The Drought has Dried up and Off we Go!

The past few weeks the pickin’s have been mighty slim.

Today was a much better day.

I went to a local church rummage sale and at first as I wandered about – nothing.

Then I found this absolutely fabulous folk art – outsider art – primitive style needlepoint.

It is not for sale.

It is on my wall at home already.

Look at Mr. in his green sweater and is that a hint of a bolo tie, perhaps?  And those old man glasses and piercing blue eyes.

Mrs. has red hair and green eyes and that fair complexion with a blush on her cheeks.

Cost?

$1.00

Value?

Priceless.

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At the same sale, I spied a Danish Modern sort of table with a drawer that was really a basket.

Weird and cool, and expensive for this sale.

I looked at it a couple of times and the crazy price put me off.

I went back to work.

I decided to do a little research on the table and then Wham!

I locked up the office and went back to the sale and paid the crazy price!

Here is what I bought:

Turns out that this is a mid century sewing table designed by Hans Wegner.

It is a Good Thing.

A Very Good Thing.

I put it on craigslist this afternoon.

I priced it about 1/2 of the going rate or less because it sure could use refinishing.

I am a good finder – not a good fixer…

Wish me luck!

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Not Skunked at the Goodwill Store Today

My hotel in Seattle is less than a mile from a Goodwill store.  How could I not scoot over there at the first opportunity?

That opportunity was today.

There is not a parking lot at this Goodwill store and we found a spot a few blocks away.

Upon leaving the car, we were bombarded by loud obscenities from across the street.  An irate irritated F-bombing local character.   Wow.  We ain’t in Kansas anymore.

The Goodwill store was mostly clothes – no furniture and “hip” young and friendly employees.

I found an old picture from Missoula Montana with a nice frame for $3.99 and then this  woodblock print.

I know what you are thinking when you see this print.

I know that your first thought is – “Hey, that is a skunk cabbage!”

Or maybe, “Hey, that is on phallic lookin’ skunk cabbage!”

Either way, it is a vintage 1972 print by Dale De Armond.   I googled her and her stuff is rather nice.

This is an early piece by her.

I guess if you have seen one skunk cabbage, you have seen them all.

If you have smelled a skunk cabbage, you know how aptly it is named.

I was pleased to be out of my regular Goodwill store range and still find a good thing.

Yay.

Heller and Plastic Philosophy?

I found some great vintage plastic Heller plates on Saturday at Goodwill.

They had them in stacks of three with rubber bands around them.

I really like this stuff.

I think I have enough of this for now that I can sell what I found this week.

I was washing these plates, so I could take pretty pictures of them and I found a post-it note -in between  a couple of plates.

I don’t know if the post-it note was there and the Goodwill workers just did not see it – or did a worker in the back room put that note there?

ONE LOVE

What on earth does this mean?

Is it a Universal Truth, or a simple longing?

One is the loneliest number.

Love is all you need.

Goodwill Philosophy or???

A Fine Find was the Frigidaire Flair for FREE!

I wanted a Frigidaire Flair stove for the kitchen in my office.  The kitchen is quite small and narrow – I mean the house was built in 1875 – when kitchen size was not a priority. I am guessing that builders did not have the anything as mundane as a kitchen as a major feature in the construction of a home.

Anyway, I digress.  ( I almost always digress. I am a grand digress-tress – I guess…)

This was on Craigslist for $200 and I was the first to call.  Then they sort of flaked out and finally just called me to come and pick it up TODAY – as they were moving out.  “Come and get it off the porch for FREE.”

OKEY DOKEY!

If General Motors still made stoves like this – we would not have to give them a gazillion in tax dollars to bail them out.

I think a pink kitchen suits a mid-century stove.

Look at how little depth this stove take up.

Want a cup ‘o tea in the afternoon?  Just pull out the stove top and it is tea time in no time at all…

After putting a 21 pound turkey in and out of my home oven yesterday – the arm-level oven height of this vintage design just seems like common sense.

Does common sense say to give a big corporation a bail-out when they cannot run their business in a cost effective manner?

Hmmmmmm…..

* * A suspicion and an exacto knife and the kitchen counter * *

I saw this tonight at the Goodwill store.

I go to Goodwill about every day – and I know how to read the codes on the tags that say what day items are put out for sale.

This came out on the floor last week.

How did I miss it?

At least someone was kind enough to put this in the FRONT of the pack of Target store art wanna be cast-offs, and dead Grandma flower prints.  Otherwise I might not have seen it.

I put on my reading glasses and got out my cheesy plastic magnifying glass and I was pretty certain in was not a print.   I decided to pay the paltry sum and if it turned out to be nothing – I would just enjoy it.  It has that mid-century eames era sort look to it.

After dinner tonight – I located my exacto knife – placed this upside down on the kitchen counter and carefully tried to cut the brown paper off the back.

The cheesy matte covered up where a name would be – so I had to pry the cardboard filler in the frame up in order to reveal the bottom of the print.  Oh, yeah!  There was a nice penciled signature.

F. Fujita  1963 A.P. (artist proof)

I googled the artist and saw that he has made some really nice wood block prints.

They sell for about $250- ish .

Not a bad day for shopping.

(Heck, when IS it a bad day for shopping?)

Friday – and I have the day off. Yay!

I am trying to take Fridays off from work.  It has been quiet and it is bliss to have a 3 day weekend.

Yesterday, I took a picture of a tree turning color when I went to pick up the kid at school.

It often rains here so much in the fall that the leaves do not turn such pretty colors – they just get brown and soggy and plop to the ground.   So it is nice to get a few pictures of pretty leaves.

I slept in today and I am going to a friend’s house to help with a computer/ebay set up for her and I hope that I may run across a good garage sale on the way there …. ya never know!

I put the Jack Spade bag on ebay along with the Glidden Piece from last week and I have high hopes for both of them to make me a little moolah!

Wish me luck!

UPDATE:

Stopped at one garage sale and it was poor peoples stuff.  Worse than that, it was poor people with no taste and they were over-priced on oh, everything.

There was a little homecoming parade downtown this afternoon.  How utterly “Small Town America” it was.

Probably a 7 minute parade…. just about right.

Is too much enough?

I really did not “need” this piece of art. It was at the local Goodwill that I haunt everyday ( yes, everyday – more about that later..) and just look at that face…. So, for $3.99 it had to come home and find a place on my shelf.

Finding a place on my shelves is no easy matter.

I have been a collector since I was a child and I try to limit what I collect – but there are SO many interesting things out there!

Lately, it has been NW pottery that has caught my eye.

Just yesterday, at sale at a retirement home, I picked up a bowl and turned it over and saw it was signed Coleman. It was porcelain and I was pretty sure it was Tom Coleman and for $3.50 – I wanted it anyway!

I stopped at my office to use the computer and found out that I was right. Tom Coleman. Lucky me!

I also bought a mid-century ovoid sofa with teak accents along the front. So the old sofa went to Goodwill this morning. Adios, old sofa – I knew you were just an interim sofa anyway…

I mostly buy things to resell – hence, the daily trip to Goodwill. But Goodwill has their own feeble website now and they pull much of the desirable items and sell them online.
People pay stupid prices, prices they would not pay on ebay or at a mall for items on the Goodwill website. Lucky them.

As I said, I MOSTLY buy things to resell – but now and then – I find it too hard to part with something. There is a Glidden tray I found this morning and I am considering keeping it – but may just put in on ebay tomorrow… Oh, the indecision! 🙂