Crinoline Robot's Vintage Year

2010 isn't quite over, but I'm anticipating being up to my elbows in flour tomorrow in preparation for a New Year's Day meal so I thought I'd look back over my year in vintage now.

I've always had a love of old things, which I think I get from my mum, but it really came to the fore this year in a big way. When I was more of a goth, I was a very bad goth (I even wore a 1920s dress to go clubbing in and would swap 1920s mixtapes with a friend at the club). Now I am more vintage but I'm quite poor at that, as you'll still find me dressed from top to toe in black from time to time and I still love the music I used to go dancing to, even if I do listen more to stuff from the 1920s-40s on a day-to-day basis. I've watched black-and-white films, worn old perfumes and read golden age crime novels for most of my adult life. Even my wedding dress was vintage!

What really rekindled my love of vintage was going to the launch party for Vintage Gifts to Knit, chatting to a very nice lady and realising that actually, I could have a little vintage loveliness every day, even if it was just a dab of beautiful perfume each morning. Crinoline Robot, which I started mid-year, is a way of sharing that everyday vintage, not the glamorous or expensive stuff, but the sort of thing we can all enjoy. Books purchased secondhand for a couple of pounds, DVDs you can find cheaply, things you can knit yourself for not too much money so it doesn't matter if you can't afford real vintage (or, like me, fit into very much of it).

I went to a couple of events this year. Dig For Victory was, after that launch party, the most important one for me, but for more personal reasons: my grandmother broke her hip and was in hospital, and I'd hoped to be able to take her to DFV in a wheelchair to hear the music. Instead I spent her last night in hospital playing her some fab swing CDs; even though she was out of it on morphine, Glenn Miller got her twitching her eyebrows, and I hope it took her back to the time when she was a beautiful WAAF. Going to DFV and watching people dance was, in a way, more important to me than the funeral, because it helped me remember her as a young raven-haired hottie, not as someone worn out and in pain.

So, I have met online some fab new people, and discovered loads of really enjoyable blogs. It's great reading about different people's take on vintage, and how they incorporate it into their daily lives. The generosity of people has astonished me – I have some wonderful magazines and books now because people know I'll give a good home to stuff they don't want but can't bear to throw out. I wish all those bloggers and non-bloggers alike (that's you, that is!) a wonderful 2011.