Traditional and Vintage

So, what I failed to mention last week is that when I photographed the artwork on the shop windows, I was actually on my first ever vintage clothes shopping expedition. Having been inspired by the Channel 4 series This Old Thing, my friend J and I decided we'd give it a go. Suffice to say, 3 shops and 2 visits to the cash point later we stumbled home laden with wonderful things having had the best day out ever!

We threw ourselves into the activity (and came close to getting thrown out of one shop for our exuberance!), picking out anything that we liked the colour of, and tried EVERYTHING on - no matter how 'ridiculous' we thought it looked on the hanger. We both even tried on dresses that we had originally picked out to show each other how awful we thought they were - and each ended up buying them!

Anyway, a number of our purchases require a few minor (or not so minor) alterations and, lo and behold, this weekend is craft club, so we are going to be tackling them this afternoon with the rest of the clan to advise - and hopefully ooh and ahh at what we think are fabulous outfits!

I'll do my best to post some photographs of the end results, but in the meantime I need to sort out my contribution to the afternoon's refreshments. This month I'm sharing responsibility for the 'something sweet'.  Since it's summer and we are both taking our vintage garments to alter, we thought we'd go quite traditional.  I'm therefore in charge of scones and J is in charge of clotted cream and jam. Well, being Cornish I thought she'd know all there is to know about clotted cream, and I'm gluten-free so thought I should bear the responsibility for sourcing gluten-free scones.

Anyway, yesterday I realised that I have never actually made scones before - but to prove that an old dog can learn new tricks I set about giving it a go.  I started with the 'normal' batch following what I hoped would be a fail-safe recipe from Delia Smith and in no time at all I had these little beauties...

Delia's Plain Scones

And whilst they were in the oven, I knocked up some gluten-free ones using a recipe I found on the Doves Farm website.

Dove's Farm's Gluten-free Scones

I have to say I'm pleased with the appearance of both batches but I guess the proof of the scones will be in the eating.  I will therefore report back on the verdict of my fellow crafters, hopefully along with some picks of the vintage outfits in my next post.