The Blue Room - and Where Did All This Come From?

If I can keep my eyes open I'll finish this post and upload the photos of "what I did today". Having taken a carload of stock to the Dairy House on Tuesday and thinking I had plenty of room, I got there this morning to find Liz (moved from Somerton as a new dealer for the Dairy House) had dropped off the rest of my stuff from Somerton yesterday afternoon and all I could do was stand and stare. Where had it all come from? Thinking about it seriously for a moment I realise that I had so many built-in shelves as well as free-standing ones in my unit at Somerton that things were able to hide in corners and appear invisible.

So, by 4 o'clock this afternoon we were in hysterics - not quite rolling about the floor but definitely tears streaming down our faces and doubled up with stitch from laughing so much. Don't ask me why - I haven't a clue. But then they're usually the best laughs aren't they. Exhaustion might have had something to do with it, or maybe the fact that everything in my little room upstairs was still there and hadn't been brought down, and it was quite apparent that we needed to take over the whole shop rather than what, a week ago, had seemed like a massive room that we would never be able to fill. If you could have seen me standing in the hall catching the eiderdowns Liz was throwing down to me from my room upstairs ... thankfully I managed to stop her throwing one of the really heavy quilts. Aren't the therapeutic qualities of hysterical laughter just what you need when you really feel you just want to sit down and put your feet up!!

Liz left at 5.00 but I still had too much tidying up to do before I could leave. I took these photos just before I left at 6.30 to show you how much I've done (the room was empty on Tuesday morning) and how much I still have to do. Two walls are pegboard which is useful for hanging up a lot of the enamel, but all I've done so far is hang things to get them off the floor. Please be assured that what you are about to see is not a display. It is panic tidying and there is an absolute chasm between the two. I need the stepladder in order to make full use of the pegboarding, remove the paintings belonging to one of the other dealers and make a good display. As you can see this is just the kitchenalia. The linen is piled on two sets of free-standing shelves behind me and most definitely couldn't be photographed. The eiderdowns and quilts are lurking in Liz's pitch off to the left behind the pegboarding. Some are in a French iron cot and some are piled haphazardly in her wardrobe. We're not talking colour-coordination here, but I'm hoping to pop over on Saturday to make everything look a little more respectable and to load up for Shepton.

You may prefer to look with only one eye. The room is painted in a colour that can only be described as VERY BLUE. The pegboard covers a window (DHA owner isn't keen on daylight!) and consequently something quite drastic will need to be done. Once I sort out the fabrics, curtains and linen, I'm sure that with some clever draping and hanging the effect will be quite eyecatching rather than a fuzzy jumble. (Don't you think that's a good name for a blog? Fuzzy Jumble? I might have to set up a second one!)

So here we are. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is still a full garage and half a storage unit of stock waiting to be let loose. If anyone sees anything they feel they can't live without then please let me know. I'll be more than delighted to sell it to you!! Enjoy ...

I don't know whether it's just my computer, but I'm unable to enlarge these photos.

Postscript, Friday: Following Clare's suggestion I deleted the photos and uploaded them again and I can now enlarge them. Thanks Clare!