Recent content by Shangas

Picked this up last week and spent the weekend repainting some of the tiles. It's a mahjong set from the 1920s. Made in Shanghai, in China. The tiles are bone and bamboo. I can't wait to share it with my friends during our Christmas meetup and play a few games with it. Sets like these often...

Antique silver chopsticks...

Fountain pens, straight razors, and safety razors. I mean, they never fully disappeared, but since the early 2000s, they've been coming back with a HUGE vengeance. The communities online dedicated to collecting them, restoring them, buying, selling and trading them, and using them as daily...

$10.00 at the flea-market a couple of weeks ago. Made of glass. Had a chip in one corner which left a hole in the bottom of the inkwell. Fortunately, some waterproof epoxy helped to fill the hole and make it waterproof again :)

$80.00. Retractable straight-razor strop. Sterling silver hallmarked casing. Restored it myself. Pulled it apart, removed the old leather strop, used it as a template to cut a new strip of leather and handle, and then fitted the new strip inside and then polished up the silver. Works great! Not...

And here's the results...

My latest restoration project: An Edwardian-era silver-faced pocketwatch stand. The watch inside is my 16s Ball railroad chronometer. The original interior: All torn out..

Haven't been here for quite a while. Lots of things happened in life which kept me busy, occupied, and away. Over the last few months I've been busy building up my wardrobe again, and have purchased a number of new pieces. One of these was my new navy blue cotton-gaberdine knee-length DB...

The first new hat I've bought in a while. This antique boater was $10.00 at a local flea-market. Another $10.00 was spent in getting a new sweatband put in. It's got one or two minor dents, but no major damage, and is perfectly wearable! :P I was told it was from about 1900-1920...

My little hand-cranked sewing machine has been my pet for about...oh...10 years now? It's my favourite little machine. The fabric I used was, believe it or not, a set of old curtains from IKEA. I found them at a charity-shop for $10.00. They were pure cotton, and they looked like a nice, solid...

Thanks! Yes, I notice that a lot of vintage gowns/robes are quite LONG - shin or even ankle-length, whereas most modern ones (unless they're bespoke, or insanely expensive) are really short. I always thought that the first point of a dressing gown was to keep you WARM, so I deliberately cut this...

This is only my second attempt at making one...

I've been to Britain in summer, I can assure you it isn't :P

It's 5'c right now. Sorry if that isn't cold enough for the Europeans here.

Hey - this morning is bloody freezing!!