What you find at thrift stores...

Isn't it amazing what you can find at thrift stores?
My mom had three floral plates from a trunk her great grandparents. They have no markings so they probably are not something special. But they are pretty. The kind I am attracted to.
So a week or so ago I was at the Deseret Industries thrift store and I spied the plate that you see here...a plate that is exactly like the kind from my great grandparents, except it's in better condition. It's now sitting on the plate rack in my mother's dining room with the original three.
As the in store ads at Deseret Industries would say, shopping there is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you'll get. (Yes, it seems they stole that from Forrest Gump.)

Wild Junk

Tuesday my friend Stephen and his dad and I went to an "I am running away from home sale." This turned out to be quite an adventure and not your usual yard sale.
The man lived in a double wide mobile home that was being foreclosed on and was selling almost everything inside and outside the house. The place was trashed and frankly filthy...it was the kind of place many of my friends would run away from the moment they saw it.

There wasn't much there I was interested in (although I wish I could have gotten the old dresser and night stand he had inside).
But outside was a pile of stuff that had belonged to someone whose RV had broken down. And he just left what he couldn't take in this man's yard. So this man told us that everything in the pile was free. The first thing I spotted was this odd creature staring out at me from underneath the pile. I did not take him home with me, but I did pull him of the mess so I could take his picture.

While Stephen and his dad went to the shed to look at what was in the shed I started digging through the pile. It was covered in snow. Within minutes my gloves were soaked wet and probably worthless. I took them off...and lost them at some point. But I found, and came home with, the oddest pieces of junk. One of the first things I spied was some groovy looking fabric. I pulled it out and saw that it was a hippie looking shirt from the 60s. One of Stephen's friends is in charge of the costumes for the plays put on at the local university and I knew she needed stuff from that era for the next play they'll be doing. So that was the first awesome score I made.
This pile had the most eclectic mix of stuff. There were drawers of clothings, coffee cans filled with nuts and bolts, spray paint, stuffed animals, electric razors, bars of soap, etc. But I found some "good" junk too.

I found a plastic tray that had lots of vintage buttons (I am so loving these buttons), rocks (including a nice hunk of amethyst crystals...this is great since my dad loves stuff like this) , and just weird things like parts for musical gadget piggy banks (put a coin through and it triggers music...because they're old some of them are dying so the music sounds hilarious when it starts to play). When I got home and sorted through the stuff in this tray I also found a Storm Trooper's head. For some reason I thought that was one of the best things in the tray other than the buttons.

I also got a cool old, metal milk crate (which was handy to carry all the junk I got). There was a vintage lamp (that works). Some neat old tins and oil cans. A very old, gold picture frame. An old colander and bottle opener. And a coffee can full of mini liquor bottles...that aren't old...I have no idea what I am going to do with them. And many other miscellaneous things that I can't recall.

Stephen got a crate full of stuff out of the pile too. But he's more practical than me and ended up with things like paint rollers that were still in their packaging. And his crate wasn't an old, metal one like mine.

Stephen gave the guy five bucks for the stuff we took, even though he said it was free. (Stephen's an awesome guy that way and I was thinking of doing the same, but he beat me to it.)

Now despite the fact that it seems like I picked up a lot of absolute junk, I should be able to sell most of it. The milk crate and the buttons alone made the whole trip and picking through some odd things worthwhile.

It was a totally fun day for an oddball like me.

...In a Flash...

So, as some of you know, awhile ago I began to be interested in round knitting looms. And I even made my own knitting looms out of tin cans and cotter pins or nails. I even wrote instructions on how to make your own here.

But then I came across a blog here that had instructions for a unique way of making what the author calls flexible knitting looms. These looms are flexible because lack a frame. They are made up of pegs (made from things like ball point pens or cocktail stirrers), beads that are used as spacers, and rubber bands to hold it all together.

In my opinion, based on the ones I made, they are a little bit awkward to use. But still they have their advantages. Including being able to make them any size you want...just add more pegs and you have a larger loom for larger items.

Using the flexible knitting loom idea I made a mini-loom with less than a dozen plastic cocktail stirrers and some hair rubber bands I got at the grocery store, some pony beads from the craft store. I also made one that creates smaller stitches by using nails as my pegs...kinda odd, but it works. And with these mini knitting looms I made a couple "flash drive or Chapstick cozies."

Pictured here is a knit little cozy that holds my flash drive. The cozy is attached to my keys so I hopefully won't lose this one like I did my other one (which I think fell out of my purse).

It's made out of some blue and brown, nubby like yarn that I found at the thrift store and then added an old button to close it and keep it's contents secure inside.

Not only does this little cozy hold a flash drive, but, because of it's small size, it's something that can be knitted up in a flash too.

Hello Again

Well, it's been almost a year since I last wrote in this blog. And I've been asked to please write in my blog again! So here it is. A bit of an update about what I've been up to.

While last year one of my friend's closed her consignment store that sold vintage, antiques and other things I have since made a new friend who has started a similar store and I am helping her out now and then there too with displays and the like. It is called Aunt B's Treasures and is owned by Barbara Rowland. It's located at 389 N. 100 W. Suite #4 in Cedar City, Utah.

It opened I think in the fall of last year, but she just had a more official grand opening recently that was written up about in a local newspaper that you can see at the left. Things were slow at first, perhaps a bit because of its off the beaten path location, but things seem to be picking up now and there are a lot of neat things in this store.

I have also put a few things on consignment at another new store in Cedar City called Re{cycled} Consign and Design. Although it's small, this is such a cool store. It's more like something you might find at 9th and 9th in Salt Lake City. A photographer name Noelle Reynold's took some really cool pics of the shop and put them on her blog here. http://www.noellereynoldsphoto.com/2009/12/recycled.html (Note the bedsprings hanging from the ceiling in some of the pics.) You can also see more pics at the store's blog here http://recycledconsignanddesign.blogspot.com

I have some pics from both of these stores that I have taken myself that I will hopefully get up sometime soon too.

Friday's Adventure's

(This post took forever to get up because I was having issues uploading pics from my camera to my computer.)

Today I went to the shop Affordable Treasures in the little town of Parowan to drop off my contract form for a booth/space for the flea market they will be starting there in June. The location is just behind the store where this is this crumbling old courtyard like space with lots of character and loads of potential charm.

You can see the courtyard in the picture here. The little street signs startled me when I saw them. Street signs in Parowan are really that short (about my height, so they are only about five feet or so).

The week before Ancestor Market had closed its doors for good I had mentioned to one of our customers that there was going to be a flea market starting in Parowan. It turns out she writes for the local newspaper and so she ended up writing an article about it...which I certainly encouraged her to do, because I want this to succeed...me being a buff for things like this.

So today when I walked in the door the owner, Phyllis, began thanking me for having mentioned the article to the girl who wrote it. And she thanked me again when I left. :D

I am so excited for this flea market. I have been to very few flea markets and this will be the first one where I'll go as a vendor. It is going to be a ton of hard work to get it together, but it will be worth it, I know it.

Inside Affordable Treasures they also have a little mini deli/cafe space where you can get espressos and panini sandwiches. I ordered a grilled sandwich that was made with a french roll, swiss and provolone cheese, and a sauce made with red bell peppers and think cream cheese. It was delicious. They also have Italian sodas, which I adore. So I will have to go there sometime and order one of those as well. They had an almond syrup so I think I would like to try that one, since I've had Italian sodas made with hazlenut syrup and Love those.

After leaving Affordable Treasures I went to where Ancestor Market used to be to check out what the new resident has done with the place. It is now a little sewing and knitting store called Stichin It Up. And it looks great. I should have taken pic's, but I didn't.

After I got home I decided to get around to doing some sewing I've been wanting to get done. The project I was going to work on I realized I didn't know if the fabric I had for it was pre-shrunk or not, so I washed it and while waiting for it to dry. So instead I worked on making a little vendor's apron to use for the flea market. The fabric I used was originally a curtain valance that I got for fifty cents at the local Catholic Thrift store. I just used the part where the curtain rod would have gone through to put a ribbon which makes it a drawstring waisted apron. And I made it so it has a total of six pockets.

I had no idea what I was doing, and there are some things I would have changed a bit, but I think it worked out pretty well and also turned out pretty cute.

What? Where am I?

Life has been so chaotic lately. The consignment vintage and antique store I've worked at for the past three to four years has finally closed. I had planned to spend the week before it closed organizing things at home so I'd have a place for anything I had for sale at the store that was still around. But I got sick and spent my week conserving my energy to close the store down and haul my stuff out of there. Once I hauled my stuff out of the store I took some it down to a new consignment store in town. It's a great place, but has a different clientele, so a lot of my stuff doesn't fit in there and also wouldn't sell for as much there. After that some of the stuff got unloaded into a storage shed. But the rest stayed in my van as I got sick yet again and had to recuperate from that. I finally have most of it out of the van. Everything is disorganized chaos.

Job hunting has not gone so well...especially with being sick.

I have been doing a bit more writing for eHow http://www.ehow.com/members/dreamsinbloom.html when my brain is functioning. Brain fog has not been much of a symptom with my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but this month it has very much been present. I don't exactly cherish the moments that I have brain fog as I very much come across as a ditzy blond when I do (any maybe I come across as a ditzy blond even when I am more "normal" anyway). But there are worse things in the world and as I said it's infrequent for me so it's not so bad.

I've been researching other online writing opportunities. I am going with the "shared revenue" places first because that helps me gain confidence and skills in my writing. And then I'll have a "portfolio" of my writing should I decide to pursue more freelance stuff.

And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll feel well enough to participate in the new flea market that will be in the nearby town. That will be a great way to help get rid of the extra stuff I have left over at the store.

a little collection

One of the things I collect are vintage Z.C.M.I. hangers. Okay...I only have four of them. But I would like more and keep my eye out for them. I suppose it's partly nostalgia that has me collecting them. Z.C.M.I. (which stands for Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution) was one of the earliest department stores ever. And is a place most people who are from Utah are very familiar with. But alas it is no more. I will never shop there, or at the shopping mall of the same name, again. Of course, when I was old enough to shop at ZCMI they never had hangers like these...only the plastic kind that I can't imagine anyone every collecting.

I also like the graphic appeal of the lettering. I have one in red, with a formal style lettering, but the letters are playfully not in a straight line. Another with formal lettering but the letters light blue and are more well behaved and stay in a straight line. And two with light blue lettering in a cursive font. I wonder what other types of lettering and colors might be out there.

I like how they look with my denim jackets. I own four of those too, which to me seems like a lot of denim jackets to have, but I love them and wear them all...although there are two in particular that I wear the most...so I suppose it's not too excessive.

I never got around to mentioning that I wrote a tutorial on how to make your own custom fabric tape for Cut Out and Keep here. It's cute and simple, so check it out.

In other news, I just turned 35 this month. It seems strange to think that in just another five years I'll be forty.