Fossicking

The other day I had a bit of an epiphany while my fingers crawled over the hangers in the vintage shop.

I love reading blogs about altering your wardrobe with a needle and thread, reviving your clothes, and the ultimate ‘trashion’, such as Outsapop which I read quite religiously these days.

So much, it has inspired me to trawl the shops and markets of vintage wear, nose quivering, looking for a boring, withered and terrible outfit that makes my heart beat very fast and I whisper “…it has POTENTIAL!”

Sadly, the last few months have born no fruit; no drumming of the heart or pings on my drowsing nose (one of the only uses for my long nose). And there I was, rummaging through a new shop I’d discovered on St George Road, thinking idly about pretty stones and how one certain little ex-babysitted brat is doing in a two-month camp in the middle of no where, and I’d written to tell her the secret of where to dig up beautiful amethyst crystals.

Then! That’s when I had the epiphany, sirs, and I had to learn how to spell that just today, about me and my gemstone collection – I never ever brought one of those tumblers (to smooth out rough crystals into those shiny stones at the hippy shop) or readily hopped on my friend’s lapidary (polishing gemstones into jewellery pieces) wagon. Once I buy/pick up something, it stays the way it is. Someone suggests to me that I should polish the amethyst crystal I found at the two-month camp, or the rough lapidary sample I brought at a market, and I give them a blank look. Why should I? I brought it because of its present looks, not because of what it was going to be after a bit of elbow grease. I don’t even polish the battered vintage shoes I’ve brought until my mother, out of sheer exasperation, polishes them herself with dark mutterings.

The clothes I buy from the vintage shops are brought in the exact same mindset; aside from maybe a few repairs or a bit of hemming or a take-in, jobs that take barely 10 minutes, my mind goes blank at the idea of grossly altering them. I mean, they caught my eye. I brought them, and they looked fab on me. Why should I tear them up further? I feel as though I’d be destroying its original principle, and something that had been intact for decades is lost forever in the passage of time – much like a crystal dug up from a 10-million-year-old bed rock, and the original shape is tossed in a 99.99 dollar tumbler to become a polished coloured rock.

However, if it’s already been polished and set and so on, and it still catches my eye, I take my wallet out. It’s the same with fabrics and clothes – I have a huge pile of fabrics that I still CANNOT decide what to make out of them!

Now, I can imagine should my future husband to be (if there is one) drops to his knee, decides to do something unique (as per my gemstone hobby) and gives me a uncut diamond crystal, proudly declaring that it is for my engagement ring, and that I can choose whatever cut I want to make of it (oooh how romantic!).

I’d give him a blank look. “Cut it!?!”