I always feel nostalgic there - in a nice way). We had a good look round the bright, refurbished rooms and I snapped some pictures of the pretty things to be found there, and then we went out to a cafe.

We all love going to a cafe, and there are plenty to choose from here......

This time we went to Silver Apples on Orchard Street - what a great name. And a lovely cafe, with a quirky continental feel, vintage china, lovely food and amazing homemade cakes displayed on the counter. Sometimes they have live music and they host lots of interesting events too.

And I knew the name reminded me of something - it comes from a poem by W B Yeats:

And walk among long dappled grass

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon

The golden apples of the sun.

I hope you're having a lovely week. x

First Vintage China I Ever Bought

This little blue and white creamer is the first piece of vintage china I ever bought. It was in the Seventies and I was an art student in Manchester. I found the little jug (I didn't know it was a creamer then) in a junk shop near college, where (not very attractive) old furniture used to spill out onto the pavement. Sometimes they had records and paperback books we were interested in.

But one day I saw this little jug and bought it for few pence. It was roughly wrapped in a piece of the Manchester Evening News and I took it back to my room in the student house I shared with several others. There it joined the art materials, books, patchwork fabrics, records, clothes and general muddle I lived in at the time. It was the beginning of years of collecting vintage pieces - and I still have it with me today. It moved from flat to cottage and from house to house with me. In the Eighties I painted it for a book illustration, with cornflowers, buttercups and wild roses.

Today I've taken it out of the cupboard and filled it with a posy of clove-scented carnations or pinks, and a few other little garden flowers. It's a wonderful little bit of china for displaying posies and the memories it holds will always keep me especially fond of it.