Terrible/Perfect

Lone Star

I haven't been thrift shopping at all lately. We're overloaded with stuff, mostly the girls' things. But we're headed to Arizona for a bit and neither of the girls have any shorts, so I spent some time looking for those. I found this old Lone Star quilt for one of the beds in the girls' room. It's vintage, hand-pieced and hand-quilted. A bit stained and yellowed but basically sound. Beautiful. A lucky find.

Ho Ho D'oh

I'm a real sucker for a miniature village. I think they're delightful. We had one when I was a kid, and it was something I loved setting up and kind of carefully messing around with, like we did with the nativity we had. I've wanted to start one, but it's an investment...the really nice ones are expensive, and for the village to look good you do need a decent collection of buildings.

I found these at Goodwill today, and budget be damned I went ahead and bought them at all of $11 for the three. I'm so pleased. They're just my style.

I'll have to get some of that sparkly fake snow, or a big piece of felt to put underneath. Maybe I'll go by the hobby store downtown and get some bottle brush trees.

Next year I'd like to get ahold of the Flanderseseses' house. 742 Evergreen Terrace should have some neighborinos.

Thrifty Tuesday: Wednesday Edition

I wasn't entirely sure there was going to be an advent calendar this year, since the chocolate kind causes Serious Trouble in my little universe, and the paper and toy versions are comparatively quite expensive, but we went to Goodwill looking for something entirely different yesterday and I found a delightful one:

ZOOM! It was tumbling around down in the bottom of the Goodwill Christmas hullabaloo, but it caught my eye, a steal (if you ask me, but I advise you not to) at 99 cents.

It's kind of crazy. Joseph looks like Elrond, and I suspect Mary probably didn't look like the Swiss Miss. But you never know.

I assume this was made in the 1960s.

Eventually I think it makes sense for us to do something re-usable and still free of sweets, like a felt calendar, but the paper ones are really cool, too. We'll keep them. They make lovely decorations, even once they're opened. I found the Tasha Tudor advent book (thrifted!) last year, and I imagine those images will be fun to rediscover every year. 

I don't shop much with my children at all these days, but when we do it's oddly special (even if it's secondhand), meandering with them, talking out the whats and whys of the things we were going to take home. I found a much-desired advent calendar, the firstborn found a Christmas Barbie she could buy with her pocket money, the little one found a nice Christmas book and we shared a bag of Brown & Haley factory seconds, all for $4. Good times.

I'm so, so happy with this calendar. I have no idea what's going to be behind the doors. But it was made in Denmark, so I'm hoping for a gnome. Come on, door #17! Be a gnome.

Free love

I love the cycle of free stuff in this town. I have no idea if other towns do this quite so much; I certainly don't remember people leaving little piles of stuff in front of their houses with cardboard signs exclaiming "FREE" on them where I grew up. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention. Whether it's a thing that other people in other towns do or not, people here do that all the time (when the weather's good for it anyway). One of our neighbors, who lives in the most intensely wooded city lot I have ever seen, in a falling apart house with broken windows, is clearing out some very strange and wonderful things. Including this old, old children's school desk. It was filthy when I carried it home. There was a spider living inside. One leg is about an inch and a half shorter than the others-even though the little metal baseplate is still on the bottom of the leg? Like it's always been this short?-so it is resting on a roll of Scotch tape. Klassy. I like my bedside reading, too: Frog and Toad, Angelina Ballerina, Beatrix Potter, John le Carre. The baby really likes espionage novels. I think at some point I will attach a little peg to the leg, but instead of trying to blend the finishes I will paint it flourescent pink or something. Anyway, love. Free love. 

It's the berries

It's Thrifty Tuesday! I just made that day up, there is no such day. But there have been some seriously good finds lately:

Fabric. It's the berries, which is funny because all along I thought it was the water.

An orange. Old. Japanese. Pure delight, especially with a bit of hot Earl Grey innit.

And...you might want to perpare* yourself.

...

...

...

...

...

Okay. You ready?

Maybe no one will ever really be ready for this. If you're not, I'm sorry:

This is, without a doubt, the best and most wonderful thing I have ever bought in a thrift shop.

*I was going to fix this typo, but "perpare"? Yes. Perpare yourself. I'm letting it stand.

The Top

Do y'all remember this quilt top?

I pulled it out of the fabric cupboard this afternoon, and I feel like I never actually looked at it before. Only a very small handful of those (handstitched) hexagons are repeats; there are somewhere around 230 different fabrics in there. And I don't think they're reproduction prints, either. The fabric is nothing like contemporary quilting cotton (and can I say how much I love high-quality contemporary quilting cottons?). I would love to know more about this quilt top and the fabrics in it. Are they reproductions, or did she buy vintage fabrics, or did she (or her mother) save them up from the 30s, 40s, and 50s? Did she make other quilts, or garments with them? How old was she when she cut and stitched the top? Was it one "she", or a group of women? Fascinating. Best $10 I ever spent at Goodwill.

In any case, I decided that it was well beyond time to stitch this sweet top up into a quilt that we can put on a bed, admire and love. I made a spur of the moment leap of faith buying backing fabric, which turned out to be an exciting and, I think, perfect choice...just the right contemporary companion to all of whoever-she-was's handwork.

Which leads me to the point: I'm going to hand quilt this. It just seems right.

My impulse is to stitch around 1/4 inch inside the edges of all the hexes, which are all about 6 1/2 inches long by 5 inches wide. Maybe I could do one more layer of quilting just inside that line, too? That would bring the longest distance between quilting stitches to about 5 inches. Seems a bit far to me still.

So, what should I do? What would you do?

Snerrrrrrg

Hey there. How are you all doing? Alright? It was kind of a weird weekend. Marriage, covert ops. That kind of thing. Some of us who are under three years old wore little knickers with Union Jacks and tiny cartoon Irish Guards in their bearskins to celebrate the occasion. I got new tires, which was awesome. I'm stoked on that.

I went thrifting, looking for a pillow form (got one) and, under Strict New Rules spent a ten spot on some booty:

Fourteen skeins (over 1600 yards) of Manos Stria (a worsted weight, kettle-dyed cotton) in what looks like Spice, Rose and Avocado, for $5. I AM THE WINNER. Blanket? Lady-sized sweater? Thoughts and considerations cheerfully solicited.

Awesome vintage flat sheet. Grey and yellows, for real. I never, ever find great old linens. I think the crafty ladies buy them all up. But this one is killer and kind of makes up for any past lack. I have so many thoughts about this, but for sure it's going to be a quilt back. I think it's a queen size, so I should be able to do a backing and have some scraps left over for piecing something else.   

Vera linen tea towels. So, so good. 

I didn't get this at the thrift shop, but I did get it at the used dog shop about nine years ago:

This is Jake. Jake Jake. The Warg. ManBearPig. The Bear. Beary Bearmann. Group Captain "Beary" Bearmann the Airman, CBE, DSO and Two Bars, DFC. Yes, we had our dogs before we had our children...why do you ask? He will lie down on anything even remotely blanket-like left on the floor. If Mr. Terrible is kicking it on the couch he'll sometimes take off his button-up work shirt and set it on the floor right next to the couch as "Jake bait", and it totally works. In less than five minutes the Bear flumps down on top of the shirt and his magical scruff is there for the scratching.

So I came out into the living room the other day and he was inside my project box. For people who don't have a fabric problem, there is every ingredient for one quilt project in that plastic bin: fabric and batting squares that took hours to iron and cut, pieced and trimmed blocks, rows of fabric stips organized by color and size. I got out the camera and walked over, and he was all "...is she going to tell me to get out? I hope she doesn't. This box is great. There's like eight layers of batting in here." And, you know, I did make him get out. He's a lusciously soft dog, truly one of the world's great soft creatures, but that's partially because he has a double coat. Double coat = blowing coat = dog hair everywhere, in places you cannot possibly imagine it could go. Geez. Batting is sticky.

But I did tell him he's awesome before I kicked him out.

Because he is.

More new old

Top to bottom: Ball quilted jelly jars with vintage tin lids; linen tablecloth; a set of eight Vera napkins; child's quilt; Pillivuyt teacup; Noritake Hawaiian Holidays "Mai Tai" pattern, probably from the 70s.

I've written about this before, and it's incredibly silly, but thrifting is enormously satisfying to me. These days I don't go as often as I might like, maybe once every two weeks to the Goodwill (these are my only non-food shopping trips) and I am selective; I have a budget, but more importantly I'm aware of amassing too much stuff.

But there are so many treasures that make their way onto the Lysol-soaked metal shelves of junk shops, and spotting them is a tremendous delight. Over the years I have, I believe, developed the eye of a collector; typically, something sticks out to me as I scan the shelves: the particularly delicate handle of a teacup, for instance. I often have no idea if an object has any more "worth" than its special appeal to me, but it often does. Which is...satisfying.

I sometimes think, vaguely, about going into business with a little vintage Etsy shop; it would mean having a good excuse for more frequent hunting, and maybe a little income, but overall, I just enjoy rescuing these castoffs, relics of near history, each little misfit piece unique and, sometimes, incredibly beautiful...if you're the sort that finds beauty in a teacup.

Hello, yellow

I found this gnarly old peeling yellow table at Goodwill a while back and I literally (and I here I do mean: in a strict sense, really, actually) ran an undisclosed number of yards across the store to lay claim to it. I may have draped my body over it as well, and I'm not saying that I did, but if I did, it was in a humorous manner for the benefit of myself and the sales clerk who filled out the sale ticket.

I have no idea how old the table is. It is solid maple, with extensions that pull out cleverly from the sides and have quite a long U.S. patent number printed on the arms of their clever wooden machinery. The yellow paint is peeling in a way that goes slightly beyond what one might attempt to emulate with the sort of genteel roughhousing that Martha Stewart enages her underlings to engage in with furniture, but it is not displeasing. I did battle with a Pollock-esque display of stains and drips and stuck-on paper and reverse-printed newspaper ink on the top surface using a bottle of diluted bleach, and won by a manly, vigorous margin. And still, one leg has been shoddily stripped, the tops of the extensions were, apparently prior to the yellow, slapdashed with a coat of military green, the hardware of one extension needs attention and what happened with both the yellow and the green on the underside of the table is extraordinary.

I. Love. It.

Love.

I want to be home all the time now, sitting at my funny $20 yellow table next to a window hung with a funny old tablecloth, drinking tea and watching my seeds sprout.

Which I am, and I do.

Dear Santa

Oh, Christmas.

You used to be so uncomplicated.

I remember so much of you from my early childhood: the twisted red and "white" (it was dough, folks...dough's not truly white unless there's a serious problem) candy cane cookies my mom made, the Care Bears Christmas record my sister and I put on while we ran around like maniacs in the living room, the cookies we left for Santa that I somehow always understood my father ate, the morning I came downstairs into the quiet mystical darkness of a tree-lit room to find ROLLER! SKATES! next to my stocking, the time I expected a bicycle and didn't get one and I cried and then my dad rolled the black and yellow BMX out from the other room and it was perfect (although I would develop the notion that bees were attracted to it and would, at some point, remove the yellow padding to avoid being swarmed by them).

Christmas!

So much tied up into the sweet cinnamon bow of it, nestled into its felted wool tip toe, wrapped up in its shining crinkling paper heart.

I had good parents, and we had more than enough to go around, and so my Christmases were wonderful.

And then I grew older and the game of it all became something more like greed, or rather something very, very much like it, and then I grew older again and ashamed and it became something different altogether: a chance to mark the subtle, or not so subtle, changes in the landscape of my family.

It was a chance to dust off old stupid affectionate taunts, to note the comforting familiarity of the knicknacks and the manger scenes, the plastic baby Jesus that always fit so perfectly in the crook of the goose girl's arm. It was the time to let the gifts mount up next to me while I drank my sparkling cider too fast and saw, loved to see, how we could not let my grandfather open a book or he would never finish opening his gifts, the gifts that always made him so uncomfortable and grateful at the same time.

There were more of us for a long while, burbling Buddha babes in ridiculous red and green one piece suits, newly minted fiancees and, once, a brand new bride and groom.

And then there were fewer. First the bachelor great uncle who sat in the back room watching the football game died, and his was the first and only corpse I have ever seen. And then my grandfathers, beloved, beloved, and never again. And we lost marriages. And dogs. 

The scene has changed, too, as the family celebration moved from a grandparents' house to an aunt and uncle's, and finally to my own parents', and as dear ones have moved from one house to another or away and back again or just away for good. 

And we ourselves have grown taller or fatter or both. The child who screeched the Care Bears songs has two coarse colorless hairs that peek out from the crown of her head and two screeching children of her own.

Now I'm making that childhood Christmas for someone else, and it has muddled me horribly. I'm grappling with how to help my kids make some meaning out of this season that, obviously, means a very great deal to a great number of people, in good and bad ways.

My husband and I settled on some ground rules early on in our lives as parents. We buy our children some, but not a lot. Overwhelmingly, our purchases are made from locally owned businesses. We eschew large quantities of sweets. We strive for traditions of family and community connection, not consumption. So that's fine. Or rather it had been.

Up until this year we hadn't bothered with the Santa myth, in part because it made me very uncomfortable to actively build up a falsehood for my child, and in part because it seemed fine to let her make whatever assumptions she wanted to. She woke up to a filled stocking and gifts under the tree. Ta da! Then last year she said that Santa brought gifts to other children but not to her. We hadn't told her explicitly that Santa filled her stocking, but we hadn't told her explicitly that Santa wasn't real, either. I felt awful. So this year we have stepped into the Santa myth more fully, because she wants to have that. We've left windows open in this construct, though, so a little light of play shines on all of it.

As part of the whole thing I encouraged her to write a letter to him, mostly to practice her writing, which was incredibly sweet. Unfortunately, as part of the letter I reminded her that she can ask Santa for a gift. And unfortunately, the gift she asked for is something we can't realistically afford to buy her. I found myself in a serious conundrum.

What do you do when "Santa" is not going to bring what a child specifically asked him for?

This problem sits right at the heart of my muddle over the whole season. To try and distill the essence of my discomfort, my feeling is that as a society we are trapped in an incredibly toxic economic situation where we have to spend a lot of money that, in many cases, we don't even have just to keep everything in motion. So in a bad economy, and a good economy, the "right" thing to do is spend a lot of money. That is also very much the wrong thing to do, because many people don't have much extra income to spend and debt is a life destroying force. There is nothing good about it. 

This isn't even touching on my concerns about fair compensation for labor, the funneling of wealth out of communities and the human health and environmental impacts of extraction, manufacturing, use of a given product during its lifetime and ultimate disposal.

But sitting there with her little eyes lit up is my kid, who just wants to experience Christmas.

I had to be realistic and make the determination that we aren't going to buy that doll. It's beyond our budget, and, this is essential, she has far too many dolls.

That's how I found myself today carefully discussing with my daughter what Santa might bring for her. I told her that what Santa wanted for her was a nice surprise on Christmas morning. And I told her that Santa doesn't want her to feel overwhelmed with her toys and games. He just wants her to have warm feelings on a special day. So he will fill her stocking (she made sure to confirm that it will be full), but whatever else he brings will be an elf-made surprise. Honestly, she was pretty okay with that. That made sense to her: Santa wants to stop by and sprinkle her life with some magic and wonder. He doesn't want to check off a shopping list.

I think that squares us up. As far as gift giving goes, the rules stay, and they stay simple: don't overspend, welcome the experiences and don't chase the stuff quite so much. The kids get a few toys that we feel comfortable with from cradle to grave.

For next year, I've learned that we need to steer the kids away from specific requests from Santa. Santa will be Magical Surprise Man. If they want to ask for something specific, they need to ask us so that we can tell them "no" up front if we need to, and give them a reason.  

By taking the burden of wish fulfillment off of poor Santa, we've also made room for some really exciting possibilities. Without the checklist (did anyone else used to go through the Sears toy calatog obsessively as a child?) Santa and his elves can, you know, make stuff.* 

Fun!

See, I am fun. I do not obsess over Christmas all day long. I have been experiencing a significant shift in my worldview, my moral compass, my relationship with money and material goods and my parenting philosophy, all at once, around the whole Christmas deal. It has not been particularly merry. Actually, that's not true. It's been a growth process. Those always kind of suck, but then you're really glad they happened. It's called disequilibrium and the more you experience it in your life, the less likely you are to be a jerkwad. Changing your cognitive structures is a good thing. Word.

Now! Stuff. Because it's Christmas and I feel like I'm constantly shopping for something even though we're doing it "simple" style.

That shit looks so seasonal. Big Kid made the bean heart in preschool prior to Thanksgiving and it makes me happy happy. The tablecloth is pretty groovy, too.

This is super groovy:

I found him lurking in the antique mall and he was crazy, ludicrously inexpensive. Cheap. I felt kind of guilty buying him for so little, because he is fancy, and I have to guess that the vendor didn't know how fancy he is. But, now he is ours. I was hoping to sneak him past the kid for Christmas love but that didn't work out so he was Highly Unusual Unexpected Toy Purchase dragon. 

Now I feel all weird for sharing my overwrought thought process around mundane topics.

Go watch this. It's adorable.

*Have you noticed that in recent Santa movies the "workshop" is basically a factory floor with marked, licensed toys rolling by on conveyor belts? That is some f-ed up shizz right there.