Craft Rage

I LOVE GARAGE SALES!!

Okay. I'm one of those people who tries to be careful about throwing the word "love" around. I know, it's weird. Put it on the list of the many things about me that are unexplainable. I tell my family and my fiance, and yes, my cats, that I love them, all the time. I even have a super-duper high-school friend whom I love greatly, and have told her so, without any creepiness. Well, maybe a bit of creepiness, but then we laughed hysterically and went to the thrift store.

There are people (pets count here) I love, and things I love, and I never mix the two up. It's always people first, then things. At least in this, I have my priorities in order. Now if only I could remember that it's groceries first, and THEN fabric, not fabric first, and THEN groceries, I'd be much more popular at home.

Many of the things I love are both mundane and ridiculous - "The Cutting Edge" is a great example of that. I can't explain why I love this movie, I just know that when I wipe out, or see someone else wipe out, the urge to scream "TOEPICK!" is almost crippling. In addition, I love peridots, and The Thomas Crown Affair, and corsets, and containers - oh, how I love things that hold things! Many years ago I took a solo trip to the southern US, and on my last day, I stumbled across The Container Store. I nearly cried when I realized I had no room in my luggage to bring some containers home.

Even above the container fetish, though, is my complete and utter love of people who lay their castoffs out on their lawn, driveway, or garage, for me to paw through. That's why Garage Sale Season is probably my favorite time of the year. As soon as the weather settles, and the last snow is a couple of weeks behind us, everyone in the city I live near cleans out their closets and attics, and lays everything out on their lawn, or in jumbled heaps in their driveway and garage.

They spend the day sitting in their driveway, smiling at strangers, chatting about the weather, joking about whether or not we've really seen the last of the snow, and complaining about the government (that's how we roll in our prairie city).

I enjoy jockeying for a parking spot and getting out of my car, pockets full of change and small bills, and pawing through stuff that people have held on to, sometimes for fifty years or more. I'm not kind - sometimes I laugh right out loud when I see that someone (other than my dad) actually bought a Thighmaster.

I also get a kick out of people who attempt to sell used items at nearly the same price as you would pay for a new one - witness, the woman who had a stack of really dirty old curling irons tagged at $10.00 each. What? You can get a brand new, cootie-free curling iron for $9.99, and I, for one, will not pay extra for clumps of someone elses' hair.

I bought two of my favorite sewing machines this way - a Singer and a White. I paid $10.00 for the Singer and $8.00 for the White, and both of them work like a charm - I recently gave the White to my mom so she could sew heavy tent canvas, and the thing runs like a freight train - the best $8.00 ever, maybe? I bought a large stack (14 in all) of sewing books, including a number of volumes of the Singer Sewing Reference Library, for $3.00.

This weekend, I got everything shown here for $4.75; (click for larger view)

There are a few things I don't even know how to use properly, like the transfer patterns on the top right, and the two yards of drawcord elastic. The clip-on garters I understand, though what I'd clip them to is beyond me - I wonder if there's a market for them on ebay? Some of the zippers in the pile were obviously removed from other garments, but at least 3/4 of them are brand new and unused, or appear that way.

I've been looking for a pattern for a jewelery roll, without much success - my plan is to pick apart the one in the picture, and make my own pattern, once I understand how this one is assembled.

In that same vein, I got this for $4.00;

I've been struggling to make my own crinoline, and I've assembled and disassembled one a number of times, not really sure if what I was doing was correct. Now that I actually have one in my hands, I know! Plus, this one actually fits me, so I have one to wear while I try to make another!

In addition to all that, I occasionally find some really great vintage patterns. Lately, I've come across a number of patterns for little girl dresses, like these;

I don't actually have children, and when I do, it's likely it'll be a boy - my fiance's family has had nothing BUT boys for three generations, and if I remember 11th grade biology, the sex of a baby is decided by the father, but even so, I couldn't resist picking up these patterns. I'm not normally a very acquisitive person, but really, since I started sewing, all bets are off. Plus, when the lady offered me the whole box (there were 16 in total, most of them 50's and 60's dresses and blouses in sizes 10 and 12) for $2.00, I could NOT say no.

Now that I have them at home and have had a chance to stare at them, I want to make the little sailor dress (bottom right) SO MUCH. Maybe I can adapt it to fit one of the cats. I'm never sure - does dressing up your cats count as animal cruelty, or is it just cute? In any case, I'm off to check the newspaper - that's where I'll find out where all the good sales are going to be next weekend! I'll leave you with this;

Labels: great deals, smooshy