Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Tale of an (estate sale) impulse buyer

Every once in a while, I glance at the classifieds to see if there are any interesting ads for local estate sales. Most sales now start on Friday mornings. I don't work on Fridays now -- yippee. But I have a childcare issue....hmmm. So if there is a sale within a 5-mile radius of our house, Lee has volunteered to watch Nate before he leaves for work while I hit 1 or 2 sales.

Last Friday all of the stars were aligned because there was an estate sale only 5 blocks from our house. The ad sounded amazing -- the buzz words for me were "material," "sewing supplies," and "crafts." I knew I had to go to this one.

It started at 8am and I was one of the first people there (typical Californian - I drove the 5 blocks). What a jackpot! This woman's house had a TON of sewing stuff -- boxes of buttons & zippers, patterns galore, yard after yard of fabric, etc. But let's be honest -- a lot of it wasn't really my taste. The fabric was mostly polyester and the majority of the sewing patterns were from the 70s and 80s. But it was still a lot of fun to look at. I guess I enjoyed myself because I was there a whole hour and made poor Lee a little late for work. Oops. And I still found a bunch of things to buy. Looking at my purchases now, I probably got a little carried away. But at the time, I was pretty excited. Here's what I got:


I don't know why I was draw to these embroidery transfer patterns but for some reason they called out to me. I don't embroider. Good grief. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with them now. Silly me. See, I told you I got carried away. Anybody out there embroider??


Unrelated to sewing -- I bought this picture too. It's hanging in our dining room. After a good cleaning, I think it turned out sweet.



My new fabric. All cotton, no polyester, thank you very much. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. Save it for something interesting, I hope.

I also picked up a great pair of pinking shears and 2 embroidery hoops I'm going to use as pseudo picture frames on the wall...unless, I decide to start yet another new hobby and take up embroidering tea towels. Maybe after I finish the Christmas cross-stitch I've been working on for the last 10 years (I'm not joking).

4 comments:

lindybasenji said...

Boy I sure hope that cross stitch isn't the little Christmas one I was teaching you on . . . that would be something!

Nikki said...

Yeah, that would be something...it would be pathetic. No, I finished that snowman right away (thank you for the lesson!) and chose an advanced project for my next cross-stitch. WAY over my head. Really big. Lots of details.

Jen said...

Oh man!!! You have the best luck. I want to see more of that pink floral fabric sandwiched between the two yellow ones.

I wish I would have known about this- I totally would have gotten up early and dragged Avery with me. Darn!

the blackwells said...

Oh my goodness...it sounds like you wandered into my grandma's house.