Fall Is upon Us...'Tis Time to Rummage!!

Yes! This past week, I took a day off so that my fellow treasure hunter Laurie and I could make our biannual pilgrimage up to Winnetka for the big rummage sale. The fall rummage mecca is Christ Church, and its sale is always a doozie. So... let's get right to the spoils:

First, the shiny things:


The box is an old tin candy box with a hinged lid. I love the detail--it would have been way cooler if the flowers could have been some kind of paisley-esque motif, but hey, you can't have everything. The crocheted thing with the paillettes is a tote bag from Von Maur... it still had the tag on it. It's probably the least practical thing I got at the sale, but I cannot pass up paillettes. Nosiree! I didn't get the moniker "Magpie" for nothing!

Of course, the rummage has become a pretty reliable place to find cool table linens, and this year was no exception.


The small vintage tablecloth was a steal at $4.00, while even the large cloth (which will grace our Thanksgiving table this year) was a tad steep at $7.00... but it is pristine. The napkins are the coolest green paisley. I don't have anything to go with them... yet. But they are lovely and in such good shape. And at $2.50 the lot, who could resist?

Then there were the books...


I was much more disciplined this year than in years past, but to tell you the truth, we arrived a tad later than usual this year, and we had to park about a mile from the sale. Knowing you have to schlep your purchases offers a little incentive to rein in impulse buying. (Okay, okay... the damned spangled tote bag was an impulse purchase. But it weighs ounces, I tell you! Ounces!)

One book I couldn't resist, though, was this small journal:


Now, I already have more journals than I'll probably fill for the rest of my life (or, at least, until civilization implodes and we no longer have access to the Web and blogs and stuff), but I couldn't resist this one. And why? Well, I know you can't read it, but just take a gander:


It was inscribed! And very sweetly, from Gina to Brian, with hopes that he will record his travels, thoughts, and adventures. On the first page of the journal, Gina has copied out and slightly adapted the first sonnet in Christina Rossetti's "Monna Innominata: A Sonnet of Sonnets." It is dated May, '94. What a lovely gift! But, alas, one that doesn't appear to have been appreciated:


All the rest of the pages are untouched. It certainly appears this journal was a gift to a departing lover, but did Gina know that Brian would never come back to her? Given the way she adapted the sonnet, it could well be a parting gift, with the hope (probably vain) that Brian might reconsider. At any rate, I felt so sorry for this little book (there I go, anthropomorphizing again!) that I had to purchase it. Fifty cents is not too high a price to pay for this artifact--and who knows? Maybe it will inspire a story, or more.

Of course, the sale yielded the usual big man's shirt (only one, this time) and a couple of pairs of designer shoes in never-worn condition...


You know, Laurie and I were talking about all the shoes we've picked up at the rummage over the years, and how even if you figure that the shoes averaged about $3.00 a pair (this year, the going rate was $6.00, which we thought a bit steep, but these ARE Italian and never worn), the sum of all our purchases would not equal the original price of one pair of them. Ah, rummage, sweet rummage!

But, the piece de resistance, the BIG find, was this never-before-worn winter coat:


Only 40 smackeroos! Now, that's kind of pricey for the rummage, but, as I said, this coat has never been worn. And, as luck would have it, I have been pricing winter coats of late, as my trusty overcoat--which I bought in 2001 when my pals Barb and Beth came to visit--is getting a tad threadbare. That now-old coat cost at least a C-note more than this coat, BUT now that even mid-priced wool coats were going for $400+ at Carson's last weekend, I would say that 40 bucks is a really good deal. I'm happy. Can you tell?

Next up, in a day or two, I'll present our newest appliance. Oooohhhhh.....

No Country for Flimsy Canvas Pirate Shoes

(With a nod to Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers)

It's been quite a month or so for Rachel and Chase: First, they got married...



and then they bought a house and five acres of land.



(No, that's not their house, it's their neighbor's... but the land in the foreground is theirs.)

I'm not going to post any pictures of the house yet because, although it's a cute, kind of sprawling and ranchy place, it currently bears all the exterior and interior marks of renovation. I want to show it at its best, so you'll have to wait a few months until our next visit. Mark my words, though: It will be a fine, fine place when it is all shined up. Magpie-worthy!

So, you say... what's with the flimsy shoe reference? And well you may ask. It's a warning not to wear flimsy canvas slip-ons (even ones embellished with rhinestone-encrusted jolly roger accents) to pick your way through the scrub of the Chihuahuan Desert. I can offer that warning because, you see, I made that mistake.

When Jeff and I went with Rachel to get our first glimpse of the house, she led us out through this gate onto the the less civilized portion of their property:



I picked my way through the brush, following her lead, but I hadn't gotten ten feet outside the gate when my right foot erupted in the jangling pain of what seemed like a hundred tiny electric shocks. Actually, it felt like a mild stinging nettle attack, and for a moment I thought, "Are there nettles here? Why, I haven't been stung by nettles since the second time I was in England." Then I looked down. There, on the top of my foot ('cause y'know, I wasn't wearing any socks...) were thirty or more tiny red ants, just biting away. It makes me shudder just to think of it, even now. And the stinging was no longer mild. It was really starting to hurt. I brushed and slapped them away and bravely went on... for a few more steps.

That was when I got what I though was a rock in my shoe. But I couldn't shake it loose. And I sure was not going to take the shoe off in the middle of ant central (even though I was now watching the ground for signs of the nasty buggers). Eventually, I decided that these shoes were not the shoes to wear while trekking ANY part of the land outside the gate, and I made my way back to the carport, near the house. There, I discovered that there was no rock in my shoe. No...there was a little thorn or sticker or really nasty burr--but with very hard, very sharp spikes--embedded in the sole of my flimsy canvas pirate shoe and poking through right to my instep. Ouch! (Okay, pardner, go ahead: call me a tenderfoot. I dare you.) Rachel and Chase said they were from some kind of invasive species... they were all around. The dogs kept stepping on them and prising them out of their feet with their teeth after they had hopped around on three legs for a while.

Despite all these dangers to those who don't dress their feet properly, the spread is spacious and beautiful in a stark kind of way. There are birds everywhere, singing and warbling like nobody's business. There are even owls nearby--I heard them hooting several times. I'm sure there are all kinds of wildlife (other than those damned ants). And, since it had been raining fairly frequently (we experienced some amazing storms wild with lightning that lit up the desert and set the mountains between Marfa and Alpine into sharp relief in the dark desert night), the place was blooming with wildflowers... including this lovely prickly pear by their fence:



By the way, I paid for my flimsy footwear with a swollen foot that lasted through the night. At least it was only swollen--it didn't continue to jangle in pain.

Next up, the promised discussion of the magic of Marfa, some great eats, and the barn dance. Stay tuned!