Newspaper Clippings

My love of magazines is well documented on this blog, I think. I also love to read newspapers, and to tear out articles to pass on to friends or family. I was at a family funeral last week, and the final reading was a poem that Aunty Enid had torn out of a newspaper and saved - they found it in a tin with some other bits and bobs. I like to think that when I am gone, one of my cuttings or tearings will flutter out of a book and be saved to be read at the funeral.

I cancelled my subscription to Mollie Makes magazine today. It isn't that I don't like the magazine anymore- although I do think it has lost its way from when it began - but I just can't rely on it to arrive. Once again, for perhaps the fourth or fifth time, I have spotted it in the shops and it just hasn't arrived at home. I love the early issues, but sadly I have found them less and less inspiring.

I was thinking about cancelling my only other subscription, to Homemaker, but the new issue of that did arrive and it was just charming, so I shall keep that up a while longer.

There are few other magazines that I buy regularly now. There have been a whole host of new craft magazines in the past few months, all in the vein of Making. I dabble and try one from time to time. I don't buy the Chap nearly so often now that they seem to have less room for the Chapette, and I went off Vintage Life some time ago as the content shrank and shrank.

It has been a while since I felt a real frisson as I discovered a new magazine. Marie Claire Idees still does it for me, but is so very hard to get hold of - perhaps that is why? Although I think that nothing will ever beat a proper print magazine, there are some truly fantastic online magazines available. My heart skipped a beat when I discovered Hey Doll magazine today http://glossi.com/vavoomvintage/4197-issue-one-february and best of all, there are 5 issues to read - and even more incredibly, they are free!

Mum recently gave me several bags of magazines from where she was having a clear out, and we talked about how much we both love a good magazine. She said that it was her Aunty Mollie who gave her the taste for them, when she was a teenager. It is the same Aunty Mollie who used to let me play with a tea set and use sugar-strands for the 'tea', so as well as being responsible for our love of magazines, I think she sewed the seeds for my love of tea, too! Amongst the magazines that Mum gave me was a bag of torn-out articles and recipes and craft ideas from women's magazines from the last 40 years or so. Some made me smile slightly sadly - there were several about feeding your family cheaply, from when I know now she must have been up against it - and some made me smile happily to see old favourites in print. Intriguingly, I found a recipe for 'Naomi Bars' (my given name) that I mean to make one day soon. I have never heard of them before!

There really are very few things nicer than settling down with a pot of tea and a new magazine. I would love one day to bring an idea I have had simmering in my mind to life. I have an idea for a newsletter-magazine-thing called The Teapot Times...it would be one sheet of A3 paper, and origamied up into a little square, and tied with ribbon to a teabag. I can see the logo in my mind - a teapot pouring out a stream of flowers, buttons, pins, spools of thread, etc. One day, I will have to bring it to life. But for now, the kettle is calling.

Love Mimi xxx