Things I bought in October 2025

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October always feels like the last month of buying things for me before buying all the things for other people starts. My sister’s birthday is in November, my nephew and husband have birthdays in early December and then it’s obviously Christmas. So, with that in mind, here are the things I’ve spent my money on this month.

Juno Calypso print

A good number of years ago now (thanks Covid for the lost years in between), I bought a print from Juno Calypso at an Art Car Boot Fair event and whilst I missed the most recent event as I was out of London, they did a follow up online sale where I was able to pick up another of Juno Calypso’s prints – Silhouette III. It’s going to go up in the spare room, but I need to do some re-jigging of the art in there, so that’s a project for a quiet weekend.

Holiday in the City plates

Last year I became aware of the existence of Anthropologie’s Holiday in the City plates. Each year they release a series of Christmas-themed plates featuring images of various cities from across the world, London being one of them. I couldn’t resist trying to build a collection of the London ones.

They seem to have been doing this for the past few years, which meant I needed to catch up. I bought the 2024 plate (Buckingham Palace, top row middle) in-store and managed to source the 2023 plate (Tower Bridge, top row left) and the 2021 plate (Big Ben and the London Eye, bottom row right) on eBay.

I couldn’t find a decently priced 2022 plate (Piccadilly Circus, bottom row left) but set up an eBay alert. Nothing came up for months, but in the same week that I went in-store to pick up 2025’s plate (Big Ben and the Instagram famous phone box, top row left), a reasonably priced option popped up, and so in one week I acquired two plates. So for now I have completed my collection. Hopefully next year they will release another and I’ll have a nice even number – six being more useful for guests than five. I’m hoping for a St Paul’s Cathedral and Millennium Bridge view.

Hamburg souvenirs

We love picking up art or trinket type things on our travels, our home is full of things that remind us of places we have been. We have brass wall swallows (in a flying duck style) from Hastings, an original painting we picked up at a church sale in Norwich and a pressed seaweed from Lyme Regis to name a few.

On our recent trip to Hamburg I was looking to try and find streets or areas with small independent shops where we might find things we like. The answer was on and around Marktstrasse in Sankt Pauli (I also had Paul-Roosen-Strasse saved on my Google maps but we didn’t quite make it there).

From Hamburg Potter and his automatic vending machine (more on that in my Hamburg post, we bought three cerulean tiles and from the automatic vending machine across the road at Raubfisch we got a tiny piece of rubbing art done in the Karoviertal.

Just around the corner at Druck Dealer (amazing little shop if you are looking for art prints) we picked up a Janta Island print – Du Eierloch ruft der Kakadu. According to Wikipedia:

Eierloch n (strong, genitive Eierlochs or Eierloches, plural Eierlöcher)

1. (childish) A mild term of abuse, almost entirely restricted to the rhyme here below.Fang mich doch, du Eierloch!(literally, “Catch me now, you egg-hole!”)Used in tag or otherwise to challenge another child to a chase.

So, “You egg hole says the Cockatoo”. Egghole is now a playful insult in our household.

We also picked up a few things from the Sankt Pauli Club Shop. A tote bag for my husband and this amazing t-shirt for me, which I sized up in and I’m currently sleeping in.

Rilo Kiley tickets

Rilo Kiley’s More Adventurous album was the soundtrack to my second year of university. Lent to me by my housemate they quickly went onto repeat on my Creative Zen Micro (the infinitely superior mp3 player to the iPod but sadly the ultimate loser in terms of mass adoption).

I knew they had reformed for a US tour, but the prospect of a UK date seemed unlikely…. until a NME article popped up on my Google newsfeed announcing a UK date in London. Tickets went on presale the following day and I was on it! Two tickets secured for June next year at the Roundhouse. Is it a coincidence that they are playing in the UK for the first time in 19 years in the year I turn 40? I like to think not, and that it is, in fact, a birthday present just for me.

Fabric

I’ve been messing around with sewing and quilt things for a little while, but last month for a work charity auction I made a fabric postcard using Foundation Paper Piecing (FPP), which I haven’t tried before. And I caught the bug. I like the precision that it introduces to sewing. So, I decided to try and do something considerably bigger and buy the fabric for a Storm at Sea quilt which I intend to use FPP for. Whether or not I’ll end up making a full quilt is TBD (I’m really bad for unfinished projects) but we’ll see how I get on and if not, make something smaller out of the blocks.

Of course, I needed fabric, which I bought from Sew Hot. To make things as easy as possible I’ve decided to stick with one main fabric, a blue Northcott fabric – Stonehenge – which has a deep to light blue gradient. I also bought a few white on white fabrics to supplement my stash. I like white on white printed fabrics because it adds a bit of depth and interest without the print being too obvious.