around my kitchen

I love the living room in the morning. 
I love the kitchen in the afternoon.

Pot scrubber octopus and hedgehog veggie brush.

Ikea foot stool with a linen towel from Nana Helen.

Vintage cake carrier for $1 at the flea market.

Solar powered friend sits behind mug rack.

a petite homemaker

All that time I spent collecting and stashing household goodies… it has all led to this! Rich and I are now finally settling into our little apartment. My cupboards are full of green Pyrex and I don’t have to feel guilty about decorating the living room with wool.

While we were on our honeymoon, we stopped at several antique malls. I found some special things including this wonderful linen tablecloth. During some intense browsing, I came across a pile of linens, and just happened to pull this one out without knowing its special hidden secret. A wheel! Of course I couldn’t pass up something with a spinning wheel on it! When we got home I put it on the table immediately. An unexpected bonus: it’s inspiring me keep the table clean.

turn back the hands of time

Clocks. My dad likes them a lot. He even made one once. But he has one that tocks very loudly and for some reason, it never stays running. My mental powers of dislike stop it, so he just doesn’t wind it up anymore.

I saw a neat clock at a church once and wondered why I never find anything like that at flea markets. This weekend I did. I asked the fellow selling it if it worked. He said he wouldn’t bring it out if it didn’t work. That’s honorable. Unfortunately it is not battery operated, and the plug is on a 3 inch cord. It makes sense for a kitchen from the 1950s when there was an outlet up near the ceiling into which a clock could be plugged. For the 21st century home, it might present a bit of an adventure.

My mom said it looked just like something they’d had when she was growing up. The colors – turquoise and peach – were very popular at the time. That’s one of the things I like about collecting vintage stuff: when my mom tells me what she remembers about it!

in the end, i bought it.

Visited the flea market this weekend and came across a Corningware piece called the “Casser-ette”. It was $1.00 and in it’s original box.

I stood there and looked at it. Looked at other items, came back, looked at it again. Have you ever seen that episode of MadTV when Lorraine wants to buy that box of tacks but can’t decide even though she needs them and they’re only 50 cents? That’s sort of what this was like. Except that I may not have needed this adorable little covered casserole dish in a basket. But in the end I bought it.

It’s microwaveable and toaster-oven safe. I’m always cooking things in the toaster oven. And now I won’t need a potholder to keep myself or the table from getting scorched. Nothing better!

future teapot sweaters

On Friday my dad went to my favorite flea market. I had to go to work. But he looked for teapots on my behalf and came home with two gems. They were a dollar each. I’m excited about them because they have very different characteristics with which to experiment and play.

I think it’s good to have someone else do some shopping for me, otherwise I’d only buy teapots that I like! He said he bought these specifically because he thought I wouldn’t have picked them out. This project will give me something else to look for at thrift stores, flea markets and garage sales this summer. I’m excited about the possibilities. yay!

teapots need snuggies too

Found this cute little teapot at the Flea Market on Sunday. Cheers for the sun being out and people selling junk in a parking lot! It was $1.00 and very dirty.

After washing it out, I decided to create another semi-pointless “tea-cozy”/knitted teapot accessory along the same lines as the tea-cozy I made for my dad’s teapot at Christmas. Also I thought it would be a good way to use some yarn that may not be next-to-skin soft.

It wraps around the body of the pot with a whole for the spout and buttons through the handle.

more green??

Stopped in at a new antique mall this weekend. Technically IT is not new – I’ve just never been there before. Thanks to working at the newspaper, I read about it in a listing of flea markets/antique malls.  Weee! It’s called “Wizard of Odds” and they had lots of interesting stuff and priced rather reasonably. I found many pieces of furniture I wish i could take home. Instead I added a few more items to some already established collections.

I found this little juice glass, a Swanky Swig, for $3.oo. The vendor had many of them. I chose this one because it goes with my other animal glasses. There is another Swanky Swig that has a spinning wheel on it (part of a different series), and I’m always looking for that one, but this vendor didn’t have it.

I also found this tiny lime green Pyex dish – the lable said “individual casserole”, which just cracked me up! I imagined putting a tiny crust in it with a few vegetables and some chicken and making a mini potpie. The stamped ID is 080, 8 oz. It isn’t part of the Verde set, but I do have a brownie pan this color. Apparently it has a lid, but this didn’t come with it.

One of the most exciting finds was this green cake plate, found in the same vendor space as the Pyrex dish above. I’ve been wanting a cake plate and after not buying one for so long, my mom gave me one for Christmas. A month later I found this! The reason I got it is because it matches two relishes dishes I already have! This one was a very early housewares purchase; this smaller one I found at an outdoor flea market in the fall (75 cents). We’re having a superbowl party of sorts today, so I got out a few of my items to use. Hooray!

yarn towers!

A few weeks ago I brought home some giant aran sweaters from the thrift store for recycling.  I’m always claiming that I want to do more colorwork, so I thought this would be a good/cheap way of acquiring yarn to dye.  Rich assisted in the disassembly by ripping the pieces once I separated them. Then I reskeined them for washing, splicing some of the smaller balls together.

Next I dyed them!  I wanted semi-solid colors and I tried to hit every note on the rainbow, so I wouldn’t end up with five balls of green and no red.  Two of them were dyed with koolaid – the second from the bottom on the far right was achieved with lots of orange (it’s hard to see).  I’m quite anxious to start playing around, although I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be making!

P.S. How does one go about creating a color palette? I’ve realized that when I dye things, they don’t really go together.  Like the yarn above, some of them do NOT mix well.  Suggestions?

a year of collecting

January 13 was the day I purchased that first set of dishes from the Village. Not long after I caught the Pyrex bug and I’ve been hooked ever since. Now a year has gone by, and I can’t believe how vast my collection has grown in that amount of time. I ended up at Goodwill Sunday afternoon and found another lovely, though lonely, leafy patterned saucer. Remember this one? I went nuts trying to find more, but not much as surfaced. After a google search, I can’t say more about the new pattern either. The back says “Mikasa Cera-stone Verde”, which is amusing because my Pyrex set is called Verde too! I’ll just add it to my leaves collection.

Also, I picked up this set of 5 gold-toned glass dessert/fruit dishes. I’d been scoping them out over the course of several trips and decided to go for it this time. Originally 50 cents each, I had a 40% off coupon and I don’t even remember what they ended up costing.

I’m sure you fiber enthusiasts haven’t forgotten that I mentioned my two substantial dyeing days. Today I had an afternoon of indirect sunlight and took photos of all the combed top and yarn. I was really disappointed with my last order from R.H. Lindsay. I ordered 5 lbs Romney and 5 lbs Falklands, but I’m quite sure they sent me Merino instead of Falklands. After spinning some I’m sure of it. We’ll see how that works out.

did you know?

Green is my favorite color. And in January of 2008, thanks to Cosy, I started collecting pieces of a Pyrex set commonly called Verde. It’s not so much a pattern as a color scheme, and that color is green. Over the past year I have picked up various items, slowly building my collection. Each time I bought something, it was washed and put into a storage box, since I have no cabinets. That made it difficult to see just how vast my collection had grown. Every once and a while I’d unpack the box, just to find out which pieces I still needed.

On Monday a box arrived containing one of the few remaining pieces I needed to complete my collection. The 503 refrigerator dish. A kind member of Pyrex Love on Flickr traded one of my blue dishes for the dark green, thereby ending my hopeless search (503s are hard to find). Thank you, Knobby Wheezer!

And because there just happened to be a nice unoccupied shelf in the living room today, I decided to pull out all my Verde dishes and take a group picture. Here is my entire collection: