Oodles and oodles

Weekend finds

 

Saturday's yard sales had a lot of ups and downs. I definitely started out on an up, because I got everything in the picture except the apron at the first yard sale I went to, for the grand sum of $1.50. The apron came later, for $1. If you remind me that I said I wasn't buying any more aprons, I'll say I don't remember saying any such thing.

 

I have no idea what this is. Some kind of pitter/reamer/squeezer thing? I try to keep the pitting and reaming to a minimum around here, so I lack experience in this field. After one good sale, and an OK one, and a bunch of ones that took no time at all to buzz through, I hit a wall.

First I went to a church rummage sale, which turned out not to be your usual church rummage sale but kind of a church-going-out-of-business rummage sale. All that stuff that only a church would need was for sale - like trays of utilitarian creamers from church suppers, and kind of boring candle holders, and some 1970s era hymnals. I may be wrong, but I don't think there's much of a market for 1980s Vacation Bible School curriculum.
 
Disappointed, I went on to the next sale, where I was excited to see many big plastic bins and the sign "Fabric: $1 a bag." Just as I had discovered that all of the fabric was yucky doubleknit, I heard excited voices and rapidly approaching footsteps. It was a van load of women who were members of a religious order, and they were charging the bins of fabric. I barely got out of the way in time. I came this close to being trampled to death by women in prayer caps, flowered housedresses and heavy knit stockings. Over polyester, no less.
 
 

Feeling forsaken, I made one last stop, at a tag sale, and waiting for me there was a Jadite swirl mixing bowl. It's the 9 inch one, and I have the 6 inch one, so now I need only to find the 8 inch, 7 inch and 5 inch, and I will own a set of nested Jadite mixing bowls. I expect that to happen in 2018, given my current rate of one swirl mixing bowl every three years. After this, not wanting to press my luck, I headed home. I knew that van full of crazy bargain-hunting religious women was still cruising around, and I didn't want to risk running into them again.

Sometimes you have to kiss some frogs

 

Sometimes you have to go to ten sales so you can justify how you're spending your morning.

 

Sometimes you have to hose the grime off the glass canisters before you even bring them in the house to give them a good scrubbing.

 

Sometimes you have to wait for a dumb driver to move her hulking, gas-guzzling SUV because she's  blocked your sporty little Subaru.

 

Sometimes you have to sort through a five-pound can of really boring buttons to find the pretty ones.

 

But after you're home, and everything is cleaned up and sorted, and you've taken a couple of Advil, you look at the haul (four glass canisters, a vase, two planters, two Jadeite saucers just the right size for the kitchen shelves, a wood hanger and a bunch of buttons including a cute little one shaped like a peach) and you start thinking about what might be waiting for you Saturday.

Anthropomorphomania

  

You may recall that a certain large stash of anthropomorphic salt and pepper shakers followed me home a few weeks ago.

 

Which was followed by anthropomorphic vegetables-in-love tea towels, which we won't show again because they kind of creeped out a lot of people, including me.

 

And now, this. How is it possible that decades passed without me finding a single anthropomorphic object, and now I find them everywhere I go?

 

Cheerful anthropomorphic oranges on juice glasses - that was Thursday's find.

 

Do you think any category of houseware escaped the anthropomorphism craze?

Recent finds, a makeover and a project

 

Geez, it's been busy around here, but I got to go to a couple of sales this morning. Thursday sales are wonderful things. I found some lovely old seed packets at the second sale I stopped at - and I have an actual plan for displaying them, just as soon as I'm done arranging them around the flower bed.

 

Snapdragons, in the garden and on the seed packet. (Linum is flax, I think, but I don't have any of that.)

 

Dianthus with candytuft.

 

Morning glory and, um, not morning glory. An anemone, I think.

 

At the same sale I found this printed cotton grass seed bag. I couldn't decide whether to buy it, but the promise of No Crabgrass Seed! tipped the balance. I think I'm going to turn it into a pillow for the front porch. 

 

One of my weekend projects was making over a garden along the side of the house on a budget big enough to cover two flats of annuals.

 

Here are two of my favorite free things - perennials divided a few seasons earlier (these are shasta daisies) and left to grow in a nursery bed until they were needed, and lots of yummy compost. I adore compost. It's just the most wonderful stuff in the world. I filled in a couple of blank spots in the border with fresh daisy clumps, and I painted the wooden bench.

 

I bought the brightest annuals I could find and ...

 

Here's how it came out. The mulch was my husband's job. We get free mulch from the town, so this reallly was an inexpensive project. I can't wait to see how this looks in a few more weeks, when the perennials really start to take off. (The before picture was taken three days ago, and the perennials already are noticeably bigger.) Back in the corner, behind the bench, is a dead spot where nothing wants to grow.

So I turned it into a decorative "work area," with some galvanized buckets and watering cans and a flat of snapdragons that look as if they're waiting to be planted, except they're going to stay right there. I made the box a couple of seasons ago, and nothing could be easier: it's just the frame of a wooden crate painted white and stenciled with the most workmanlike stencils I could find. I think I just traced on the letters with a fat black permanent marker. 

It's looking like a good sale weekend! There's certainly quantity; quality remains to be seen. But I did find something else today, and I'm going to try to post it first thing tomorrow morning because it's just the kind of thing you'll want to see bright and early. 

Vintage bird feeders, and other things

  

I never gave the subject of vintage bird feeders any thought until I found this one at a sale Friday morning. When I asked the older man who seemed to be helping his wife at the sale what it cost, he looked at me sympathetically and said, "I think she wants 50 cents for them." He seemed to feel that was outrageous. I thought it was more than reasonable.

 

Especially for this copper birdfeeder. I'm not sure the birds are going to get this one. I need to clean it up a little, and then I think I might see how pillar candles look in it.

 

At another sale I found an old bread box and a little oil painting. 


   
Actually, a pair of paintings. There's a pretty famous artist named Linnell. That's not who painted these. I like them a lot, just the same.

Visitor

 

See what's in the garden?

 

Only a little bigger than a coneflower leaf?

 

Cute as a ...

 

bunny.

Easy embroidery

 

I had time for five minutes of therapeutic ironing this morning (see also: therapeutic thrifting, therapeutic weeding, therapeutic button-sorting) so I thought I'd show you this little napkin that came from a box lot of linens. It's so sweet and simple, and recreating it would be really easy: a fabric applique and basic stitches, including what looks to me like therapeutic free-hand cross stitches.

 

Here's a better view. The lines leading into the cup motif are running stitches in the palest shade of blue that go around all four sides. I think it would be fun to make coffee mug motifs with scraps of vintage fabric that are too tiny to do much with but that need to be saved. And I would make sets of them and tie them with ribbons and keep them on hand for hostess gifts. And I would give them out with abandon whenever I'm invited to teas and showers and leisurely lunches on someone's terrace. OK, that's all for my fantasy world today.

Broken

 

I once had a friend who went through husbands and boyfriends as quickly as most of us go through spring jackets - every year or so, she'd need a new one. She could not figure out why she consistently picked the wrong man. Another friend had a very succinct explanation: "Honey," she said, "your picker is broken."

  

Boy, that's how I felt this weekend. Not husband-wise, but sale-wise. What a sorry bunch of losers I picked. The only thing I can say about this weekend is that at least I got to pal around with my friend  Lillian Friday morning and my daughter Saturday morning. Lillian was nice enough to refer to the crowd at an estate sale as "a subculture," although I think "underbelly" was probably a more accurate description. And she wasn't even with me at the sale Saturday where I'm 99 percent sure that all of the helpers were recent parolees. Pretty much all I've got to show for my shopping is the birdhouse wall pocket from a Friday yard sale and a rose-print feedsack I found Saturday.
 
 

Oh, and I did find lots of knitting needles. I thought these were remarkably pretty. To my credit, I promptly sorted through them and put them on eBay. (I listed some buttons, too.) The chances of me taking up knitting right now are fairly remote. In fact, the chances of me blogging again this week are fairly remote, I'm sad to say. It's just going to be a busy week. But - hope springs eternal - I'm hoping it will be a good one.

Old notions

 

Really, I have nothing to say today but there has been a request to "get those creepy vegetables off your blog," and I think there's some wisdom in that. How 'bout some old sewing notions instead?

 

These emerged in bits and pieces from some box lots. Older than the things I usually look for, but I love those old labels and lettering.

 

Isn't it remarkable how anything with French print looks sophisticated, no matter what it is? It's kind of like anything that's said with a British accent just sounds smart.

 

I've been pretty busy with work all week and had high hopes of updating my Etsy shop today. The fact that it's so dark outside I practically need a flashlight to walk the dog is making that plan look less likely. Even with the new camera, I need a little natural light. Anyway, I'm going with a sewing notions theme for the next update, and I think there will be some fun things to look at.

 

I'll let you know when that happens. Meanwhile, I'm appreciating how 12 plain white spools of thread ...

 

look like an extravagant purchase when they come in a good box.

Vegetables in love

 

Hey, wanna see some kitchen linens? This towel was in the box lot of linens I got, and so were these:

 

a blue flowered apron, just in the nick of time for Wear an Apron Day (or something like that), which is today.

 

And this one, which may have the best fabric I've ever seen. Take a look.

 

I can't think of any piece of fabric I've ever seen that I love more.

  

And then there were these, which capture those magical romantic moments when vegetables meet. From left to right, we have the waltzing carrot and potato, an onion serenading a tomato, and Miss Peapod pretending to listen to the story the very boring but extremely wealthy cucumber is telling. I don't know how to describe these other than vaguely disturbing.