Checking out the Chicks

Judy was in fine form on Friday, trying on all the hats we could find on the driveways of Salem. She ranged from glamorous

to cute

to…how about mysterious.

She was ready to lead a parade

or go trick-or-treating.

Some of you may be saying, what the heck is that girl in the background holding? (The one who’s keeping her distance in case these two crazy women are actually dangerous.) She is holding a chicken. A silkie chicken, to be exact.

Named Charity.

It was a different sale that had fresh-laid eggs for sale. We each bought a dozen.

Right after we met Charity the Chicken we met Chester.

Chester’s sale was the one where I bought a nice kite.

(Zoe wants to know what this thing is in her living room.) Hadn’t flown kites for years until we were at the beach a few weeks ago, and the kite-flying bug has bit us again. This one in a double French military kite. Big French militaries were used in WW2 as man-lifting kites – they used them to get men aloft off battleships to do lookout duties. I was chatting with the guy who sold me this kite, and he said he really wanted one of the big two-line parafoil kites he’d seen at the beach. So the last time they were at the coast he bought the biggest one he could find. “That sucker was dragging me down the beach,” he said. “It about lifted me out of my shoes. I took it back and got a smaller size!” My kite luck held, and the next day I found this guy.

I have a super bug phobia, but even I can’t be alarmed by him.

He was originally purchased as a souvenir in Puerto Rico and has been displayed on a bedroom wall. But one of these day’s we’ll let him actually fly. Kites like that.

A couple of the sales we hit on Friday had just unbelievable amounts of random stuff. We wondered if maybe these people were buying up abandoned storage units or something. But they had really good prices. At one, I came away with a brand new twin sheet (we have several twin beds for guests)

for a whole fifty cents. At the other I bought a video (one of these, but can’t remember which!)

and a vocal-exercises CD for my husband

for a dollar (for both!). Then Judy showed me a mystery object.

Yes, it is a little giraffe thingie. An odd little giraffe, made of pewter

who turned out to be an espresso tamper!

My husband does make espresso using his yard-sale vintage La Pavoni

and he uses a rather elegant rosewood tamp, but maybe he’ll have days he feels like using the giraffe instead. And if not, I’ll put this guy on eBay around Christmas-time to make some whimsical coffee lover’s day.

I was happy with this score.

 

The hand-embroidered cover encloses a dozen never-used dinner napkins in a lovely white damask fabric.

They’re big. Twenty-three inches square. Enough for the largest lap.

Yes, that is the letter D hand embroidered on each napkin. No, the letter D does not figure into any of our names. Here’s the thing: our sweet dog Zoe seems to have a vendetta going against any cloth she can get her teeth on. She’s chewed up a large number of dish towels and cloth napkins. We’re getting better about keeping them out of her reach, but she’s a wily creature and still snags them from time to time. So I needed cloth napkins. I got a dozen beautiful ones for – are you ready? – fifty cents. So as far as I’m concerned, the D stands Danged Decent Deal.

Why were they so inexpensive? (I refuse to use the word ‘cheap’ for such nice napkins.) The lady who sold them to me (probably in her 70s) was given a lot of stuff that had been her aunt’s. These napkins were from her aunt’s husband’s first wife so her aunt never used them. And now it was time to clear her home of all the stuff that had been her aunt’s.

So the dozen napkins were fifty cents.

I went back out on Saturday morning by myself. Found some ten-cent magazines and the rest of those DVDs, and met some pets. (No more chickens though.)

 

I picked up a lovely Noritake dinner plate.

   

Sometimes you want something a little fancy to eat from. It will go great with the napkins. As I was leaving this sale, I paused to chat with an older gentleman and his miniature schnauzer. He struck a pose and said, “Our mustaches match!”

I had to get their picture, of course, and as I did he said, “You know what’s the best thing about a dog like this?” I couldn’t imagine, but he had a ready answer.

“He’s a chick magnet!”