Category Archives: life-threatening clutter

June 26, 2012 · 6:18 pm

Mystery Date

Mystery Date fellows – click image for an enlargement

I didn’t want to give you guys a day off, so here’s a quickie for you. I picked up this Mystery Photo at a local estate sale. Here’s everything I know surrounding the photo:

I bought it in Arvada, a suburb north of Denver (Colorado)
The house where I bought it, built in 1968, was owned by Gordon and Dorothy “Dot” Stone (nÃ©e Scheurn), but I don’t know their children’s names, or if either of these fellows could be their son
That’s a 1961-1967 Ford Econoline van and, according to Wikipedia, only the 8-passenger Club Wagons carried the Falcon badge as this one does
The van is gussied up as an ambulance, bears a “Property Of” Colorado state government license plate, and has a September registration tag in the window

So, there you go. That’s all I have to give you today. If you have anything to add, please do!

Prominent Designer Series: part 1

On Friday I promised you a new series this week, and here we go! For the next 2 weeks I’ll be posting daily images from a vintage broadsheet-style catalog I have of Prominent Designer Patterns. There is no printed date, and an online search for individual patterns usually dates each one to “1950s,” but I think overall they look more early ’60s. Of course, some of these patterns may have been in print for a few years. If you have more specific information about any of these, please be sure to share in the Comments!

As always, you can click on the images for embiggerationing.

Prominent Designer Pattern mail-order series

As I type this out, none of these individual patterns are in stock at Winkorama, however I can find a few here and there when searching online. May the vintage juju be with you if you fall in love with any of these!

Brigance A844 Shapely bodice for sheath

Oleg Cassini M276 Dress with bolero-effect bodice

8 Comments

Filed under collections, fashion, life-threatening clutter, sewing, vintage

June 1, 2012 · 4:31 pm

Not Today’s Post

That is, today’s post was intended to be something else. But it requires a lot of scanning and merging, and I was busy with other things. For instance, did you see the HELLO, ALFRED SHAHEEN silver Lurex pants I posted at Tiddleywink Vintage today? Because they are stellar.

No, today you get a recap of a conversation I had with my friend Erin of Theda Bara’s Vintage Boudoir while we were out together hunting for goodies for our shops. In what seems like a typical day for us lately, she found a bag full of goodies and I, wellâ€¦

Donut-All batter dispenser by Nordic Ware

Me: I’m getting this. For myself.

Erin: Are you going to make donuts?

Me: Well, I’m not making them without this.

Now on the not-so-immediate hunt for a good fried donut recipe. I probably have a few pinned on Pinterest already. If you have a favorite, please let me know!

1 Comment

Filed under collections, food, kitchen, life-threatening clutter, vintage

May 24, 2012 · 10:12 am

For My Next Trick…

I’m combing my hair, right? And then I set the comb down on my rad, vintage, circle-wire vanity shelf. Which already has a (larger) comb and a bunch of barrettes on it, so the (smaller) comb slides off the top of the pile. I see it fall down, hit the carpet, and bounce under the vanity. So I bend down to pick it upâ€¦

and it’s NOT THERE.

Well, of course it has to be there. I check right up against the baseboardâ€¦nope. I lift up the area rugâ€¦nope. Â I check right up against the baseboard again. I shake out the area rug. WTF? The floor in this vanity space is about 3 ft by 4 ft, if that. Not exactly enormous. I am perplexed. I mean, seriously perplexed. This isn’t some hypothetical problem I’m having trouble with, this is a PHYSICAL OBJECT Â that I WATCHED fall to the floor. What in the freaking hell is going on? I spend the next 4â€“5 minutes fruitlessly searching the same 12-sq-ft area, because I don’t know what else to do. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a physical anomaly in my house, so IT HAS TO BE THERE. I am now down on my hands and knees with my head on the floor when I discover, after nearly 9 years of living in this condo, that the baseboard does not actually meet the vanity cabinet. There’s a 1″ high gap above the baseboard, and below the vanity, that the comb must have bounced into. I think about sticking my hand in there to feel around for it, then remember the photo that was posted to Instagram last night of the dessicated rat that someone discovered while demo’ing their kitchen cabinets, and decide against it.

It’s okay, I have another comb.

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Filed under life-threatening clutter

March 8, 2012 · 4:35 pm

New New New (and slightly less-new)

Hi, I’m Troy McClure and you may remember me from such educational films asâ€¦ no, wait, that’s not right.

But I am Tiddleywink (Design, Vintage) and Winkorama Vintage Sewing. Happy to fulfill your vintage clothing, vintage sewing, and freelance print production dreams. Not necessarily in that order.

As of today, I’m also Tiddleywink Retro. It’s not really a big deal, just a little shop for the misfits: the items of clothing, etc. which don’t qualify for my Etsy shop because they’re not truly vintage, but are too nice and/or expensive to simply toss in the donation pile. Trust me, there’s plenty in the donation pile already. These are things that I either bought for myself but never wore, or bought as vintage for the shop only to find upon close inspection that they’re not as “vintage” as may have been advertised. And so here is where those items will be posted, hoping for new homes. The listing prices will be set at whatever I paid for each item; no more, no less. No markup. No profit. No sales. No discounts.

Tiddleywink Retro. It looks an awful lot like this.

Due to the nature of the store contents, I hope I won’t be updating it very often. But, you know, things happen. Maybe a dealer missed a dead-giveaway label hidden in a side seam. Maybe a dress I bought online is a few inches shorter than I’d hoped. Maybe I ordered two pairs of identical shoes planning to return whichever pair didn’t fit, only to have the store go out of business before I could send a pair back. Um, you know, for instance. Hypothetically. (Yeah, that once happened.)

So stroll around, take a look, tell your friends. Buy stuff that deserves to be worn, rather than hanging in a dark closet with no foreseeable future.

You can get to all of the above links, and more, from this one swell page: