What we did on our Holidays - part 3 - Melbourne

After the turquoise blues of Perth's beaches the grey/brown of Melbourne's came as a disappointment ... they say it is storm water run-off.   However, I had been knitting yet more cossies for Blythe dolls and BiBi did some modelling for me.

BiBis is my daughter's French Trench, she was the 1st Blythe in our family.  She has a classic beauty - rather posh & classy though her 'bed-hair' suggests that she likes to party ... on expensive champagne. 
BiBi has claimed this classic plain black one-piece swim suit.

The photo-shoot was at Brighton Beach with those wonderful beach sheds as the perfect back-drop. 

 

This cossie is more 'vintage' style with a modesty skirt - I'm thinking of opening another Etsy shop, to sell clothes etc for Blythes & this might just be the first item made for it. 

The dolls love going to Melbourne and catching up with their friends there ...

BiBi & Lillian enjoy nice long chats

Took the grandkids to the museum one day - the Melb museum has this wonderful whale-bone on display.  I've made reproduction corsets, I've handled real Victorian corsets and I've done a lot of research on corsetry - so to me, this is fascinating.  

The whalebone that was used in corsets and clothing is not really bone, it is the baleen.  The filter-feeder business in the mouths of the baleen whales that feed on krill.  And look - it is like compressed hair - this is why it was so strong yet flexible (so much better than the modern plastic boning and thinner than the spiral steels we use).  It is made of keratin - just like our hair & fingernails, also birds' feathers & beaks.  It is also practically black, though I have seen old 'whalebones' in vintage garments that were cream colour (also some very dark ones) not sure of the reason for such variation in the colour.

I also did some crafting with the grands - 

cheap little kits to make Chrissie Decorations but we'd lost some of the bits and so the children had do be imaginative ... I love what they came up with.

Penguin?

Naturally, we all did plenty of eating - and I realised that I'm constantly taking photos of my granddaughter eating - she does enjoy her food! 

Now for some random Melbournian photos - 

saw these pretty lead-light windows in a house not far from Brighton Beach.  Love that one window had green round the edges and the corner window had the pink...

I also finally managed to get a photo of The Hand at Flinders Street station - pointing the way to the correct platform for St Kilda ... wonderful old tiles!

Finally - some more Brighton Beach photos - the dolls didn't mind the E. Coli count!

Audrey made sand-castles...

   

   

While Lillian and BiBi went for a stroll and chatted away some more!

Violetta & BiBi play beach ball, despite the wind!