Weekend Wares

I shop in places you probably wouldn't want to go to. We have some clean, well lit, well managed thrift stores that I frequent, but I'm not talking about any of those. Although I know there are lots of folks who wouldn't be caught dead even there. (Milk glass shakers, {love!}, 8.00)

My favorite place is notorious. Famous for "finding nothing there". Which is largely true. It's huge, crowded, messy, has mostly more recent household stuff, a questionable clientele, and is not particularly clean. I would bust a bladder before ever using the facilities, for instance. (Ironstone butter pats, 2.00 ea.)

I can't recommend it. I wouldn't take you there. The last time I mentioned it to friends they said, oh yeah, that place, but I saw so many dealers there. . . . (Ironstone butter crock, 10.00)

It's near the edge of town by some older neighborhoods, far from the antiques district, out of the way, and the only place I go to where the oldest, cheapest stuff sometimes turns up. Maybe only one or two items in the whole place worth the trouble. (Wedding photo, 2.00)

Are you ever struck by how when you get your haul home and lay it all out it sometimes tells its own story? I can tell it's a good picking day when people keep stopping to look in my basket. I've even made transactions standing right there. Oh what a game! (Folded square doilies, 1.00).

I think these are supposed to be napkins. Pretty impractical. I have no idea yet what I will be doing with them, but don't they make a sort of pretty iris or lily looking flower? Or butterfly?

I like the still life quality of these objects together. Their suggested relationships. Weddings, lace, white, domesticity, basics like bread and butter, and salt. The romance of aged objects. Sepia tones. . . .

I am enamoured of the secret textures of life. Its layered history. Its repeated cycles as narrated through meaningless ordinary commonplace objects.

Its scratches and dents.

And most of all, its faces. . . .

 Its frozen expressions peering earnestly through the ever turning, ever fading, ever mysterious leaves of time. . . .

And I'm even willing to go out of my way, to turn over miles of junk, and to get my hands utterly filthy in order to uncover it.

I'll tell you about the old Water Babies book shown here too another time. We're done with the weekend wares for now! But what turned up for you? It seems like grey, blah days are the best for rummaging through piles if it's not too much of a mess to get out!

 Can't wait to see!

Jacqueline