Oodles and oodles

The Case of the Mysterious Tablecloth

 

Isn't this tablecloth pretty? Wouldn't it be a completely great idea to have a blog where the title of every post would be a variation on a Nancy Drew book?
 
 

Here's the mystery. It's the girl's appliqued skirt. It's not just a skirt.

 

It's a pocket that holds a napkin. And what I couldn't figure out ...

 

is why the girls would be in the corner. Why would you set a table that way? It seemed like the girls should be along the sides, a little left of center, so they'd be next to a placesetting. I have another tablecloth like this, too - it has teapots in the corners - and I could never figure out why it was made that way. Fortunately, this was part of a box lot of linens from that auction last week, and in the box  was another tablecloth (not nearly as cute) that still had the pattern for making it. And the title of the pattern was the answer to the mystery.

 

The tablecloth and the four napkins are called a Bridge Set. And that makes all the sense in the world. It's a card-table sized tablecloth, with the motifs in the corner, so the ladies playing bridge could have their cards in front of them and their snacks off to the side. I love knowing stuff like that. It's like being back in fifth grade and realizing that you really do know all of the capitals of all of the countries in South America, so you could quit studying and go finish reading your Nancy Drew book.

 

And just when you got to the next-to-the-last (or, to use one of my favorite words, pentultimate) page of the book, you'd read this sentence: Little did Nancy know that, having solved The Case of the Mysterious Tablecloth, she would soon embark on an even more exciting adventure titled What's Up with Sunbonnet Sue?

 

Because these Sunbonnet Sues were in the same box lot, and they clearly served some purpose, but I don't know what it was. They're two-sided, with a hanger on top, and the skirt section has an opening  - I tried to show this with the one on the left - apparently so they could hold something.

"But what?" Bess asked Nancy excitedly.

"Bess, don't be such a twit," answered her tomboyish cousin, George. "Clearly they were intended to be clothespin holders."

"I don't think so, George," mused Nancy, as she searched in her handbag for the keys to her blue roadster. "They're only about 12 inches tall, and the skirt section only about 7 inches tall, which seems too small to be a clothespin holder. Besides," added the slim, attractive sleuth, "anyone reading this who has never read a Nancy Drew book will have no idea in the world who we are or why we're talking this way."

"Did you notice, Nancy, that the fabric in both Sunbonnet Sues is the same, but the one on the right is much more faded?" George asked. "Does that mean something?"

"It might," Nancy began, but her response was interrupted by a shrill scream.

"Look!" Bess cried, pointing into the box lot.

 

Nancy peered inside the box and gingerly pulled out another small, cotton-print object. It, too, appeared to be a small holder of some sort, yet too small to be a clothespin holder.

"I don't say this often," Nancy said, "but I'm completely baffled. I don't know what these are."

Friends, I'm asking you. Any thoughts on what these small, holder-like objects were used for? Because I'd really like to know. And because I don't think I can channel Nancy Drew for one more sentence.







 

From the kitchen

 

Some kitchen-y finds from the last few days: a picnic tablecloth, a Bakelite pastry cutter, a Pyrex bowl and a set of canisters.

I hope this is as close to a kitchen as you get today.

Happy Mother's Day!

Anthropomorphism Friday

 

I like when there's a theme to what I find at yard sales. Today started out kind of random. These are some bird birthday candle holders, on a tablecloth that I think would make Cath Kidston jealous.

  

Things sort of started to take a bird turn. These were at a sale where a woman was selling a very large collection of salt and pepper shakers. (She was also selling the tablecloth, which I think is my favorite find today.) The salt and pepper shakers weren't exactly my style, but I was thinking they'd be pretty fun to photograph, and there's a pretty good market for them, and before I knew it, I asked her what she'd take for all of them. And when she quoted me what seemed like an entirely fair price, it was only a matter of time before ...

 

my dining room table looked as if there'd been an explosion at a ceramic novelties factory. Lots of these are way too Happy Meal for me, but taken separately, some of them are pretty endearing.

  

A pair of peaches.

 

Fruit ladies.

 

A happy couple.

 

A pair of pears.

 

And, hmmmmm - turnips? So I guess today's theme is anthropomorphism, which is not a theme that comes along often, and a good thing, because it's not the easiest word to spell.

The button-sorting drill

 

You know the drill, don't you? Lug home a couple of box lots of buttons from the auction. Begin sorting. If you have to think about whether you love the button, you don't love it. Put it in the yard-sale box.

 

Do not put these in the yard-sale box. Especially do not put those big white flowers in the yard-sale box.

  

Now, sort by color.
 
 

Pull out the button cards. Consider whether to save the golfer button cards for golfer son and husband. Remember that son and husband like golf, not buttons.

 

Line up the extra-pretty buttons.

 

Play. Admire. Take pictures. Repeat as often as possible.

All about vintage tape measures

 

Nothing is more restorative than a midweek auction that promises SEWING COLLECTABLES in bold capital letters. I'd have preferred the correct spelling, and maybe downplaying the sewing a little bit so that I'd be the only person who showed up, but I'm not complaining. I came home with a bunch of boxes of notions to sort - oh, joy! - and something I never knew existed: collectible tape measures. I love this dog. I love this dog so much I might keep him on my nightstand.

Here's a little Hoover vacuum cleaner tape measure. A lot of the tape measures seemed to be either souvenirs or advertisements, but my favorites were the little domestic miniatures.

 

A little iron. The red part is padded fabric; it's the pincushion part. The tape measure extends out from the base of the iron.

  

And a dress form! The tape measure comes out of the knob on the neck.


It's back to sorting through boxes and figuring out how to use more than the automatic setting on the new camera. I took a photo of all of the boxes I brought home, but I didn't have the memory card in, and I can't figure out how to download from the internal memory. I've got my work cut out for me today, but it looks like pretty enjoyable work.






  

Just turn that frown ...

  

It takes a lot to make me cry. Tears of happiness, that I can do. With ease. I cry before weddings start, at the end of Disney movies and at the mere promise of a heroic pet story on the evening news. But mad/sad/upset crying? I just don't do that.

 

Except when my daughter breaks my camera. After I was hesitant to let her borrow it. After I made her promise to be really, really careful with it. After she promised to be really, really careful with it.

 

I was just so frustrated. I don't know about any of you, but the weight of trying to be positive lately is really wearing me down. I'm tired of putting on a happy face about all of the economic bad news, which is hitting way too close to home. Tired of looking at a slimmer budget at work as a way to focus our priorities. Tired of thinking that well, if this line of work doesn't work out, maybe it's an opportunity for reinvention. And when all my camera would produce was a fuschia photograph with horizontal black lines --  which the online help menu explained was the result of a) crushing or b) immersion in water and could be fixed only if I a) sent the camera somewhere to be fixed and b) spent more than it was worth to repair -- well, I just wasn't in the mood to go all Pollyanna-ish and say, you know, I've been saying for a year I really need to upgrade to a better camera! Maybe I'll just go buy one today!

 

Nope. First, I called the school and had my daughter called down to the office so I could chat with her on the phone. (There goes the Mother of the Year award again.) Then I called my husband and told him his only job was to keep everybody away from me, because I'm mad at the world. Then I cried and told the dog to stop being so annoying. Then I priced new cameras and found one in my price range and went and bought it. (I'm figuring I can repay the tuition fund. Better yet, perhaps my daughter can assist in repaying the tuition fund.)

 

And after wallowing in crankiness for a while, I took the camera out (A Fuji Finepix S1500) and put in the batteries and started playing around. And it's going to be fine. When I get the hang of it, it's probably going to be great.

 

So maybe it was a blessing in disguise. Or maybe it was just one more frustration. Either way, the only thing to do is accept the facts, hope for the best and keep moving forward.

Weekend finds, part 2

 

I drove a long way to an auction Sunday, only to find nothing there that I really wanted, as well as competition from every antique dealer between Rochester and Syracuse. Fortunately, it was a nice day for a drive, so I hopped back in the car and headed home a different way. I'm a very strong believer in never going back the way I came. It drives my family insane, but we'll explore that some other time. As luck would have it, a neighbor who lives less than a mile away from my house decided to have an unadvertised moving sale, which I'd have never known about had I not just driven two counties away to an auction. Isn't life funny? Anyway, that's how I ended up with a new McCoy planter, the yellow one on the right. It was part of a box lot, which is how I also came to own the blue pitcher and the (for me) strikingly modern pink vase.

 

These were in the box lot, too. I think the iron-shaped piece is a sprinkler bottle for ironing - any thoughts on that? I have one of those water-sprinkler tops to pop in it. My mom found one for me and wrapped it up as a Christmas gift one year. I love when she does stuff like that.

 

My neighbor also was divesting herself of her Jadite and spice-jar collection. I truly think that blood stops flowing to my brain when I see Jadite at a yard sale. It so rarely happens. These four pieces mean I have to rearrange my entire kitchen, which I should also paint while I'm at it.

OK, want to see what we'll all be wearing this summer?

  

Playsuits (I swear, that's what they're called on the pattern) with wrap skirts, so we can spend the morning at the beach and then cover up to meet our husbands at the club for lunch. I got this from a different neighbor, who was having a moving sale Friday. I'm not exactly sure why everybody is up and moving from our neighborhood, but as long as they leave the good stuff behind, I'm OK with it.

The weekend, part 1

 

The first part of the weekend, all I was finding was fluffy, frilly, sparkly stuff. That was A-OK with me. I think it's pretty, but I'm not the least bit tempted to keep it, so it all works out.
 
 

I found some of the prettiest millinery flowers at a house sale Friday. Most of the flowers had been made into corsages. These pansies are about 100 times sweeter in person - it's that rich, old velvet.

 

I love these violets, too. I did pluck a few out of the bouquet to keep. I really can't imagine anyone wearing these earrings (OK, I can't imagine me wearing these earrings) but I thought they might be good embellishments. I seem to be building a little stash of cameos, which I'm sure will end up in Etsy at some point.

  

Here's some more sparkly stuff. I don't normally buy jewelry because it's usually out of my price range, I know next to nothing about it, and there are already plenty of people snapping it up. These were too good to pass up, though. The top piece is a handmade beaded collar. It reminds me of a collar Susan made. She makes the most gorgeous fabric rosettes and uses them so beautifully - if you visit her blog and Etsy shop, you'll see what I mean. (The shoe clips, the necklace and a lot of the millinery are or will be on eBay this week.) As the (currently blogless) Tina sometimes asks, "Are you keeping that, or is that second semester tuition?"

 
 
Here's the kind of thing I'm a lot more familiar with. These all came from the church rummage sale Saturday. I'm keeping the Haeger bowl and the nativity animals, but I already have a manger like this, and I probably don't need two. The chalkware figures inside are really wonderful. You can't see much of it, but the tablecloth is pretty great.

 

I didn't realize how weird this photo was until I'd packed all the figures away, but you get the idea.
 
 

The yellow tulip planter is the last of the rummage sale finds, and the yellow tulips are from my garden. I decided at the beginning of the sale season that the only things I really was interested in buying for myself this summer were some planters and vases, and any Jadite I might find. More photos to come, but I might be done buying for myself already. And so early in the season!

A rummage sale find, plus bonus advice

 

I find it very hard to look at Christmas things this time of year, so I'm easing you in with this sweet windmill ornament. All set?

  

Pretty much nothing makes me happier than finding a big box of Christmas ornaments at a church rummage sale, especially at those low, low rummage sale prices. There was a tray full of Shiny Brites ...

 

including the hard-to-find unsilvered Shiny Brite lantern with tinsel ornament.

 

There was a tray of super-big handpainted ornaments made in Poland ...

   

including a pink ornament with a glittered reindeer and blue Santa.

 

And there was a tray of this and that, and a handful of figurals ...

 

including the sweetest white bird. (And I'm pretty fond of that dapper snowman, too.)

I'm not normally a fan of church rummage sales, because they usually involve waiting in line, which we have previously established as something I hate to do. I particularly don't like waiting in line at rummage sales, because unlike estate sales, there is even less of a chance that there's anything good.

Also, and I don't know why, but rummage sales seem to draw a generally nuttier crowd. This morning, for example. I found myself in line with a young woman who seemed fairly normal until she unexpectedly and somewhat hysterically began to explain how she had to let the government take her house so they wouldn't put her seven kids into foster care. (You know, one of those house-for-kids swaps we're always reading about.) I did a lot of nodding and slowly backing away when the older woman in front of me chimed in. Boy, I was relieved to have someone else join the conversation, until SHE unexpectedly and somewhat hysterically began to explain how to use the Bible to predict the weather.
 
That's when it struck me: Cell phone technology! I pretended to be startled by my phone vibrating (like either one of them would notice it didn't ring), pretended to read a text and began texting back. I texted my husband. He was sympathetic to my plight. It was nice to have somebody normal to communicate with. So that's my advice for rummage sales: Always carry a cell phone, and text when necessary. You don't have to know how to text. Just move your thumbs around. 

I found lots of good stuff this weekend, and there's an auction Sunday: Oh, how I love this time of year!