Oodles and oodles

An argument against DIY

Committed as I am to the idea that the best way is the do-it-yourself way, I could not be happier with our refinished dining room table and the fact that we left it up to the pros.

(The lovely doll quilt was a gift from the exceptionally talented and generous Martha.)

The finish on the table is nicer now than when we originally bought it at an antiques show. And it's as smooth as glass. I'm almost afraid to eat on it.

I took this photo in part so you could admire my extensive Easter decor. The daffodils with the deep orange centers in the vase are growing wild in the meadow. When I went to pick a few, a rabbit scurried away. Clearly, it was the Easter Bunny.

The only other remotely Easter-ish decoration is this egg cup. There's writing in pencil on the bottom: Easter 1935. (Thank you, original owner.)

As you might be able to tell from this photo, our Easter was low-key and lovely, and I spent part of it stitching new pillows for Carson. At some point I'll take more pictures and explain why, but in the meantime, feel free to admire his extreme adorableness. 

 

 

24

My mention that I bought 24 of a certain item at Saturday's estate sale prompted the terrific Gina of Vintage Junk in my Trunk to leave the following comment:

"Looking forward to what you got 2 dozen of; hope it's not what I think it is!"

Over the last week or so Gina and I have been commiserating. Outright complaining. Gina had e-mailed to say she was finally getting around to listing _____, and she had a few questions. I answered the questions as best I could, and wished her luck, because I knew she would need it. What she was listing requires care, patience and a high threshold for boredom.

There are 24 button cards in the photos, but that's not what I bought at the estate sale.

More e-mails were exchanged, and the thought of Gina toiling over her __________ made me feel a little guilty. I had my own stash of _________________ to sort and list, and it was the kind of job I was trying to put off indefinitely. But all the chatter about ______________ convinced me to get busy. At least I would have company, and misery loves company.

There are 24 wooden spools of thread in the sewing box, but that's not what I bought at the estate sale.

In one of my last e-mails to Gina, written after spending several hours with _________, I pledged I would never buy __________ again. She felt this was a sensible course. In fact, presented with the opportunity to buy a big bag of ________________ over this weekend, she wisely refrained.

There are more than 24 toy clothespins in the tin, and that's not what I bought at the estate sale. I already have enough of them.

No, I bought 24 patterns at the estate sale. Even though it was only days after I had pledged to never buy them again. Vintage patterns are fun and appealing. They're also a pain in the neck. Many sane people gather up a big bunch of patterns, stick them on eBay, confess they don't know if they're complete or not, and sell them for a lot of money.

Nothing wrong with that. But I feel compelled to check them over. Piece by piece. It takes a long time. It's extremely boring. (Just ask Gina!) But my great-grandmother and my grandmother would be horrified if I were selling patterns that I hadn't checked.

I tried to at least be discerning, and not buy more than I thought I could reasonably get through. (I love a good Dolman sleeve, don't you?)

So I bought 24. And I've already sorted and listed them. (They're on eBay, link in the sidebar, you know the drill.) And having spent a number of hours with vintage patterns, I am once again ready to declare that I'm never buying them again.

Unless they're really, really pretty.


 

Return of the aprons

Today felt like the first day of the 2012 sales season, for no other reason than a) there was a sale b) I made an effort to get to it and c) I purchased items. And although I'm not completely committed to using the patented apron rating system throughout the year, I thought it would be fun to get it out at least for Opening Day. So let's give a shout-out and an apron

for the Pyrex Friendship refrigerator set, complete and in good condition. An auspicious beginning.

Oh, not so fast.

I arrived at the sale at 6 a.m., signed the list and waited 2 hours for my number, which was 21. It was an OK number. Not great, but not terrible, and I wasn't all that concerned because with a nice big split-level house with a garage and an attic, I wasn't worried about being among the first wave of people to go in.

Except the woman running the sale decided to let 20 people in. Which would have been tolerable had the house actually been crowded. But it was not. From my vantage point ONE INCH from the entrance, I watched my rivals shop leisurely. They made one pass through the kitchen. Another. A third. I thought I would lose my mind. The negative apron above is for wanting to dash my forehead against the door until it was a bloody pulp.

This apron is for me telling the man guarding the door that I was never coming to one of his company's sales again.

It was purgatory. Mainly because I could see the Pyrex so close I could touch it. It would have been actual hell if somebody actually picked it up while I was watching.

Reliving this experience has made me get up and pour myself a soothing glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

Finally, the woman running the sale allowed five more people in. (She could have let in 50. It was just crazy.)

I grabbed the Pyrex. On another pass through the kitchen (yes, I now was the one making leisurely passes through the premises) I got more Pyrex.

Delightful individual casserole dishes. Sorry, no more aprons. Only one Pyrex apron per sale. I don't make the rules, I just enforce them. Actually, I do make the rules. What awesome power this is!

I discovered the super-secret cubbyhole of Christmas ornaments. I was especially happy to find a box with six strands of glass bead garland, which I seem to have a hard time finding.

An apron for glass bead garland. Not that there's anything the matter with nice old tinsel, a few Shiny Brites and some oddly endearing Santa ornaments.

Some kind-of cute Easter decorations. I'm just going to get this out of the way here: not a fan of Easter. Somewhere along the way, it became my elderly relatives' favorite weekend on which to die. Don't ask. The numbers would shock you. I hope I don't have to give myself a negative apron for my conflicted feelings about Easter.

Moving on: this feels like a good time for a cute alert.

I'm not big on real cute, and even I think this is real cute.

It's Napco.

The head fits on the body like a cookie-jar lid, but it's not a cookie jar.

It's a bank. With a little padlock to foil burglaries.

You can't deny a cute kitten an apron.

I'm about to award another apron

for purchasing 24 of a certain item which I will discuss at a later date. It has been the subject, the last week or so, of some personal e-mails exchanged between me and a Well-Known Blogger.

So it's a two-apron sale. With the possibility of a third, if the bracelet I picked up on a whim turns out to be Bakelite.

 



 
 

 

 

 

Tulip time

Our early spring has brought flowers outside, but I don't want to overlook the flowers inside. I don't usually have these planters side by side and never noticed how different the shades of blue are. I'd take them back except I bought them for a dollar at a yard sale a few years ago. (And I really wouldn't part with them.)

Tulips are such a great vintage motif. You can find them all over the place once you start looking.

They were so popular that there were entire series of different tulip designs on Swanky Swigs.

I could get them all out to show you but I don't want you to suffer from Swig Fatigue.

The tulips are a nice companion to the daffodils. This marks the first time in recorded history (well, my recorded history) that I've had daffodils to bring inside in March. Yesterday I planted spinach, arugula, mesclun and lettuce. The thought that I could be eating fresh spinach in a month makes me almost as dizzy as the sun.

I have to do listings today, but it's really hard to make myself stay inside and work. There's so much to do outside! For example, I took this photo yesterday morning, and all of the daffodils have popped since then. It's so 24 hours ago! Maybe I'll give myself a lunch break and see what else is new.

Weather drunk

Spring weather makes me kind of giddy under normal circumstances, but when it arrives six or eight weeks ahead of schedule, it's - well, I don't know what the word is. Everyone I encountered this weekend seemed deliriously happy. Like we'd all won the lottery. Like we were present for a miraculous event. Everything was just good. Except the sale I went to Saturday - another one of those on-my-way-to-get-groceries sales, except I was #5 or #7 or something but nobody really seemed to care who went in when because we all were just so happy. Weather drunk. We're all just weather drunk.

Anyway, the sale wasn't any good, but nobody cared about that, either, because we were all just going to go home and soak up the sun except for the part where we were watching basketball. I bought an old cookbook, a folding yardstick, a yellow napkin holder and a food mill. There are clamps in the photo because the yellow napkin holder was in the garage holding hardware, and the clamps were in it, and my husband loves clamps. I don't know why.

Me: What would you like for Christmas?
Mr. Oodles: I could always use more clamps.

Me: What would you like for your birthday?
Mr. Oodles: I could always use more clamps.

Me: What would you like for Father's Day? Don't say clamps because I got you clamps for your birthday and Christmas.
Mr. Oodles: I know, but I could always use more.

Had I been thinking and not dizzy from the sunlight, I'd have tucked these away for Father's Day, but instead, I left them out on the counter with a note for him. Now he's deliriously happy, too, because the weather is so great and he's got a new set of clamps and there is still Father's Day to look forward to.

I have to confess that even though the cookbook was in good shape and from 1933 and all, I really just liked the cover.

Aside from the weather, there were other good things happening this weekend.

My team is in the Sweet Sixteen.

I got all kinds of yard work done.

My dad says you should plant peas on St. Patrick's Day, so I did. The eating kind and the kind that go in a vase.

I had a good week on Etsy and something that I got at an auction except I don't remember which one and was just in the bottom of a dollar box that I wanted for some other reason but I don't remember what sold for $80-something on eBay. (Antique hair combs. We should all be looking for antique hair combs.)

Good weather makes me write run-on sentences with misplaced clauses. (Not sure that's a good thing, just an observation.)

My daughter and I had strawberry milkshakes for lunch today. Not the kind that come from McDonalds but the real ones you make yourself with real strawberries in a blender.

The strawberries are coming up in the garden. That's not what we used for the milkshakes, though. The ones in the garden are just poking up and saying hello at this point.

I rearranged the living room furniture.

Because I rearranged the living room furniture, I wanted to swap one rug for another one upstairs, and because I was swapping rugs I needed to vacuum and the vacuum cleaner wasn't working, and I took it all apart and with nothing more than my wits and a screwdriver, I fixed it.

It's possible that sunlight in March gives me superhuman powers.

A week from tonight at this time I will be watching the season premiere of "Mad Men."

I spent some quality time with my favorite garden catalog and Post-It notes.

The weather is going to be even better on Wednesday. It's going to be kind of perfect, from what I understand.

I am not accustomed to feeling like this. Especially in March. 

Delightful ideas for spring entertaining

When you sell vintage cookbooks, you are duty-bound to sit down and go through them page by page to make sure they aren't damaged and stained. This can take a few minutes, or a few hours, depending upon how much you like to look through cookbooks.

I like looking through cookbooks quite a lot. Especially ones that remind me of childhood birthdays. The decorations on this cake were made by rolling gumdrops flat, then cutting them out with cookie cutters.

Timely suggestions for a salute to St. Patrick's Day. We always have corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick's Day, but I've never really thought of apple pie as especially Irish. Did you make a pie for Pi Day (3-14) yesterday? I did. Key Lime. It doesn't need to be Pi Day to make pie, you know.

I wish I'd had this cookbook when I was planning my parents' 50th wedding anniversary party a few years ago. I like almost nothing more than a nice bowl of punch. I looked high and low for a punch recipe for that party, but I could not find one I liked. It didn't occur to me to look in a cookbook from the 1950s and 60s. This book has so many punch recipes I could throw a party every month and not repeat beverages.

These cookbooks had a peculiar fascination with anything served at Neiman-Marcus, the epitome of ladies-who-lunch cuisine. I never ate at a Neiman-Marcus, but I have many fond memories of eating lunch with my mom and grandmother at department-store restaurants.

If you'd like to create the experience, here's a recipe you could try. I think it's unlikely I'll make any baked-Alaska-in-a-flowerpot kinds of desserts, but the straw as a stem for a fresh flower? Genius. 

 

 

Feedsack in a frame

This has been one of my favorite pieces of fabric for years. Other pieces have come and gone on the top ten list, but this one has remained a constant. I didn't even realize it was feedsack when I first got it, and when I realized it was, I only loved it more. Like most of my favorite fabrics, though, this one seemed destined to languish in storage, neatly folded but rarely displayed.

So I gathered my courage, a pair of 16" and a pair of 22" stretchers, scissors and thumbtacks, and as soon as I get the right picture hangers, I can hang it on the wall.

This is so easy it doesn't really require directions, but here they are: Put the stretchers together. Center the fabric over them, leaving enough to wrap around the edge and over the stretchers. Trim away the excess fabric. Wrap the fabric over the stretchers, tacking it into place, and folding in the corners as you would if you were wrapping a gift.

That left me with leftover fabric, so I hemmed the long edges and turned it into a dishtowel.

So instead of one favorite piece of fabric, now I have two. Or still just one favorite, but in two different places.

Today's to-do list: a few Etsy listings this morning, then outside to garden - this bonus week of spring is just amazing.

Springtime color

I'm a little wishy-washy about Easter and spring decorations because they're usually pastel, and a little pastel goes a long way with me.

Although there's really no rule that says springtime has to be pastel.

Sometimes the things that are the color of bright sunshine are a welcome change. (Especially yesterday, when the weather was definitely on the white side, and what they like around here to call "localized squalls" resulted in ten miles of the worst driving conditions I've seen in years.)

Safely back home, I wanted to see nothing but bright color.

And nice old graphics.

The cheering sight of Swanky Swigs all in a row.

And a shelf that might have come straight from my grandmother's kitchen.

Most of this stuff is hopping over to my Etsy shop this weekend, so pop in if you need a shot of color. No purchase required - the good thing about a shot of color is that you can get it from window shopping, too.

 

Carried away

It's possible I got a little carried away.

It's possible that I got a tarp out of the garage so I could lie on the wet ground and get close.

Real close.

Bury-my-face-in-them close.

It's just that, for whatever reason, the snowdrops don't always come up. (Or, more likely, they do, but there's still a foot of snow on the ground and they don't stand a chance.) When they do - when there's anything blooming in my yard before St. Patrick's Day - I can't help myself.

I get carried away.

Happy Friday!

Dealing with the dud sale

I consider myself an expert on dud sales because I've been to so many of them. For every great sale I've been to, I've probably gone to ten that were terrible. I've never kept track, because it would be too depressing. And even though I've honed my techniques over the years and reduced that ratio, the dud sale is just an inevitability.

I went to two of them this past weekend. I'm only counting one of them, though, because the first one was nearby and pretty much of an excuse to sign up early with Patty and drink coffee. This would be one way to deal with the dud sale: Turn it into a social event.

The second sale I went to probably shouldn't count, either, because I'd never have bothered going if it hadn't been five minutes away and on my (well-worn) route to the grocery store. The advertisement listed a lot of stuff I'm not very interested in (Asian furniture, fine antiques) and, worse, promised "no junk." As if "no junk" is a selling point! Here's how I dealt with that dud sale: I wasted nothing. I didn't waste any time signing up for it, I wasn't there very long, and I didn't spend any money. Sometimes not buying anything is the best you can do.

This is all well and good in early March, when in upstate New York any sale is a bonus and the long, lovely sale season is still a somewhat distant dream. But at some point those of us who want stuff to sell need to have some better ways to cope.

Here's one idea: Dig around somewhere you don't usually dig. In my case, that would be the garage, which is where I found these old brass label plates at a sale last summer. My usual technique is a) quick scan of the kitchen b) head to whichever bedrooms have sewing, linens and holiday, and c) quick scan of the living room on the way to either the attic or the basement, whichever looks best. The garage is usually last on my list, but sometimes there are a few treasures there. (Inexplicably, that's where I found these Shiny Brites.)

If you're at a dud sale, give the garage a try. Give the sorry collection of kids' toys a quick look (really quick, if lots of brightly colored plastic is involved). Are there any old cookbooks worth buying? Sometimes a bad sale is just a bad sale. But as long as you're there - and if you're not trying to get to a more promising sale - you might as well try to find something of value.

These rusty coathooks were in the same coffee can as the label plates, and there was something with them I didn't notice until much later.

A note explaining where they came from, an old one-room schoolhouse. Sometimes you can even find provenance at a dud sale.