Here's What I did instead of Working Today

The Greatest Invention Of Our Time

Tumblr.  Hands down.

First we got Suri's Burn Book.  Next came McKayla Is Not Impressed.  And now, this:

http://fromtalkingtodoctors.tumblr.com/

 

Why can't I be this clever?  Oh, well, at least I'm clever enough to find this stuff on Tumblr.

I've Got A Little Pro-Yect

Tony and Cara (our resident mechanics) have been hard at work on the derelict vehicles around here.  With varying results.

 Here's Pooh up to his elbows in the Volvo.  The back is adorned with brand new "Zags Mom" and "WSU Alum" stickers, and it's THIS CLOSE to starting...

The Freelander, on the other hand...we took it out on a test run after the two mechanics had spent hours fixing the mystery leak.  It was looking good...and then the tranny grenaded.

Pretty sure the Freelander is going to be donated to Cars For Charity.  :-(

More Adventures with The Pickers

So Team Plack is really rolling with the Picking of treasures for my store.  My students in thrift store/estate sale picking (Cara and Tony; Pia is too busy and Katie wouldn't be caught dead...) are developing a keen eye for a knitting/crochet pattern and now shove me aside as soon as we enter a thrift store while they head straight to the crafts aisle.

We tried something new last Sunday: an auction.  I've never been to one (at least not one that isn't a highfalutin' fundraising event for some school) so we weren't sure what to expect.  But they advertised "boxes of needlecraft magazines" so we needed no further encouragement to hit the road to Moscow, ID.

It was ... interesting.  On entering the building, we found dozens of tables of "treasures" (aka crap to anyone who wasn't in search of said treasures).  Everything from a hay rake to junk jewelry.  We quickly scoped out our items (only 2 boxes I was really interested in), got our number and settled in.

We were a bit dismayed to realize that MANY of the items were going to be auctioned off individually when the first thing up for bids was a pair of earrings.  That meant that OUR boxes were going to come up at about 9:30 pm unless we acted fast.  So I cornered auction boy Jerome and let him know we wanted to bid on 2 boxes and he brought them up to the front.  About an hour later, we were the winners of a big box of McCall's Needlework mags from the 50s and 60s for ten bucks.  Plus a wheelbarrow that somehow caught our attention, for another ten bucks.

Tony realized a second too late that he really wanted this cool railroad lamp.  Next time, Pooh Bear!

Here's a smidge of video of our auctioneer in action:

I had a great time, I'd definitely go again.

A Banner for The New Baby

My niece Caris is expecting her first baby, a little girl named Colie.


the baby shower is tomorrow, so I got to work on my gift.

I have 5 colors of Cotton Classic (blues and purples) to knit a little bunting of 5 flags, with the name "Colie" embroidered on it (a letter on each flag)

I ended up winging the pattern, as I wanted the flags to be smaller than the ones in the pattern I originally chose (which would have resulted in flags about twice the size):

I cast on 20 sts, knit in garter stitch for 20 rows, then cast off 1 st at each edge every other row until 4 sts remained, then cast off.

I embroidered a letter on each flag to spell the baby's name, then crocheted a "string" to hold the flags, working 12 sts, picking up and crocheting across the top of each flag, then working 12 sts.  I turned and worked back across the entire string which formed a nice edge.

Cute!

A Great Pick!

I have two mentees in my thrift store adventures!  Cara and Tony have proven worthy students in the art of the pick and can now be trusted to scour the crafts dept. in any thrift store in search of inventory for my store.

But The Master still rules.  I spotted this awesome card shuffler in the Douglas County Historical Society Thrift Store.  $2.00 cash and it was mine.  Including 4 C batteries and a deck of cards.

UNO has gone electric!

A Much-Loved Painting

Team Plack -2 was thrift storing on my birthday when I stumbled across this print.  I HAD to buy it (and it was half price so SCORE)

My sibs will remember this picture hanging in our dining room when we were kids.  It makes me so happy to have the same print now hanging in my dining room :-)

And it's of course a well-loved and famous picture called "Grace" by Eric Enstrom.