Oodles and oodles

Batteries not included

I made a quick detour into a thrift store today and found this spun-cotton Santa. I took it to the counter to buy. My timing was a bit off, as there was a couple in front of me buying a large amount of merchandise. In fact, their total came to more than $77. That was quite a feat, since most of what they were buying cost a quarter or so. The cashier was a very dear church lady volunteer. You cannot imagine how long this took.

I thought about leaving. At this particular thrift store it is necessary to remove every price tag and attach it to a sheet of paper for inventory control. This meant something like 280 price tags needed to be removed. Some of them were stick-on price tags that were difficult to remove. It was excruciating. I offered to help remove some of the price tags. It was that, or lose my mind.

Once home, however, I decided it was worth the frustration. If you go here and play the video, you will understand why I feel that way.

A spun cotton action figure. Worth every penny of the $1.08 I spent. And every minute I waited.

Heavenly

I picked up this little angel ornament at the thrift store the other day. I was curious about how she was made.

And what she was made with. I've seen this metal trim before, but I've never been quite sure what it was. It's very lightweight metal - light enough to fold - but heavier than foil. It's vintage, but kind of a clean, unfussy vintage.

One search led to another, and I discovered what this stuff is. Sequin waste. It's the metal strip left over after sequins are punched out. Knowing that pleases me no end. (Did you already know this? Sometimes I think I'm the last person to figure something out.) It also pleases me no end that someone was clever enough to look at something that might have been thrown away and found a way to reuse it.

Sometimes I like finding stuff out almost as much as I like finding stuff.

A vintage voter

Suffragette Genevieve Clark, circa 1914

You know a lot of the things I love: feedsack fabric, Jadeite plates and Shiny Brite ornaments.

You may not know this: I love voting more than I love any of those. By a lot.

Voting makes me lightheaded. Happy. Almost giddy.

My great-grandmother, who was born before women had the right to vote, adored FDR. Without him, she believed, she would not have had a roof over her head. She worked as a Democratic poll watcher every year by way of thanks.

My father, a lifelong Republican, ran for a local office when I was young. He had a pretty slick get-out-the-vote operation. It consisted of driving from house to house every evening in our used Chevrolet, my brother and I in the back seat. He handed out business cards with his name and the words HONEST and RELIABLE. In his case, it happened to be true. He lost his first election, and I cried. He won every one after that.

My parents took us with them when they voted. They believed it was as important to vote for town supervisor and state representative as it was for president. Afterward, we went to the Civic League for the Election Day supper. We sat with neighbors and ate homemade soup and bread and cake.

Nobody had to say what a great country we lived in. Nobody had to say how great it was to be an American. We knew that, especially on Election Day. Those suppers felt more patriotic than Fourth of July fireworks, as celebratory as Thanksgiving.

I love a lot of the things I grew up with - farmhouses, gardens, livestock and pets; aprons, quilts and Pyrex bowls. I grew up in a family that valued voting, in a country where my vote counts, and I love that, too. And today's the day I celebrate that.

 

 

A season begins

It was a perfect November weekend here ... a family dinner on Saturday so the New York relatives could spend some time with my parents, a birthday celebration on Sunday for my husband, and on both days, the kind of weather that reminds you the seasons really have changed. There was a coating of snow both mornings, and sometimes the sun would come out, then the sky would get dark and it would snow like crazy, then it would stop. Oh, and there was that whole extra hour! I love that. I wish that could happen more than once a year.

The snow never really amounted to much. In fact, sometimes it wasn't really snow, it was graupel, but really, who wants to be the geek who annouces that it's graupeling outside?

 When I was cleaning up the gardens a week ago (and apparently in the nick of time) I dug up some herbs in hopes I could keep them at least through late fall. So this is my November garden. If we don't get too much graupel, it could even be a December garden.

In what felt like a milestone for me, I got a call from someone who owns a store ... they were just getting out their Christmas merchandise and wondered if I wanted to take a peek first. Well, sure. Once my parents left for home this morning, I went out to do a little last-minute birthday shopping and swung by the store. There were just enough pretty ornaments to make me happy. As I left the store with my box, it started snowing again, and when I got in the car, I switched the radio to the station that starts playing Christmas music on Nov. 1. I know it's wrong. But I only listened for a few minutes. My husband likes to refer to his birthday as the beginning of the festive holiday season, and today, I think he had it exactly right.