TEA AND COOKIES AND YARD SALE ORNAMENTS

Sunday was our annual tea-and-cookies (among other things) open house. Everything we serve is homemade, so I didn’t go garaging Saturday. Really, I didn’t. I just took a rather, um, circuitous route to the grocery store to stock up on supplies I'd need for a lot of baking. Not my fault there were signs posted for several sales. I’ve spent too long training my car to turn in response to those signs, and it would be cruel to confuse it by ignoring them, right?

I stopped for at least half a dozen sales, but bought only two items. One was this little loom for one of my staff.
Cathy asked me to keep a lookout for one of those old looms that we used to make potholders with. Can’t think of the name. Jiffy loom? Anyway, she’s an artist and I'm hoping she’ll have fun with this modern version until a vintage one comes along.

She made me this fabulous pin, isn’t it beautiful? It's decoupaged onto her son’s old name badge from a store he worked at. Recycling at its best!

My other yard sale purchase was for myself, a beautiful mug to replace one I broke recently. Alas, I managed to break this one within three seconds of walking into my house with it. Dang!

At the same sale where I bought the mug, I chatted for a few minutes with a woman who bought a lovely piece of vintage crochet, a large doily of variegated pink roses, beautifully made. She said she didn’t know anything about it but just liked it, and I explained a little about crochet. We waved as we parted, and then about half an hour later as I left the 99 Cent Store, a pickup pulled up and paused. “Hey, that’s not a garage sale!” the driver hollered, and it was the lady who’d bought the doily.

The last sale I stopped at had mostly children’s toys, outgrown by their two boys. Isn’t this little stool adorable? Hope somebody bought him.

Another item on the driveway was some windup toy playing music that finally limped to a stop. When it ceased I realized I was still hearing the tune; it was the dad, softly whistling. “You do that better than the toy,” I told him, and he laughed. “I should, I've heard it enough.” I told him that was the kind of toy I think of as the grandparent’s revenge—you give it to the kid and send them home, so you don’t have to listen to it.

I probably will not go out for the next two Saturdays; our oldest friend is coming down from San Francisco next week. But that will be a good time to look back over the year’s finds and stories. And to start the process, I went around the house this morning looking at some of the Christmas decorations I've thrifted:
Two quilts adorn our entry this year. They’re probably imports, but I love their cheerful colors.

Last year I picked up a whole bunch of these glass ornaments, which made great party favors. Wish I'd remembered to take the picture before most of them left for new homes!


Our tree is full of ornaments we’ve collected over the past 35 years, many from yard sales:
A tiny wooden train with paper wheels
A wonderfully silly ram made of wool, with pipe cleaner horns
I have several of these painted metal cardinals—they were a broken set of wind chimes

Handmade cross stitch ornament
Woody enjoys helping to decorate the tree


Elsewhere around the house are more decorations…
The polar bear came from a store about 15 years ago, but his penguin friend is an old Steiff from a yard sale

My little collection of ‘smokers’ from Germany. These are incense burners, designed so that the smoke completes the image.
I bought my dumpling lady in Nuremburg, Germany many years ago; when the incense is lit her dumplings appear to be steaming! Her companions came from people’s driveways, along with a lifetime supply of incense cones that I picked up with the blue mail carrier.

I love the lines of this rusted metal deer.

My dress form wore a beautiful silk dress for the party. This dress fits me quite well, and I hope someday to have some fancy event to wear it to—knowing I’d probably be the only person there wearing a fifty cent dress!


I found both of these pieces this year—the chalkware snowman was still packaged (he’s not vintage, but I love him anyway) and the bottlebrush tree was given to me at a yard sale. The ‘snow’ at the tree’s base is cut from a thrifted white angora sweater that I felted.



Our party on Sunday was fun. I'm not much of a party person, but this was a good mix of colleagues and friends who came and went throughout the afternoon. I meant to take pictures before the party started but I was still prepping at the appointed hour. Thank heavens everyone was fashionably late! Several who came have read my blog and asked to see various items I've written about this year. I had a better time than a sane person should, showing off my Saturday morning treasures. One or two folks might even have been inspired to try driveway shopping themselves. Hope so—it's too much fun not to share!

I hope you have lovely holidays, and that the new year will bring us all good fortune.

HOW TO FELT SWEATERS

I had a comment on last week's post asking how to felt sweaters. I was going to email Miss Lila but Blogger doesn't reveal email addresses. And perhaps others would like to know as well.

The way I make felt is super easy!
1. Go to garage sales and buy wool (or alpaca or cashmere--needs to be all or nearly all natural animal fibers) sweaters for as little money as possible. I rarely spend more than a buck. Keep an eye out for sweaters with a hole in them--people will sell these for practically nothing (or give it to you) and a hole or two won't hurt a thing. You can work around them.

2. Take your sweaters home and throw them in the washing machine with some detergent, and maybe a towel or two for roughage. Wash with hot water on a regular (not gentle) cycle.

3. Throw them in the dryer and dry on hot.

4. Remove from dryer. Voila, you have felt! Once in a while a sweater won't have felted enough and I'll put it through the process again. But it's a pretty reliable system and nearly always works.

I was cold this morning working on the computer (we haven't yet turned on any heat and even in SoCal it gets chilly) so I cut the sleeves off one of my stash of felted sweaters. With a slit for the thumb in the right spot, I now have fingerless mittens that took about two minutes to make. Next time I'll cut them longer though (guess that would be next time I have two minutes!).

If you need some inspiration for using your felt, there are fabulous pics over on Flickr. Here's what I got with a search for 'felted sweaters.' http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=felted%20sweaters&w=all

PINK FLAMINGOS AND CANDLE JEWELRY

I'm sure some people think the hallmark of living in southern California is being able to go around in your shirt sleeves most of the year, or having plants bloom in the winter (not to mention needing to mow your lawn), or having Disneyland on your doorstep. Yes, all those things are true, but you and I know that the really amazing thing is going to yard sales a week and a half before Christmas!

Most charming moment of the morning: the seven year old girl still in her flannel jammies & slippers singing a Christmas carol. I think it was Hark the Herald (almost typed Harold!) Angel Sings…but it might have been O Little Town of Bethlehem. Let’s put my lack of memory down to excitement over the goodies I came home with rather than a pure senior moment. (My senior moments are beginning to merge into senior days and weeks.)

Most gratifying moment: I paid the good old boy lounging on his wooden chair fifty cents for a small bowl, and he handed me back a quarter. “That's for being nice,” he said. Now, whoever said being nice didn’t pay? Okay, it doesn’t pay much, but still!

Several items came from a sale run by two women. Maybe sisters, couldn’t tell for sure. They had a bunch of new nick nacky things that I liked, and I asked if they had been gifts. Of course they were, so I got to haul out our “If there were no gifts there would be no garage sales” line. Talk about reliable material—that always gets a laugh, often a rueful one. I asked who had given them one of the things I bought. “That was from my ex-boyfriend’s mother.”

Nuff said.

I saw another amazing vehicle parked in a garage where I was perusing goods on the driveway. Not as large as the 1951 Bentley from a few weeks ago, or even the vintage Mustang convertible, but this one gets points both for classiness and creativity.

They started with a regular canvas-covered kid’s bike trailer and rebuilt it, complete with tiki god on the back. I love the contrast of the cute six year old with the pin-up girls on the fabric! Now that the kids in the family are getting too big for the cart, they plan to retool it once more—for the family dog.


I spend $8.75 and brought home:

The last of the wine glasses I need for our open house next weekend. (Next weekend? Sheesh, I'd better get busy!) If there’s enough room in our boxes of Christmas stuff (can’t remember how full they are, they’re still in the attic—told you I needed to get busy!) I think I’ll wrap up and keep all of this year’s party glasses instead of donating them after Christmas.

This cute bowl (from the good old boy who thought I was nice) is Spode—perfect for some small nibbles at the party. He asked me if he was going to see this on Antiques Roadshow and I said no, just on my blog. I checked the price of these puppies when I got home—he sold me a bowl that retails for about $30 for 25 cents. Guess the wages of niceness are better than I thought!

BTW, that’s not a crack on the lower right, just a stray dog hair I didn’t notice until I downloaded the pictures!

A pile of acorns. These appear to be real but have been preserved somehow. I just like acorns.

These four little votives are absolutely gorgeous—deep saturated color on the outside, shiny silver inside. Can't wait to try candles in them.

I figured these picture holders might be fun as tree ornaments. But maybe I'll use them on the table at the open house to hold cards describing some of the food.

Now, this is the perfect example of gift giving run amuck. Candle jewelry. Candle jewelry, for heaven’s sake! Brand new, the Kohl’s price tag is still on the back with the $12.99 price scratched over with a pen. I thought these might be fun tree ornaments too. But when I opened the package I realized they are on posts exactly like earrings without the little back that slides on and heck, I've got plenty of those. My candles will have to fend for themselves. As far as I'm concerned, this is three pairs of festive holiday earrings!


The one thing I really wanted to find was something to wrap a couple of gifts—DVDs and CDs. I’ve heard of using thrifted scarves, so I figured something like that or even a piece of clothing with interesting fabric would be fun. And there it was at the first sale—the pink flamingo skirt.
Further down the road was a sale with lots of bows and ribbons—perfect match!
I think some flamingos in sunglasses will be a welcome relief from all the Santas and reindeer and snowflakes on everyone else’s gifts. I'm kind of hoping there will be a bit left over so I can make a holder for my fuschia pink mp3 player!

GRUMPY GUYS AND YARD SALE PRIDE

This time of year, as I head out on Saturday morning, I fully expect this will be the week that I buy nothing and have not a single conversation with anyone. I drive along making my backup plan on what to blog about. It will come to that, so the planning isn’t wasted, but I won’t have to use it this week. Though the morning was plagued with two of my least favorite things: sellers who are way too proud of their stuff, and signs for nonexistent sales.

The first place I stopped admittedly had nice things, but I don’t think the twenty-somethings having the sale had ever actually gone to a yard sale in their lives. A lady near me asked the price of a Christmas ornament, and was told something like five dollars. As soon as the seller turned away, she and I locked eyes. “Sheesh, this is a yard sale,” I muttered from the corner of my mouth. Her eyebrows flicked as she quietly set the ornament down, and we both left. You might pay five bucks for something like it at TJ Maxx, but not on someone’s driveway.

Not my five bucks, anyway, and evidently not hers either.

Five bucks came up again down the road. I met up with Linda, who shared the purple boot moment with me last week, and her friend Shelley (who was wearing a fabulous hat) perusing a sale. They told me sotto voce that the prices here were all over the map. Shelley found a Longaberger basket for a dollar, but they wouldn’t budge from the $5 price on a Pyrex measuring cup, which is only $5.99 new.

Linda told me there was an aftermath to the purple boot story from last week. She went back to her car, which was parked by the next door neighbor’s drive, still chuckling over those purple boots and the brain on a chain. Evidently her car extended a couple of inches into the drive (and I saw it and wouldn’t even have thought it was that close) and the guy who lives there came out and started yelling at her for blocking his driveway. He said he had called the cops and they were on their way and how dare she and on and on. After apologizing Linda got in her car and drove away. I'm happy to say she has not yet been apprehended by the police for her heinous crime.

My charitable side says this guy must lead a miserable life to be so upset over such a nothing. He wasn't trying to get out of his driveway, which wouldn’t have been a problem anyway. I know we should pity him. However, my noncharitable side, which is probably the larger one, would love for him to suffer some nasty consequence of being so mean to such a nice lady. And even though Linda knew she really hadn’t done anything to deserve it, well, we’re women and it’s hard not to keep playing that kind of scene over and over in your head. And we’re from the Midwest (Linda’s from Iowa, I grew up in Missouri and Oklahoma) so we take stuff to heart. Too bad she hadn’t bought those silly purple boots—the spiked heels would have made a great weapon!

This is the kind of behavior I expect to see from people shopping in malls during the Christmas season, which is one reason I stopped going to stores this time of year. Yes, it's partly frugality, but mostly I don't want to be exposed to overwrought shoppers who suck all the joy out of the season. Hmmm, maybe that was it—the guy was getting ready to go to the mall!

On a lighter note, two sights amused me during the morning. One was an SUV that passed me with an African grey parrot sitting on a stand on the passenger seat. Some people take their dogs with them wherever they go, this person evidently takes their parrot. The other happened as I left a sale—floating down from overhead I heard a man’s voice calling, “Ashley! Can you see me?” I looked up and saw this dad putting up Christmas lights on his roofline. Ashley must have been pretty young, because dad was still calling, “Look up, Ashley, I'm up here!” as I drove away.

By the end of the morning I'd managed to spend $7—pretty big outlay for this time of year! The treasure hunt netted:
A couple of door prizes for children’s librarians—a crystal growing kit...


...and three miniature baseball bats…our Summer Reading Program next year is being sponsored by the Angels baseball team (thank you, thank you, Angels!).



A large spatula, which I'm hoping is silicone and not plastic, to add to my collection.

I love these things and use them constantly, sometimes all of them in the course of prepping a single meal. The existing collection:

A felt watering can.
It would be a cute with fresh flowers with a plastic container dropped in, or would make a great gift basket. Or maybe I'll display last week’s Peter Rabbit puppet in it—didn’t he hide from Mr. McGregor in a watering can?
I've been wanting a new container for my collection of ice cream scoops. The old basket was getting pretty tired.

I'm thrilled with this metal container, which matches the tile on our kitchen counters almost too well. It's a little small for the whole collection, but I can just rotate pieces—and maybe downsize a few.



Remember the lovely wool rug I got a couple of weeks ago? It's missing some stitches in one corner, so I was watching for some wool to repair it with. Should be able to winnow out something that will work from this needlepoint kit, and frankly I think it will be a much better use for the yarn than the pheasant picture it was intended for. Though if anyone is into pheasants and would like the painted canvas, just let me know.

In keeping with the season, I picked up this cute little snowman ornament, brand new and in his box with the $10 price tag on it. Don’t you love getting a $10 something for fifty cents?
Another seasonal item is this cookie press, with 10 discs for various shapes. I do a lot of baking but I've never owned one of these, and I'm looking forward to trying it out. I liked its stainless steel hard edged look—the juxtaposition of that with cookies shaped like trees and stars is a hoot.
Lastly, I found a little white cotton tablecloth embroidered with Mother Goose (literally) reading to her goslings. There must be a place in my office for this!