The Great Viennese “Halle für Alle”

For those of you who love op shopping: Vienna has some of the biggest op shops I have ever seen. Actually the biggest I could ever imagine. They are the second-hand op shops run by Caritas called “Halle für Alle” which means “Hall for All”. I found 2 in Vienna. Each is an enormous complex of warehouse-sized halls filled with absolutely anything and everything, even second hand cars! Definitely op shoppers’ heaven.

I went straight to the clothing/jewelry/embroidered tablecloth section. That was about a five minute walk! I refrained from stopping on my way at the books, crockery, furniture (they had amazing chairs and tables), nic-nacs or anything else that caught my attention. I was on a mission. I wanted to see the embroidered doilies as soon as I could. Someone else might be buying my things! Strangely enough there was another girl buying a whole stack of tablecloths, napkins, and doilies. So I began my search in earnest. I ended up buying only 2 doilies but the other things I bought made up for that. My favourite finds: an old beaded purse that looks as if it was probably made in the 30’s or earlier, a string of glass beads with beautifully muted colours that looks very 60’s to me, and a lovely aged doily. It was a good day for me and for Caritas.

This old beaded purse is my most-unusual-bag find. I love the simplicity of the pattern and most of all, the surprising way in which both sides have been beaded with different color combinations.

This aged doily caught my attention straightaway. Everything about it shows really beautiful workmanship and design.

And these glass beads have to be from the 60’s. I love the colours. They also have a really nice weight and feel when you hold them in your hand, but you probably have to be a real ‘bead person’ to understand this.

So much for my finds. While I was away my blog was getting on quite well without me (no thanks to my cat). I had lots of visitors thanks to Karen who posted her version of the Travelling Doll’s House here, to Chrissy at one crafty place who links to kids craft projects and recipes, and to Linda at pane amore & creativita who was blogging about different dolls’ houses that people can make and included mine. Linda’s blog is in Italian but I can work out, more or less, what she is saying from my Spanish and from reading the pictures. She also links to an amazing range of crafts mostly, but not always, kids crafts.