She Shoots! She Scores!

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure the dreaded 2020 is not over yet – 2021 seems to be channeling the spirit of its predecessor quite nicely, thank you. I actually wrote this post over three weeks ago, but I dawdled a bit on posting it…which was a mistake.

The first glitch was that we had an ice storm. From what long-time residents tell me, this was an ice storm like no one had seen here before. If there are Hundred Year Floods, then this was the Hundred Year Ice Storm. First it rained, then the rain got colder and colder, and turned to liquid ice, and coated everything. Everything. Salem is known for our beautiful trees, and every tree had an inch or more of glittering ice on it. Which weighed them all down, trees were bent to the ground. And then – they started to break.

Huge limbs started falling in the night. Whole trees split down the middle. Birches and oaks were especially hard hit, and a lot of huge oaks were completely uprooted. Power lines, tangled in the huge street trees, started coming down. And transformers began to explode. I heard four or five in the area around my house go before there was one more large bang – and the lights went out.

My electricity was out for five days. My gas furnace needs electricity to ignite, so no heat. I was able to manually light burners on the stove to cook, which is a very weird experience in the pitch dark. Thank heavens for my headlamp I bought for early morning trips to the dog park. It got colder and colder. After the second night, I begged a bed from my ex (his apartment had only a brief power outage) and the dogs and I slept over there. When they crews finally came and reconnected my block, I went out and clapped and cheered for the guys. I hope I never take heat and light and convenience for granted again.

However, the fun was not yet over. The city looked like a war zone – in fact, the WWII memorial downtown looked like a battle had just taken place there. Cleanup crews were out immediately, and it's only the last few days that the sound of chain saws and wood chippers has not been constant. Part of the collateral damage was that the Internet was knocked out. And even when it showed they had fixed the storm outage in my area, I still had no WiFi. I'm not particularly proud of the fact I was more fretful over not having any Internet for three weeks than I was about not having power. It's a little scary, how much of our daily lives depends on the Web. It didn’t help when they failed to show up for the repair appointment I had a week ago, and I had to wait five more days for another appointment. In fact I was in a right old snit about it. I send out huge thanks to my friends who listened to me whine during that week!

We are more or less back to normal, and Spring is getting closer; in fact, there are daffodils blooming in my yard. Perhaps it was 2020’s last hurrah. Let’s hope so!

With that explanation for the delay, let me take you now to the post I wrote in those more-innocent days of three weeks ago…

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Driving home from the dog park Thursday morning I noticed a big Estate Sale sign leading into my neighborhood. Even though it was early, barely eight o’clock (we hit the dog park at first light), naturally I followed the sign, which led me to a street 3 blocks from mine. I went on home with Zoë and after feeding the gang, checked Craigslist for more info on the sale. Sure enough it was there, along with a listing for another sale back in my old neighborhood, and that one had a Picture of Interest.

Back in October when I had knee surgery and Marcia was staying with me, I put my queen size bed in the guest room and moved the twin bed for me to use. Much easier to get in and out of than the larger and higher one. I liked having the bigger bed in the guest room, so I decided to part ways with the pair of twin beds in there and get a double or queen instead. That room has a rather large closet – in fact it is just about the size of a twin bed, and so I put a bed in there. 

It was quite cozy and I enjoyed sleeping in there from time to time, but as I've gotten older and creakier it got harder to do things like change the sheets. So I moved the bed out of the closet and have now turned it into my cozy reading nook.

So…I have been looking for a different bed since fall. Saved a search on Craigslist so I see all the new listings, and let me tell you, there are a lot of ugly beds out there! I looked at that estate sale listing and saw a possible candidate, so I headed out, all masked up and keeping my social distance.

When I got to the sale, I chatted with one of the workers while I looked at a few things on the driveway, and I noticed a footboard and side rails for a bed. Asked her if they went with the headboard I'd seen in the picture and she said she didn’t know for sure, her boss at the estate sale company handled the furniture. “He’s the one who knows about that, things like what kind of feet are worth more,” she said. My heart sank a little, sounded like he might actually be an expert, and when I went inside I saw that some things were pretty pricey. Couldn’t locate the headboard in any of the bedrooms, but then I realized they had moved all the furniture into the living/dining room. And there it was behind a couple of ottomans, a double headboard just the size I've been wanting.

When I got close, my heart started to go pitty pat. I could see immediately this was a midcentury piece, either teak or walnut, possibly Danish. I've never seen anything like it (and I've looked at a lot of midcentury furniture since I bought my MCM house). 

Though made of wood, it appears to be woven – the top rail is carved, I'm sure by hand, to look like thick straps going over.

This thing is absolutely exquisite, and I knew I wanted it – if I could afford it. I tipped it toward me so I could see the price written on a piece of masking tape, fingers crossed.

Are you ready?

Five dollars. Five dollars. Holy yard sale gods. I about fainted…but didn’t want to take the time to pick myself up from the floor. I started wrestling that puppy out from behind those ottomans. About then the lady I'd talked to on the driveway came in and asked me if I wanted her to take it out for me. I managed to keep myself from jumping up and down with joy as I let her take it, saying I wanted the footboard and rails too.

I did a quick turn through the rest of the house, and emerged with a little splurge – a $4 Noritake hen with lovely details

plus a $2 original watercolor that’s been nicely framed. 

Let’s just say I was distinctly unimpressed with the knowledge of the ‘furniture expert’ who priced the bed, but perfectly happy to make such a score.

As it happens, I was even less impressed with the man when I stopped by the other sale on my way home. Turns out both were being handled by the same estate sale company, and I'm sure the "furniture expert" was the guy who seemed to be in charge at the second one. The guy in the garage greeting people – and not wearing a mask. In fact he appeared to be boasting about it to the person who went in just before me. Unlike the first sale, this place was way crowded, and I left almost immediately. If I had felt any twinge of remorse over my bargain with the bed (okay, I really didn’t!) it would have vanished after seeing him.

So my guest room is on its way to a new look. I still need to find a mattress and bedding, but that’s an adventure for another day. I've searched and searched online to try to get a line on the maker of the bed, but have found nothing comparable. So it may be quite rare. I found a stamp on the back that seems to be a date, “Aug 18” but the year is blurred, I think it's something like 1965. And ‘waln’ hand written, so it's probably walnut. But even though I haven’t found a match for it, perusing eBay and other sale sites convinces me I found an amazing deal, one of my best ever. Hop over to eBay and do a search for ‘midcentury headboard’. Let’s just say that none of them are priced at five dollars!

Happy Hopping

I'm happy to report that the garaging scene here in Salem is looking up. The proof? I managed to spend a whole $1.50 on Friday!

I was flying solo and promised myself that if I started to get too hot wearing a mask, I'd pack it in for the morning. This is definitely not an issue I've ever had in close to half a century of garaging! It turned out I had no problem getting through my list, which I had limited to the south part of town. Most of the sales again were meh, just nothing that needed to come home with me and not much conversation either. My first purchase was this book.

You can see its original bargain price, but that pales in comparison to the 50₵ that I paid! A couple of stops later I picked up a DVD for a buck.

Price-wise, the deal of the day had to be this stack of free magazines.

The real highlight of the morning was unexpected. I was heading toward the final stop on my GPS route, when I passed a house with something in the yard that made me turn around and go back for a better look.

Aren’t these hoops terrific? I've been trying to come up with some kind of inexpensive arch for a trellis over the wide double gates into my yard, so my first thought was maybe this was something I could copy. Turns out these are made from galvanized pipe, which is not something I have the wherewithal to bend. As I was about to return to my car, I noticed a woman in the back yard, so I called hello and she came out. (Holding a colander full of strawberries she had just picked!) We had a nice conversation and she showed me around her garden, including the flock of young chickens and the guinea pigs who live under the deck. She and her husband have spent the last 3 years turning the former lawn into a productive food and ornamental garden. They made the hoop trellises themselves, and she confirmed it was quite a lot of work. Those vines you see climbing up are hops vines, which also grow on their back fence.

It's always delightful to visit someone’s garden. But it was all I could do not to grab those fresh-picked strawberries and run!

A Quickie!

I was on a mission last Friday to stay with practical stuff that I actually need. Which was fairly (if not 100%) successful. Found a broom at the first estate sale Judy & I went to, what could be more practical than that?

The most practical item: needed a new trash can for under the sink. Found the perfect one, and then used it the rest of the morning to corral my other finds. Made me think I should always go garaging with an empty trash can in the car!

Reddest item: A toss-up between the brand new silicone spatula and the set of measuring cups. I’m giving the cups away to someone else, so let’s go with the spatula.

Coziest item: two skeins of Icelandic wool for a buck. But I don’t see yarn, I see a warm pair of felted slippers (one of these days).

Most vintage item: As we were leaving a really junky looking sale I noticed what I thought might be one of those old bed lamps, which you hooked over the headboard of your bed so you can read comfortably and turn it off easily when you get sleepy. (That’s how we all fall asleep, yes?) It turned out to be a vintage bathroom light 

complete with a dismayed-looking face for a plug. 

The price was fifty cents, how could I not take a chance on it? I put a query on the local Next Door site asking if anyone knew where I could get it rewired, and almost immediately got a reply saying her husband is a retired electrician who would be glad to do that for me. So I schlepped it a few blocks over to their house. Gary took one look and said the wiring is just fine, but come out to the shop and he would burnish off all the rust and gunk on the base and end caps. Which he did, it’s ready for a new coat of spray paint. Wouldn’t take a penny, and ended up showing me several of his other projects. Besides being an electrician he does plumbing, carpentry, you name it. He restores cars and motorcycles. He makes beautiful walking canes that he gives to anyone who needs one. He buys pieces of antique rifles and painstakingly fits them into new pieces. I finally asked him if he ever eats or sleeps; he laughed and said he has a lot of nervous energy. I could only think of Michelangelo; I bet he had a lot of nervous energy too.

Best bang for the buck: Picked up a new Rubbermaid utensil tray to help organize my pantry, like this one. My price: a quarter. Amazon’s price: over $16. Good grief.

Happiest piece of scrap fabric: The sale with the waste basket was at a quilter’s house, and there were free scraps. This is my favorite.

Funniest item that is also blue: at the junky looking sale, another shopper pointed to an item and asked what it was. “It’s a cat carrier,” was the answer. “My daughter just had to have it.” She sounded good-natured but I believe I detected an eye roll. I glanced over at the item in question, and when the other shopper didn’t take it I strolled over and picked it up. When I asked how much, the lady said make an offer. I shrugged (don’t really need another pet carrier) and said I could do a dollar. “Sold,” she said. So for one dollar I brought home a new carrier for Millie. She is going to be an astronaut the next time she has to go to the vet.

Isn’t it a hoot? They retail for about $70. Seems well made. And Millie will have a swell view from inside.

A Good Omen for the New Year!

One of the folks whose blog I read is Kelly Cline, an amazing quilter. I think I first found her site because she does a lot of quilting using vintage textiles, and as you may know those things follow me home from sales like little lost puppies.

So Sunday evening a new post on her blog popped up on my feed reader entitled "We Have a Ruler Winner!" You can imagine my surprise as I began to read:

CONGRATULATIONS TO Queen of Fifty Cents!!! I don’t know your name, or who you are, but you are the winner and I love your thrifty blog! 

Seems like a good omen for a creative year to win a set of quilting rulers before the first week has passed.

The only slight hiccup is that these are used for free motion quilting, which I have not (yet!) done. But what better motivation to learn, right? I'll keep you posted on my free motion adventures once they begin.

Meanwhile, here's a piece I just finished, made in large part as a learning exercise. I used some of the upholstery sample fabrics I picked up in September for the rooster. In fact all of the fabric, thread and batting came from other people's driveways.

I tried out some of the techniques from the Craftsy class I've been watching called Stupendous Stitching.  I learned how to do the edge binding using a felling foot, and the hanging sleeve on the back with the blindstitch foot that came with my Bernina I found on Craigslist. A total thrifting project!

High Contrast

I knew from the addresses programmed into my GPS that we were going to experience a wide variety of residences on Friday. Our first two stops? The golf course/country club neighborhood, and then a mobile home park that has been around since the Fifties.

I probably felt just a leeeetle bit more at home at the second place!

The country club place was ginormous. Let’s put it this way: my house is big but it's built on two levels so it doesn’t seem overly large. That house was also on two levels…each one just a few hundred square feet smaller than my whole place. And only three bedrooms, so you can imagine the size of each. Here’s the foyer, which I'm sure is bigger than my master bedroom!

The floor covering in the kitchen at first glance appeared to be a classic black and white pattern, 

but each dark square had a rose imprinted in it.

Most of the items for sale were, as Judy put it, just not our taste. Especially in the man’s closet – I've never seen so many pastel silk sport coats in one place, and there were a number of silk shirts in wild prints. But I did grab this throw, 

because I noticed immediately it is 100% alpaca. 

An alpaca throw – how luxurious is that? I splurged ten bucks on it, and when I got home I looked up the brand. These things go for $200 to $500! I just love the natural colors.

I kept feeling splurgy, and succumbed to the charms of a Denby Arabesque teapot, cups and saucers.

On my last pass through the kitchen, I picked up a mystery item.

The lady running the sale and I both thought it might be something for brewing coffee, but after we got home, KK figured out its true purpose. It's a wine decanting funnel! Just what I needed!

On we went to the mobile home park, where the entire single-wide abode would have fit inside the foyer and living room at the other house. I didn’t find anything there; picture motorcycle riding leathers and DVDs of guy films. But KK possibly got the deal of the day – a late model Sodastream Jet for three bucks! Just the CO2 canister is worth ten times that amount.

We moved on to more contrast, a 1930’s house in the lovely older neighborhood where the governor’s mansion is located. The same folks had a sale a few months ago and told us they were going to retire to Mexico or Costa Rica or somewhere (my grasp of geography is surpassed only by my leaky memory). So this was the retirement sale, and since they used to be antique dealers we thought it could be interesting. Which it was, although they seemed to think they were still running an antique store, at least from the prices. Some of the items struck us a creepy, 

but there were cute things as well. 

Here’s a good example of both – we thought KK looked ravishing in this headdress, but the taxidermy battle to the death behind her…not so much.

I think they might not have been completely on the same page, since the husband was giving deals because they have to be out of the house by the end of the month, but the wife wasn’t budging on her prices very high prices. The only thing I bought was this, 

and the wife huffed that she didn’t know where her husband was getting his prices because she had been selling them for twice as much. (Couldn’t have sold many, there was an overflowing boxful.) Anyway, I think this is a guinea hen, made of a sturdy wire armature and rope and feathers. 

I just like her. I was thinking if I leave her outside she might grow moss and look cool in the yard. But then I was also thinking she might just disintegrate in the rain, so for now she’s hanging out on top of the coat closet with a vase of dried alliums.

I like the contrast of her texture against the smooth glass vase.

Two? That’s Plenty!

Sometimes when we start out on Friday mornings, we make a quick stop at Taco Bell so I can pick up the bite of breakfast I didn’t have time for in the rush of getting everything done. (Dog park, then feed pets, then dry my hair if it’s raining, which it was, then change clothes from park duds to something I'm willing to let KK see me in, then get all the addresses in the GPS, then…) Usually it really is a quick stop, but not this week. There was a grandpa and a teenage girl who needed a verbal tour of the entire breakfast menu, which they had to think about for a while before deciding what to order. Then there was another grandpa who was quite deaf, so he took a while. Then me, and I took less than a minute, but then had to wait for everyone else’s food to be prepared. Finally we were off to our first estate sale on the south outskirts of town, arriving perhaps five minutes after they opened instead of a few minutes before.

Alas, the delay was enough to cost KK something she saw in the Craigslist pictures and wanted to buy. See the silhouettes of the two skiers?

Already gone. Dang it. I fared better, scoring three that I like.

Then we overheard one of the sale helpers telling someone that all the quilt fabrics were out in the studio. Our ears stood up, and we headed there.

Oh my heavens. I have seen nirvana, and it is having your own large studio to work in. Sigh. Maybe someday. When I win the lottery. I have never bought a lottery ticket, but I'm sure it doesn’t change the odds by much.

Fabric was selling for $3 a pound, and fabric can be heavy, but the ladies who were shopping seemed thrilled. And it was an amazing collection. There were thousands of pieces of quilt fabric, and a variety of notions. I love finding good notions at a bargain price, and picked up a package of fusible tape that will be useful. 

And I'm thrilled to get a much larger cutting mat than I've been working on.

Five bucks seemed reasonable, and this is probably the mat sold at a chain fabric store for $70. In any case, Millie likes it.

Though this collection of fabric made my stash look pitifully small, I was determined not to buy much. When I found the stack of Japanese prints, I picked out several pieces for future play

as well as the cutest chicken fabric ever, and stayed within a pound limit.

Isn’t this one pretty?

I spent longer in the studio than KK, and eventually found her back in the garage sitting at a table (demonstrating the comfort of the chair) and chatting with other shoppers and the cashier. When we were on our way again, she said that one of the guys she had talked to said he was from New England, and while he seen red leaves and yellow leaves on the trees here, he really missed orange leaves.

We were indignant! Don’t get me wrong, I loved seeing New England and the beautiful fall colors, but we spend half our time these days exclaiming about trees. all over town they are magnificent, especially with all the dark green fir and redwood trees to set off the brighter colors. We spent the rest of the day pointing to trees as we drove and declaring, “There! That one is definitely orange!” I rather suspect we may do it the rest of our lives. Can’t you see is in thirty years, propping ourselves up on our canes and yelling, “That one is pure orange, I tell  you!”

Our second stop was clear across town, an estate sale, though not inside the house as they usually are. There were things in the garage of the Sixties house with the huge yard, and in a barn off to the side as well. KK found a long stand-up shoe horn in a box of dollar items in the garage, but the guy said it wasn’t a dollar and someone must have moved it there. So she handed it back to him and we headed to the barn. Which held an amazing assortment of junk and was very ill-lit. I pulled my flashlight out of my purse to peruse the tables. KK spotted this knife stone, which I had mentioned I wanted.

I have no idea how old it is, but look how worn down the sides are.

I might have been interested in the Bernina serger (I've never used a serger and am curious) but it was $150. Too much for mere curiosity. Then in a box under the table I found some fabrics, and thanks to my flashlight found this needlepoint that I'm imagining I can use in some way

as well as this absolutely gorgeous fabric.

My hands told me it is wool challis, and when I did a burn test it appears to truly be wool. I think even the selvages look classy.

There are about two yards, and it cost a dollar. Even if I never do anything but pet the fabric it will be worth that. Hmmm. If I have any left after making a shirt or something, perhaps I could make a stuffed bunny with the remnants…

When we emerged from the barn, we got into conversation with a relative of the lady who had lived there. He told us she is 92, has all her marbles, still drives, and recently moved to Capitol Manor, a local retirement mecca. We started talking about the age of the house, and he was telling us about some of the features of this one. Perhaps it was our enthusiasm for mid-century architecture that led him to let us go in the house for a few minutes. I wish I had had the nerve to take a picture of the view from the living room(it seemed so tacky to whip out my camera) – a long vista off to the east with vineyards changing to their fall colors and an emerald green field of something like rye grass. It was stunning. It gave me the same feeling as this painting by Charlie Baird. 

We spent so long at these two sales that we didn’t care much when we couldn’t find the third on my list. The address did not exist. I rechecked the Craigslist ad later, and it turned out there was one address in the title line, but in the address by the map they had transposed two digits. You can guess which one I had used. But no matter, two sales were just the right number!