Brocki Love and Decisions to Make

It’s been a while since I posted about my brocki (second-hand shop) finds, but that’s no indicator that I’ve let up on my brocki perusing. I probably have become older and *ahem* wiser about my brocki habit, partly because my little flat is fairly full as it is, so the search for furniture has pretty much tailed off, and that was what I used to go in search of. But I still find them pretty hard to resist, and last weekend The Boy found himself, once again, watching me riffling through the drawers of sewing bits and bookshelves (hey, they usually have an English-, or at least foreign-language section!)

The Remains of 2014 – Guston

Here are a couple of jumpers that were finished around Christmastime. The first is Guston by Anne Budd, which was intended to be for The Boy’s birthday, and officially it was, but it didn’t make it off the needles until shortly before Christmas. The cold season here has only really started since I’ve been back after Christmas anyway, so no harm done.

Brocki Love III (or “A wee confession”)

Well this was bound to happen, wasn’t it. I sort of knew it would, as soon as I’d posted about how I had to regulate my brocki shopping due to lack of flat space. The following weekend I was walking innocently along the road, minding my own business, when a bag of stuff being “got rid of” jumped out at me from the side of the road. Sticking out were some of those picture frames that I’ve been after for ages, the ones that are just a piece of board with a piece of glass held together by metal clips. You know the ones. They’re brilliant for a picture that you don’t want to detract from with a regular frame, but leaving them unframed would mean that they curl up.

Brocki Love II

When I first came to Switzerland, I imagined spending all my time in Brockis, which are second-hand shops, and the closest they come to charity shops here. I’m a great charity shopper when I’m in England, but since charity shops are generally fairly small, you’re not in danger of coming away with a car-full. The Brockis here are much larger, and consequently you lose (a) much more time, (b) much more money, (c) much more flat space.
However, I much prefer to go into these places than to go into big shops full of stuff that is pumped out for this season, and expected to go into landfill by the next to make way for the next lot. Living in a finite planet can only work if we have a stuff cycle that involved re-using old stuff. I love pretty, new (to me) stuff as much as (and probably more than) the next person, but I get much more of a kick out of something that has been (to use a horrendous, tired cliché) loved before. (See my kitchen table, below.) It also means that I buy things that have already survived for a while, and are probably better quality than things I might buy new. And I am more inclined to keep hold of them than toss them aside and pick up the newest trend (which I imagine could be quite a problem if I only took Pinterest seriously.)

Since my flat’s quite small, I’ve had to really keep a handle on my brocki shopping. It’s really rather lucky that there’s only one big one within striking distance (by foot) of my flat. So these posts about Brocki shopping are proving fewer and farther between than I originally intended. But for the sake of my living space, that’s how it has to be.

One Year in Switzerland

So. I’ve been living in this tidy little country now for a whole year. I’ve changed, as we all do, when confronted with new experiences (and even without.)

A Doily Lampshade

Here’s a project that was on my mental to-do list for a very long time. It first crept in and settled down before I left England, inspired by a penchant for doilies that was plaguing Pinterest at the time, and the idea started putting down roots

Brocki Love

Switzerland is an expensive place to live, no two ways about it. But one of the very redeeming features is the Brockis which you see signposted on every country road, and in every town (mostly when you don’t have time, they’re more difficult to find when you’re looking for them.)

I was a massive charity shopper when I was in the homeland, they don’t have the same idea here, although there are Salvation Army Brockis.They can be well organised, everything on shelves with similar items, clothes arranged by size, everything priced-up and labelled properly. Others are organised more like someone’s loft