Treasures from This Summer's G-Sales

Oh yes, I do so enjoy a nice garage sale. For me it is like boutique shopping in a foreign city. One never knows what treasure will be found. My son and I like buying those incredibly useless toys that they advertise on tv; once you take them home you realize what a big waste of money they are. For example, the Crayola Crayon Making Machine, or whatever it is called. You only have to melt one crayon before you conclude that there are better ways to waste your life away. $1 for that knowledge. The Easy Bake Oven, a tried and true device that I remember well from my childhood. For a mere $2, my son quickly realized that you can make a lot more brownies a lot faster if you put them in a big pan in the oven.

But it is the fiber and craft related treasures that are the most interesting to me, of course. This year I felt very privileged to find the following:

1. Adirondack Backpack - I bought this because my mother's family is from the Adirondacks, and it seemed to me that I should have something displayed in my home that suggested as such. $20, worth every penny. Of course, I couldn't help but try to think of something to put in it.

This led to:

2. Canvas painting of a sheep. Which rolls up nicely in the Adirondack backpack, because I can't figure out what to do with the canvas painting of the sheep. Sigh. But you see, I had to buy it to remember why I want to try my hand at painting canvas floor mats. Now you're getting it, aren't you? This is all about having a collection of inspiration, just sitting there, inspiring me. Oh, wait, I just remembered, I bought the canvas painting of a sheep because I thought my friend Denise would like it. And then I got it home and thought, "Why would anybody want a canvas painting of a sheep?" But still, it is inspiration.

2. Teeny weeny handpainted baskets, one with a sheep on it - Honestly, I can't think of any purpose for these, but they look pretty sitting on my shelf. Given my feelings about sheep, you would think I wouldn't like to honor them, but really, the sheep just make me itchy, not... well, let's say witchy.

The wee  baskets, combined with this very cool Honeoye Falls basket that I did not paint myself (but did find at a garage sale), are my inspiration for floor cloths, described in Next on My List. Of course, I am waffling between something primitive versus something artsy and flowerly, like the paintings at Highland Hospital.

3. Those things you use when you are using a loom - $4. What a buy! Do I have a loom? Errr... well, no. I had a couple, but they were too big and cumbersome, and I honestly have no clue how to use them. But I liked the weaving utensils just the same.

If worst comes to worst, I theorize I could use these as a weapon in the event of a home invasion. "Wait a minute! Are you wonking me over the head with WEAVING TOOLS?"

4. An Indian wood cut - I went through a period a few years ago where I just LOVED watching Japanese wood cuts go for sale on ebay. Do I stamp designs on fabric, thus justifying the purchase? Errr... no. But if I were going to stamp designs on fabric, Japanese wood cuts would be at the top of my list.

Now I've just spent a few hours wandering on E-Bay, trying to find those wood blocks again, and of course I can't remember what they were called. I thought they started with a "k", but I've looked for Japanese wood blocks, wood cuts... the closest thing I found was "batik stamp", but those are made of copper. On http://www.dharmatrading.com/, they have Indonesian Copper Batik Tjaps, but they sell out within 24 hours of arriving. This just leads to the inevitable question of when I should start investigating batik, a whole 'nother line of art interest. The closest I've found for wood blocks are at Zanzibar Trading. Sigh... now I find myself dithering over whether those copper tjaps are more interesting than the Indian or Japanese wood cuts.

5. Containment systems... sadly, I seem to have inherited a desire to put things in things, on things, over things, within things... So lately I've been buying glass jars of assorted shapes and sizes, within which to store my lovely fiber, because what good is it if you can't see it?

It kind of looks like I've taken to pickling my yarn

6. If you're going to have containment systems, then you sort of need a shelf. So I bought a shelf.

7. Magazines about knitting. Honestly, I should be shot for that. But I have these shelves, see, and magazines look nice on shelves. I'm not going to include a picture of the magazines, because I don't want you to know how many magazines about something I don't know how to do are in my house. Now if someone would come out with a magazine about knitting relatively rectangular things without actually following a pattern, because that requires too much attention, then we'd surely have something worth photographing.