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Please call me Dorothy, she said.

September 4, 2009 · Filed under I sew., I thrift. A lot.

We were invited to spend the weekend with some good friends in their camper last weekend. The friends, who we haven’t seen for so long, were great. The camper was great. Meeting new playmates was great. The weather – not so. Rain and rain and rain and rain. And while it rained: c-o-o-o-l-d. The campground’s special Halloween trick or treating event had to be moved inside to the teeny-tiny game room. (Halloween was celebrated prematurely that weekend; by late Oct the campers are all winterized.)

If you know anything at all about me by now, you’ll understand how it was imperative that I make Isadora’s costume. (Oh, how we love Halloween. Always have - see Matthew and Gunnar Nelson for more details.) It was handy to pull out this men’s Oxford shirt that I had scored at a rummage sale for the explicit purpose of reconstructing it into Dorothy’s apron dress. Never mind that it’s been on my studio’s To Do pile for months now. You and I both know that I had no choice but to make it the day we left for camping. I intend to post a little tutorial on the process – it was so fast and easy that I started and finished it during the kids’ naptime. Later, though.

Because it was made during Dorothy’s naptime, I had to guess at her waist measurement. I guessed a wee bit low, but the adjustment will be a quick and easy one if I can find my way back to the sewing machine. Captain Daddio was called into service to pick up the shoes on his way home from work after Project Ruby Red, Plan A fell through. He swooped in heroically to present the shimmering jewels, securing his Super-Hero status indefinitely.

Oh, just look at all that candy. Enough to last the whole family for 2 months….until the real Halloween. No, thank you. None for the Boy, I had to tell the generous candy distributors. He doesn’t even have teeth yet.

And that Boy? He was sporting a ready-made Red Hot Chili Pepper costume that I scored at a garage sale for one dollar.

Yes, we really were in the campground’s game room. (not really rustic camping, of course) Our apologies to the fat old men sprawled at the video poker machines that we had to weave around, heavily laden with kids, costumes, and wet jackets. Hope we didn’t interfere with your lucky streak.

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The Summer of THE TURKEY FRYER and Other Thrifted Gems

August 27, 2009 · Filed under I thrift. A lot.

Summertime around here has its fair share of hallmarks. This morning I pulled on a sweater and the warmest socks in my drawer with dismay, wondering again why summer never showed up this year, but for those two separate weeks. No, I tell The Girl, you can’t wear that skirt, shirt, or virtually any of the clothes in your drawer today – it’s too cold. Of course my dismay is nothing like that of the bushels of green tomatoes languishing on the vines in my garden, scrambling to put together a Plan B for ripening, one that omits the need for sunlight and heat. So this summer will clearly not be known for its abundance of beach time. It will also not be known as The Summer of Scorching, Unyielding Heat. That title rests with the summer of Isadora’s gestation and birth. Last year might be otherwise known as The Summer of the Mosquito. Not so this year, thankfully. There’s been plenty of rain, at least lately, so Summer of Drought is out. And The Cold, Wet, Miserable Summer seems a bit too forlorn to commit to the memory.

There is one aspect of this summer that stands alone as superlative: the thrifting has been extraordinary. Rummage sales, estate sales, Craigslist, and even the thrift stores have made it the summer of Thrifted Treasures.

This is just a fraction of the goodness I scored at a particularly good garage sale liquidating a decades-long crafting stash. You might have heard me shrieking as I opened up this box and discovered the Easter egg colors inside, all carefully bound by chocolate colored scraps, presenting a delicious palette of colors that got the neurons in my brain firing at lightning speed.

At the heart of this particular story lies an important thrifting phenomenon, the Holy Grail of treasures, if you will. Call it the Grab Bag, or The Lot, or simply an overflowing box. The biggest high of thrifting, for me at least, is to come upon a collection of something, to skim the tops of the boxes and find just enough goodness to justify the purchase of the whole lot. Buying in bulk is almost always my preferred method of buying and thrifting is no different. Negotiating a price for the whole lot often works to the best interest of the buyer and the seller. But the best part, the ultimate sweet spot of treasure hunting is to get those boxes home and tear them open to see what other gems are buried within. Oooh. On the day I opened the box that contained the sweet bundles of pastel fabric shown above, I had just returned home from the doctor after presenting with an ear infection. (Because I’m 3yrs old? Crappy, cold, wet summer. Boo.) The mercifully-prescribed narcotic painkillers were juuuuuuuust hitting their stride in my bloodstream when I exited the car, on the path to my bed, when….there they were, the boxes that I hadn’t yet gotten to excavate, being up to my ears in kids these days. That day, the kids were at Gramma’s.

I’m not even sure that I’ll use much of this fabric – they’re mostly vestiges of the days when Polyester ruled the day. (it is triumphantly under-represented in this house) The real treasure lies in the color combinations within and the inspiration they bring to my studio. That light on dark blue has got my head spinning. How lovely.

Oh yes. I’ve also scored a turkey fryer, a pressure canner, a fire escape ladder for our bedrooms, and countless other things, all for real cheap. It really has been a good summer.

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Now that’s what I call a Makeover.

August 13, 2009 · Filed under I make things., I thrift. A lot.

One Saturday, not too long ago, there was a small explosion in our house. A metaphorical one, thankfully, but nonetheless producing a wave of impact that was felt within a 25 foot radius. It was a Saturday morning, on a rare weekend that was to be spent at home. What, Andrew asked, are your plans for the day? Famous last words, but my blank-faced stare bore no hint of the turn of events to come. There was the spare bedroom to tidy, with a visitor coming later that day, and…

I set about the chore, starting at the top of the stairs, in the small bathroom we fondly call The Office. It’s really less of an office and more of a Room with a View. The toilet sits squarely in front of a generous window to the back yard – the best view you’ll ever have from a toilet, we tell everyone on a tour of the house. Actually only a half bath, its counterpart with a shower and bathtub lives right around the corner.

I paused as I washed my hands, glaring at the splatter-painted frame of the mirror above the sink, scowling at my decapitated image, as the placement of the mirror was determined by a much-shorter former occupant of the house. For some time I had been collecting pieces for a bathroom redo and at that moment I considered how quickly I could replace said splatter-painted mirror with one more proportioned to my height and less offensive to my design sensibilities. Just an anchor, a screw, some new wire….my peripheral vision took in the mirror propped against the wall and the thrifted cabinets stacked alongside. And then it happened. The explosion. Why don’t I just go ahead and redo the room? It’s tiny, after all, and it is The Weekend, which from the inside always looks like it’s made of nothing but time. Yes. It was settled.

I had been mentally redesigning that room for months, had been collecting pieces and stashing them, and any design choices I hadn’t yet made could be hashed out on-the-fly, riding on the crest of the Morning Coffee. I could complete all of the painting and most of the design work on Sunday, right? Yeah, right.

So it took over a week to finish, of course. But to me, it is spectacular, a re-purposing showcase.

I had been saving these used circuit boards for eons. Any time I come upon a lot of the same thing, I imagine how they might look in a grouping like this. I also try the “how much for the whole box” method of bargaining. Can you imagine how thrilling it was to find this box of circuits while thrifting and then to get it for a song? Uh huh. Hung on the wall in a grouping, they remind me of an old city plat map. Love, love, love it.

This is a variation of an idea I’ve seen floating around the design sphere, using vintage door knobs or plumbing valves as towel holders or curtain tie backs. Andrew came up with the copper configuration to make it hang to my specifications. I was in such a hurry to hang it up that it hasn’t even been soldered yet, so it rotates a bit too much. 5 minutes of soldering or even glue could fix that.

And in an homage to one of our favorite obscure animals, the Prairie Dog has brought some literacy to the formerly-purple switch plate.

The standing shelf, shown above, gave me the perfect opportunity to use some gorgeous vintage wallpaper to line the inside back. (Thanks Lily!) And the red painted backdrop behind the mirror was pure on-the-fly design and something I’ll definitely use again.

No one ever accused me of minimal design, as you can clearly see; there’s a lot going on in this tiny space. I tend to hang out in the “more is better” camp and most often have to reel myself in a bit. But it works for me, in it’s eclectic marriage of vintage and industrial/techno. And the splatter paint has been drop-kicked into oblivion.

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Join us for tea, won’t you?

March 3, 2009 · Filed under I thrift. A lot.

It could be said that I have a weakness for teapots.

As I tour the house with the camera in hand to collect these photos (they are all ours, not a collection of random flickr photos), even I’m surprised by how many I’ve amassed over the years. Can you blame me though? Don’t they indeed make the perfect vessel for plants (especially neglected orchids) and wooden spoons? Given these indisputable facts, would you join my husband in resigned head-shaking and smirks as I unveil the latest thrifted additions to the teapot family, writing it off as one of my hopeless quirks? I think you know better. I think you, too, would instead join me in unabashed homage to their fantastic design, the infinite variations within this simple design, and the warm coziness they bring to the house. At the very, very least, you’d become so accustomed to greeting the new acquisitions I present in my thrifting Show and Tell that you’d soon become resigned to their presence, maybe even appreciative.

These two are the latest additions to the decor family, planted and hung in the post-curtain frenzy of Sunday evening. They reside in our stairwell, soaking up the Southwestern sun and fostering a new generation of Grandma’s geraniums. My tool-wielding husband kindly mounted the primitive who-knows-what-this-was-used-for antique wooden base from which these two tea planters hang.

Rather clever, isn’t it, that there’s plenty of room to hang MORE teapots in this grouping? Yes, I thought so too. I’ve added them to my shopping list.

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Yellow Week Pop-In

February 19, 2009 · Filed under I thrift. A lot.

Erin at House on Hill Road has been hosting Yellow Week this week. See all of the contributors’ yellow pics at the Flickr group here. (I’ve been following Elsie Marley’s every day.) While not officially participating, I thought I’d add this sunny little pic to the mix. It’s freshly-thrifted and lending its own cheery rays to our already sun-kissed kitchen.

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I have no choice – we have cold feet.

February 5, 2009 · Filed under I knit. (and crochet), I thrift. A lot.

What might you get if you mix a little bit of DIY empowerment, a pregnancy-altered sense of urgency, budget constraints, and cold feet? A rag rug of gargantuan proportion for the living room. (of course)

We recently graduated from the IKEA rug that formerly graced our living room floor and transferred it, in all its pug-hair-encrusted, dingy glory to a new home in the playroom, where it was better proportioned to the space and far less aesthetically offensive. Little did we realize the impact that a rug has on the heat retention of a room. Even with slippers, mandatory to our dresscode, those hard wood floor are FROSTY, sucking every last joule of heat from an already paltry supply. Digging into my bag of tricks, I consulted the usual channels of getting stuff: craigslist, ebay, google searches, local stores, even Target. Nothing to satisfy the aesthetic or budgetary requirements. I realized with some foreboding that I’d have to make it myself if I wanted to solve the problem now. And NOW was of utmost importance. Did I mention that we’ve got a baby on the way?

I’ve made a rag rug before, but not even this fog of hormones will allow me to forget how LONG it took to make. The process of cutting thrifted clothing into 1″ strips to crochet turned out to be so tedious that I required a months-long respite after each cutting session. Maybe if I focus all my super-productive attention on a rug now, that would be different? With some skepticism, I visited the Mecca of thrifted raw materials, our local St. Vincent De Paul Dig & Save, where you literally dig through pallet-size boxes of thrift-store rejects and buy them by the pound. Visit on a Wed. and you’ll find the clothing to be half off, at 50 cents a pound. If you can look past the grime, the smell, and the tedious method of digging and view the goods as fabric rather than clothing, you can score some terrific raw materials for a steal. It’s my fabric store of choice. In fact, if you’ve ever met me in the flesh, chances are really good that I’ve mentioned Dig & Save somewhere in our conversation, so personally do I take the self-imposed mission to save these clothes from the landfill. I consider myself something of a Dig & Save missionary.

Even with this perceived Life Purpose, there was little inspiration to be found from that visit, and “digging” with this belly was not so productive, so I hit the second tier of Getting Things: antique stores. Nothing. Would we be resigned to frozen feet for the rest of the winter? Not on my watch.

Problem, meet solution. Yardage. Like the kind normal people buy from a Fabric Store. The kind that is rectangular in nature, not shaped as a yoke or sleeve or pant leg. The kind that doesn’t yet have any seams in it to cut out before use. Aha!

Turns out our fabric store has a Red Dot clearance section, with bolts and bolts of fabric at $3 or $4 a yard. Sweet. I left with these three bolts of green, some 22 yards among them, and a smile on my face.

Cutting it into strips turned out to be a breeze, employing my rotary cutter, mat, and straight edge ruler. With a little know-how, I was able to cut a whole yard of fabric into a continuous strip.

Of course, true to myself, I already had a healthy stash of Dig & Save greens that I’ll be working into the rug.

Cutting one basket of clothing into strips rather than 5 or 10 seems much more manageable to me, allowing me instead to spend the bulk of this time actually crocheting the strips, which I love to do.

It is indeed the perfect project to pair with our new-found kitchen-based lifestyle, rocking in front of the fire, crocheting rags together. As I sat and rocked and crocheted last night by the fire, I felt as if the boundaries of time were blurred. Surely some other woman has done the very same thing in this house, using the resources at hand to fill a void and nuture her family. The luxury I have that she likely didn’t is that of choosing the materials to meet an artistic requirement, creating out of desire rather than necessity.

And if all of this seems like a convoluted way to say “I’m making a rag rug for the living room,” it’s only because I’m trying to rationalize the craziness for myself. I’m in my third trimester of pregnancy, with a to-do list a mile long, and yet this project is of UTMOST IMPORTANCE. Like everything else on that list, I might add. So let this be a test of Nesting Instinct: can a woman half-crazy accomplish such a feat in the remaining 10 or so weeks before Baby arrives? We’ll see. I’ll be regularly posting about my progress, so stay tuned.

Oh – I almost forgot to mention. The rug’s target size is 8ft by 10ft. C-R-A-Z-Y.

Wish me luck!

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We be harboring Pirates, Matey!

November 5, 2008 · Filed under I make things., I sew., I thrift. A lot., I'm Momma; this is my family.

Drop your sword.

We’ve a pirate recipe to share with ye.

Ingredients

1 Women’s Corduroy Jacket, size 1X, 1980’s style, complete with Michael Jackson “Thriller” style shoulders

1 baby size romper, in purple velour (not pictured)

Magic sewing kit: scissors, sewing machine, pins, a bit of courage

Pirate Gear: hook, sword, eye patch, ratty black wig, skeleton fabric for head scarf

Red and white striped tights from Momma’s personal stash

Instructions

Velour romper: Cut top half off, reserve the ruffles and scraps for later. Make simple casing at the new waist, add elastic, sew. Pirate Bloomers: done.

Jacket: Fit on the pirate subject. Pin, cut, sew.

Repeat.

(Best done with subject wearing Pirate Bloomers)

From scraps of jacket, fashion a fancy pirate ruffle for jacket waist.

In the same spirit of flamboyant pirate style, fashion some ruffle sleeves.

Add ruffles from velour romper to front of jacket. Fashion a skull and crossbones applique from remaining romper scraps for an unmistakable show of Pirate allegiance.

Garnish with remaining ingredients.

Set out to surrounding neighborhoods to plunder sugary loot.

Chef’s note: While this is my first commission from a pirate, it has ultimately been the biggest, most dramatic garment reconstruction ever attempted (and completed!). It will no doubt open the door to commissions from other professions, which adds some job security. Pirates are a shifty sort.

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Almost the stuff of dreams.

September 12, 2008 · Filed under I thrift. A lot.

I had the absolute BEST dream the other night. It took place in a thrift shop, involved some kind of design challenge ala Project Runway, and I kept the bus load of fellow contestants waiting while I filled my arms with the most wonderful finds imaginable. I was loaded down with vintage textiles, some great toys for the Girl, and there was even something great for the Guy. Oh, it was heartbreaking, indeed, to wake up to the reality of that dream. Despite this, I was left with the lingering euphoria that always accompanies such a windfall of treasures.

Naturally, it became imperative that I did some real-life thrifting. At the very least, I needed to replace our entire collection of drinking glasses which have been breaking at the rate of about one a day. You can bet I came home with far more than glassware.

I’d like to start off the parade with this smashing combo, illustrating the ever-present Goddess of Thrifting Synchronicity at work. The yellow rose print is on a roll of vintage wallpaper given to me by a good friend just days ago. The fabric, photographed on this poorly-lit dreary day, was bestowed upon me by the generous St. Vincent de Paul. (one of my favorite saints, no doubt) I’ve only got a fuzzy vision of how this combo will be transformed, but I’m thinking it may have something to do with lining an armoire or some kind of shelves. Martha, incidentally, has lots of ideas for using vintage wallpaper.

Aren’t these sweet? Add a little bit of paint, maybe some hinges to connect the two and make them a bit more stable, and perhaps some candles behind to flicker through…

While not my style, (I’m a micro-brew kind of girl) this full length bed sheet will make the perfect foundation for lounge pants for a special someone on my Christmas list. Just as soon as I rig the name exchange to be sure I get his name, that is. This is actually the second Christmas gift I found in this round of thrifting. The other, a real gem, has my husband’s name on it, so I don’t dare picture it here. You’ll have to trust me when I say it was a real find.

These gossamer earrings seemed the perfect complement to a knit jersey dress I’ll be making soon. They have an appointment with a pliers, some glue, and a new set of posts and backs to replace the screw-into-your-earlobe-posts. Clips and screw posts common to vintage earrings are no doubt vestiges of the corset mindset, are they not, sacrificing personal comfort for fashion and propriety. Thankfully, the barbaric holes in my ears negate this kind of fashion sacrifice.

And I’ve saved the best for last! This is a Loteria set, a sort of Mexican version of Bingo, it seems. The illustrations are fantastic, as is the opportunity to brush up on necessary Spanish vocab like El Borracho (the drunk), El Alacran (scorpion), La Sandia (watermelon) and La Calavera (scull). That said, it was clearly born of a different era, one without the culturally-sensitive guiding hand of Political Correctness. There may be a few racially-insensitive stereotypes hanging with El Borracho, El Soldado (the soldier), and El Valiente (some kind of strapping, brave Mexican man). Nevertheless, it may be time to institute a Family Multi-Cultural Game Night sometime soon, albeit with a few disclaimers.

And now the parade must be cut short, for the best and most quaint thrift shop of all was tragically closed for lunch. All in all, it was a highly successful trip. Let the transformations begin.

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Cookbook love.

July 1, 2008 · Filed under I thrift. A lot.

Cookbook Love

Last week I had to take matters into my own hands, Rosie the Riveter style. Cookbooks were amok, buckets and baskets strewn about, and every revolution of the washing machine’s spin cycle sent the clutter atop the heap into a frenzied break-dance. The project intended to curb all this chaos had been started a week or more ago, but had gotten swept up in the current of Our Lives and washed away to some remote place downstream.

At some point last week, the steam built up enough to make this kettle whistle, loudly, and I decided that enough was enough. I’m actually pretty capable and handy and all that, but for some reason, inserting anchors into plaster walls seems both too cumbersome and not nearly instant-gratification-enough for me. So I usually leave it to my handyman, Mr. Andrew. (he’s the husband in this story) Turns out this handyman’s itinerary is miles long, with much more pressing projects, if you can believe that.

Enter drill, anchors, perfectly sized screws (bought by Mr. Handyman specifically for the project), some barn wood from our demolished barn, some shelf brackets, and you have yourself the ingredients for some clutter-busting, order-making sanity. My favorite kind.

That’s much, much better.

Really, though, this just may have been an excuse to create a space for this family-heirloom scale and thrifted vintage apothecary bottle.

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The fabric of time.

May 20, 2008 · Filed under I knit. (and crochet), I sew., I thrift. A lot., I'm Momma; this is my family.

I’ve mentioned that this house has an aesthetic all its own. That it requires, gently but firmly, handmade quilts on the beds, bright sunny colors on the walls, handmade rag rugs to cushion our step, and the boisterous sounds of laughter and bare feet tickling the wooden floors. Just imagine, then, my barely controllable JOY at finding this collection of rags. Already wound into balls, ready to become a rug. By the hands of my female ancestors. From the beautiful fabrics that dressed their days. Just imagine my joy.

Grandma says they were, indeed, used to make rugs, but not in the manner that I’ve undertaken. These strips would be taken to the weaver, to make a rug like this:

I much prefer the method of crocheting them. Besides the aesthetics of it, the rugs have lots of cushion and spring, and I can orchestrate the design and carry it out myself, without having to bring it to someone with a loom. And I think the crochet method will better showcase the beautiful fabrics that my elders had spent so much time ripping, joining, and rolling into balls. It’s also rewarding to feel that I have something to contribute to this project that was started so long ago. But if Grandma’s reaction is any indicator, I’m quite sure that they’d laugh at me for calling their old rags “beautiful”. They were rags, after all, worn to the point of being useless for anything but a place to wipe dirty feet. It surely is the haze of time passed that casts such a lovely light on these vintage threads now.

A kind soul commented the other day that she loved how what we were trying to do here at Five Green Acres was deliberately old-fashioned and the stuff of our Grandmothers. I couldn’t have said it better myself; I once read or heard somewhere that, in the event of a catastrophic disaster, only the Grandmothers would know how to survive. That sentiment has stuck with me. Yet while there are many folks who embrace the ideals of self-sufficiency to prepare for such an event, we’re certainly not among them. Our aim is much more rose-colored and perhaps even a little “control-freak”. I simply want to know where my stuff came from, how it was made, and how to make exactly what I want. In my eyes, these skills bring with them immense power. Design power. Power to live in luxury without buckets of money. Power to infuse pure love into something made by hand. Power to feed my family.

It seems that the flawed short-sightedness of our culture compels us to overlook the wisdom of our elders or dismiss it as out of touch with The Now. Perhaps we should be consulting the Grandmothers of the world for our Terrorist Preparation Kits instead of taking Homeland Security’s suggestion to buy rolls of plastic and duct tape for our windows. Echoing this sentiment is a children’s book we just read together, Old Ladies Who Liked Cats by Carol Greene. It’s a lovely, simple story of how things are connected, and how the Old Ladies are the only ones with the wisdom to see these vital connections that turn out to be crucial in protecting their little island. How do we get rid of the pirates? Just ask the Old Ladies. They know.

This stuff of Grandmothers – heirloom seeds, the know-how to make a bounty out of nothing, the smell of bed sheets dried in the wind, the sincere gratitude for life’s joys, the precious Mason Jar jewels lining the shelves of the pantry, the smell of the kitchen, the ability to use, reuse, reuse again, and not waste a single thing… To me, this is the good stuff.

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