IT'S SPRING AND WE’RE IN LOVE

My husband and I are in love.

Well, yes, with each other, but we’re coming up on our 38th anniversary in May, so that’s kind of an old story. No, this is a new object of our passion. We found our first addition to our furniture for the midcentury modern house we’ll be retiring to eventually.

We love her. Teak, with what I believe is birch behind the sliding doors on the base,
and this nifty felt-lined sliding tray for flatware. (Please excuse the unlovely background!)
What really makes us swoon is the beveled front edge on the shelves in the upper hutch.
She’s from Denmark, I'm guessing early to mid Sixties. Anyone recognize this logo?
I tried googling “Danish Furniture Company” and as you can imagine got several million hits.

She was an incredible deal. We had to rent a van to get her home, and even with that she cost about fifty bucks. Yeah, the van cost quite a bit more than we paid for the furniture!

We haven’t had a chance to put her two pieces together yet. This beauty is definitely not going to hang out in the garage until we move someday. We’re going to shift some furniture in the house and move her inside in a few days. I think she’s going in my home office. I'll have to move one or two white Ikea bookcases somewhere else, but I can live with that. As soon as I get her fixed up in her new spot I'll take more pics.

It's love, I tell you.

We found her at a sale on Friday, a fundraiser to support a young woman who volunteers as a psychotherapist at an orphanage in Zambabwe. She comes home to the US every once in a while to visit family and friends, and to raise funds so she can go back again.

Hers was the second sale we hit on Friday. The first was an estate sale that advertised in Craigslist that they had midcentury furniture, so I was hot to get over there at starting time. Didn’t see anything I would call midcentury, but it's a useful phrase these days to get people to your sale. My husband found this little white teapot that we like for its unusual lid catcher.
I was a bit bemused by their writing the item name on the price tag.

Maybe label switching does go on at estate sales, but I've never seen it. Most of their prices seemed silly to me. They had looked up every item on eBay and had printouts of auctions that had the highest prices they could find. Can't help wondering how much they actually sold.

Stopped at lots of sales on Saturday as well, but only bought at one of them. Definitely one of those “you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince” days. But it was fun, starting with some of the Craigslist ads. One promised “lots of toys, designer clothing, hooker/pole dancer shoes…” Kind of makes you wonder what sort of toys they were talking about. Their ad went on to tell you to look for their signs, which would be really good. “Airplanes know when I have a sale” they boasted.

I used to proofread books for a friend who is a publisher. You can imagine my shudder at this ad: “Were at the end of the cold de sack.” Hey, I live at the end of a cold de sack too. My favorite ad though was posted a few days ago, on March 16—advertising a sale on March 13…and ending sternly with “No Early Birds.”

Reminds me of a limerick I heard in my youth:
There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was much faster than light.
She set out one day
In a relative way
And arrived the previous night.

Encountered a much loved Poodle today who was taking it easy and didn’t bother to get up.
These Pekes are brothers, Joey and Zack. I keep wanting to call them Zoey and Jack.
Their owner had just purchased a little stuffed Santa toy for them, which Zack was eagerly anticipating. He had no intention of sharing with his brother!

Didn’t find out this friendly kitty’s name.
He was almost impossible to get a picture of, he kept writhing on the sunny sidewalk, purring madly.
Not counting the cost of renting the van to pick up our sideboard, I spent $24 this weekend. (Told you it was an amazing deal!) At the same sale as the sideboard I found this nice black wool jacket, with velveteen lining the front facings and hood.
It was probably designed as a swing coat for someone smaller than me, but hey, it fits and that’s all I care about. Hmmm, maybe I have a swing butt. I didn’t care much for its boring black buttons, so I changed them out for these vintage ones in gray.
Found more DVDs to replace old VHS tapes.
At the same sale I picked up this embroidered rayon shawl or wide scarf.

And that’s it. Just enough to keep it interesting—though the sideboard alone was enough to make my weekend.

I will probably be absent from the blog next week. I'll be in Portland at the Public Library Association’s national convention. They’re a reckless bunch—they’re actually letting me speak. So instead of garaging next Saturday morning I'll be with some colleagues imparting what we like to think is wisdom.

Maybe I can sneak in a few anecdotes about yard sales.