Gathering Dust

Cleaning Up the Guest Room

I don't get a lot of company.  That might be because it's hard to find the bed in the guest room.  The bed is usually just a repository of junk  er, wonderful vintage finds. 

But I cleaned off the bed so I could show off this pretty pastel quilt that my Mom made for me.  Most of my house is darker colors, but my guest room and craft room are lighter and brighter.  My pillow shams were made from vintage table clothes by Betty.  My dolls were made by my Grandma many years ago.

Of course, all those "wonderful vintage finds" had to go somewhere.  How about here.

   

Actually that's only part of the stuff that was piled on the bed.

 

There's lace to sort.

 

 

The wisk brooms and letters are going to the antique mall.

On a different subject- this ISN'T junk...look what I got in the mail.

 

My own little watercolor Christmas card from Karla.  I just love the combination of the single sparkly ornament in the nest.

We spent Christmas day at Karla's Cottage with Sugarwings

and a very expectant Twinkle.  ( I borrowed these pictures from Karla)

 

Sugarwings favorite new saying is "I'm not crazy anymore".  Her mom thinks it's a variation of "I'm not a BABY anymore".  My husband really liked it- so now he won't stop saying "I'm not crazy anymore"...but it might make ME crazy.

 

Karla had a Christmas present for me in this great box.

 

These beautiful, "sparklier than seen here" earrings.  Karla's sister bought all Karla's sisters earrings, and Karla thought I needed sister earrings, too.  How sweet is that?  She also gave me one of my favorite china stencils buttons packaged on an old button card. 

The stencil button inspired me to write a little post about china buttons on the Button Floozies Blog.  Check it out if you like buttons, too. 

Squeezing the Most out of $34.75

 

What a treat- finding my favorite kind of estate sale the day after Christmas.  Upper middle class neighborhood, houses built in the 1960's & 70's (think ORIGINAL owners who didn't throw much away)- and lots of the little pieces of weird junk that I love in the $1- $5 price range.

The sale had plenty in the "over $5" range, too- but I'll go back tommorrow on half price day to check that out.

The first picture shows a needlebook; a label moistener- it's ceramic- you fill it with water and roll your label or stamps over the cylinder to wet them; a magnifying glass, pearls & a pearl covered sewing kit for your purse.

 

Pull out the cylinder and there's a thimble, thread and inside the spool is a stash of needles.

 

Besides good sewing stuff, there were knitting supplies, too- all of this for $2.50- that's less than one pair of new needles cost.

 

Here's a little knitting tool quiz- do you know what the circles in the plastic box are?    Stitch markers to put on your knitting needles to keep track of beginnings, ends, turning points, whatever, on your needles.

 

And this doohickey?  Its a row counter for keep track of how many rows you knit- you put it on the knitting needle and as you finish a row, you move the counter to the next number.

I'm guessing that if your a knitter, you probably already knew this- and if you aren't, you probably don't care....but thanks for indulging me.

 

This was the most expensive thing I bought- $5- its a salesman's sample card for mother of pearl buttons and buckles.  The buttons are BIG- about 1 1/2" in diameter.

 

I can't pass by a spool of cream, white, ecru, or beige crochet thread or a cone of string.  I paired them up with a little $2 marble vase and an old hymnal with a great cover.

I got a few other little books, too.

 

This one looks like it was written in some kind of code- I think its probably part of a fraternal group.

 

Another thing I can't pass by is advertising with an old phone number (Evergreen 0750) or a pre-zip code address.

 

This is a slide rule- I used to know how to use one.  In the days before electronic calculators, this would do all your multiplying, dividing, and calculate logarithms for you.

I managed to fit all of my purchases in one tote bag.

The tote bag is kind of fun- I used to be part of a Yahoo Group that decorated and altered dominos- this is a collage of dominos and altered games pieces made by members of the group.

A Yarn Surprise Ball, Auction Finds and Buddy & His Blanket

 

I got a fun present in the mail from Jeannie The Marmalade Gypsy .  She's a knitter and knows I'm a knitter, too.  She sent a yarn surprise ball- I'd heard of them, but never seen one. 

A yarn surprise ball is a ball of yarn that has been unwound and then rewound with little surprise gifts. I had only knit a few inches and the little Santa and faux Christmas candy fell out.  You can see the little wooden spool at the top of the yarn ball. 

This was real incentive to keep knitting to find out what else was in that ball.

 

Tiny playing cards, a rubber stamp, coins, buttons, sea glass- its amazing how much you can hide in a skein of yarn.  What a fun and different gift.  And the yarn was WONDERFUL- Cyprus Mohair.  It's Yarn Shop yarn as compared to Michaels or Hobby Lobby yarn, and there is a difference.

 

In my last post, I mentioned that I had been to several auctions in the last week.  I got a lot of stuff- some of my favorite things are the paper, books and ephemera. 

 

The Hansel & Gretel book has the most charming illustrations. 

 

The Jolly Jingle Picture Book has color illustrations, too- with a very stylized 30's look.

 

The Picture Dictionary for Children is full of cute drawings and simple grammer lessons.

 

But I was a little disturbed by the how many times they mention FIRE.

 

 

Maybe this is because when I was about 5 years old, I saw one of those Road Runner cartoons where the bad guy wrapped dynamite around the Road Runner's house and blew it sky high. 

What was going to keep that from happening to MY house? After all, if I saw it on TV, it must be something that really happened.  Sometimes at night I'd hear a noise and I'd gather all my courage and look out to see if Yosemite Sam was outside wrapping my house with a fuse.

 

And if I had a school book that said "The house is on fire, It may burn down"- well, certainly it could happen to my house, couldn't it?

So, other than the muliple references to fire, this is a cute book.

I'm going to try and have all these books in my Ebay Store by the end of the day.

   

Some sparkly & sweet little findings from the bottom of a jewelry box- I don't know why but I think I'm  more interested in these bits & pieces than the regular jewelry.

 

At the bottom of a box of sheet music- mostly 30's & 40's movie music- I found these pre 1900 pieces of German sheet music.  They have the BEST graphics.

 

Bundles of letters in air mail envelopes and stamps with great images.

 

Are they letters from a sweetheart,  letters between separated best friends, letters between pen pals who've been corresponding for years without ever meeting?

 

Nope, every one of them starts with "Dear Mom".

 

Remember when Mah Jong bracelets were "THE" thing?  Even though I don't wear my bracelets anymore, I still love the tiles- they look great in an wooden bowl or in an apothocary jar.

 

Even with all the auctioning, I had an itch to check out an antique store, so I went to my friend Jackie's booth and found this fab floral hat.

 

And underneath it, this tomato pin cushion and emery strawberry.  They are actually more pink that the picture shows, which makes them kind of different.  Next to them is the cute spoon that I got from Laurie.  That girl is a painting and creating machine- she sells on Ebay and Etsy- check out her blog to find out where you can get her sweet creations.

   

One of the best things I got this year didn't come from an auction or an estate sale- it's my puppy dog Buddy.  We adopted him in Sept, and now he's pretty much running the house.

 

He particularly likes this fuzzy afghan I knit.  If its on the couch and he wants to sleep on the floor, he just paws at it until he's got it on the floor and circles and tramples on it until he's made a nice little nest for himself.  He must feel pretty safe, because he'll sleep on his back with his paws and legs loose at his side.

 

Buddy does have a few weird little habits that I don't quite understand.  When I polish silver, Buddy will do whatever he can to get the polishing cloth and roll in it.  YUCK!  I wear gloves when I polish because I hate the smell and the mess- and he wants to cover himself in it.  Sometimes even after I put the cloth away, he'll roll in the spot that the cloth was lying on.

That's probably enough family secrets.  I have to finish The House at Riverton- its overdue at the library- I was almost able to go a whole year without any library fines and then I blew in the last two weeks of the year...

Three Auctions in Seven Days- and all my pictures are of someone else's stuff

   

...except this- this is mine.  Tammy Smith of Homemade Circus sent it to me.  I showed her cute creations on my blog a few weeks ago after I met her at a craft show, and she wanted to thank me.  

   

It's so much fun to see a completely new idea and one that's so charming.

 

So, seriously, I've been to three auctions in the last seven days- but I don't have any pictures of what I bought.  I took tubs of stuff to the antique mall, and planned to take some pictures of my booth, but ended up taking pictures of some of my favorite booths.

These stone cherubs and the pictures below belong to Steve Rogers of Prize.

 

Doesn't everything look better under glass?

 

 

These pictures are from Joanna Votilla's booths.

 

Isn't this hardware cabinet FABULOUS?  Its about  four and half feet tall and four feet wide and has a bunch of drawers.

 

This is Joanne's other booth- very Hollywood glamour.

 

I'm interupting these pictures of fab antiques to complain a little bit.  Has anyone else ever bought a hank of tags, pulled a couple out and then found  that the rest of the tags are hopelessy snarled?  It happens to me all the time.  The only way to get  a tag out is by CUTTING it out- and then the string has to be tied.

Ok- thanks for listening to me complain.

 

This beautiful celluloid prayer book and rosary are from Susan Greer's booth.

   

Susan also had some cool letters in her booth.  The trick with letters is trying to find a meaningful word to spell.  "Shosh" was the best I could come up with but it doesn't really doesn't say anything to me.

 

Get rid of the "H"s and you have SOS- might be handy on a remote desert island. 

(I know that if my Mom is reading this, she is using her massive Scrabble enhanced brain to come up with a triple letter score word)

 

My last group of pictures are from my Miss Frenchie's  friends, sisters Teri Eliot and Gwen McClure, who buy their goods in France..

   

Aren't these cones of thread wonderful?

 

And this dress form has been collaged with French fashion prints.

 

Gwen pointed out something interesting to me.  The dress form is from the 1890's- 1910's- look at the large bust/small waist- it was meant to accomadate a dress with a bustle but its been collaged with more of a 50's style images.

 

Of course I love all these pieces, but aren't the pattern tissue paper flowers just the touch that makes you smile?

Well, that was a look at everyone else's stuff- maybe if the weather changes here and we get some sunlight, I can take some pictures of my stuff!

A Lazy Girl's Christmas

 

Don't be mislead by the title of this post and think it's some kind of guide to having an easy and stress free Christmas.  It's just a round up of my Christmas- and I am a lazy girl.

Case in point- the bowl of ornaments is my Christmas decoration.  That's right- decoration, not decorations-in years when I don't put up a tree, I usually just put out a bowl of ornaments.  This year it's yellow and gold, mostly because they were the ornaments that didn't seem to be selling at my antique booth. 

WARNING TO MY MOTHER:  don't read any further if you want to be surprised on Christmas morning.

 

I started and finished my Christmas shopping at the grocery store this afternoon- almost everyone is getting gift cards.

 

The guys get a chocolate bar with their cards.

The girls get handmade "containers" for their cards.

 

I printed images from The Vintage Workshop on their linen fabric sheets.  The linen fabric is so cool- you can run it through your printer, peel off the back and it's ready to sew (or glue).

 

I added some Swarovski crystals and attached to a drawstring bag.

 

This is picture of my great niece Grace with Milo, the dog that we lost in June.  Grace was only about a year old, but she went right up to Milo and gave him a hug.

I printed it on the linen fabric, added some embroidery stitches and a ribbon hanger- it would be cute on the Christmas tree, but it would be sweet hanging on the bedpost or a doorknob.

My nieces get their gift cards tucked in  journals.

 

I dug into my "good" paper stash- pretty wallpaper, flocked wallpaper and ledger paper and used them to cover chipboard books from K & Co.

 

 

 

Why do guys get chocolate bars and girls get handmade gifts?  Because the guys would throw the handmade gifts in the pile of torn wrapping paper.

So, that's it- I'll get these presents in the mail, and the lazy girl is ready to relax and watch Rudolph and Frosty.

The Estate Sale Ads Weren't That Promising...

 

...but I hadn't been to an estate sale in weeks, so I headed out this morning anyway.  (Don't feel too sorry for me, I've been getting my share of good junk at auctions.)

Today was a good day for sewing stuff and lace.

 

It was my "Lucky Day"- to find these Lucky Day button cards with the buttons still attached.

 

This beautiful floral hatbox had a surprise inside...

 

Lace and beautiful trims.

And at the bottom...

 

...a Madonna & Child print and...

 

...a sweet vintage birthday card.

One of my favorite finds doesn't have anything to do with sewing- it's this folk art dart board with a feather dart...and it's leaning against a nice white ironstone pitcher.

Great Graphics

   

I'm always drawn to the graphics and printing on old boxes, labels, signs..old anything.  This Bostonian shoe box is about falling apart, but I can't bring myself to toss it because it has such a great logo.

 

Chances are, I'll never use this "embroidery cotton", because I want to keep that pretty wrapper intact.

 

Even old game pieces seemed just a little bit more interesting.  These Bingo cards are some I wrapped with ribbon to sell at the antique mall.

 

Don't you think that Rice would taste better coming out of a canister like this than coming out of the red Minute Rice box?

(Might depend on who's making it...)

 

Much more attractive than the little paper packets I pour my oatmeal from.

 

Even old wrapping paper seems just a bit more distinctive.

 

I have a stack of 1950's Antiques magazines, but they have that "old paper" smell, so I tore out the pages with the best graphics, glued them to cardstock and used my Cuttlebug to make tags.

The tags would look better with strings, wouldn't they?  It seems to me that Avery charges about 50% more for tags with strings- and when I think about threading string through all those holes, I understand why...

Miss Frenchie Est Magnifique!!

   

Miss Frenchie's Holiday Brocante was a wild success- a beautifully decorated historic barn, dealers with inspiring displays and the best customers ever.

With all the excitement, I didn't get a lot of CLEAR pictures- but I know you'll be able to find some here, here, here, over here  and for sure, here.

One of the great things about the show was the customers "got it".  They didn't ask, "Why are there book pages on Elizabeth's floor?"

   

I had a stack of four ironstone plates, two that were crazed and two that weren't.  When a customer bought the crazed plates instead of the perfect plates, I knew she "got it"- the crazing brought character to the plates and gave them a past life, which, to me, is infinitely more interesting to me.

 

This is a great display put together by Deb & Elizabeth.  Stacks and stacks of tarnished silverplate, greenery and a fantastic light fixture adorned with antique men's shirt collars. Nobody asked "Didn't you have time to polish the silver?"- they just "got it".

Meeting people who read our blogs was a highlight of the show.  I've bought paper on-line from Mary Green in her eBay store  Green Paper Packages, and she's bought stuff from my booth at the antique mall.   We both live in the Kansas City area, but had never met.

Mary had a great package of paper & buttons for me- this tobacco envelope, a deposit box key tag, ledger paper- and these WONDERFUL cards:

 

Check out Mary's  Etsy store too- she offers FREE shipping.

   

I bought some great OLD French postcards from Gwen.  She travels to France twice a year to bring back a container of wonderful antiques & paper goods.

Besides the older postcards, she had a basketful of newer postcards with French handwriting on the back.

  

I scanned a bunch of backs- I think this will make a great collage background.  If you'd like to use it your work, just click the picture and it will open in a new window and you can save it to your computer.

   

I didn't even look at the front of most of these postcard- I was strictly buying for penmanship..

The card about did catch my eye because it's so darn spooking.  It's a picture of Notre Dame in France.

Just for fun I typed the message on the back into Google's translator.

 

It translates to:  big kisses from Jacques and I arrive in extremis. it is cold and gray but work is really relax. I embrace you very well and soon.

It doesn't really  make sense to ME either.

 

Scarves & Crafts & Buttons

 

Remember the 35 lbs + of buttons I bought a few weeks ago at an auction?   I'm still working on sorting them and I think I'm down to 50 lbs- yep, I swear it seems like the button piles keep growing- except they aren't growing with pretty blue or green buttons- the button pile has lots of tiny brown buttons with little pieces of cloth attached- my current personal button pet peeve.

 

I've matched sorted and juggled LOTS of buttons and bagged them to sell.

 

Personal button trivia- in my buttons I've found these treasures and listed them on eBay:

 

This "Win with Wilson" campaign button sold for $60 on ebay.

  

And these US Indian Service buttons sold for $20.

Of course, I probably spent 10 hours looking through the buttons, so what's that...about $7 an hour.

  

Michael's had yarn on sale over Thanksgiving weekend, and since there was a small space in my closet that I could squeeze some yarn into, I bought a bag full.  This scarf is a combination of two yarns, a varigated heather and a bobble.  It knit up quick- two evenings.

   

This pink velour yarn is irresistable- you just want to pet and run your fingers over it.

 

I've been doing a little crafting, too.  This is a journal I made from cabinet cards.

 

It has a few of my favorite things- vintage wallpaper, flocked wallpaper & ledger paper.

 

 

Maybe I should use it as knitting journal- I could record the yarn I buy, the projects I start, and the projects I finish.  No... I'd need a bigger journal to keep track of the yarn I buy!