Vintage adventures in the Isle of Wight

Hello and welcome to a new week. Mr Wolf worked out that we are 1/7th of our way through the year already. Sometimes you just want to smack him.
But... you can't... because you are away for your anniversary weekend and are supposed to be being nice to each other (which in truth we are really). I had a minor melt down yesterday (not a BAD one, just a TOO MUCH one) so this is Monday's post out on Tuesday - see, we are only 2 days into the week and I am already behind!


Anyhoo... We had a great time on the island and it turned into quite a vintage adventure weekend. I did as many Charity shops as I could muster then I did the knitting shops too. Surprisingly, we found there to be a decent vintage scene out there.
We met Tracy from Suze's Room in Ventnor:

And along the way we found Odds and Sods in Shanklin:

Who sent us on to Oh So...Vintage! in Newport:

(Now this is embarrasing, that style pattern was my ball dress in 1990. Back then it wasn't vintage)

We also walked out to The Needles, leaning into the wind the whole way and checked out the wartime gun battery out there.

(The "after" shot of my hair has been canned for fear that Darren Dead Man will tease me forever about it)

As a fitting end, on Sunday we went to the "Dairyman's Daughter" for lunch and happened across a wonderful swing band. Gosh they were fab!  

We worked off the roast by dancing the afternoon away on the cobblestone floor (tricky on my 193 yr old dodgy knees). From left; Rupert, Keith (also known as Arthur!?), Brian and Bob are amazing musicians with not a piece of sheet music between them. From what we can work out they have an impressive background; highly trained, quite famous really and are terribly nice and funny too. We think they make the most amazing live music we have heard for awhile. For reference, they are known as "Menage", being a bit of a play on the words "Men Age" and they play either at the Dairyman's Daughter or at the Glasshouse restaurant regularly.

What we DIDN'T get to is Cameos in East Cowes, and to check out Vintage Vacations (forgot they were based on the IoW until Tracy mentioned them). Oh and I needed another day on the charity shops! Does anyone else have vintage contacts in the IoW to add?

We hope to go again since the Island also reminds us of the NZ countryside. Perhaps in Summer though... and without the windy trip to the Needles.