ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DRIVEWAY

Every afternoon when I get home from work, my husband is very good about remembering to ask how my day was. Sometimes it's good, sometimes rather tedious. Sometimes I have to say, “It was just a day.”

That’s pretty much how this week’s garaging went…it was just a day. Picked up a few items, spoke briefly to a few people. Ran across only one dog, an Australian shepherd, and when I said hello to him, he got up and moved to another spot to lie down. Made me feel like the proverbial chopped liver—though I'm sure chopped liver would have been much more interesting to this dog than I was!

Thank heavens I met Roxy on Friday.
She was not only friendly, but quite willing to swoon at my feet!
Ran across several sales with silly prices. At one, my friendly “Having fun yet?” was met with an uber-sarcastic “Oh yeah, right.” She went on to complain bitterly that no one was buying anything. Of course when I started looking at her wares it was obvious why. I think the only things there under five dollars were those crappy plastic toys that come free with kids’ meals in fast food joints. I noticed a faded cotton jacket with a tag that said “Vintage 1980’s—$15.00.” Puh-leeze!

My next to last stop was like an estate sale. I think the mother of one of the two guys there had gone to assisted living and they were clearing out her house. They mentioned something about her having run a shop, which must have been a second-hand clothing store. There were boxes and boxes of fairly nice clothing, mostly from the 80’s, with hand-written hang tags still attached. While I was rummaging, another guy paid for something and took it to his car, then came back with a picture in his hand. “Do you guys ever go to Alaska?” he asked them. They answered no, sounding a bit puzzled. I too wondered where this was going. “I was there last summer, and I caught the third largest flounder [I think it was a flounder] of the year.” He was clearly quite proud, citing all the fish’s statistics. Evidently the picture was of this fish. He went on, “I thought I was going to win the prize for the biggest one of the season, but just two weeks before the season ended the same captain who took me out caught a hundred and thirty seven pounder. Made mine look like a trout.”

He went on without a pause to pitch his services as an antiques appraiser and said his rates are very reasonable. And off he went. The two guys seemed a bit stunned, and I admit I'm still pondering the connection of big fish and antiques.

Even a so-so day of driveway shopping adds up…in this case to $8.00. Some items I plan to give away, like this bubble stuff…
…and this brand new box with handwoven cloth on the lid (I like the price I paid better than the original)…

…and a nice tea mug with lid and insert.

I think I have a spot for this candle lantern on my patio, but if not I can give it away too.
A book to inspire me in using all my Saturday morning treasures.
A jazz CD for the hubs.
Got four of these cushions. I need something on some of our outdoor chairs. These are a little puffy, but when you sit on them they settle right down!
They’ll be fine until I find something better. The seller said they came from a seven-foot-long sofa that has gone bye-bye. I think it went to that Family Room in the sky.

And finally, I picked up a couple of sweaters after rummaging through all those boxes. I think I'll felt this one.
Plan to sell this one. There are no tags, but looks to me like wool, lined with silk, probably Fifties or Sixties. It needs a better home than a box on a driveway!


Looks like I will be missing from Blogland next weekend. We’re going to a family reunion on the Oregon coast so I'll be doing that instead of garaging. They’ll probably all wonder why I'm so twitchy on Saturday morning!

THANKS EVERYONE!

You guys really made my day! So many of you visited my web site that I made as a class project, that I got this email from the website host today:

Subject: Your Site is the Highest Rated

Congrats - Your site with username petalsedge is in the Top 1% of all sites created this week!

Woo hoo! Of course, maybe they say that to all the girls...since it went on to try to sell me a domain name. Little do they know whom they are dealing with. Like the Queen of Fifty Cents could be convinced to pay for something she can have for free. As if!

But I confess I am totally jazzed, and encouraged to add more content (soon, soon) at the Petal's Edge.

BIRTHDAY HATS, WOODEN SHOES, AND CREWEL WALLABIES

I've always found that asking folks having yard sales if they’re having fun yet is a great conversation starter. Most say yes, but you can tell from their voices if they actually mean it or not, and we can continue on with joking about their sincerity level, and how much more fun it is to go to sales than to have them. But I knew it wasn’t going to work this morning when I asked an old guy, “Having fun yet?” and his reply was, “I sure hope we don’t.”

Not sure if he misheard me or was a dyed-in-the-wool misanthrope, but didn’t feel inclined to pursue it. Fortunately he was the only sour note all morning. Started out with a sale near home where a mom was trying to get her grown kids to clear their stuff out of her garage. Her son was trying hard to sell me item after item, beginning with a stuff Alf toy, which he described to me as an icon of the Eighties. I was easily able to resist Alf, along with just about everything else. Spotted a ream of bright colored paper though, and when the price turned out to be fifty cents, we were all happy—a sale at last.
But it got better; the mom thought there was more of it around somewhere and unearthed two more packs, which they threw in on the fifty cent deal. Can't beat that! I was almost finished at their place when I stumbled a bit on some of the stuff cluttering the driveway. “Hey,” said the son, “you break it, you buy it.”

“Honey,” I said, “if I break me, you’ve bought it.”

Met some lovely doggies today. First was Dahlia
who had her stuffed toy tucked into her bandanna to keep it close and safe.

This is her owner demonstrating some of their merchandise.

Buddy deserves an acting Oscar for his performance.
As soon as I moved toward the gate to pet him, he pressed against it in the manner of a dog who was abandoned as a mere child, unloved and unwanted. When I began to scratch his chest through the bars, he practically swooned.
I said something to the woman having the sale about what a great act he had going. She kind of sniffed and gave him a not very friendly look. “Yeah, he’s a lot like my husband,” she said darkly.

Next on our itinerary was Violet.
This is Cooper.
Cooper had a death grip on that tennis ball and believe me, no one was going to take it away from him.

Finally, this is Caroline.
Her close-up doesn’t do her justice. This is how I first saw her, under the table.
She’s a four-pounder. About one third the size of my cats!

The shopping? Good. Nineteen bucks good. There was all that paper, and from the same sale a pair of wooden shoes.
I plan to plant flowers in them for my front porch. I know, I have no shame.

A DVD to replace a vhs tape.

Adorable little framed picture, about 5 x 6 inches. Looks vintage but has a tag on the back with a barcode. Still cute though.

An addition to my collection of vintage ceiling glass.


A bunch o’ magazines.

The Vegetarian Times came from the sale of a woman who mentioned she’s a research chef. I've never heard of such, so I asked her about it. She said she works with various manufacturers. She gets an idea for a product, gets a manufacturer to work with her to develop it, and then sells them to Trader Joe’s. Apparently she designed all of TJ’s frozen enchiladas and a bunch of other stuff. Who knew such a job existed? If you eat Trader Joe’s enchiladas, I'm sure you’ll be glad to know she was a very nice lady.

Also at her sale, I found one of the things I'm always looking for and rarely find. An Yixing teapot.
This one came with a warmer and four cups.
The price was right on the set, so even though I really only wanted the pot I took it all. She still had all the boxes they had come in; evidently she never used the pots or cups. When I got them home, my husband, who also enjoys a good teapot, noted that they don’t really go together. We looked at the warmer, then at each other, and grinned. He went in the other room and brought back his favorite Yixing pot, that I gave him about ten years ago.
Pretty darned good match.

I was not similarly tempted by this teapot set.

The mouse on the cat's head is a cream pitcher. Call me old fashioned, but I would not care to drink something that had been poured out of this face.

Money wise, my last buy was the most incredible. Two rolls of beautiful fabric. I'm thinking maybe bedspreads from this:

And I admit I have no idea what to use this for
but a whole roll of crewel embroidered fabric with Australian animals cavorting across it was not going home with anyone but me!
Both rolls have many, many layers of fabric on them.


I'll leave you with this lady. Had to take a picture of her enjoying her hat.
Asked if it's actually her birthday and she said no. “But it is my birthday month. I’m practicing for the big day. And it was fifty cents. Isn’t Saturday morning just the best?”

SHAMELESS BRAGGING!

I've been taking an online class on creating websites, in preparation for a big project I shall reveal in a few weeks (yes, more shameless self-promotion ahead, don't say I didn't warn you!). A couple of months ago, all I could tell you about 'html' is what the letters stand for.

Finished my final project for the class yesterday. I wrote an honest-to-goodness website! No Dreamweaver or other authoring software, just me and Typepad and a whole bunch of letters and symbols (the <> keys have certainly gotten a workout!). If you get a chance, stop by my site here. "The Petal's Edge" is a visit to our garden. Still needs a bunch more pictures added, but I'm completely amazed that I was able to make this!

WHILE THE THRIFTING GODS TAKE A HOLIDAY…

It’s a holiday weekend, and the thrifting gods decided to go visit family. They left some demigods in charge today, knowing that the die-hard thrifters would be out on the trail but that we can probably get along okay on our own. The demigods did okay by me, though I was a tad disappointed that there was nary a dog nor cat nor even turtle to be seen.

The oddest thing about this morning was the lack of traffic. If you are at all familiar with Southern California, you know there are cars on the roads at all hours. So to find empty streets every time I needed to make a left turn was strange indeed. Of course some of the drivers who were out were more than a bit demented. My fave was the person I saw waiting for a green arrow in a left turn lane. Guess they got tired of waiting, because they suddenly made a right turn, directly from the left turn lane. Fortunately no one was in their line of fire.

Maybe they were hurrying off to a bank. I had conversations about people who show up with hundred dollar bills at the first two places I bought things. I think twenties are too large and get them broken as soon as I can. I'm not embarrassed to bargain for something, but you lose face if you then whip out a big bill.

We all know that low finance is more my thing. I spent ten cents at one sale this morning, and when I handed over two nickels, I told the young guy running the sale to be sure to spend it wisely. He chuckled and said he’d put it into the kids’ college fund. Good idea, I said; through the magic of compound interest you’ll have enough by then to maybe buy lunch when you go to look at a college.

We parted the best of friends.

Even with the thrifting gods away, I still managed to spend $5.35. The ten cents went for these cute envelopes:
I expect they’ll come in handy. Shoot, when you buy 8 for ten cents, you could mail a bill in them and brighten someone’s day.

Found this DVD set
and these magazines
at the same sale. Tracy Ullman and Martha Stewart seem like strange bedfellows, but a yard sale is a level playing field.

This vintage tablecloth needs a good oxy soak



but it's nice heavy cotton and looks like Fifties embroidery motifS to me.

These three little vases will come in handy for small bouquets from the yard.
The crocus bulbs are still in the box, but I'm not holding my breath that they have any life left in them. No telling how long this has been hanging around someone’s garage. But if they bloom I'll let you know.

And once again, my favorite find of the day was a toy. I foresee hours of fun ahead with this little guy.

What can I say. I'm easily amused!