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!

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!

busy bees! excited ones too.

I’m getting really excited about this whole crochet thing. I’ve been experimenting a little at a time with it; adding it to edges and such. It’s not something I particularly like in huge quantities – no crocheted ponchos for me! But it is fun on the top of these wristwarmers that I just made yesterday. The bottom part is done in garter stitch and the top is just a single crochet thingy. It looks a little lacy to me and being white I feel that it is quite delicate and feminine.

Yarn is handspun -
Blue is a handdyed cashmere/merino blend
White is a mohair/BFL blend (that I did on my drumcarder!)

Getting more active in the process and adding little touches here and there really makes for a more interesting product. That seems like a “duh” statement, but I’ll say it anyway.

On Thanksgiving I tried my Pyrex Bake-a-round for the second and more successful time. We used the bread machine to knead the dough rather than having me do it, plus the water temp. was measured before adding yeast, which I didn’t do last time. It rose! It baked! It oozed out the sides. But that was because it was 1.5 pound loaf and the tube holds a 1 pound loaf. I sprinkled wheat germ on the outside for interest. And with apple butter, it was great!

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:

d’ya like bread?

I must admit, I’ve always wanted to bake bread. It’s never happened though. In my mind, I have it built up into this dreadfully impossible task. But when you really think about it, humans have been making bread for a long time and doing it without fancy technology.

But fancy technology doesn’t hurt. Over the weekend, I found this Pyrex item:

I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere. When I found out it was only $1.00, I decided to give it a try. I don’t think anyone has ever used it. Part of my interest in it was the box, plus it had all its instructions too. The only problem: bread-making is a slow process. And I have almost no patience. Stay tuned.

card me happy

It sure is amazing what a difference having the right tools can make. For a while now I’d been using dog brushes to card and blend wool. They were cheap and performed the task to some degree. I can’t say that they made good-looking rolags, but since I had no idea what I was doing, it didn’t matter. However, it prevented me from ever really grasping the concept of handcarding. Now with my great new Ashford Minis, I finally get it! They’re just the perfect size for me and they do the job so well. I used them on a pile of Columbia locks for practice.

The subsequent yarn ended up quite lumpy. I didn’t get the second cuts out, so maybe I did something wrong. Or is that the way it’s supposed to be? I realize this looks remarkably similar to another bobbin of yarn from a few weeks ago. I did not do that on purpose.

And while I’m here, I received my box from the Thrift Store Treasures Swap hosted on Swap-bot (my first one). She sent me this lovely Pyrex casserole dish in the Forest Fancies pattern, #475, 2.5 L. I think we’re going to use it tonight for dinner!

cheers for unemployment

Being unemployed + sunny day = Thursday morning flea markets! I popped over to a PA flea market this morning, one I had been wanting to go to for a few weeks, and spent some time browsing and enjoying the weather. I found several happy little items including two Pyrex 501 refrigerator dishes. Also picked up two lids for my Bake Serve & Store set; a small divided dish that matches my other green relish tray; and an awesome box of buttons.

The refrigerator dishes are in a pattern I don’t usually buy, Crazy Daisy I believe, but they were $2.00. Plus, they can go along with Verde quite easily. I may be inclined to trade them in the future.

This small dish was only 75 cents. It matches a relish tray I bought back in January, one of my very early pieces. After going to the flea market, I stopped at an antique mall. One of the vendors was selling this exact thing for $7.50!  And she had the matching relish tray for $8. I know I didn’t pay that much.

I found this box of buttons where I bought the 501s. When I saw the $6.00 price tag I knew I had to buy it. The previous owner and I must be kindred spirits. She organized them all by color! How fantastic is that. I finally have a good assortment of buttons in a variety of colors rather than just having a very large collection of brown and white.

as productive as I get

When some people have a pile of yarn or dyed fibers to show off just so we know how busy they’ve been, it is huge. It may cover a couch, dining table, etc. For me, not so much. I’m a slow worker. I get bored easily. I need variation. So, this is as productive as I get…

Here contains assorted yarn, some top, and a bundle of dyed locks in Corriedale, Falklands, or BFL. These will be added to my Etsy shop as I get to it. The main hang-up was just getting the photos taken. My camera battery died and I wasn’t entirely sure where the charger had wandered off to. Also, I have to get the light at the right time of day, which seems to be around 10 am. I got everything reskeined, weighed, measured, and tagged yesterday. It’s fun to have a relatively large batch to look at and make yourself feel good.

I ended up at the Four Seasons Flea Market Sunday afternoon. It has proven itself to be quite the little hot spot for things I’m looking for. I found this hand-held mirror for $1.00 (wanted one for my craft sale table); the buttons were $.25 for the loose and $.50 for the cards.

Also found this cute little bowl for $4.00. He wanted $5, but after a lot of thinking, he gave up. He just asked that I didn’t go on Antique’s Roadshow and say, “Look what my mom and I found at the flea market!”. It was pretty funny. It’s number 441, so now I’m just missing 442 and I’ll have the complete set of Verde Cinderella Bowls! Additionally, I found two Pyrex lids that I needed for $1.00.

soft and fuzzy VS hard and shiny

I’m trying to get a significant amount of dyeing done before I go away in a week and a half, but I can only handle about a pound at a time. So I got out the remaining Corriedale and dyed it on Monday. I’ve really taken to the whatever-it’s-called method where I soak the fiber, lay it out in a large rectangular casserole dish, pour the dyes all over the fiber and bake it in the oven. The colors don’t mash together as much so I get more variation. All of the following were dyed in that way.

 

 

My favorites are the top two, Crab Nebula (first in the Hubble’s Eye in Space series [HubbleSite.org]) and Heat Miser. The green/blue one is called Surf and Turf; each is 2 ounces. My original thought was to spin each as a single and ply them together. The last is unnamed because I am not inspired by it. I think I’m going to spin it and go from there. The other three are for sale.

____________________________________________________________

My mom has started a Pyrex lid collection for me. She brought home three lids and an adorable 6″ pie plate from the thrift store yesterday. I didn’t even know they made those! It’s so small and cute. Two of the lids I know what their bottoms are, but the third is very unusual; I’ve never seen it with anything before. It’s identification is as follows: B – B 682 C. Anyone know anything about it?

the wonder of pyrex

Ah, the magic of Pyrex.

Early in May I came across an avocado green casserole dish at the Goodwill. It matched my other pieces of the Verde collection, but it was missing a lid. I decided a lid was a small matter and bought the dish. Over the summer I looked for lonely lids, hoping they would match my dish, but no such luck. Well, the neat thing about Pyrex is they label the CRAP out of everything. Each dish has several identifying numbers as well as its volume. I got out all of my dishes and recorded their numbers so I would know what I had and what I was missing.

Today at the flea market I came across two lids. Each was labeled Pyrex (which is what they do), so I got out my list and found the one I thought it might fit. The casserole number was 024 and the lid was 624-C. Of course the numbers go together! How cool is that? So I bought the lid for $1.00, took it home, and put it on. It fits. Magic.