Queen of Fifty Cents

The Devil is Beating His Wife!

2012-01-22T15:25:00.001-08:00

Rain is falling (we have a metal roof, so I can gauge the amount of rain by the sound) and the sun just peeped out. Which is called a sunshower, and in some parts of the world when that happens folks say, “The devil is beating his wife.” I haven’t found an explanation of the phrase’s origins, but it’s said in various places all over the world. Some things are better without explanations, don’t you think?

It’s been a rather wild and wooly week, weatherwise. We started out with a few days of snow, and then got several days of serious rain. Lots of flooding in Salem, streets closed, some nearby towns were evacuated. I can tell you we were awfully glad we live near the top of a hill! Okay, a little less glad during the snow part, but hey, I’m retired – I don’t have to go anywhere! Not that I haven’t interacted with the weather. I’m still housebreaking a puppy, which means regular trips outside at all hours. I admit I’m going to be extremely happy when Zoe becomes more reliable!

I did go out garaging on Saturday, there were 4 or 5 sales to check out. I bought one item for fifty cents, but it’s going to be a present for someone who reads my blog so I can’t say what it is yet. And I picked up one free thing, a somewhat battered cookie sheet that fits in my oven better than some we already own. Not a subject for an exciting photo shoot. Had one short conversation with a couple of ladies about how you can actually wash leather shoes in your washer, air dry them, then give them a good polish. They seemed happy to have the information.

In short, not the most exciting Saturday morning ever. Gosh, you’d think it was the middle of winter or something.

But I do actually have something I’ve been wanting to say:

Yes, a big ol’ thanks to all of you who read my blog, with an extra heaping of gratitude for you regulars. Just went and looked at my numbers, and I have 556 subscribers (people who get notified via their RSS reader when I post something) plus 378 followers – you can see them over in the right hand column. So far we’ve had over 256,000 views of this blog. I really appreciate every one of you who takes the time to stop by and see what I’ve been up to, and I love, love, love it when you leave comments. Besides becoming a conversation here on the blog, they arrive in my email box, and it’s such a treat to hear from folks near and far.

So rain or shine – or today rain AND shine - thanks for stopping by!

And to think I almost didn’t go out!

2012-01-14T15:09:00.001-08:00

When I do my “Shopping on Driveways” workshop, one of the things I tell people is that to find great deals, you have to keep showing up. Okay, that’s true for lots of things, including writing. And there are people who seem to have the kind of luck that if they only go to one sale a year, they find everything they were looking for. But for most of us, luck is in persistence.

Which is probably what got me out of the house this morning. Even the Queen of Fifty Cents weakens when faced with gray skies, cold wind and the forecast of snow outside vs. a warm snuggly puppy inside. But hey, my husband really needed a warm snuggly (okay, make that wiggly) puppy to keep him company for a bit, so I made my list of sales, grabbed Gertrude Pemberton Smith (my GPS) and headed out.

A lady was leaving the first sale as I arrived and stopped on the sidewalk, clutching her estate-sale wok, and said hello. Then she said, “Um, I hope this doesn’t seem too weird, but are you the person who writes the Queen of Fifty Cents blog?”

Now, this is the kind of moment you dream of…a stranger recognizes you on the street from your blog! Maybe it happens thousands of times a day somewhere in the world. But I bet not.

So I agreed that I was, and she went on to introduce herself and say that she works at the Salem Library, and one of her colleagues is the person we bought our house from a couple of years ago who had told her about my blog. (Hi, Robin & Ann!) She said she recognized me from my picture on my blog and that she’s good at remembering names and faces. (How I envy that!) Not only that, my next-door-neighbor is her hairdresser. Salem is not a really large town!

We had a nice chat. She mentioned that her husband is usually the one who goes to sales but he was doing something else, then a few minutes later she noticed a guy coming up the sidewalk. “There’s my husband now,” she said, so I got to meet him too. His thing is to buy air conditioners at sales and refurbish them to resell. She’d already scoped out the one at this sale and we all thought the price was silly.

I was a little afraid that everything inside would be equally overpriced, but was glad to see things marked ten cents and a quarter. Not anything I wanted, unfortunately – until I reached a sunroom at the back of the house. Where I found (drum roll) puppy gates! Two of them! For…a quarter each!!

They need some cleaning up, but I know they are going to come in awfully handy while our little Zoe is in the not-yet-housebroken-and chewing-on-everything stage.

I jury-rigged some barriers to keep her in the kitchen

where the floors are tile and there are no cords to chew on. She’s learned to wiggle out of any gap she spies, so actual gates are going to be great. And fifty cents worth of gates is best of all.

That wasn’t my only score. Picked up a dog brush for Edward (Zoe’s grooming needs are going to be minimal)

and a pair of waterproof Gore-Tex Nikes for me.

After I paid, I noticed a box with odds and ends which turned out to be free. So I scored these.

On the way home I realized that now I have a new collection. You know how they say if you have three of something you’ve started a collection? This is my Little Red Wooden People Collection, along with my walking Pinocchio from a few weeks ago.

Total outlay: two bucks. 2012 is off to a good start!

All Good!

2012-01-03T07:46:00.001-08:00

A new year! Time to add a new page to my thrifting spreadsheet, but before I do let’s look back at 2011. No matter what else happens, I can always look back at my garaging record and say without doubt that it was a very good year!

In case you’ve not yet started keeping records of your own finds, let me encourage you to begin. I can’t help it – I always get a thrill when I look over my spreadsheet and see how much I got for how little. The columns on mine include the date; item; how much I paid; the approximate retail value; a category to help me sort things; and a field for notes. If you buy to resell, you could also include a column for mileage, since you’ll need a record of that when you do your taxes.

Of course I can never help comparing the year just completed to previous years. One area I’m happy about this time is the Donations category – in other words things I bought that I decided not to keep. A perfect year would have none, but there were only 15 items in that category this year. Five years ago there were 95! Of course many of those were items I bought to resell that didn’t go, but I’m still happy to see how much I’ve improved. And nearly half of the donations were items I used for a while (like some pieces of clothing) that I ultimately decided not to keep.

“Household items” is always a huge category for me. Perhaps I need to break it down further in the future, since it includes kitchen items, furniture, office supplies, and even exercise equipment. It’s a category where I get a lot of bang for my buck – an average of almost $43 of bang for each dollar spent this year. Some lucky furniture finds really contributed to this great bottom line, notably the four Hans Wegner CH23 dining chairs I picked up for twenty bucks.

I didn’t know their provenance when I found them, just knew I liked them – and that’s the only reason to buy anything at a yard sale. Evidently they are quite desirable; it’s hard to find any online that don’t have ‘sold’ on them – but there’s a set in Sweden that’s priced at the equivalent of almost $3700. And even the ones with seats that need reweaving, as mine do, seem to be worth hundreds. And that was just one of my furniture finds. There was also the pair of vintage twin beds, which finally have wonderful mattresses courtesy of Craigslist and are gracing one of our guest rooms.

And the pouf of a stool that’s perfect with our Heywood-Wakefield vanity.

And the 8 foot long sofa made in 1964 – perfect for lying in front of a fire blazing in the fireplace with a good book – and all the pets, since there’s plenty of room.

The “pet items” category had a good return this year too. Only bought three items, but those averaged over $46 bangs per dollar. The two pet carriers made getting our cats from California to Oregon possible – though it was still a long drive!

The “entertainment’ category shows a smaller return for each dollar spent, but doesn’t reflect the hours of enjoyment we’ve had from these finds. I picked up 17 books, 8 CDs, 28 movies, and 31 magazines for less than $53. That’s about the equivalent of three movies seen at a theatre for the two of us. We’ve already watched three of this year’s movie finds more than once on our home theatre (White Christmas, Last Chance Harvey, Danny Deckchair). We win!

I found some great gifts this year too. Spike the dog looks quite at home in front of the fireplace at my friend Diana’s house – and goes very well with their mini-dachshunds Sophie & Tootsie.

My SIL Linda enjoys seasonally decorating her dining table, so the gorgeous embroidered table runner was perfect for her – and it was free at an estate sale! (It went home with her before I got a picture.) And my BIL Biker Bob is still chuffed at the $2 brad nailer I found to use with his compressor. Twenty- three gifts for an average of less than $1 each. And my children’s librarians got lots of cool door prizes as well, including a huge bag o’ Legos, bunches of hand puppets, and a Tomy gearation toy whose 23-second film is still my biggest hit on YouTube – 32,740 views so far!

My small career as a re-seller is still small, but the economy must be improving at least a bit since eBay sales have picked up again. I spent a total of $31.60 on sale items, and made a profit of nearly $500. Better than the money though is connecting nice people with cool stuff, like the college professor who now has a lovely vintage Bonnie Cashion Coach bag from the Sixties, or the gentleman who lives in the classy NYC brownstone who was able to replace the Dansk placemats he’d used for years with a set of new ones . Or one of my very own QoFC followers who’ll be using vintage Vera napkins in some of her tablescapes!

Finally, I found some great clothing and accessories for both my husband and me during the year. I’ll never be able to afford an Eileen Fisher shirt at Neiman Marcus, where the price tag would be over $250, but I love the $2 one in my closet!

Ditto the Pendleton shirt that’s helping Steven stay warm in this colder climate we’ve moved to,

or the blue cashmere sweater that I bought for fifty cents.

I admit I get a bit of a chuckle when I see him wearing that sweater, since I bought it intending to felt it and make sofa pillows or something! I picked up 18 pieces of clothing that would have cost us at least $800 in stores – and I paid $22.75!

Now don’t you want to go start your own spreadsheet – not to mention go garaging?

So 2011 was terrific, and I’m betting fifty cents that 2012 will be too.

Of course the find of the year was not at a garage sale, but it did come from Craigslist! Yes, that adorable puppy.

Looks like her name is going to be Zoe. We’ve tried out several, but she likes Zoe best. And she is one seriously awesome puppy. Cuddly and funny and smart as she can be. She’s already coming when called and sits for her treat. Housebreaking is coming along (we were able to skip the 3 a.m. trip outside last night and I got to sleep till 5:30 – woo hoo!). She eats like a champ (has grown from 5 lb. 12 oz. to 7 lb. in less than two weeks) and is perfectly happy to have pieces of her regular food used for training treats. And she adores her big brother Edward.

They play and play and play. His tail is her favorite tug-o-war toy; he flings her about then gently removes her so the wrestling match can continue.

He does a great job of wearing her out, and then she sleeps for hours.

Puppy heaven!

Additions

2011-12-23T13:15:00.001-08:00

We have a couple of new things at our house. The first arrived in a box, and was a total surprise.

My friend Cathy G., artist and children’s librarian, recently took a class on creating these photo collages. She sent me pics of some she’d done for family. I’m totally honored to be commemorated this way, and I love her work. You can sometimes find things she’s made in her Etsy shop, Penelope Basset, and I’m sure she’d take orders too. I have another piece she made for me from one of the Dresden paper cuts I gave her.

It’s rather like having my own personal shrine! I’ll have to display it with some quarters and a yard-sale candle.

I’ll have to make sure the display is several feet off the ground. And that’s because of the second new thing at our house.

We have a new puppy! As yet unnamed (we’re trying out some possibilities, and are quite motivated to settle on something lest she be stuck with ‘Piglet’ which is what came first to mind. Right now Piglet would be perfect, but I figure when she’s a handsome, strong grown-up dog, being called Piglet will seriously erode her street cred), she’s 7 weeks old, a Springer mix. Supposed to be Springer and Lab, with a soupçon of Pit in there as well. This is our third Springer mix. Kate was the first.

Edward, of course, has set the standard for Springer mixes.

We’ve had three black, longhaired dogs in a row - Possum, Lizzie, and Edward..

This new little one looks like she will have the same short, soft coat that Katie did. So far she’s quite a bit more mellow than Kate, who was a wonderful dog, but pretty much a maniac for her first 12 years. I think we’d had her about 2 days when my husband looked at me and said he didn’t know if he was going to be able to take it. I was thrown into a fluster of trying to decide which of them I could possibly give up, and the answer was neither – so I kept them both.

So far so good with little Nameless. She eats like a champ, sleeps for hours at a time, and is already figuring out what she’s supposed to do when we take her outside. And she’s cuddly, with the most impossibly soft ears you’ve ever felt.

Charlie Brown was so, so right…happiness IS a warm puppy!

Is It a Party?

2011-12-17T12:22:00.001-08:00

This is probably the last weekend of 2011 for sales, and there weren’t many – but I was there! Well, mostly. There’s an estate sale going on today that I wasn’t able to find. When I got home I rechecked the address , and it turned out that they spelled the street name wrong in their Craigslist ad. Gertrude, my GPS, is an awful stickler for spelling, and as far as she was concerned, the street I was trying to find did not exist. And it’s too far and too cold to go back over there. But whattheheck, I managed to spend three bucks this weekend so I’m good!

Found one sale yesterday billed as an estate sale. Maybe. That description is used rather loosely at times. The folks were friendly, the stuff was clean, and the prices were absolutely silly. Ten bucks for a small electric heater – that was broken. A small bottle, very like ones I’ve dug up in backyards where I’ve lived, was $35. I thought a little friction car was ten cents…but looked again and saw that the decimal was somewhere else. As in $10. One of those sales where you smile, and say thanks as you head empty handed out the door.

Today I found an estate sale (seemed like a real one this time) not too far from home. Got there about ten minutes before the advertised time. There were a number of cars, so I parked a little way off, by a short cul de sac that had a huge trampoline set up at the end of it. (Evidently people here worry less about liability!) Four little boys were riding their bikes in the cul de sac, and as I headed for the sale one of them called to me, “Is it a party?” No, just an estate sale. He nodded wisely, seeming to know what I meant. “But some of us think it’s a party,” I told him.

As I walked up to the house, two ladies were talking on the driveway, and I heard one of them say, “And she wanted $20 for a milk bottle that wasn’t even old!” So I knew they’d been at the same sale I went to on Friday.

This sale was being run by a local company that I’ve encountered before. There was a sign up list on the porch, and I was rather chagrined to see I was number 30! I asked some of the others waiting how many they usually let in at a time, which no one could answer but it started a conversation about sales we’d all been to and the ones who let in 5 at a time vs. the guy who crowds everything into one room and then lets in 30 people at a time. (Hmmm, I think I’ve encountered those sales too.) Got lucky though; when the sale opened and she started calling out names, about half the people had disappeared, so I got in right away.

As I stood on the porch chatting and listening, I realized I was surrounded by dealers. Not little penny-ante dealers like me, who resell a few things on eBay or Craigslist from time to time. These were Dealers. Sure enough, when we got inside, one old boy headed straight for a box of jewelry, which he was still inspecting when I left. Another scooped up a rather nice MCM dining set, which at $250 was way out of my league, and I don’t need any more dining furniture anyway. They weren’t pushy or obnoxious (this is Salem, Oregon after all; we pretty much don’t do pushy and obnoxious up here) but they were quite focused. Especially the guy wearing a pair of glasses shoved up on his head with lenses like jeweler’s loupes!

I keep hoping for that last pair of twin beds I need, but nope. I left the dealers to their dealing and picked up some hand soaps, a shoe brush (we can’t find our shoe polishing kit since we moved, so I’m slowly replacing it), a box of tiny tapers, and some insoles. It’s a pretty slow day when your items aren’t worth photographing! Well, except for one little bird ornament. Plenty of room for one more on that tall tree in our living room!

I expect we’ll be entering into a very lean season for sales, especially the next couple of weeks. But I’ll be doing my year-end retrospective, looking back at what I found in 2011. I feel quite excited about it. Is it a sign of age to get a little giddy over a spreadsheet?

Meanwhile, we’re looking forward to holiday activities with family, a lot of great food, and cozy fires in our fireplace. Hope your holidays will be just as good!

Little Items, Big Tree

2011-12-11T10:00:00.001-08:00

There was a time when my husband and I had a running joke that if he came garaging with me, it was the kiss of death. We would find absolutely nothing. I told him on Friday that the curse was offically lifted, and he can come with me whenever he likes! Our first stop was an estate sale where we got to talking to the brother and sister and their cousin having the sale. The dad is gone, mother has moved to retirement home in Montana, and they needed to clear out a bunch o’ stuff. (Yeah, we helped some with that!) We got some wonderful stories. The parents were professional musicians who played in orchestras all over the country, including the Oklahoma City Symphony where I ushered for concerts when I was in high school. The mom was a cellist, and we saw a wonderful watercolor portrait of her playing. Dad played a wind instrument, but I can’t remember which they said. Their mother was one of four sisters who had been started playing instruments when they were quite young, I think the cello was started at age 8. Another story was about one of their aunts, who at age 6 broke a finger and so was unable to play the piano. Her mother stuck a viola in her hands (guess the broken finger was on the bow hand!) and told her to play, opining that ‘idle hands are the Devil’s playthings.’ The four girls formed a quartet (two violins, viola and cello) and were quite famous in the New England area when they were teens, must have been in the 1930s. “They traveled as far as Indianapolis, though how that came about I’ve never known!” we were told.

Steven found a couple of movies there. The thing they have in common is an orchestra background.

I noticed these interesting dining chairs. “Yeah, Mom made those. And the table,” they told us. Apparently you could buy frames back in the 60s and put together your own chairs.

She must have been a seamstress as well. There were sewing supplies, and I picked up this wonderful piece of vintage boucle wool fabric, the perfect size for a throw for my sofa.

I tried it out last night. It’s toasty warm, light as a feather, and a complete kitty magnet – I had one cat on my lap, and the other tucked into the folds of fabric where it dangled by my feet.

Speaking of kitties, the next stop was another estate sale where I found this. (Nope, that’s definitely not the price I paid!)

At first I thought the can was empty, it weighed so little, but when I opened it there was an unopened bag of catnip in there. So I brought it home. Wasn’t sure if the ‘nip would still have any attractive qualities, but evidently it is as fresh as the day it was organically hand-picked. I sprinkled some on the cushion in the cat basket, and two seconds later Noll Baxter was in there sniffing.

And rolling.

I couldn’t get any really good pictures because he wouldn’t stop writhing!

This adorable little ornament came from the same sale

along with a strange little Pinocchio. about 5” tall. My friend Marcia thought he looked scary when I showed him to her during our Skype call this morning, but I love him. (Maybe he’s better in person.)

I admit he does a great giant zombie imitation, looming over the snowman house.

And…I just discovered he can walk!!

Saturday I went to another estate sale, and it was almost a bust. They were only letting in a few people at a time, and there was a line, and it was cold. Then one of the guys working the garage part of the sale turned on an old radio, and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was suddenly blaring. I commented to the guy behind me in line that being cold was bad enough without Rudolph, which made him laugh (thank heavens). Then the music changed to the Little Drummer Boy, which seemed to cement our new friendship. We chatted as the line slowly diminished in front of us. Turns out he knew the family having the estate sale, and that his dad had been a house builder who built the house we were at! So a fun conversation was definitely a mitigating factor. Didn’t find anything to buy until I was leaving and paused at a box of books in the garage, which included a whole stack of these mid-century guidance pamphlets.

I had to get the one published in 1957, the year our house was built. I think it will be a fun addition to the guest bathroom downstairs! And we’ve been getting all kinds of good advice from it. Like “How to be a lipstick artist…1.) Choose the proper color…and 2.) Apply the lipstick carefully.” Boys get good advice too. I wonder what the correct answer to this little quiz might be?

Saturday afternoon we did something that turned out to be surprisingly thrifty – and involves something I bought recently at a garage sale! We went to a tree farm and got our Christmas tree. A big one.

Certainly the tallest tree I’ve ever had! Yes, it’s going to take a ladder to do the top part. Hope our ornaments will do it justice. Oh, and the thrifty part? Well, aside from the farm being only a couple of miles from home, every one of their u-cut trees was a whopping fifteen bucks. The people were a hoot there too. They had a big sign that said ‘Christmas trees with personality.’ Yes, but what kind of personality, I asked. “Oh, different trees have different personalities,” the lady told us with a twinkle in her eye. “Don’t cut down any of the ones that reach out to slap you!”

Guess if I’m supposed to have it, it will still be there!

2011-12-04T11:22:00.001-08:00

What in the world are these people thinking? I was by no means the first person at this Friday sale, people were leaving with their hands full, and yet this was still sitting on the first table I came to.

The world’s cutest mixing bowl. A batter bowl, no less. Wait till you see the inside!

Even the logo on the bottom is cute.

Oh wait, I remember now, lots of people don’t cook any more, which is why there is a fast food place everywhere you turn.

I admit, I DO have other mixing bowls. (Not the mushroom bowl any longer, it’s winging its way to a new home – in Norway.) But since I bake bread about four times a week, the process is made a bit more wonderful by a bowl like this.

But perhaps a bowl won’t attract everyone. Or even an adorable German Easter egg candy box.

But on Saturday, the lady at the first sale where I stopped (make that ‘the shivering lady at the first freezing cold garage where I stopped’ – it was like 29 degrees out) told me that dealers were lined up on her driveway at least half an hour before she opened, peeking in the windows. And yet those dealers left me two Coach bags that were very reasonably priced. Not fifty cents (dang) but still reasonable.

The smaller one apparently is a Bonnie Cashin bag from the Sixties.

My next stop, which had been going for at least 45 minutes by the time I got there, had two Wilton 6” cake pans…in the free box!

And in a box of toys I uncovered this beauty.

Not just any pull toy, but a Kouvalias, which are quite high quality. And as far as I can tell, any kid who got one of these adorable ladybugs still has it – I’ve only found a couple of auctions where they were sold, and an ad for Christmas toys in a November 2000 magazine. When you pull her along, her wings go up and down. And it turns out that besides being beyond cute, we’re talking total kitty magnet. I finally had to shove Noll Baxter away so I could take pics.

Then there was the pair of Eddie Bauer wool gloves. Who couldn’t use a decent pair of wool gloves in this climate? Especially for a quarter?

Probably most people around here already have a Christmas tree stand. We had one, but the hubs didn’t think it was strong enough for the size tree we’re planning to get this year. And there was the one I needed, for about a tenth of the price in a store.

Had fun just talking to people too. At the sale where I got the cake pans and pull toy, a mother and her grown-up daughter were shopping. Mom tried on a pair of sunglasses and asked how they looked. When I assured her they were stunning and wondered who that mysterious woman was, she struck a model’s pose with her hand behind her head. We kept chatting, and I admired her boots and asked where she got them. She said she got them for free, so the two ladies having the sale and I had to have the story. “Well, in August my home burned down, and I lost everything,” she said. Of course we are all riveted. A local store provided some replacement stuff to the victims of this fire (it was in an apartment complex) and they were told they could choose a pair of shoes, and her daughter talked her into this pair of boots. When she told us some more details of the fire, I realized she had lived in the same apartments where my niece use to live – before she was burned out in a fire a year before this one. My niece escaped with all her kitties, but this lady’s kitties were all killed in the fire. But she’s recovering and moving on, and I got to see the picture of their two new kittens.

Met a young couple having a moving sale and got to talking, and found out they’ve started going to garage sales every Saturday; it was driving them nuts to have to mind their own sale instead of going out treasure hunting! I gave them some tips on mapping out a list of sales before heading out, which has turned out to be pretty necessary here. “And never buy anything new!” was my other advice. Actually, it’s okay to buy stuff that’s new…as long as you find it in someone’s garage!

On Friday I stopped at a sale in the neighborhood just north of mine – mostly gorgeous older homes but some MCM beauties too. This sale was in a little cottage probably dating from the Twenties or Thirties. When I arrived I asked the guy if he was having fun yet, and he said he was, even though people had warned him that garage sale shoppers could be very aggressive. “Dang,” I said, “they’ve been talking about me again!” As I looked around, I asked him if he had any twin beds for sale (still need one more pair), and he said he had a pair but they had just decided to keep them. “I guess this is where I have to prove my reputation for being aggressive,” I told him, and he laughed and said I could at least see them. He led me into the house, and luckily for him his twin beds were not at all what I’m looking for. He had a very narrow escape – if it had been a couple of Heywood-Wakefields there’s no telling what might have happened!

In Dogs We Trust!

2011-12-02T12:48:00.001-08:00

Hot off the press and available now – my new novel In Dogs We Trust.

In this second volume of the Willow Falls mystery series, counterfeit traveler’s checks are creating a stir in Willow Falls, but Louisa McGuire has a more pressing problem: her house has sold and she has nowhere to live. So she agrees to mind a country bed-and-breakfast inn, where her friendly (or are they?) guests pop up in the oddest places. Things go bump in the night…but Louisa knows that In Dogs We Trust!

Renew your acquaintance with Louisa, her antique-shop-owner cousin Kay, and her dogs Emily Ann and Jack. You’ll also meet a new canine friend, Rollo the Cairn terrier…and he knows something that no one else knows!

In Dogs We Trust is available now as a trade paperback from my publisher, Saturday Books. Click here to purchase copies. (Still working on having it available from Amazon – but if you order from the publisher you’ll get a slightly better price!) The paperback is $15; e-books are $2.99 and are available for the Kindle and other e-readers.

There’s also a special price if you buy both books in the series, Sleeping Dogs Lie and In Dogs We Trust. A wonderful gift for anyone on your list who enjoys a cozy mystery – or who likes to laugh!

Now, I know that the folks who read my blog are a frugal lot (and you know I am!). We’re used to finding our books for fifty cents, or free from the library. But I’d take it mighty kindly if you’d consider buying some copies of my book. And I don’t want you to just take my word for it. Here’s what some readers had to say:

“… It's a real page-turner! I love all the characters, I feel like I know them personally! And the dogs are great too!” – Kim Simester

“… I enjoyed this book even more than the first. The characters are so great. I just love Louisa, Kay and the gang including the lovely dogs. What a treat. I never even suspected that [BLEEP!!] was behind the whole scheme!” – Teresa Raines"

And Sleeping Dogs Lie readers said this:

“…I found myself not wanting to do anything but keep on reading. Her chapter ending cliff hangers, complete with murder and kidnapping, propel you through the book.” –Linda Wight

“Characters who become your friends…Don't get me wrong - the baddies are suitably bad and the plot is thrilling. But it is the sympathetic and very real main characters (dogs and humans) in this book who have stayed in my mind - in some way they have become part of my mental landscape and I rather expect to meet them one day. I certainly intend to 'meet' them in the next installment!” –M. Alison Heal

“This was a "can't put it down once you start" book. The characters are so funny and very real. I loved the dogs and their antics. I am looking forward to Sharon's next book. When I say you will Laugh Out Loud, I mean it!” –Linda MacKean

A Cautionary Sale!

2011-11-25T17:14:00.001-08:00

My, oh, my. It was interesting, I bought a few things, and when I left this morning’s sale I wanted to get home as fast as I could to a) take a shower and b) start decluttering my house!

The Craigslist ad did not lie. One couple’s accumulation of Stuff had been carted to a 7000 square foot building in order to have this sale. From what I heard, having it at the house would have been impossible for several reasons. (One was the mice. Ig. Didn’t hear that till I’d been looking around for some time!) This building apparently is used mostly for weddings and other large gatherings. I got there about 20 minutes after the sale started, and was a little surprised that the parking lot wasn’t full nor were there lots of cars turning in. Guess most folks were battling each other for bargains at the malls.

I started looking around. The twinkling strings of lights are probably wonderful for a wedding, but they were hell on my eyes trying to discern what I was looking at.

The stage was amazing – a whole scene is painted up there. That full moon over the mountaintop is a light fixture. I actually took a couple of things over to it in an attempt to make out details.

After a while I began to adjust to the gloom. One of the first tables I came to had old games. Thought these were kind of amusing.

Aren’t those kids a riot? Looks like they just grabbed three kids and said, “Here, pretend you’re playing this game.” And doesn’t ‘Dig’ sound like fun. Actually, I looked inside the box of that one, but pieces seemed to be missing so I passed on it.

Actually, I passed on a number of things. Well, thousands actually given what was there. A couple of our friends recently bought a fabbo motor home and we know it needs a clock, so I was a little tempted to give them this one.

D & D, you had a narrow escape! I know you want to listen to 12 different tunes coming from the wall as you drive around!

This made my wordsmith’s teeth grind together. Helllloooo…if something is unique, there is ONLY ONE.

I thought putting a first aid kit into a cardboard box was a little odd. Then I realized it was a CLEANING first aid kid. These people must have a different relationship with their carpets than I do.

Of all the thousands (I am not kidding) of items, it seemed like a third of them were owls. They were everywhere in every conceivable material and form. I will probably be chased by owls in my dreams tonight.

Close to the table of games I spotted these.

They struck me as something that might resell, given the popularity of midcentury stuff, but had no price. A guy came by with a roll of masking tape and gave me an acceptable price for them, and we chatted for a few moments. He shook his head as he looked around and said, “Yep, this all belonged to one woman. She’s 77 and just moved to a smaller place. Kicking and screaming all the way.”

My soft heart went into overdrive. Ohhhh, poor old thing, I thought, how sad for her. But as I looked through all the tables of stuff, my sympathy somehow started fading. There was something about it all…well, it was mostly just junk. Perhaps I’m overly pragmatic, feeling that the things in our homes should be useful (or beautiful!) . I certainly have plenty of stuff that I have acquired just because I like to look at it. But maybe that’s the key, because I do look at my stuff and enjoy it and if it stops making me feel happy I move it along so someone else might enjoy. A bit later I fell into conversation with one of the women helping with the sale, and got more of the story. She repeated what the guy had said about it all coming out of one house, and I said it must have been a big place. She nodded. “Great big house in West Salem, up on the hill. You wouldn’t have believed it. Every room was packed from the ceiling to the floor. And there were rooms where something had fallen down and blocked the door so you couldn’t even get in. All this stuff, and mice.” (This was the point when a shower started sounding good.) “Mice, and cats. And cars in the yard. They kept every car they ever bought and left them in the yard. Lincolns. There’s a Lincoln parked over at the church they’re trying to sell. They foreclosed on her house. When she lost her husband, she had no income but she didn’t stop buying stuff. They bought the house back in the Seventies, you’d think it would be paid off, right? But no. They just kept buying stuff.”

By now I’m about ready to put back the items I had picked out to buy! I didn’t – but I’m more than a little glad I’ve carted at least a dozen boxes of stuff over to the kitty rescue’s thrift store since I moved here!

In the end I spent $4.70, and hopefully will make it back with a couple of resales (a form of decluttering!). I did buy the two framed Richter antelopes.

Wind up toys are always fun, and both of these little Tomy bears still work.

Brought home a few Christmas ornaments. We’re thinking about having a fairly large tree (the ceilings in our house start at about 10 feet and go up to a peak in the middle!) that will be able to accommodate all our ornaments and then some.

Thought this candleholder was just interesting.

As well as candles, it can hold the wind up bears.

Picked up another vintage linen that I’ll try to resale. The RN number on the tag dates this to late 1959!

I can’t help wondering why one would have a lovely piece of useful cloth like this, and never ever use it. Not even for show – because even though the tag is from Montgomery Ward, that $2.49 price tag was a chunk of change back then. Over $18, according to an inflation calculator I just consulted.

I unearthed a couple of old pieces from the tables of stuffed toys. Hope this vintage rubber-faced skunk will sell. She’s really rather cute.

And I tried to resist, but this guy needed to be rescued.

I know, I know, he’s not the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. He’s probably been over-wound, but when you spin his tail his head still turns back and forth. He’s quite close in design (though not as well made) as my windup lamb that I bought at an auction about 30 years ago. Her tail also spins, which makes her head go up and down, and a little bellows in her neck bleats.

I’ve never been able to find any information about my lamb. She’s a tin windup toy, covered with mohair fabric. I bought her with an Eduard Cramer teddy bear that dates to the 1930s. I’m hoping that perhaps the tag on the new guy (what the heck is he anyway? The spots are giraffe colored, but leopard sized…and the body is more like a llama!) might give me some new clues to search. Any info greatly appreciated!

At the Grange

2011-11-22T07:43:00.001-08:00

Now that we’re running up to the holidays in earnest, I’m expecting fewer and fewer sales on the weekends. Last week’s three day blowout may have been the icing on the 2011 cake. So this Saturday when I saw a Craigslist ad for a flea market being held in the grange hall of a small town about 20 miles east of Salem, I knew we had to go.

Do you see what’s on that hill? Yup, snow! The seasons sure are different when you move a thousand miles north!

The parking lot was packed, the grange was toasty warm, and full of people. About 25 folks had tables set up, pretty much the kind of wares you’d see at garage sales. Makes total sense if you live out in the country to have your sale this way. We made our way down the aisles, chatting with a few sellers. I glanced at a vintage book on Danish silver, and commented to the seller on how cool some of the pieces in the pictures were. He said something like he wished his grandparents had left him some, but what can you do when they pass away before you ever get a chance to meet them. I summoned all my tact and did not say that this probably was not by their choice!

At the end of the room I paused at a table with hundreds of small round objects. Little turkeys, snowmen, reindeer and other seasonal motifs gazed up at me. Looking closer I realized these were wrapped chocolate-covered mints, each decorated with a paper cutout.

I asked the lady if she had made them all, and she said she sure had. She said some of them are cut out with a punch, but some she cuts out freehand. The amount of work she has put into them amazed me – and they were twenty-five cents each. I bought a few of the turkeys. How could I not? This lady cut out 5 layers of tail feathers for each one, and varied the order of the colors from mint to mint, and cut out and glued on tiny triangles for the beaks – and then drew on the eyes and details with a pen. I gave a couple to my friend Diana on Sunday, and she immediately held them up to see how they’d work as earrings.

Not bad actually – but probably would work better without the mint!

On the last row, a couple of ladies were sharing a long table. The older one had a few pieces of vintage china . when I asked about them she laughed and said she knew they were old because they were given to her about fifty years ago, and she wasn’t going to say how old she was at the time.

I seem to like Winfield china! This is the third time I’ve bought some. I wish I knew if it’s safe to actually bake in a casserole dish like this. Or to bake custard in the adorable small lidded bowls? (Missing one lid, dang it.)

The other lady at this table had mostly Christmas items. In the box of quarter stuff I found this.

Hand painted egg! Rooster! Love! And we really need something Oregon-ish on our Christmas tree, right? What could be more Oregon than this?

When we left the nice warm grange hall and headed out into the chilly November day, we decided to drive through town rather than just turn around and go back to the highway, since we’d never been here before. Around a bend in the road we found a thrift store and went in to peruse. I live in hope of finding another fabulous piece of MCM furniture everywhere I go. Didn’t find anything…but I wish I was still young enough – and small enough – to use this.

It’s called a Pogo Pony, apparently came out in the late Sixties. I bet there were some scarred hardwood floors in the homes that had these puppies! The ads for it said it could gallop, trot, canter, even back up and turn, and the spring-feet actually leave the floor. It must have been a really fun toy. Of course, any kid who had one today would probably be required by law to wear a helmet to ride it!

If I may veer for a moment into shameless self promotion, I’ve got several auctions running this week on eBay, including those Vera napkins some of you like. Auctions end the day after Thanksgiving – please take a look!

What You Can Buy for Grzybumpy Cents

2011-11-13T17:18:00.001-08:00

You know, I expected retirement to be wonderful. I looked forward to it for a long time and was really ready for the change. I assumed that moving a thousand miles north would mean that my thrifting would be limited to the summer months, and that by now I’d be blogging about stories from the past or how I’m using things I’ve found over the years. No doubt those weekends will come as winter progresses. I certainly did not expect to be able to go out garaging more than I did in Southern California, but this weekend I hit sales on three days. Woo hoo!

Granted, the number of sales are limited, but the stories I heard were fun, and I spent a whopping thirty bucks so you know I brought home some goods.

Friday I bought things at three sales and heard stories at another. I saw this plaque in one garage and asked the lady how much it was.

“Grzybumpy cents,” she mumbled. I must have had a puzzled look on my face, because she said a little louder, “Grzybumpy cents.” Ummm…she said it once more, and I said, “Did you say twenty five cents?” “Yes!” I laughed and told her I’d thought she said forty-five cents and it seemed like such an odd amount, and she laughed too. No way was I going to tell her I thought she was saying grzybumpy. And of course a quarter is perfect, because that was the original price!

The picture is laminated to some kind of board. Don’t think it’s a real cover, but besides being perfect for my guest room decorated with children’s literature stuff, I actually remember this album from when I was little. (It was not my favorite though. That honor goes to “How Much is that Doggie in the Window?”) Maybe I’ll have to frame that saying “What if the hokey pokey really is what it’s all about” though personally I like better “Hokey Pokey Clinic – a place to turn yourself around.”

I also picked up this little trellis there, for when we start relandscaping in the spring.

Another sale netted a fifty cent bottle of Fray Check, which I’ve never owned before, despite have sewn sporadically for, oh, um, over forty years. And I picked up some votives and tealight candles at another, which was nice because I’ve been using a lot of them in the Yixing teapot warmer I found a year or so ago.

The funnest sale though was not one where I bought anything. This beauty greeted me as I stepped from the car.

If it’s not a twin to the sad picture over on Retro Renovation it’s at least a close cousin! A nice young couple with three kids are renovating their Craftsman house, and this puppy had to go. Hope some MCM fan got it. Most of their stuff was inside the house, but when I headed through the yard I was stopped by this wonderful wattle trellis the wife had made.

They told me the house came with three lots, one of which is planted with fruit trees which had not been pruned for a long time, so there were plenty of cuttings to work with last spring. Evidently the cuttings were not ready to admit defeat, and sprouted leaves after they had been woven into the trellis!

Inside I started chatting with the lady of the house. A small, gray half grown kitty came by and was willing to be picked up and petted. It was one of those delightful conversations where one topic riffs off another. Before long we were each telling our favorite “mice in the house” stories. (Oh, go on. You know you have one too.) Hers included one about a bowl of cat food that none of the cats would eat from. They would line up to eat from the other bowl and not go near the other, even though it was full. Then they started noticing there was always a dip in the food in the middle of the bowl. By now I’m about ready to believe it was haunted, but no. One night she stayed up late, sitting quietly nearby, and saw a very large – well, let’s say it was a step up in size from a mouse! – come out, grab a piece of food from the middle of the bowl, and take it back to where a stockpile was being created. All of the household cats were brought in to take care of the problem, but they all jumped up and cowered on the bed!

Saturday, I started out at a sale near my house, and spent at least 45 minutes going through the artist’s studio behind the house. The first thing I noticed was this lamp, which is a relative of the vintage Sight Light desk lamp we got back in January.

I looked around some more, and noticed boxes and boxes of cloth. You have never seen so many vintage linens in your life. I keep telling myself “No more!” and I did pretty good. Only brought home a couple of cloths to keep.

I picked up this vintage tea towel to see if it will resell.

The linens were just the tip of the iceberg. The lady who lived here was, according to her daughter in law, very artistic in lots of ways, and anything she wanted to do or try her husband would get for her. She painted, she did ceramics, there was a kiln, there were vases and knick knacks and boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations. There was so much stuff I had to look around several times because I kept seeing stuff I had missed. Like this little guy.

I was completely smitten by the sailor collar and the basketwork of his cart. When I got him home I remembered a piece of ribbing I had left from a felted sweater. So now I have a new pincushion.

Amazingly, I was the only shopper for much of the time I was looking. Others came and went. One gent about my age looked around happily and told me and the daughter in law that he grew up in a florist’s shop, and he remembered a lot of the things that were there. He pointed out some vases from the Fifties, and got nostalgic over a herky tape dispenser just like the one his mother had in her shop. While he was talking I noticed a stool under some pink pillows. Moved the pillows and found this.

Yes, it needs recovering, but it is perfect to go with our Heywood Wakefield vanity. It swivels beautifully. When I got it home I saw that the fabric was just pinned on. How fast do you think I got it unpinned? Probably not quite that fast – the pins were rusty and I had to get some pliers to pull them out. Underneath a different homemade slipcover emerged.

It was rather stained, so it’s getting an oxy soak even as we speak. I think the stains are coming out, but if not I’ll find something else.

When I got home I started looking up prices on vintage tablecloths and noticed they seem to resell pretty well. So this morning Steven and I headed back so I could see if anything resale-worthy was still there. We were greeted by this beauty, who probably lives next door.

Can’t think when I’ve gone back to a sale a second time (or gone out three days in a row). I could tell that some stuff had been sold, but what went out of there on Saturday barely made a dent. While I was going through the tablecloths and cloth napkins again, I got more of the family history from the daughter in law. Her husband’s parents are now in their late 80s and living in a care home. They ran a store in Montana for years, sounded like it was a combination of clothing and pretty housewares. “She’d go buying for the store, and of course would find stuff she wanted for her own home too.” I heard about the sets of dishes that various family members have received, with names like Spode on the backs. Each set with eight or twelve place settings. When they closed the store they moved to this house in Salem and created an absolutely amazing garden behind the house. Her studio where she did her art was actually built over a swimming pool! Yes, they had an indoor pool, but when they were in their 70s decided it was too much to take care of, so they built a floor over the pool and made it her studio. Steven asked if they had filled in the pool, but no, it’s still under there. Not only that, there is a trapdoor and they use the old swimming pool for storage! Which may explain the rather musty smell clinging to the probably hundred or more sofa pillows still looking for new homes.

Today I picked up a couple more tablecloths. Hopefully they will sell, but if not I’ll be happy to keep them. ;o)

Also some vintage Vera napkins.

And my stash of tiny tapers grows apace!

Since there’s so much stuff still left, they are planning to have another sale in March when they put the house on the market.

Yeah. I might have to go back again, just in case I missed something!

Square Eggs

2011-11-06T09:01:00.001-08:00

Estate sale, sign on the door: Come on in! Inside a hint of funky smell, but not too bad. Most of the rooms were corded off, but the kitchen and a huge family room had tables set up with items for sale. I perused, listening to the three folks chatting in the kitchen. Rather ironically they were talking about how it’s a better idea to price things so they will move than have a bunch of stuff left over. The irony came from the prices they had marked on everything. But as I remarked to the lady keeping an eye on things in the family room, I don’t really care if I buy anything, I just like to poke through other people’s stuff.

“Oooh, I found a treasure yesterday,” she told me. Turns out she was helping set up the sale, and had washed and dried every piece of china and glass in the house. (Did a good job, too, I would never have known the stuff was dirty a day earlier!) I asked about her treasure.

“It’s this little gadget that you peel a hardboiled egg and put it in and press and it makes a square egg! Is that the coolest thing? I just can’t wait to try it. I want to see if they stay square after you slice them. If it works, I’m going to make square deviled eggs.” She was positively gleeful. “Oooh, those would be great to take to a potluck,” I said. “Yeah, and if anyone asks what they are, I’m going to tell them there’s this guy I know who’s started breeding chickens that lay square eggs.” By now we were both cackling. Square-egg-laying hens would have felt right at home with us. I left without buying anything, but a tall tale about square chickens is priceless.

And if you’d told me I would get over (are you ready?) NINETY MILLION hits when I Google ‘square egg’ I’d have thought that was a tall tale too! I’m happy to report there are pictures of square eggs that have been sliced, so I know there are some deviled eggs going to a potluck somewhere in Salem one of these days.

That was on Friday. On Saturday I was shopping a garage in west Salem and heard a conversation turn to the prices at estate sales around here. “Most of them mark everything ridiculously high,” one lady said. And every other person in the garage (yup, including me!) joined in, agreeing. “I stopped at that estate sale not far away before I came over here, and there was a line waiting to get in,” she went on. “I’m not going to wait in line and pay too much. Sheesh.” Later I ended up at the estate sale she was talking about, and was she ever right. Now really, who in the world is going to pay THREE DOLLARS for a used jar of basil? Yup, that’s how they had priced the little jars of spices in the kitchens. I saw another couple pick up a couple of square lidded canister-size jars, similar to the Ikea ones I bought for fifty cents a few weeks ago. A few minutes later I saw them tapping the jars. “I think they’re plastic,” the woman said. The man tapped his, then held it out to me. “Does this look like plastic to you?” “Yeah,” I told him, “and you can probably buy new glass ones for about the same price.” They decided to leave them for someone else. Of course, this being polite Oregon, they didn’t set them down on the table we were standing by, they put them back in the same spot where they had found them!

My next stop was in the garage of a lady who used to own an antique mall, and one of the shoppers had had a booth there. “What are you up to these days?” she asked, and they chatted for a bit. Then the middle-school age boy with them said, “I thought you were asking me what I’m doing these days. I don’t do anything!” I commented that he is probably in school, and I hoped he wasn’t doing nothing. His dad said, “Yeah, we’re just trying to get him through middle school. I’m going to try bribing his teachers.”

“My niece is a middle-school science teacher,” I said. “So bribe away. I’m sure she’d appreciate it!” Science seemed to be the key word. The kid began to tell us about a science experiment they were doing where they stuff a chicken with cinnamon lifesavers to mummify it. (Ig. I’m glad I don’t teach science!) “I’ve cooked chicken that came out mummified,” someone said.

I felt like a real Oregonian Saturday. My car finally has its Oregon license plates, and I was garaging in the rain. And when I got home, there was a pickup truck parked in front of our driveway, delivering the cord of firewood we had ordered. Not just any firewood either – a load of filbert wood, which aside from fir is about as local as you can get. It took us about an hour to get it stacked, during which we realized it’s been about 25 years since we bought firewood. And that we were 25 years younger the last time we stacked it!

I spent a grand total of $5.50 this weekend, garaging in the gentle Oregon rain. I’m hoping this thing will help us open the stubborn jar lids that seem to be getting more and more stubborn.

It’s also a potholder and a trivet, and has a magnet so it can hang on the fridge. Such a deal. So was this lighted stand.

It changes color.

I bought it to display this piece on that I picked up a while back.

There’s just one catch. I can’t find the darned thing anywhere! Of course we’re not 100% unpacked yet, so I live in hope. Cross your fingers that I didn’t put it in box of stuff for the thrift store in a fit of clearing out.

I plucked a lovely monogrammed bridge cloth from a free box.

It’s badly stained, but I can’t resist seeing if an oxy soak will refurbish it.

I thought these teak fish salad/snack bowls were just a hoot.

Back in the realm of the practical, I scored a box of vintage, extra long sewing pins

an oak outlet cover

some little foam dot thingies to put on the bottom of stuff so it won’t mar your table

and a few tiny tapers for my Dansk candle holder. Tiny tapers are now permanently on my search list. I can’t bear to pay very much for something I’m going to set on fire.

Found a copy of perhaps the only movie sequel that was better than the first one.

I’m looking forward to reading more of this sewing guide from the 1920s. How can you resist prose like “From doll dresses of the simplest sort to stately gowns – all have held my interest and given me in their creation a great deal of happiness.”

And from the same sale, a big chunky magazine from 1958. It’ll look great on our coffee table.

Some of the articles are by quite famous writers (Eric Ambler, Kenneth Tynan, C. P. Snow, Joyce Cary). I’m sure I’ll get around to reading them someday. But (she admits, blushing) it was really the ads that made me spend my quarter.

I want one of these for my carport.

Of course I really want this one, but I don’t think it would fit!

Old Ladies and Mushroom Bowls

2011-10-29T14:46:00.001-07:00

I’ve been sitting here fondling a bowl. Not just any bowl. (What do you take me for?) A mid century bowl.

A Finel Mushroom bowl designed by Kaj Franck back in the Sixties. A pristine, mint condition Finel mushroom bowl. Picked it up this morning thinking it might have some resale value (it does). But dang, when you sit there fondling a bowl as long as I just did, you might have to rethink the resale!

I know I’m going to resell most of these – after I enjoy taking a peek through them.

Whole bunch of Mary Engelbreit magazines, some of which I haven’t seen before. I auctioned a bunch of these on eBay before we moved, so I know I’m not the only one who likes them.

They came from the kind of sale that makes the heart of someone like me go pittypat. (Cathy G., you would have been drooling!) Two women were clearing out their stashes of vintage and artsy and crafty stuff. The driveway was packed. About the first thing I saw was this book.

Didn’t buy it though – after all, I can write my own ‘long way to Oregon’ story! I flipped through the crafty books, admired the vintage embroidered pillowcases and fifties printed tablecloths, glanced over the tables full of stuff, stuff, stuff. Nearly succumbed to a small tablecloth with a vintage embroidery design stamped on it; one motif was partly stitched, and there was thread and a hoop in the bag with it. But I asked myself rather sternly how likely I was to actually finish this piece and use it, and the answer was ‘not too.’ So I left it for someone else.

Quite a few of their items had a higher price tag than I was interested in paying, but it was great fun to look at everything. Then I started chatting with another lady who was looking through a shoe box of old photos. She held up one. “Wow, look at this dress!” she said. I looked.

“There a name on the back.” She squinted at it. “Earl.”

We both gazed at the picture. “Well, maybe it is Earl at that.” We giggled. But I took the picture when she put it back in the box, and the more I looked at it, the more I liked it. The dress is amazing, yes, but it’s the face. If you look very closely, there are fine wrinkles all over her face.

I think she looks patient, and wise, and though her eyes are sad, her mouth is about to curl up into a smile. The pin at her throat looks like an Eastern Star pin, and I have in my button collection at least one button like the ones on her dress. While we were looking at the photos, one of the sellers came by and we asked where all these pictures had come from.

“Oh, my husband went to appraise a house one time,” she said, “and he found stacks of these things in the trash can. So he brought them home, and I used them in art projects for years. There’s a family name on the back of a lot of them, and you can kind of trace the history of the family through the pictures.” We all agreed it was such a shame that no one in that family had wanted or valued these pieces of their history. But this one at least has a new family – me. I’ve adopted her as one of my forebears, and she’ll be going in a frame soon. I think I’ll have her hang out with this other portrait I love.

That’s the author Dorothy L. Sayers, one of my favorites. And since the plot of the new book I’m starting to write involves some old family photographs, these two ladies will be here on my desk for the next few months as my muses.

I was about to leave this sale with my magazines and Mrs. Earl’s portrait when I saw one more thing I had to have. Back story: my husband could not get everything on the rented truck when he brought the last load of our belonging up from California, there just wasn’t quite enough room. Like the pioneers crossing the vast American plains, he simply had to leave some things behind. He made good choices, but one thing I really miss – my little footstool.

It wasn’t much to look at, but it was the perfect size to sit on and weed garden beds, or sort books on a low shelf, or give the cat a perch. If I ever see another like it, rest assured I will buy it. Meanwhile, I’ll use this.

A bit taller than my old one, but still compact and very sturdy. My husband took one look and said, “Nice lines.” The top is covered in old oilcloth, but it will be easy to take off and recover. And this is the sort of piece that’s at home anywhere, even among MCM pieces.

After this sale I headed north, where most of the sales in town were supposed to be today. But until I hit sale with The Bowl it was a bust. But the trees are putting on a lovely show, and though a bit foggy there was no rain, so a Saturday morning drive is a treat. And if I hadn’t headed north, I might never have seen this local landmark!

Shop Local!

2011-10-22T17:25:00.001-07:00

I think we’ve taken “shop local” to a new high. Went around the corner this morning to a sale in another Midcentury Modern house. The driveway was quite a hike – long and all uphill. Everyone was winded when we arrived at the top. One of the guys helping with the sale was talking to some other shoppers by the front door as I panted by him, saying, “Of course it is a really long climb, but we had one lady who was 91 years old while ago.” I stopped to tell him that I now felt 91. Inside I did a quick initial cruise checking for furniture (still need another pair of twin beds) and in one of the downstairs rooms I came to a halt. Long, low, MCM sofa in a tweedy gold/brown fabric. It was piled with other stuff for sale (placemats, a large piece of fabric, a bunch of thises and that’s) but I could see it was the real deal. And now I know why I finally broke down and got a cell phone: so I could whip it out and call my husband and say, “Come look at this.”

Five minutes later he was there, and he liked it too, and the price was thirty bucks, so we did it. Then we started figuring out how to get it home. He went ahead and took the cushions home in his car while I did a bit more garaging. I managed to spend one more dollar on a trash can for one of the guest room and a couple of throw pillow to recover for the sofa. Oh yeah, the sofa. The one that was still a block from home.

I mentioned it was long, right? This is a dachshund of a sofa – 8 feet long and 2 feet tall. With the cushions off it wasn’t horribly heavy (just substantially heavy). So we decided we’d try to carry it home, and if that wasn’t possible we’d call the U-haul place and rent a van (which would have doubled the price of the piece, and you know how I felt about that!). So back we went – downhill on our street to the corner, downhill to the left past the school, another left and uphill to the house with the sale, and another trek up that long driveway.

In the house, down the stairs. I picked up one end of the sofa and bravely said, “Yeah, let’s go for it.” There was a sliding door to the outside in that room so we headed out with it.

A young couple was in the room shopping, and when she saw me holding up the sofa the woman said, “Here, my husband will help you.” He smiled as though she’s volunteered him for stuff before. We explained that we were planning to carry it uphill over to the next street. “That’s okay,” she said. “He can help.” I told her she was my new BFF, no wait, her husband was my new BFF, as I surrendered my end of the sofa to this nice young man. He and Steven schlepped it down the long, long driveway and paused by our Honda Civic.

“Maybe we could get one end in the back,” I said, “and you could hold up the other end and I could drive really slow.” Steven shrugged, nice young man shrugged, we opened the hatchback, and damn if that thing didn’t go in! Well, about a third of it went in. But it was securely wedged, didn’t look like it would slide out, so I got in the driver’s seat and off we went.

It’s really hard to drive as slow as a walking person! But turned out not to matter. Sofa didn’t budge as I went down the street, around the corner, up the hill past the school, around another corner, and up the hill to home.

Whew.

I’m awfully glad I didn’t actually have to carry this thing all the way from the other house, since getting it inside was enough for me. I pretty glad that Nice Young Man didn’t have to carry it all the way either! But get it in we did, and though initially we talked about putting it downstairs in the family room, now we think it’s perfect in the living room.

I’m not sure of the brand. The tag inside dates it to 1964, and the loose back cushions are down filled. It’s the original upholstery (the color is “Soiree Russet”) and though faded in some places it’s in quite good condition. I saw a picture of one like it that was identified as an Edward Wormley for Dunbar – but that one had been recovered in a cheetah print. Ig. I’m awfully glad mine is still Soiree Russet!

Noll Baxter is too.

Keeping Our Balance

2011-10-16T14:41:00.000-07:00

I used up my old computer, and the new one arrived this week. Actually, I’m told that what I used up was the memory on the old computer, making it slower, and slower, and s-l-o-w-e-r until I just wanted to scream every time I used it. We’re talking several minutes for something like a folder in Outlook to open. And, well, the relationship between my old computer and me has always been rocky. I wanted to love it, and I just never could.

So I’m thrilled to have the new one here. Less than thrilled at all the setup necessary though! We were able to transfer all my files – but not all the programs I use. So every time I start to do something, I find I have to download something and wait for it to install. I doctor all my pictures for this blog using Picasa – which wasn’t here. I write posts on Windows Live Writer – which no longer had a path or something and had to be downloaded again. We won’t talk about my movie editing program, or all the camera software, or Quicken, or…oh wait. We’re not talking about those!

It’s kind of like when you head out to go garaging. Before you can get in the car and crank the top down (assuming the weather is cooperating) there’s always a bunch of stuff that needs doing. I actually have a list in the front of my little notebook, reminding me of everything I need to gather. I’m sure this list has saved me countless hours over the years of trying to remember everything, not to mention the frustration of dealing with forgotten items.

Of course some items are so basic I don’t even have them on my list – feeding the pets before I go out, dripping fluids into Mrs. Wilberforce, our kitty with chronic kidney failure. It’s not our fave moment of the day, but she needs her “kitty juice” so we just do it. Which led to the note I wrote for my husband yesterday, who was still asleep when I left:

Okay, YOU try to think of a good rhyme for juice! Have to admit I was probably influenced by the picture my friend Cathy G. send recently of her and an elk. Okay, so it wasn’t a moose. They’re both big, brown, and you don’t want to be run over by one. (No, Cathy was not run over by the elk. Though it would have made a better vacation story if she had been!) Steven said when he read the note his first image was of a large brown animal, but this was quickly superseded by a short internal video in which I was set upon by rogue hairdressers who slathered me with foamy white mousse.

At some point during the past week, a whole bunch of trees in town decided it was Fall.

After ten years in Southern California, I’m really enjoying the show. (I suspect I may enjoy the inevitable raking a bit less in a few weeks.)

I had the thrill on Friday of finding one of the items on my “hunt for” list. Not a huge thing, but something I use often – and the only thing that got broken in our recent move.

You really can’t complain when, out of all the stuff we crammed into two rental trucks, only one box got dropped and one item broke. But I’m so happy to find a replacement for a buck instead of having to go to a store. And I scored a few movies at the same sale.

My favorite encounter on Saturday was talking to a nice young woman who’s getting ready to move to Portland. (May her breakage report be as good as ours!) She said she got a job there a while back and blithely told herself the commute wouldn’t be bad, it’s only 45 minutes, no problem. Unfortunately her commute does not take place in the middle of the night, which is about the only time she’d actually be able to do it in 45 minutes. She also thought she’d have a couple of month to prep for her move, then learned her apartment was available NOW. Having just moved I can totally sympathize. Turns out she’s a jewelry designer as well; she showed me a picture of a very cool silver cuff bracelet she’d made. Somehow we got to talking about my creative endeavors (more on that below!) and she told me about a job she used to have as a technical writer. Apparently one of her co-workers left out some information in a manual, which resulted in a $9 million lawsuit! Have to admit I’d never thought of the awesome responsibility involved in tech writing.

As on Friday, I ended up buying things at only one sale, which seemed to be the remnants of an estate. As soon as you walked into the garage, you knew this home had belonged to a bird lover. China birds, cloth birds, more china birds, bird books. One piece was so unusual (and priced so right!) that I had to have it.

Ummm, it’s just a couple of odd birds on sticks, you’re saying. It’s not until you touch one that you realize they are balancing on the tips of their beaks!

I just thought that was cool, and you know I love bamboo. So I grabbed it, and kept looking around, and finally noticed a couple of small cloth bundles with a Dansk tag on them.

My MCM antenna started to vibrate. Each is a roll of 4 vintage Danish placemats or napkins – they’re placemat size and shape, but woven of lightweight linen. The price was right (I spent a total of $7.50 this weekend, so you know it was!) so the Dansk cloth came home with me. Of course the first thing I did was see what I could find out about them on eBay and other sites. One set of 8 placemats sold for over $70! And all the ones I found on other auction sites and Etsy have been sold. So these babies are currently on the re-sell shelf– unless I find I need them for myself!

The downside to looking up something like Dansk on eBay is seeing all the other stuff I’d like to have. Not to mention the set of teak handled stainless flatware that looks awfully like the set we used to have (bought at a yard sale in the early 80s). We used them for years until too many pieces lost the wood off their handles and we moved on to something else. Now I see they were probably the ones designed by Jens Quistgaard. Sigh. But, I also see that my little candelabra I picked up a few weeks ago is another Quistgaard design from Dansk.

Now I feel better!

Okay, this is now “below” and here’s some news about my creative endeavors: the second book in my Willow Falls series will really and truly be out soon! In Dogs We Trust is getting formatted as an e-book, and I expect the galley proof of the trade paperback from the printer early this week. I’ll let you know when it’s all a “go” – and in the meantime, if you haven’t yet read Sleeping Dogs Lie, it’s very much available!

First it wasn’t raining, then it was…

2011-10-07T20:44:00.001-07:00

…and it turned out the rain didn’t matter a bit!

I found it interesting when we were still in Southern California the way people often reacted when they learned we were moving back to Oregon. “But it’s so RAINY up there!” (Said in tones close to horror.) I had to reassure any number of people that we had lived here before and had some idea what we were getting into.

MY concern of course what what rain would mean in terms of pursuing my favorite activity. (Yes, the weekly treasure hunt.) Well, it turns out they do something very cool up here.

They have their garage sales in their GARAGES.

Imagine that!

So when I did my morning weather check (which consists of sending our dog Edward out to the back yard for his morning constitutional and then seeing how damp he is when he returns) and determined that it was misting, I set out anyway with my list of sales and Gertrude Pemberton Smith, my gps. It misted a bit, then stopped, then started, on through the morning, but the main effect was that I had to leave the top up on my car. (I only pouted a little over that.)

I almost didn’t find the first sale on my list. I was looking for a house – and it turned out to be in a sort of shop building near the Winco store. One of the ladies having the sale is moving to Hawai’i, and you know what that means – everything has got to go! Didn’t find anything like I did at the sales that Mikey the insurance guy had when he was getting ready to move to the islands, but I did pick up a couple of items. I couldn’t resist the color of this nicely-sized Thermos bottle:

The photo doesn’t do it justice, it’s a fabbo coppery orange. Of course it does have writing on one side

but that just kept the price down in my price range!

The other thing I found here is for re-selling – an absolutely gorgeous Pendleton pleated skirt.

I knew by looking at it that it’s vintage, and I think the visual clue was the edge stitching on the pleats. The pleats are stitched down over the hips, and then just the teensiest edge is stitched to keep the pleats crisp.

If you sew, you probably are looking at that stitching with as much awe as I am! It wasn’t until I was taking pictures that I noticed this tag:

It’s reversible! Here’s the other side.

Evidently Pendleton made their Turnabout skirts in the 50s and 60s. Wish it fit me – I could hang around my 50s house in true vintage style! But alas it does not, so will be going on sale probably on eBay soon. Though if you’re interested, send me an email and we can work something out. (And BTW, I’ve got 9 auctions going this week, including a couple of great Halloween sweaters…)

There was one sale this morning where I totally cracked up. The house had a lovely garden and I chatted with the owner for a bit about gardens, since I have a lot to learn about what grows well up here. Another older lady showed up and we were all talking. The lady having the sale had a couple of items she’d ended up not using in a remodel, a sink and vanity top, and a Jacuzzi tub. A guy looking for tools noticed the tub (which had a sort of protective cover on it) and asked what it was, and the older lady popped out with, “It’s a salsa bowl!” I don’t know, just hit me funny. I told her if it was a margarita bowl I’d be coming to her party.

My other fun stop was the rummage sale at the Episcopal Church not far from the house. All the ladies running the sale kept reminding everyone that “everything is half price today, so buy a lot!” I had a sort of vision of all of them lined up, Rockette-style, chanting, “Half price! Half price! Buy, buy, buy!” but they were too busy for me to see if they were up for it. But since things were half priced, I found I was a lot more interested in the rocking chair I’d seen than I was originally. I revisited it with one of the sale ladies, who told me she thought they had really overpriced it to begin with since it needs some work, and between us we got the price down to one I liked. And I really love this chair.

The shape of the arms, the carving of the runners…

The cane seat needs to be replaced, but I can order the pre-woven cane stuff.

I even kind of like the place on the end of the runner where a puppy did some teething.

I was trying to figure out what it was that made me think it’s a really nice piece. I don’t see any maker’s ID on it. I think it’s the shape of the piece at the top of the spindles.

Many spindle-back chairs have a top rail that’s straight across, so all the spindles are the same length. The curve on this one means it must have been more work to construct it. As is my wont, I started looking online to see if I could find a match to get more information. Didn’t have any luck at all for a long time, until I finally searched something like “Danish Windsor rocker” in Google Images. And I found one in an antique store in Miami! They have it listed as a “Classic Danish Modern Walnut Rocking Chair” and I admit theirs is in better shape than mine (at least until I get the seat fixed!). But…their price tag is more than $500 more than mine was!

Rain or shine, I win!

Garaging in 2/3 of the O States

2011-10-01T16:47:00.001-07:00

The rumors that I have fallen off the face of the earth are largely exaggerated. Busy, yes; slightly crazed, definitely – but still here, and stll garaging! I’ve been frustrated at not getting to post for a couple of weeks, and I’ve got less than an hour before the hubs has to work on the computers some more, so let’s dash away.

Yes, he’s here – got all (well, most) of our stuff moved up from the OC and into the house in Salem. The truck he rented wasn’t q-u-i-t-e big enough, so last minute decisions had to be made about what to leave behind. Our former neighbors Bob and Ruby now have my little pond, water lilies and the mosquito fish; some bookshelves went to a college student down the street; and the park bench we carried down the street when a former neighbor put it on the sidewalk with a free sign is still in the backyard we left. But the important stuff got here – husband, pets, bed, fridge – and after all, stuff is just stuff. Those of us who shop on driveways know there will always be more stuff!

The day before he arrived (two weeks ago) I figured I'd better go out looking for sales on Friday since we’d be unloading the truck Saturday morning. Didn’t buy much, but it was one of those days that remind me why I really go to yard sales. It’s not actually for the things I buy. It’s to see things I'd never otherwise see, like this amazing house that’s clear across town. I turned a corner and did a double take. “That house has a lighthouse attached to it,” I said.

There were large fantastic creatures in the backyard, and the front was pretty amazing too.

I continued to the sale I was hunting, where I saw this funny Yoda-esque dog sitting in his owner’s lap.

“Sing to him,” she commanded. “Sing Happy Birthday.” Obviously a person who has not heard me sing. I hemmed and hummed a bit. She herself began to sing Happy Birthday, and after a few notes the dog started to whine and howl. She switched to another song (can't remember what it was, maybe She’ll be Coming ‘Round the Mountain) and the dog stopped. As soon as she switched back to Happy Birthday, the howls resumed. Funniest thing you ever saw. Wish I'd filmed it, could have gone viral on Youtube. I bought a couple of things there, and started to leave but then remembered the house down the street, so I went back and asked about it. One of the ladies actually lived just a few doors away from it, so she gave me her version of their life story. It used to be an ordinary little ranch house, and the guy who lived there enjoyed building stuff. The lighthouse was created for the house plants his wife loved, but when it was finished they were chagrined to realize how hot it got with all that glass, and all the plants died. The large animals in the backyard were made for grandchildren to play on. I imagine the décor in the front yard was accumulated slowly over time. It's hard to tell in my picture, but along with the railroad crossing signs etc. there is a real cannon!

Last weekend I made a trip to Oklahoma to take care of some family business. Since I was there on Saturday morning, my sis asked if I wanted to go to some sales. Duh! is the only proper response to that question. It was a hoot driving around with her and her husband. Wish I'd had my camera with me, because I know you’d love to see the most unusual item I noticed for sale – a rattlesnake hunting kit, complete with burlap bag.

Back home again, my GPS, Gertrude, and I have been out both yesterday and this morning. It's been more of an exercise in exploring the town than in purchasing stuff, but that’s just fine with me. Who needs to buy stuff when you can stand amazed before a patchwork sculpture

or meet a lovely smiling kitty named Becket.

I just looked at my spreadsheet, and over 3 weekend I’ve spent $39 – and almost half of it went for a single item today. I still believe this is the least expensive hobby ever! The (relatively) big ticket item was something I've been watching for on Craigslist, and only happened by the sale where I found it by accident.

At the moment it’s residing in our quite large master bathroom, which has an open 8’ x 10’ area in the center. Plenty of room to exercise, and you can jump straight to the shower when you’re done! Later it will go downstairs after we get the icky carpets out and some other kind of flooring in. Soon, I hope, since I can't unpack down there until that happens.

Yesterday all I found were a couple of vintage decorating magazines.

But there’s a lot of furniture in them to lust over! I’d like two of these beds in the twin size, two of the benches, and one of the chair, please.

Even though I didn’t buy much, I really enjoyed the drive. Headed to West Salem, including a sale on a country road. I had to pause on the long driveway while some cows were delivered to a field.

Turned out not to be what I consider a yard sale – more of a high end antiques sales at antique store prices. But who cares if you buy anything when the wares include fabulous stuff to look at, like this antique piano that had been upholstered in bright pink vinyl and mirrors. My jaw dropped.

Last week we found some sales in and around Claremore, OK, and my sister, Midcentury Marilyn, scored several things for her eCrater store. I came away with a couple of things I could fit into my suitcase, a DVD

and a Belgian tapestry. I've never seen Humpty Dumpty depicted this way before. The people watching him fall seem quite calm about it.

It may have been our Noll who knocked him off his perch. Bad cat!

The week before, waiting for the hubs to arrive, I had pretty good luck. My BIL, Biker Bob, was quite chuffed at the brad nailer I found for his compressor thingie. He had asked me to keep an eye out for tools to use with it, and I was amazed to actually recognize something.

I couldn’t resist buying something from the guy who made this locomotive.

He had all kinds of things he’s made from wood.

“I don’t like to watch TV,” he told me, “so I come out in the garage every morning and think about something to make and then I make it.” He seemed quite pleased when I had him sign the locomotive. “Nobody ever asked me to do that before,” he said. I assured him he is an artist, and artists should sign their work. “That’s what I keep telling him!” his wife chimed in.

Picked up a few things for the house as well. This soap dispenser is in my half-bath, the one with the vintage pink fixtures.

We needed a chalkboard for the kitchen. I really like the bunny, and the hubs is cohabiting with it uncomplainingly.

This vintage wool blanket will be cozy on one of the guest beds. It washed and dried beautifully.

And I fell in love with this glass switchplate cover. I've put it up in the guest room with all the children’s literature toys.

So we’re settling in with all our new (used!) stuff. And I'm hoping the rains that have started will confine themselves to weekdays!

I’m in Love with Gertrude Pemberton Smith

2011-09-09T18:54:00.001-07:00

It’s true. I am completely smitten with my GPS. What a great garaging tool! I admit I didn’t need her before I moved to Oregon; in the OC you just head out on Saturday morning and watch for signs. If you want to be organized you can check Craigslist, which I did mainly to see if there were any neighborhood sales.

As you might imagine, things are a tad different up here. The population density, for one thing! I’m totally charmed to be driving along from sale to sale and suddenly be in the country.

Yes, that is a silo on the left in front of those trees!

So. Gertrude and I headed out this morning. It was the maiden voyage for the rice-and-wool GPS holder, and that sucker worked like a charm. My water bottle and M&Ms rolled around on a couple of curves, but Gertrude never wavered. I had a list of addresses from Craigslist and gsalr.com, and we turned here and there and found them all. There was only one that we had trouble with. The address wouldn’t come up on Google maps or on Gertrude. Turned out it’s because the neighborhood is so new that the streets aren’t on any maps yet.

I only found the place because they had listed a cross street that is on the map, and they had a couple of signs posted. Poor Gertrude was rather confused when I drove away. She depicted me driving around in a field; wish I’d gotten a picture of it.

I did manage to get a picture of this cutie. His name is Chubby D.

“The kids named him,” was the explanation. I really wanted to hold him, but every time he got near he’d turn into a Halloween kitty and bounce away. He was awfully cute…but I still maintain that our Mrs. Wilberforce was the cutest baby kitty ever.

Since I had Gertrude Pemberton Smith along to guide me, I decided to take a country drive to an estate sale over in Aumsville (I’m still sorry that I missed their annual Corn Festival a couple of weeks ago). The sale wasn’t much, but the drive was glorious. Warm September day with that wonderful slanting golden light, driving through farms and forests. Perhaps the best moment was when I was socked in the face by the scent of fresh hay, and spotted a huge stack of bales in the field I was passing. I was instantly transported to my childhood and visiting my aunt’s farm. I didn’t get a picture of the hay, but it wasn’t far from this wonderful building.

When I got back to town I treated myself to lunch at the fabulous Thai restaurant close to us, Tup Tim Thai. It’s the kind of place where they remember you after one visit, and after two, you are ushered to “your” table!

I thought I’d bought a ton of stuff, but when I unloaded my bag I discovered I’d only spent $6.25. The first item came from a free box!

I’m envisioning little loaves of orange-cranberry bread to give away at Christmas. Not sure when I’ll use this

but it’s bound to come in handy for something, right? Picked up some ten-cent magazines

and a DVD of the first movie we saw in Salem, back when we were buying the house a couple of years ago.

This lovely handmade ladle was thrown in with a bunch of 25 cent kitchen gadgets. Long, carved oak handle riveted to a hand-thrown ceramic bowl…I love it.

Finally, I picked up a couple of items that to my eye have a rather mid century vibe. This bathroom set feels like it’s made out of Melmac.

And I love this thermal pitcher and mugs with their teak handles.

Tomorrow Gertrude Pemberton Smith and I are meeting my SIL for breakfast and then garaging in Lake Oswego. I have this fantasy that I’ll find some great MCM stuff up there.

Hmmm. I have that fantasy everywhere I shop on driveways!

Rice and Wool!

2011-09-06T19:51:00.001-07:00

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may be aware that I have an embarrassingly large stash of felted sweaters. These are wool sweaters that have been washed in hot water and dried in a hot drier so that they shrank and became felt – a wonderful crafting material. Wool sweaters are not exactly a necessity of life in the OC, so they sell very cheaply on driveways. There was a time when I could hardly pass any of them up, leading to that stash. How large a stash, you ask? Let’s put it this way…I’m probably the only person you know who has slippers lined with cashmere felt.

In any case, I’m always on the lookout for ways to use my felt, and today I came up with something new: a secure mount for my new GPS!

I almost ordered a ‘portable friction mount’ along with the GPS, but hated to spend another twenty bucks or so. Decided to see what the dashboard mount thingie that came in the package was like. And it holds the GPS just fine – it just won’t stick anywhere in my car. I didn’t want it on the windshield, and the slanty dashboard wouldn’t hold it at all.

But there’s a bit of space between the gear shift and the heater controls. So I took a felted sweater sleeve, cut a tiny hole in the center and inserted the head of the swivel mount through it, then sewed around that to keep it in place. Each end was filled with rice and stitched shut. The weighted ends hang down over the center console keep everything in place.

Have to say I’m pleased as punch to have solved my GPS mounting problem so inexpensively (fifty cents worth of rice and maybe ten cents of sweater sleeve). And my felt stash is about half an inch lower!

She’s Back!

2011-09-03T15:03:00.001-07:00

It’s been too danged long since we got together! Moving and nesting can really cut into your day. Yes, I am 1,000 miles north of where I last posted, with a warm breeze redolent of pine (or perhaps barkomulch) wafting in my open window.

I admit I’m glad to have the trip behind me. I’m calling it the Journey with Two Cats and a Bonsai. Never heard a peep from that little tree, but Noll Baxter cried and cried for miles. Then he stopped crying and panted for many more miles. If it was an act, it was a good act. When we arrived he claimed he was exhausted.

Mrs. Wilberforce mewed in a distressed fashion a couple of times and then went into a catatonic state. I’m not sure if that wasn’t harder to see than the panting. But we all arrived safely and transferred thankfully from the car to our new home.

So far I’ve spent most of my time here painting. As in walls, not lovely pictures. Though I could be inspired by the terrific sunrises I’ve seen most mornings outside my windows.

So far I have eradicated pale, insipid pink walls from my office, half bath, hall, master bedroom and master bath, which went from this

to this

The bedroom is a darker shade of green, and my office is a nifty shade called Quiet Moment that is blue, gray or green depending on the time of day and the light. I’ve also mitigated (at least temporarily) the southwestern motifs on the tub surround

with some I like better.

Starting tomorrow I’ll be painting downstairs, and since that’s only a gigantic family room, a playroom, three bedrooms, a bathroom and a hall I should be done by oh, Christmas. Optimist that I am, I’m even thinking Christmas of this year! Need to do it before the rest of our stuff comes up from California. Which I am happy to announce will most likely be soon – way before Christmas even.

We must have been living right, because we got a decent offer for our house in the OC less than a week after it went on the market. Looks like escrow will close in mid-September (everyone keep your fingers crossed). We even have a backup offer on hold in case anything goes wrong with the first buyers. Whew! Of course it’s a nice house with a fabulous yard in a great location, but I’ll be very, very happy when I don’t have two mortgages to pay.

But wait, some of you are saying, this woman writes about yard sales. What’s with all this house stuff? And to you I say, gently, gently, this is only the 3rd weekend I’ve been here, and I’ve only been able to go our garaging…three times! Yup, I was out on the trail my first morning here. That was the day I learned that sales here tend to start on Friday and go all weekend, and they don’t start until at least 8 a.m., many not until 9. So that first morning I cruised about in the convertible, just enjoying the early morning air until it got late enough for a sale to be open. Had a lovely chat with a lady who works at the hospital (apparently there’s only one). From her I bought 4 Garrison Keillor 3-CD sets (so a total of 12 disks) for a buck. Can’t show you a picture though because I loaned them to my friends Diana and Dave when they came by on Sunday.

My next stop netted a brand new applicator pad for putting sealer goop on your deck. We have over 900 sq. feet of decks here (I’ve lived in houses smaller than that) and it all needed sealing, which my fabulous brother-in-law Biker Bob has undertaken since the hubs is still down south. (Everyone send blessings his way, this is a huge undertaking!) Bob says this pad thingie may be the best fifty cents I have ever spent. At the same sale I spent another fifty cents on two 50’ rolls of clear vinyl carpet protector, which I figured would come in handy during the painting process. However, it’s probably at least 10 years old, and is a very wide tape with the sticky side out, and it has baked together so that I could hardly pry up a corner, let alone actually cover anything with it. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. The lady at that sale threw in a really great dish brush for free, so I’ve decided that’s what I shelled out the fifty cents for instead of the carpet stuff!

Last week I went out on Friday. Mapped out a little route with the help of gsalr.com and went exploring. There’s no better way to learn your way around than by going to yard sales, right? And I found some sales and managed to find my way home (after shelling out a total of fifty cents for a black fanny pack) but the experience convinced me that my life would be a lot simpler if I finally got a GPS.

Choosing one about drove me nuts, but I finally did, and it arrived a couple of days ago. So today was my first day of garaging with the assistance of Gertrude Pemberton Smith. She’s not as much fun as Marcia or Linda or the other friends I’ve been garaging with, but her sense of direction is quite good. But there is one thing I’d like to know: how DO they make an electronic voice that manages to sound peeved as she says “recalculating”?

Went to the west side of town today to see what we could see. Some older neighborhoods, some midcentury areas, and some quite new. For a total of $8.50 I scored a desk chair, not fancy but rolls around really well

a couple of Ikea jars, so that I can decant my flour and sugar

and a DVD.

Yard sales are always a good source of “as seen on TV items” such as this supply of 6 tubes of Mighty Putty.

Don’t know how well it actually works (very mixed reviews on Amazon) but the “as seen on a driveway” price was the proverbial fifty cents. And it was worth that much to see the video pitch on the Mighty Putty website. Those hucksters who sold stuff at fairs are alive and well and selling Mighty Putty.

Picked up a couple of items at an estate sale down the street from my house. It was mostly priced too high for me, but this little candelabra was reasonable, and I think it has a nice MCM vibe. I’ll have to watch for some of those extra skinny tapers at future sales.

I also found a lovely vintage embroidered table runner in a heap of old kitchen towels and potholders under a sign that said “linens, ten cents” – a sure sign of a sale run by guys. They had dollar signs on all the tools, but beautiful hand embroidered grapes and vines on ecru linen was only a dime. And they didn’t even bother to take my dime! My fabulous sister-in-law Linda was helping me prep the family room for painting and liked it, so it’s gone home with her. Yes, she hangs out with Biker Bob. I’m very fortunate in my relatives – not only do they help with home repair but they take home those vintage linens that you swore you were not going to bring home any more of!

Good Friends

2011-08-13T16:02:00.001-07:00

Last week I tried to get my friend Marcia to go garaging with me, but it didn’t work out. But I made a new friend on one of the driveways I shopped.

Her name is Sophie.

“Great cat,” I commented. The folks having the sale enthusiastically agreed. “And she’s not even our cat. She lives down the street. Anything that happens in the neighborhood, Sophie is there helping out.”

She helped me look at earrings. We decided not to buy any. The more I petted her the louder she purred, and the closer she got.

I admired her fancy toes.

Had to leave Sophie behind (they didn’t think the neighbors would take kindly to their selling her). So I got Marcia to go out with me this week. We were just starting out when we saw this tiny little woman, probably in her 70s, trying to hang these signs on the wall. We stopped to help. Well, Marcia helped. I took her picture.

We didn’t see much at their sale we wanted, but they did give us this book, by an author I like. Don’t judge this book by this cover, it is way better than it looks!

We ran across one sale where they were into merchandising.

I snuck a shot of this terrier while the owner and a couple of other folks were talking about all the local problems with coyotes.

One of them claimed that the coyotes in Huntington Beach are now grabbing small dogs on leash and running off with them (and not in the amorous sense). HB – it’s not all surfers anymore. Around the corner the terrier turned up again, and was immediately surrounded by an entire teenage fan club.

Marcia asked them why it was just kids running their sale. Turns out one of them (the one with teal blue hair that I didn’t get a picture of) is raising funds to go to Europe, where she is going to study cooking in London, France, Italy and Germany. We were suitably impressed, and bought some cookbooks from her.

I needed another baking book, yes? When we left she thanked us and said she was all energized about her trip again.

I don’t think the HB coyotes would stand a chance with Dexie.

She was really growling at us. The girl’s dad took her and we petted her a bit, a trifle gingerly on my part.

This sweetie was introduced as the security guard. Well, both sweeties, they were a team. The dog is blind, but the guy wasn’t missing a thing.

I picked up a vintage cartoon book and a couple of DVDs at another sale

and some bookplates and cards at another.

She had several boxes of these cards. “Yeah, I bought them when my twins were born thinking I’d send out pictures of them every few weeks, and they just had their ninth birthday, so I think it’s too late.”

My one other find of the morning is in the nature of a sentimental ending to my time in Orange County. I was so excited when they offered me the position here. That weekend I went to a yard sale and found a Peter Rabbit needlepoint pillow, and I remember thinking as I bought it that oh, boy, I had an excuse to buy children’s literature stuff again. So it seems just right to buy one more Peter Rabbit, who will be part of the collection of children’s literature items I’ve found on the driveways of the OC.

Nope, I didn’t give them all away to my librarians, and am planning to decorate one of our guest rooms with them.

Marcia and I ended the morning by meeting up with my friend Linda for breakfast. Linda is literally one of the best things I’ve ever found on a driveway. Yup, we met at a yard sale, started talking, and that’s all it took.

This is my last weekend here; I’ll be heading up to Oregon later this week. I’m not sure how long it will be until I’m back online and will be able to post. But rest assured, the Queen of Fifty Cents has only retired from her day job. I’ll let you know how things are going and what the Salem yard sale scene looks like just as soon as I can!

AHHH...

2011-08-12T06:25:00.000-07:00

Did it.

Retired yesterday.

No more pencils,

No more books,

No more teacher’s

Dirty looks…

Oh wait. Wrong rite of passage.

No more meetings

No more bossing.

I’ll have plenty of

Time for flossing!

Sweetness

2011-08-05T10:19:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday my children’s librarians had a Storybook Tea to help me celebrate my retirement. It was quite lovely, and I had a wonderful time.

We actually had it at my house, which was handy for me! Our house is in a central location, and we’re having to keep the house and yard spiffy anyway because the house is on the market. We ate a ton of delicious food that everyone brought, and talked and laughed, and petted my dog Edward, and they gave me gifts.

Can I say these women totally understand me? Take a look at this.

A beautiful bonsai…and what is that it’s resting on?

Quarters, so I can keep going to yard sales! There were also these fabulous vintage bags.

Each one had a quarter in it! And to honor where we are going…

Oregon quarters!

Isn’t that fabulous? Okay, I admit there were no quarters in this gorgeous blank book, but it’s going to be my new Saturday book that I keep notes in as I’m out garaging.

I’ve used up my old notebook. There are literally two pages left in it, and I’ve got only a couple more Saturdays for garaging here.

I’ve looked forward to this life passage for a very long time. Retired from my career – gulp! It’s scary, yes, but very exciting. Four more days of work. I’m very grateful to have spent the last 10 years in this place with these people.

Thanks, you guys. You’re the best.

Gods, Dogs and Chairs

2011-07-30T16:37:00.001-07:00

The yard sale gods evidently were very, very sorry for last week. I mean, when two acquisitive women spend all morning at yard sales and manage to spend fifty cents between them, you have to figure you’ve either seriously offended the YSGs, or they’ve gone on vacation. I’m leaning toward the vacation theory…and now they are back.

I mean, today I spent a little over $26. Given my frugality you know it was a big day. Started out small, with me just taking pictures of stuff I thought was kind of cool but didn’t buy. Like this, um, lab equipment thingie.

Couldn’t think of anything to do with it except perhaps place it next to the control panel from a 1916 x-ray machine in my husband’s office (a story for another day). So I left it.

Wasn’t even tempted by these.

Her brother assured me I should not be fooled by the wings or the angelic expression. I wasn’t. They did enjoy my story about the guy I saw a while back do something similar, and then wasn’t able to get the darned wings off. His buddies were most amused.

First buy was a DVD.

Then a couple of vintage books I’m hoping to resell, though it looks like they won’t make my fortune as I had naively hoped.

At the same sale I picked up this handmade wooden jar. Just liked it. Might have been made by the same guy who tied the flies. Once it’s cleaned up I think it will be quite nice.

A stack of gardening magazines is always welcome.

Met a few dogs along the way. Handsome Kahlua was very hopeful that the cookies might be shared with him. But they weren’t.

Miss Molly gave my car a good sniffing. She’s elderly; maybe her eyesight is going and she thought it was a big dog.

Found a gift for a friend who likes dragonflies, one of those crystal cubes etched inside by a laser. Hopefully I’ll be able to give it to her before she reads this!

Another sale provided these little LED lights for a dime apiece

and a free sundial, something I’ve always wanted.

By now I was definitely feeling the beneficence of the yard sale gods, and sending them my thanks. And then it happened.

Walked up to one of those sales where the little kids have a table of cookies for sale. Noticed that two of them were sitting on rather nice mid century modern dining chairs. Took a couple more steps and saw two more of the chairs…with a price tag for the set of four. Fairly reasonable, although the woven seats of all four must be redone. Given that, I suggested an even more reasonable price, and soon they were mine.

I really, really like the look of them. Even with the seats coming undone they are rock solid and comfy to sit on. I love the contrasting wood on the backrest

and the sculptural quality of the pieces.

I wedged the four of them into the convertible and toted them home, and gloated over them for a while. Then started looking online to see if I could find a maker, since I don’t see any labels. (They may have had paper labels that have come off, or something under the weaving.) And I do believe I found them. Looks like they are the CH23 chair by Hans Wegner. If you’re into mid century furniture you know how exciting that is! Hans Wegner designed really cool stuff and I have lusted over pictures of his furniture for some time, never dreaming I would actually find some that I could afford. You can do a Google Image search on his name, or click here to see the results I got.

I’m sure I’ll get a bit snarly when I reweave all the seats, but I’ve done that kind of weaving before so I’m sure I can handle it. The Danish papercord will cost far more than I paid for the chairs, I’m sure! But when they’re done we will have four matching dining chairs for the first time. I’ll try to finish them before our 40th anniversary next spring!

So here’s to the yard sale gods: all my appreciation for a fine morning. Hope they smiled on you as well!

Elmos and Eichlers

2011-07-23T12:38:00.001-07:00

My friend Stephanie came out garaging with me this morning, and since she lives way up in north county, we decided we’d meet about halfway between our houses. This put us in quite a posh area of the OC; figured if we didn’t find many sales we could at least look at the high-priced neighborhoods.

We figured right! I have new respect for my usual route, which has proven so fruitful over the years. Didn’t buy one darned thing, and Steph ended up spending a whopping fifty cents. But she spent it well, as you will see.

Some of the neighborhoods really were lovely, with beautiful landscaping. But even those areas of million-plus dollar homes had their stinkers, like the two story stucco house painted a very odd shade between pea green and acid yellow. We stopped at one sale in a neighborhood of houses that all appeared to be Eichler houses. Turns out they actually are Eichlers! We got kind of excited when we saw some open house signs, both of us perfectly willing to be looky-lous. But then we realized it was only 8 a.m. and the open house would not yet be open. I just checked some real estate sites and most likely the signs were for this house. Which would have been fun to see, but I have my own MCM house that I’ll be seeing in the near future!

We met a few dogs. This little guy was recovering from surgery and I tried hard to pet the Lab half of this pair but she was so excited I could hardly touch her before she bucked away in excitement.

Little Roxie was rescued from the pound. She has an absolutely gorgeous coat.

Handsome storm was shopping with his owner on Roxie’s driveway.

I hope he had better luck with his shopping than I did. Bought nothing. Zero. Zip. Of course, since I’m moving in the near future this is not a bad thing! Here’s proof that we’re getting serious about this whole retirement/moving to Oregon plan:

We’ve already moved part of our stuff! We’re putting our OC house on the market very soon and needed to clear it out so it will show well. It’s feeling quite spacious now! So if you know anyone in the market for a great house with an amazing yard in PRIME yard sale country (this week notwithstanding) send ‘em by.

So, back to Steph’s fifty cents. Her husband asked her before she left what she was planning to bring home, which of course one never knows. So we started watching for something silly she could take him, and we found the perfect thing.

Everyone needs a talking Elmo, right? When you tilt his head back he says various things, or just laughs. We cracked up the whole morning every time we hit a bump and Elmo said something from the back seat. Several stops later she scored a new change purse.

It’s the sequins on the kitty’s butt that make it really special. And so here we have Portrait of a Happy Garager.

Guess it pays to shop those posh neighborhoods!

One Down!

2011-07-16T12:03:00.001-07:00

I’m kicking myself for not taking a picture of my friend Linda this morning. I was so surprised to see her out garaging that grabbing my camera didn’t cross my mind. I would have entitled it “Portrait of a Dedicated Thrifter” and made sure the cast on her foot was in sharp focus. Yes, she broke her foot a couple of weeks ago; yes, it still hurts; and yes, she was out driving around looking for yard sales this morning. I sure hope she had better luck than I did – though I did find one thing I especially need. And I found it because of Linda’s broken foot!

It’s not that there weren’t a number of sales this week, but their wares were either total crap (sorry to be so blunt, but it’s true) or ridiculously priced, or both. I mean, come on – you think you’re going to get $5 for a cookbook no one has ever heard of? That was at the sale where the kind of unsure-of-himself boy was helping his mom, with a copy of The Out of Synch Child prominently displayed for sale. (And overpriced.) Hmmm, wonder if there’s any market for one entitled The Insensitive Parent…

But it’s a beautiful morning, about 70 degrees and a little breeze blowing (I know, please don’t hate me) so I kept going. The one thing I really hoped to find was a couple of pet carriers, for when we move the cats up to Oregon. The ones we take them to the vet in are quite small (but easy to get them in and out of) so they each need something a little bigger that will still fit in the car. So I looked and looked and never saw any.

Finally came to three houses in a row having sales. The lady at the middle house was sporting a very familiar looking cast on her foot. “You have an owie,” I said, and she agreed. I told her about Linda’s foot that she managed to break by stepping off a 2 inch high curb. This lady may actually have Linda beat – she doesn’t know how she broke hers! “The only thing I could think of,” she said, “was that I dug a hole to plant a tomato, and the next day my foot started to hurt. I bet my doctor imagines I’m some kind of falling down drunk having blackouts or something.” We agreed it’s pretty scary to be able to break a bone and not know it, and chatted a few minutes. Then I headed off for the next house, but for some reason as I started to move I said something about looking for pet carriers and not finding any. “I may have one,” she said. “Go check their sale while I look in the garage.”

So I did (another sale of overpriced crap) and she did, and she dug out one of those soft sided carriers. We agreed on a price, and I learned that it had been her cat Rebel’s, who died at the age of 15 from kidney failure a few months ago. “That’s what my Mrs. Wilberforce is dealing with,” I said, and mentioned having to drip fluids into her every day – which is exactly what she had done with Rebel. So we had a good old talk about that, and it was really quite encouraging. Rebel lasted for 4 years on the drip regime, and she said it really got to be no big deal for either of them. Mrs. W and I are glad to hear that, both that it really extended his life, and that you get used to the routine. And we feel like Rebel has passed along his travel case to Mrs. Wilberforce. I know there are some good vibes in there.

In fact, Noll has already been checking out those vibes!

Gale-Force Winds of Change are Blowing!

2011-07-09T14:42:00.001-07:00

I broke the news at work this week that I am going to retire.

Next month!

I vacillate at least hourly between excitement and terror. Oh boy, I get to go live in my MCM house in Oregon now! Eeeek, will we be able to make ends meet?! And on and on. But when you decide to make a huge change in your life, you have to accept that all the ducks will never line up beforehand. You just jump in and work things out as you go.

Sounds wise, yes? Which is why I was able to pass up this item at a yard sale this morning. Figured I have sufficient wisdom already.

Right now yard sales feel like an ocean of stability in my life. Safe, predictable, comforting.

Inexpensive! I spent a total of $2.60 this morning. Probably the best deal was ten cents for 8 Georgia O’Keeffe cards.

They were at a semi-crazed sale with a ton of stuff belonging to three different women. Every time anyone asked how much something was, one of them would say it belonged to someone else and start hollering for whoever. I’m glad the only thing I found that I wanted was a simple buy that only required one holler for a price.

Bought some white things. A trio of canvas boards for an artist friend from some twenty-somethings. One of the young ladies told me rather grandly that it was the first sale they had had in twenty years. I refrained from telling her that few preschoolers hold yard sales, which is what she much have been twenty years ago.

This roll of white Con-tac paper will come in handy at the new house.

Couldn’t grab it fast enough when I saw that it is repositionable. If you’re old enough to remember the stickum that used to be on this stuff you know what I’m talking about. It must have given them idea for Super Glue. Man, that stuff could stick – and woe betide you if you got a wrinkle in it or it stuck to itself!

A couple of driveways up the street I met little Lucy at another sale.

Isn’t that a wonderfully goofy face? I think she thought the camera might be food. Not so Riley the Pomeranian; he was having nothing to do with a camera.

I missed a good shot at another sale, perhaps because there was no dog involved so I didn’t think about grabbing my camera until it was too late. A family visiting from Norway was being taken to yard sales by their host and were having a wonderful time shopping. Evidently the host agrees with me that they could have no experience more quintessentially American. The teenage daughter found a pink feather boa, and they asked the lady having the sale to take their picture. Then they had someone else take a picture of them with the sale lady.

My last buy came with a terrific story.

As I paid the young woman having that sale, she smiled when she saw what I had and said, “I went to that movie on my first date.” This is the kind of remark that makes my heart go pitty pat. “Your first date ever?” I asked. She nodded. “The very first. I went to this movie with Tim Dufor, and we went across the street for ice cream afterward. My mom took us, and his grandma picked us up. Then he spent the rest of the summer coming to all my baseball games and watched them with my mom.”

I asked if she was still in touch with him, but no. “I knew him all the way through high school and he just got handsomer and handsomer. But after that we lost touch.”

I think I’m going to keep an eye out for good looking guys of the right age named Tim. If I find one, I’ll see if he remembers On Golden Pond.

It’s in Our Genes!

2011-07-03T12:40:00.001-07:00

My mother’s 90th birthday was last week, so I trundled off to Oklahoma for the festivities. The party of course was fun, but the real excitement for my sister, Midcentury Marilyn and I was that we got to go garaging together! This opportunity has not come our way since we were kids, and we had a great time. Since I had to schlep anything I found home in my backpack I contented myself with two great finds: a vintage Coach bag

and a pie bird, something I have secretly always wanted!

Sis did great, finding a number of items for her resale shop,

not to mention some items that will be gifts, or live at her house.

Everyone had to thumb through this cookbook looking for favorite recipes.

And we got a lot of hilarity out of the singing Hershey’s kiss jar.

That evening at the birthday party our nephew Evan was the last to arrive. His cousins immediately began admiring the boots he was wearing. “Ten bucks at the thrift store,” he said. Marilyn and I locked eyes and started laughing.

“It must be genetic!” she said. And indeed, all of the younger generation started comparing notes about their favorite thrifting adventures.

To my mind, those kids were raised right!

This week I got to spend Saturday morning with one of my oldest friends, Diana, who was visiting from Oregon. (We figured out that we’ve known each other for 37 years. Yikes!) Even though it was a holiday weekend, we headed out to see what we could find. Met this sweet exuberant dog, Callie, first thing.

She bounced sideways out of the shot just as I clicked the camera. But once I found that magic spot on her neck to scratch she fell right over for petting.

Callie was the dog of the day, guess the rest of them must have been cooling off at the beach or something.

Our first purchases were from an older lady who had a lot of kindergarten teacher stuff for sale. I asked if she had retired and she said no, she plans to keep working forever, but she’s been moved to a different school and she has absolutely no storage in her new classroom. So she has to downsize her teaching collection. We commiserated, and she remarked that “very few school administrators were ever kindergarten teachers.” I think she may be right! Diana picked up a couple of child size life vests, and I got a couple of twisty things:

The froggie plant ties just crack me up. I think the video is one I’ve seen before with lots of footage of tornados taken by lunatics with camcorders.

Got to mark an item off my search list: I needed a tray for my new (smaller) CPAP machine to sit on. This one just fits.

Found a couple of books for gifts, one of which I was planning to order this week from Amazon or somewhere. I’m awfully pleased to have found it on a driveway!

And the deal of the day was this large Silpat.

If you bake very much, these are great. You put it on your cookie sheet instead of grease or parchment paper, and you can use it over and over. I have a smaller one that’s just big enough to bake cookies for two people’s evening snack. I mix up cookie dough and keep it in the fridge, so whenever we need “a little something” as Winnie the Pooh would say, we whip out the Silpat and in a few minutes have warm cookies and a baking sheet that’s still clean.

I did bring back one more yard sale find from Oklahoma – but it’s not one that I bought! Almost three years ago I was in Oklahoma to help MC Marilyn do a sale for our folks, and she found this great teapot at a neighbor’s sale for a buck.

I tried to get it from her by hook or by crook, but no dice. So imagine my surprise when she gave it to me on this last trip! It’s not quite the right shade of blue for her kitchen, but she had no trouble thinking of someone who would appreciate it.

I’m just wondering what the security people at the airport thought when they x-rayed my carry on bag!

The Yard Sale Cure

2011-06-18T17:22:00.001-07:00

After we packed up the leftovers from our yard sale a couple of weeks ago, I realized I had done something to my back – and it hurt. (I’m a total pain wimp.) Felt like a pinched nerve by my left shoulder blade. I tried ignoring it (didn’t improve), and had my husband do some Shiatsu massage stuff, and laid on a heating pad. Darned thing hurt all week. By Friday I was contemplating a trip to a chiropracter, but realized I hadn’t tried ice on it. So I put a wet washcloth in the freezer, meaning to lay on it for a while Saturday morning.

Which I forgot to do. But, Saturday afternoon I realized that my back no longer hurt. Now, it might have been that the mere threat of ice was enough to make my back shape up. But I think it was going to a bunch of yard sales that cured me!

No, really. My theory is that the repeated twisting motion of getting in and out of the car all morning eased whatever was out of whack back into place. So the next time you have a pinched nerve, take ten garage sales in the morning, and then let me know if it worked. If we get enough anecdotal evidence, maybe we can get a research grant to really study this. Just imagine, some foundation could give me a whole lot of money to dole out to thrifters with backaches to see if yard sales cure them.

It’s the least I can do for mankind.

Today I succumbed to the lure of some mid-century china. Is this not perfect for a 1957 house in Oregon?

It was a bit of a splurge for me (you know how I get when the price is over fifty cents!) but I took one look at one plate and was a goner.

I didn’t have nearly as much money on me as the price the lady quoted (which I would never have paid anyway), but she immediately said, “Well, how much have you got?” So we explored my billfold and she was okay with what I had, which was half of the price she had said. (Had to go find an ATM afterward so I could keep garaging!) Then she told me it had been her grandmother’s, and that her grandmother had worked at the Vernon Kiln. Which I guess is where this stuff was made, but I’m not completely sure, since this is Winfield china.

She said the employees at the Vernon Kiln got to take turns naming the patterns, though she’s not sure if her grandma ever got to name any. Grandma got complete sets of dishes to give everyone in the family, each grandchild getting a different pattern. This one is called Blue Spruce.

It’s not a complete set, but I’ve never been big on sets of things. This will do us just fine!

As if one vintage china find wasn’t enough, a few sales later I peered into a box of junk and saw this graphic.

Ooooh, cute dog dish, I thought, and pulled it out of the box. And my heart went pitty pat. It’s not a dog dish, it’s a baby food warming dish.

You pour hot water in the spout and it keeps the porcelain bowl warm. The metal handles on the side balance it perfectly in your hand so you can grip the dish and feed baby with the other hand. So there I am on this guy’s driveway, gripping this thing and staring at it as he tells people how much his other things cost. I finally got his attention with “How much?” You know this moment…will the price be low enough that you can justify buying something just because it is adorable? Your heart speeds up just a little, and then he says the magic words:

“Fifty cents.”

I found similar dishes on the Internet, but no others in this pattern. This mark is on the back.

It appears that the company is German, and the only thing I can find that they made were these warming dishes. Talk about a niche market!

I’m almost glad I only found a few other things; how much goodness can one stand in a single morning? Picked up some DVDs

some seeds for the birds I feed at work

and a house o’ blocks…because I love alphabet things.

I’m awfully glad to know that one can be cured BY yard sales – because I sure don’t want to be cured OF them!

The Sun Came Out for Mrs. W.

2011-06-11T17:52:00.001-07:00

I wasn’t sure I would be able to write a post today. Our cat Mrs. Wilberforce has been quite ill this week, and I was very much afraid we would have to make that hard decision this afternoon to let her go.

But we didn’t!

She didn’t eat all last weekend, so we were off to the vet on Tuesday. Her bloodwork indicated she was in kidney failure, and she was born with only one working kidney, so this is serious stuff. She is a very private and shy cat, and any trip to the vet is torture for her. We decided not to do dialysis (which would mean leaving her there several days) but to bring her home and administer fluids under the skin, plus some other meds. Doesn’t take long for a cat to decide to have nothing to do with you when you’re going through this, and it’s been a rough week.

But they checked her again today, and the vet said the change in her blood levels is “remarkable.” He acted like he could hardly believe it himself – all the readings are now at the high end of normal, instead of off the chart. We’ll still be dripping fluids into her, but only every other day, and don’t have to take her back for a recheck for two weeks. So Mrs. Wilberforce looks like she will be with us a while yet.

Whew!

It was a damp, gray, chilly morning, and the trip to the vet that I so dreaded was about all I could think about. Garaging is about as good a distraction as you can find though. I wasn’t a very sparkling conversationalist, but did get some really good smooches from Lucy the Lab

and very much enjoyed the guitar performance by this young lady.

Aren’t the fuzzy slippers just the icing on the cake?

A couple of sales I stopped at had really, really nice stuff – and really, really high prices. Oddly enough I found a fifty cent item at the first one that I really like. I thought it was a necklace

but after I got it home I decided it’s probably a headband.

Not something I need with my hair so short, but I rather like it!

I’ve been watching for some light colored fabric to make a new half slip, since my beloved silk slip has literally been worn to shreds. (Sigh.) Picked up some light cotton curtains to upcycle; didn’t get a picture of them before they went in the laundry, but just think white, cotton, bit of a ruffle at the hem. Should be fine until I get my hands on some white silk one of these days.

Found another silicone spatula for my colorful collection of cooking utensils

a dvd to replace one of our VHS tapes

a whole bunch o’ clip art

and a cute winter pin. Those silver dangles are little bells that actually ring.

And then I found some mid-century fun. Dug these out of a box at one sale.

Then down the road a piece I noticed some vintage knitting books in a box of stuff. Turned out the whole box was a buck, which netted me a handy dandy sewing machine threader

a baggie of embroidery supplies, and needle threaders so I can actually use them!

And some really cool knitting magazines from the 40s and 50s.

This one is full of Manly Men doing Manly Things.

Many manly things, that include manly props like hammers, ski poles, paint brushes, a globe, ice skates, and (for the sweater with a couple of deer running across the chest) a rifle and a Weimaraner. I tell ya, they just don’t make knitting magazines like they used to. Or chins either. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a chin before that’s as big as the forehead. But it is Manly!

So my Saturday turned out to have vintage goodness, fabulous driveway deals, and Mrs. Wilberforce will be staying with us a while longer. Guess this clip from the Muppet Show is as good a way as any to express what I feel.

From the other side of the table

2011-06-04T14:12:00.001-07:00

The Queen of Fifty Cents had a yard sale today.

My belief that these things are way more fun to go to than to have was reconfirmed.

On the other hand, we got rid of some biggish stuff and quite a bit of little stuff, and made a few bucks into the bargain. The leftovers are boxed up for delivery to the thrift store next week. And my car can be parked inside the garage again, woo hoo!

The morning also alleviated a little personal fear I’ve been harboring. This is somewhat embarrassing to admit. Sometimes after I get home from a morning of garaging, I’m afraid that the chatty persona I adopt has been boring or annoying to people. I mean, it seems like we’re all having a good time, but then I start wondering if I’m deluding myself and people are breathing a sigh of relief as I drive away.

(I never said I was not paranoid!)

By the time our sale ended, I was longing for someone like me to come along and strike up a conversation. It’s not that the folks who came by weren’t nice enough people, but there was just no repartee. And what is a Saturday morning for, if not repartee?

Next week I’ll be back on the trail, and when I ask a seller, “So, are you having fun yet?” and wait to see how they’ll reply, I won’t be worrying about sounding like an idiot. Even if I sound like one, it will be a good natured idiot.

We did actually have a little bit of repartee, but that was with our next door neighbor, Kurt. He slept late, and when he got up he saw we were having a sale. So at about 10 a.m. he dragged a couple of things out of his garage to try to get rid of them. The welding stuff sold within five minutes. The ceiling fan went a bit later, then a bike. Then when a guy asked me if we had an exercise bike to sell (nope, still riding my vintage Schwinn every day) Kurt said he used to have one that he tried to sell several time and never could get a taker. I asked if he still had it and he wasn’t sure, so I told him to go look in his garage. (It’s one of those garages!)

Sure enough, he unearthed the thing, dusted it off, and sold it. I tried to convince him he owed me half the sale price since I made him go look for it, but that didn’t fly! He said later he had put it out at least four times when they had sales and no one ever looked at it. Guess it was waiting for just this buyer!

Holiday Rambles

2011-05-28T16:09:00.001-07:00

I try always to have low expectations when I go garaging on holiday weekends. No need to court disappointment! But for a holiday weekend, I did okay today. Very first stop was a sale presided over by a young woman who looked like Drew Barrymore. She told me she absolutely loves having yard sales and she was bouncing around with the energy of a 5 year old. And she’s the mother of preschool twins and a 10-month-old baby. Sheesh. I want to start having whatever she has for breakfast!

Met a couple of pets…

cute little dog, and a kitty with his head on upside down. Actually, kitty was trying to be cool and sat down with his back to me…and then couldn't resist checking on what I was doing.

Had a funny conversation with a guy about my age, maybe a bit older. He was showing me all the brand new things he was selling, all Christmas gifts from his son. “Why would he think I would ever use a pasta extruder?” he said, shaking his head. Even sillier was the large can opening machine that looked like it takes two hands to lift the lever so you can insert your can. It would take up a good foot or more of counter space. I suggested he tell his son that something like a gift card would be nice, or making a donation in dad’s name to some good cause. Apparently neither of these ideas had ever occurred before. Then I asked him what they give the son for gifts, and he said, “Uh…gift cards.” So I suggested that perhaps rather than exchange gift cards they could just mutually decide to forgo the gift giving. You should have seen the look of relief on his face at this thought!

There were even items for sale with great signage.

In spite of it being a holiday weekend, I still managed to spend $4.60. Some of it went for a LARGE bag o’ Legos.

My library system has been collecting Legos to use in programs. With 34 branches to share the collection, I figure we can’t have too many. So this will be my contribution to the cause.

My husband mentioned he needed a container for the cough drops he always has on hand. And this heavy glass container is perfect.

This hinged chrome frame will hold a couple of vintage photos of my hubs and his brother as little kids.

Have no idea if this DVD will be interesting, but I can gamble fifty cents.

I read on someone’s blog recently that backpacks can be good eBay items, and that Jansport is a good brand. So I thought I’d test it with this. Probably should wait till back-to-school shopping starts.

I’m sure that hearts, stars and skulls & crossbones will appeal to someone!

And I picked up half a dozen cloth napkins that I think will be fun with the striped tablecloth I bought last summer.

I had Friday off work and spent part of the day proving that sometimes it pays to buy stuff on driveways without knowing exactly what you’ll use it for. My first project involved the large stash of scrapbooking paper I picked up exactly two years ago.

I don’t scrapbook and have no intention of ever doing so, but I loved all the colors and designs and figured paper would come in handy. And I’ve used it for several things, but still have a lot left. I noticed the other day that this navy blue tin from Ikea that I use for a trash can in my bathroom had gotten rather beat up on the inside, though the outside is fine.

So a couple of pieces of scrapbook paper and some white glue, and voila, it’s nice again.

Nice enough for trash, anyway! Then I tackled another project I’ve been thinking about. I keep all my pins and earrings inside this cabinet, which had cross stitch fabric tacked inside to hang stuff from.

I’ve been reading in other people’s blogs about covering foam core with fabric and framing it to display jewelry. So I decided to do that inside my cabinet. I had a piece of foam core that I picked up at a yard sale at least 5 years ago, and some gold silk fabric that I’ve had stashed since September, 2006. I cut foam core to fit snugly in the spaces inside, covered it with fabric that I taped to the back, and stretched a narrow ribbon across to hold dangly earring and stick pins. The ribbon is the last of a spool I paid a quarter for two years ago.

I think it turned out rather fun!

Hmmm, getting quite a collection of pins there! While I was arranging everything back into the cabinet, I noticed this piece, a gift from someone I used to work with, actually has a maker’s mark under the tarnish.

I’ve always thought it was probably from the 60s, but it turns out it’s a Georg Jensen piece, and he died in the 30s so it’s a lot older than I thought. And if sales on eBay are any indication a lot more valuable than I realized!

A Turtle, a Cat, and Some Dubious Art

2011-05-22T08:48:00.001-07:00

"How much is this turtle?” Three boys stood by a large stuffed object on a driveway.

“Fifty cents,” the seller called back.

“We’ll take it!” The oldest immediately went to pay for their treasure.

Off they went, calling excitedly, “Dad, dad, look what WE got!” They made the youngest carry it.

Wasn’t easy! The middle brother took over. Competent, that’s us middle children!

The seller and I were both chuckling. “You know why I said fifty cents?” she asked me. “I figured if I made it any higher their parents might make them bring it back!”

The joys of decluttering. Feels so good to move out stuff you’ve been harboring for ages. Like, um, art pieces.

Perhaps it was an exercise in learning to frame stuff?

Talked with another woman for a bit who really is an artist, though she couldn’t show me the gate she’d painted sunflowers on, because termites ate it. (Yum, painted sunflowers, let’s go get some!) Her mailbox was lovely, though she admitted she hadn’t made this piece.

I think she did make this stuffed cat.

When I picked him up, he seemed a little embarrassed by what was left behind on his chair!

I wouldn’t have dared pick up this cat.

Though he seemed friendly enough, there was something in his expression…

He was next door to the sale where I saw Seamus giving his new person a little smooch.

She said he’s about 3 months old, and has been at the animal shelter since he was 2 weeks old. The story she got was that some people who breed Cairn terriers brought in this litter, saying they had decided not to keep them. Of course they all had to be bottle fed for several weeks. The girls pups had already found home, but little Seamus was waiting for her. I was looking online at pictures of Cairn puppies, and I’m thinking there may well be some other genetic heritage at work here.

No matter. He’s as sweet as can be, and in a happy home. Whew!

Spent $8.50 this Saturday. Got good stuff! This pot rack is destined for our MCM house in Oregon.

I’ve grown too used to having my pots overhead to give that up! Here’s what we did in our current kitchen. Very handy.

Next biggest buy was a set of 6 drinking glasses.

They have indentations in the sides, in just the right spots for your fingers and thumb. I hope this will improve our grip and we won’t break them any time soon!

Picked up a fun goofy movie.

And a vintage decorating book to resell. This one’s from the mid 70s.

The coolest encounter of the morning was an affable guy, quite willing to chat, who turned out to be a major fan of the library system I work for. He raved about the wonders of our interlibrary loan service (can’t wait to tell them next week about their fan!) and I had to agree. I recently requested an old novel by an author I’ve read for years. Had never seen this book anywhere, so I asked our ILL folks to get it for me. Which they did—straight from the Library of Congress! Evidently it was the only copy in America, and I got to read it.

Wow.