Oodles and oodles

Sunshine on a cloudy day

 

The sunshine this time of year is fickle, here today and gone tomorrow. It's good to have lots of yellow around as a substitute. I'd like you to believe I somehow scored six identical vintage egg cups, but these were a find from Marshall's years and years ago.

 

Tiny yellow chick with flower cap.

 

This egg cup is vintage. It's marked Fannie Farmer on the bottom, so maybe it held a chocolate egg at one time.

 

These are plastic lollipop holders. (Or perhaps, more gramatically, lollipop holders made of plastic. The holders, not the lollipops, are plastic, but I think you knew that.) They were made by E. Rosen in the 1950s.

 

Another E. Rosen lollipop holder.

  

And finally: the classroom shot, with the short people up front. 

Mail-order fashion

 

I needed a little junk-store therapy Saturday, and here's what I found. There's nothing quite as dear as a mail-order apron pattern.

 

The number of variations that apron designers could find is nothing short of amazing. You have to love a heart-shaped pocket.

   

This may be the perfect apron: the flowers, the scalloped hem, the bias-tape trim.

   

Although this apron seems like a good choice for a day when you have a long to-do list, the first item being "Gather eggs."

 

I've had quite a streak of finding apron patterns lately, and I can't remember if this was in the pile I got Saturday or one I found earlier. I love how it's made - there's one large body piece that is fitted with darts and fastened with a belt that buttons. If I were going to make it, I'd use that piece of feedsack in the background and red rick-rack. 

Lookin' up

 

I should have known.

 

Things always look better when the sun shines,

 

when the crocus bloom,

 

and when people take a minute to say the nicest things.

 

So thanks for all of the kind words Friday. I hope all of you have a great weekend, too!

Hopeful signs

 

This has not been the greatest week. It's been one of those weeks when, if someone says, "Cheer up! Things will get better!" your immediate reaction is to want to smack them. It's been one of those weeks where I've looked high and low for something cheerful and hopeful and springlike. The only things I found were in my kitchen and dining room, although I did, with some effort, think of three other things that represented an improvement.

 

1. My husband was able to sit up in bed this morning, which is a vast improvement in his condition. He did something weird to his back on Tuesday, but the physical therapy and megadoses of muscle relaxant and painkillers seem to have him on the road to recovery. He's the kind of guy who actually stayed at the office to finish something up when he had a kidney stone, so having him home immobile and wincing was unsettling, not to mention just the tiniest bit annoying.

 

2. Harold finally stopped texting me. I don't know Harold (and yes, that's his real name) but he  apparently is looking for a girlfriend. Without going into a lot of detail about what Harold was sending me, I can understand why he doesn't have one. I thought perhaps a quick "u hv wrong #" would do the trick, but I was wrong. The words "police" and "harassment" are a lot more effective, it turns out.

  

3. Finally, although it turns out my son did break his nose at soccer on Sunday, it did not need to be re-set.

 

And it turns out that Carson is such a good dog, he's willing to serve as a pillow for the injured. So I guess that makes four things that might cheer me up this week.

I had really wanted to e-mail a bunch of you back, especially some people I hadn't heard from before or heard from in a while. This just wasn't the week that was going to happen. The Gurley candles were really feeling the love - thanks for all your nice comments!

An Easter collection: Gurley candles

 

One of my favorite things to collect for Easter is one of my favorite things to collect for any holiday: Gurley candles. Gurley candles were manufactured in Buffalo, N.Y., mostly in the 1940s through the 1960s, and are easy to identify by the cardboard disc marked Gurley on the bottom. Christmas Gurleys are pretty easy to find, and Thanksgiving and Halloween candles turn up with some regularity, but Easter candles aren't as abundant. If we'd have been shoppers at Woolworth's, we could have picked up these sweet five-inch ducklings brand-new for 49 cents each.

   

Every once in a while, a candle has its date of manufacture stamped on the cardboard disc on the bottom. This little bunny is from 1950. He's a small Gurley - in the three-inch range. The smaller candles are generally easier to find.

  

Here's a bigger bunny whose colors are still nice and vivid. Most of my Gurleys come from yard sales and occasionally the thrift store. If they're dirty or faded, I usually don't buy them, although I'm not too choosy when I find an Easter candle. There's no way to un-fade a candle, and although I've read about different ways to clean them, it's pretty difficult to not damage them in the process.

  

If you're shopping for Gurleys, make sure they haven't been lit (most of them haven't), and that they haven't started to melt and lean. That's common with the taller, slimmer candles, especially Christmas trees. Don't leave them in a hot car if you have more shopping to do, and don't display them in the direct sun. They can melt pretty fast.

  

You can find these little panorama candles with different little shapes inside - bunnies and roosters and such. 

  

Good thing I don't have to pick a favorite. I don't think I could.
 

Honey, does this pattern make my butt look big?

 

I've really been thinking about making a dress since I got those patterns. I was taken with this dress, largely because I thought it would be fun to make.

 

Check out the construction. Four big pieces and a facing, plus the belt. No set-in sleeves! What could be easier?

 

But then reality set in. I looked at the dress again. Do you see where the gathers fall? Right on the widest part of the hip? Would this look good on anyone who was not an artist's rendering? Short of making this dress in horizontal stripes, I can't imagine anything less flattering. I'm very much of the opinion that Barbie has been unfairly blamed for the dysfunctional view many women take of their figures. It's got nothin' to do with Barbie. It's these patterns.

 

Also on the pattern front, I have been deeply troubled by the different spellings I see of the word "selvage." (Once an English major, always an English major.) I thought I had found definitive proof for my spelling. Before tut-tutting about the decline of spelling skills, though, I thought I would check my Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, and you know what? "Selvage" is the first spelling listed, followed immediately by "selvedge." And selvedge is kinda easier to remember, with the word "edge" and all. So spell it however you want. I'm still going with selvage, but it's no longer an issue for me. Phew!

 

And finally - just when you think you know all of your sewing terms, you find something new. Do you know what to call that piece covering the shoulders of the model wearing the green dress?

It's named after the 6th century French queen Berthe de Laon, the mother of Charlemagne. Yep, it's a "bertha." which is defined as "a wide, round collar covering the shoulders." You learn something new every day.

The charmed life I lead

 

It's been quite a week. Every day I get up, go to work (or, today, a college tour), come home and find a package waiting on my doorstep. You'd think it was my birthday or something. Nope, it's just the charmed life I lead.
 
 

Before you see all the goodies, check out this vase. It was a birthday present from a friend and fellow gardener. I just love it. You can buy a $4 bunch of carnations from the supermarket and make them look like something special. It's really perfect for showing off just a few stems.

 

After weeks of telling myself I could not buy myself this book, my friend M. (she knows who she is) sent it to me for no reason except to be nice. The book's a keeper, and so is my friend M.

 

These arrived from the Netherlands, courtesy of LiLi. They're conversation hearts in Dutch! Vruchten hartjes, little fruit hearts. Prima means fine, and leuk means nice, both of which apply to LiLi.

 

Here's a picture of my kitchen (I wish!) Actually it's the jigsaw puzzle that I won in Heidi's giveaway. I love puzzles. I'm saving this one for my parents' visit; they're also puzzle fans, and putting a puzzle together is one of the things we can all do without making each other too crazy. Thanks for contributing to family harmony, Heidi!

 

Susan hinted that a pincushion was headed my way, but she also sent the wonderful fabric and trims. I am wild about how it all looks together. Note to self: Continue to make friends with people who work at quilt shops.

 

I did a one-on-one fabric swap with a friend whose stash I admire, and here are just a few of the squares she sent. These make me seriously want to take up quilting. The horse fabric in the upper right was my daughter's favorite ...

 

but I think these two are mine.

Quite a week indeed.

Spring

 

It feels like spring here today, and since the real bunnies that live here are camera-shy, the vintage bunnies are going outside for some fresh air.

 

It was nice enough to get outside and rake out the flower beds, which is how we discovered the tulips coming up. These are Tulipa greigii 'Toronto,' a species tulip. Species tulips are on the short side (maybe 8 inches) and very hardy. These come back year after year and have even spread a little. I have a lot more luck with these than I do with the more familiar tulips, like Darwin hybrids.
 

I'll give the chives another week, and then I'm going to have to harvest a few. Nothing is better than the first chives of spring (except the first asparagus of spring, the first strawberry in June, etc., etc.)

 

We were surprised to find any crocus at all, since the groundhogs did a pretty good job of feasting on them last year. We love all things great and small here, but we have to try very hard to love the groundhogs sometimes.
 
And on the subject of creatures - if anybody's familiar with these particular bunnies, tell me what you know. They lived in the attic of my parents' home for years, but no one seems to remember where they came from. One of them has a very faded "Made in Japan" tag. I saw a pink one once at an antiques show years ago, decided against buying it, and haven't seen one since.

Feedsack farewell

 

Multiple choice: This picture represents:

a) A lovely pile of feedsacks
b) An afternoon's worth of washing and ironing
c) A potential contribution to the tuition fund
d) All of the above

 

The answer is D - all of the above - and as pretty as these are, I feel kind of good about letting them go off to good homes. (In the dog rescue world, if you've ever gone through the process of being approved to adopt a puppy, these are known as "forever homes.")

 

My only hesitation in posting about them is that I increasingly feel weird about showing you things that I'm selling. Not that it stops me. Especially with fabric, because there seems to be a general swooning and fainting about lovely old fabric. And if I've spent all day taking pictures for eBay or etsy (notice deliberate lack of links) I don't have a lot of time left for blog pictures, which are really what I'd rather be doing. I love seeing other people's creations and finds, whether they're keeping them, putting them online or taking them to their booth or store.

 

But I also recognize that blogs can start to feel like advertisements instead of friendly communication. And I certainly would like to avoid that. So this post is just for window shopping and general feedsack adoration. I was happy to find them, and I'll be happy to let them go, and in the time in between, I'm just enjoying them.
  

On the bright side

 

Pastels are nice in the spring, but so are bright colors. This illustration from an old reading primer has perfect colors for spring.


 

Here are some chicks on a deep blue egg ...

 

and a bunny dressed in red.

 

A bouquet straight from a fresh box of crayons ...

 

which is now sitting underneath a pedestal plate. If you want to feel slightly less aggravated after you break one in your pair of depression glass sherbet dishes ...

  

flip the one that remains upside down, and use a super heavy-duty glue that's made for glass to attach it to a plate. You know the old saying: When life gives you a single sherbet dish, turn it into a pedestal plate.

   

Hope your Monday is sunny, and if it isn't, I hope you have a pretty umbrella.