My mother was driving down her street and passed a few boxes that had been set on the curb.  It seems the occupant of the house had passed on and the house was being readied for sale.  My mother, unable to pass a promising looking trash pile, and knowing my love for vintage linens (and hankies), grabbed all of them and took them home.  She and my aunt lovingly handwashed and pressed each one, and gave them to me in a nice, tidy little stack.  I love them so much!

To think someone threw these in the trash. Seeing beautiful old things like this just brings up so many questions in my mind.  Who did these belong to?  What was she like?  How old are they?  What tears were shed on these? I also cannot help but marvel at the hard work and excruciating detail that went into making these.  It really was a different time, when (most likely) a woman put in many hours to make something as simple as a handkerchief a beautiful thing. Some of these were obviously hand made, and it just amazes me.

What a different time we live in now. The handmade hankie has been replaced with a linty kleenex.  What a waste, in more ways than one.

The Daddy Monkey gave me the most gorgeous vintage sewing box for Mother’s Day this year.  I love it so much.  Much better than the messy basket-with-everything-shoved-in-it system.  Ahem. Have I mentioned before that he is awesome?  He is.

And what better to put in the box, than two great thrifted sewing stashes? I found the tracing wheel (more on that in another post) and a bunch of thread, snaps, buttons and patches all jumbled together in a plastic bag at the Goodwill.  The other score came from one of those funky thrift shops where the little old ladies get mad when your kids touch things (not a good place for us).  But that thrift shop has the best selection of old sewing stuff.  They always have tons of old metal zippers for a quarter apiece, and I have been buying them up and stashing them.  The quality is way better, and obviously cheaper than buying zippers new.

The spring bunting became happy birthday bunting with the addition of a few new letters.

The bendy dolls I made for The Girl’s new dollhouse.  These took So. Long. To. Make.

Beautiful thrifted oak caddy for her art supplies.  When she wants to use it she says, “can I paint my heart?”  So sweet.

When I was pregnant with The Girl, I bought this wooden doll cradle at the Goodwill for $5, because I was so convinced that she was a girl.  This month, I finally pulled it out of storage and it was a mess.  It had nails sticking out of it, and it was spotted with paint and dirt.   I sanded and scrubbed it, then polished it with some nice beeswax polish.

I made a little mattress and quilt, and to my delight, this doll fit perfectly inside.  That is the doll I made for The Boy years ago, which he never played with.  I gave the baby a good bath and made a new little gown and diaper for it.

I love the little cloth diaper.  It’s details like that which made me totally fall in love with certain dollies when I was a little girl.

I put a lot of time and love into this gift.  It makes me so happy to see this old doll (and cradle) get a new life.

Remember that day I went in search for shelves for my fabric stash and came home with a ton of yarn?  Well, the score somehow made my storage problem worse, not better, and I have been scouring the thrifts ever since.  Believe me, the irony of that is not lost on me.

Last Thursday I finally found some new shelves for $30, and brought them home.  They look great with all the fabric neatly stacked.  I spent a good part of the day re-organizing the stash and happily discovered that my fabric stash is actually shrinking.  So having it out in the open where I can get to it is so much better than having to dig through boxes to find what I need.

The bottom four shelves are my stash, and the top shelf is for WIP’s.  That’s the new yarn in those laundry baskets on top.  The other baskets contain various knitting and quilting projects.  I can’t wait to make this with some of that yarn.  I found that link through ravelry.  That place is insane.  In a good way.

Edit: I guess when I said “new shelves” that meant that they were indeed, new.  However, they are only new to me and found at the Goodwill.  The fact that I got it used makes me happier than buying something from a big box store for new.

I see yarn at the Goodwill pretty much every time I’m there, but this yarn was different.  This stash very clearly belonged to someone who loves good yarn and loves to knit.  There was not a ball of Red Heart to be found.  The store had them bagged up in large plastic bags, and was selling them for $4 apiece.  Thinking of my already embarrassing yarn stash at home, I picked only four bags and headed home.

I giddily showed them to the Daddy Monkey, and told him, “This is only a fraction of what they had.”  And then he spoke the ill-fated words, “why didn’t you buy all of it?”  This is why I love him. His logic of “why not stock up on the good stuff for cheap” was enough to convince me to rapidly get the kids ready and load everyone up in the car for another trip out there.  I then bought six more bags, still leaving a few behind.

So let me introduce my new yarn stash.  I think I probably doubled my stash with this purchase.  So for $40, I got luscious yarns in cashmere, merino wool, pima cotton, silk, alpaca, and angora.

It was all I could do to not dump them on the floor and roll around in them.  So instead I just took them out and sorted them by color and found that I have enough of some of them to make a sweater for The Girl.  Certainly enough yarn to make funky striped sweaters for everyone.  (Except The Boy who said he DID NOT want a sweater.)

So now I really need some new shelves because I have nowhere to put this yarn.  It sits, still in bags, piled up on my sewing desk.

I feel so happy about this purchase. That I somehow got my hands on on this glorious yarn shop quality yarn for insanely cheap feels like a small miracle to me.  I feel like I should do something to balance out the karma on this, so I decided to make the commitment to do something I have wanted to do for many years.  To make a wool sweater for Children in Common, a charity program that provides assistance to children in orphanages in Russia.  Ever since I learned to knit while pregnant with The Boy, I have wanted to do this but have never found the time.  I still don’t have the time, but I do have the yarn, so that’s a start.

I found this incredible Le Creuset pan at the Goodwill for $6!!  I nearly had a heart attack when I found it.  I don’t know how much it cost originally because I’m unable to find it online, but these pans are not cheap.  Who would give this to the Goodwill?!

Before I had this pan, my brown rice was always soggy and mushy.  This magical little pan makes the best brown rice ever.  I’m assuming it’s because of the super thick cast iron walls.

And I absolutely love that this thing will last forever if properly cared for.

Two insanely cute vintage dresses for The Girl for $1 each!  The one on the left is handmade.

I love the little chicken on the jumper on the right.  I’m thinking I could make something similar.  But without a chicken.  Maybe an elephant or something.  Would be pretty easy, it just buttons up the side.

I can’t wait until she’s big enough to wear these.

Our dishwasher finally went kaput.  It’s been on the fritz for months, and to be honest, it has never worked right in the few years we’ve had it.  It did the worst job washing dishes, as opposed to our old one which would wash anything.  I swear you could put a whole chicken in there and the bones would come out clean.

Last time our dishwasher died, we rushed out and bought a new one and it was a piece of junk.  The Daddy Monkey has been looking on Craigslist, and has found a few, but we are in no hurry.  We’ll get one eventually because a dishwasher is nice to have for dinner parties and when you are making jam and whatnot.

We finally embraced the act of washing dishes by hand, and I cannot believe what has happened.  Our kitchen is always clean. When the dishwasher worked, it seemed that there was always a sink full of dirty dishes.  Either the dishwasher hadn’t gotten the load clean, or there were too many dishes for one load, or the machine was full of clean dishes and waiting to be unloaded.  We both swear that our new setup is faster.

We bought a nice drying rack, the only one the store had that folded up, and wasn’t plastic.

We both make an effort to wash dishes when they are there.  I try to keep on top of them during the day and The Daddy Monkey usually does them after dinner while I’m bathing The Girl.

I love the fact that we can now use an eco-friendly dish washing liquid as opposed to that nasty chemical stuff that we used in the dishwasher, but I’m not happy about using more water to hand wash.

At least we have this guy to keep us company while we wash.

I think he was a plant holder in a previous life, but now he holds our brushes and scrubbies.  I found him ages ago at the Goodwill, of course.

I had to take a little break from it because I started getting really sick of it.  I always get to that point in the middle of quilt production when I start questioning my choices and really dislike what I’ve done.  I chalk it up to being tired of looking at it so much.

Is it wrong that I’m already planning the Summer quilt when this one is not even finished yet?