Flea Markets, Secondhand Shops, Silent Auctions, Estate Sales, and One Very Generous Mother
This month I have only managed to blog in the single digits. Obviously that indicates a busy life. But what have I been doing? Nothing, really. And everything. Just a combination of lots of work, lots of chores, lots of time spent at church or preparing to teach at church, and lots of time on the phone or on the road in my quest to help my Chin friends avoid eviction.
And now October is drawing to a close. But it's not like I have nothing to show for my efforts. My friends were granted enough emergency relief money to pay their debt, avoid eviction, and buy much-needed groceries. My house is in a fairly clean and manageable state most days and requires but a half hour of tidying to make the first floor presentable. I managed to unearth my long-lost desk. We've been enjoying fires in the fireplace now that the cold weather is upon us.
A couple weeks ago we went to a small flea market in a nearby Catholic church and I scored some awesome deals (like an entire vintage set of Mark Twain's whole fiction catalogue in hardcover for less than $2). This charming 4.5" x 2.5" print of early dirigibles was just 25 cents.
You might think I picked it up for my son, but you'd be wrong. It's mine, all mine. And I have it stuck with sticky tack to the side of my file cabinet in the office, just below a fabulous signed and numbered print of a Hemingway poem that was part of a Hemingway package that my husband won for me at a recent silent auction fundraiser for the Historical Society of Greater Lansing. The fundraiser was held in this fantastic Art Deco building in downtown Lansing.
The package included a year's membership in the Michigan Hemingway Society and a private guided tour of Hemingway's Michigan. I hope to take that tour with my husband next year in the early summer. In case you only associate Hemingway with Chicago, Paris, Spain, and Key West, it's time to brush up on his early short stories which were inspired by the events of his youthful summers spent at the Hemingway family's summer home in the Petoskey, Michigan, area, where I would love to live someday.
Another new addition to our walls it this watercolor landscape by someone named A. Miller. I bought it at the aforementioned flea market, also for just 25 cents. Superb! It now graces a skinny wall in the dining room.
That's not all that's new in the dining department. A few days ago my dear mother told me she was getting rid of her casual dishes and would I like them? This didn't surprise me, as my mother has bought new casual dishes with some regularity for my entire life. I can remember at least four different sets bought during my 18 years in my parents' home, and I'm sure I'm missing one or two. But mom found a great deal at a consignment shop on a full set of very nice dishes and knew that I had been talking about replacing ours at some point.
You see, we've had our very plain white casual dishes since we got married (that's over ten years) and in that span of time we have slowly whittled down the dish inventory through various mishaps (read: we're phenomenally clumsy). So we really did need new dishes. I'm thankful for my mother's propensity to get tired of dishes and her generosity to simply pass them my way. So now I have 12 full place settings (we had previously been down to just 7 dinner plates, 5 salad plates, 6 cereal bowls, and 5 pasta bowls of the white dishes) of lovely, colorful, handpainted stoneware from Pier One, plus many serving pieces.
Not only that, when we were doing a bit of secondhand shopping in Bay City yesterday, I stumbled upon this very lovely teacup, which Mom offered to buy for her dear daughter.
Sheesh. What a wonderful mother.
The real reason I was in Bay City this week was to visit a friend of my mother's who recently had to put her own mother in a nursing home. This old lady was a fabric hound and now her daughters are working to sell off her obscenely extensive collection of fabric as they prepare her house for sale. When I went up to the sewing room I was hit by the immensity of the project. Every wall was lined with cabinets and every cabinet was stuffed to an almost uncomfortable degree by neatly folded fabric. Almost all the fabric was in pieces that were 2 yards or more, plenty to make almost any item of clothing one would wish. When I inquired about pricing, my mother's friend said, "We decided on $1000 for the whole lot." Ummm...one would need a U-Haul for the whole lot. I quietly asked my mother if she had given her friend the impression that I was in the market for an entire room full of fabric, and she assured me that she had not. We settled on a different pricing scheme and I set upon the stacks of fabric with the single-minded purpose of only pulling out the stuff I knew I would use.
Much of it was prints or fabric types I didn't personally care for. But a good chunk of it was solid colored or tastefully pinstriped or patterned. Much of it was suiting. Much of it was wool blends or linen look or cotton. And a big box of it came home with me at the more-than-reasonable price of $5 per piece. For several of the fabrics I brought home that amounts to only a couple dollars per yard. For the deep blue corduroy in the photo below, it's less than $1 a yard. Score.
Which brings me to a pledge I believe I must make and adhere to for the coming year of 2012 . . .
I solemnly promise to sew only from my stash for the entire year of 2012, to avoid going into fabric stores except for necessary notions, and to then take the long way around to the zippers and thread, avoiding the fabric section entirely. I will do my utmost to pair my stash fabrics with my stash patterns, not trolling eBay or Etsy for new patterns. I will not reject gifts of fabric in 2012, but I will not pay for any additional fabric, the one exception being lining fabric that may be necessary for jackets and skirts.
There. I said it. And now you all know. So I have to keep my word. Those of you who may purchase gifts for me for Christmas or my birthday, I will still joyfully accept Jo-Ann gift cards, which will help me get notions to complete my projects. Hint, hint.
An here's one for all you vintage fanatics out there. I have 2 yards of this whimsical bird print. Trying to decide what to do with it. Sell it to defray the cost of all this fabric? Make it into aprons or curtains or pillows to sell on Etsy? Sit on it for 40+ years like it's previous owner did? Hmmm... decisions, decisions.
