Back Then Part Two

Back with more pics of what I found in my thrifted time capsule handmade sewing box. This matchbox was filled with straight pins and tiny buttons, also something my grandmother used to do with hers. It makes me wonder if the box could date back to the forties, and was inherited by the next generation.

I found fine steel crochet hooks (one was a double-0 with a cap for the hook, which I've never seen before) and a very slender, slightly bent awl-type tool that may be a thread picker.

I've only seen reproduction wooden needle cases. This one is the real deal.

And it still had needles inside.

It's always fun to guess what the original owner did with their tools and notions. The box's contents were a bit disordered, but from everything I saw I think this was a working sewer's box, probably primarily used mostly for clothes making and mending (there was a pattern wheel tracer tool and a well-used bit of tailor's chalk in the box.) Yet she definitely crocheted, too.

There were some mysteries, too. I've never seen a razor knife like this. Could it be an ancient ancestor of the rotary cutter?

I reorganized everything as I went through it; here are all the spools of thread that came in the box. Some I recognize as coming from the seventies; others are wooden and quite old. I love finding spools with just a yard or two of thread saved on them. That always touches my frugal little heart, as I do the same. :)

Anyway, I will preserve this time capsule and hope that the next generation in my family finds it just as interesting.

Fabscrap for the Holidays

Because I don't have enough to work on, I decided to make a Fabscrap order before the end of the year, and it arrived.

First up was this sample sweater, which is part of their Ugly Christmas Sweater kit.

It came with a bundle of scraps, heat and bond and safety pins for embellishing. I've already got lots of ideas, but I kind of love the sweater and don't want to mess it up (the colors are amazing and it fits me, too. I just need to make it longer, as the hem doesn't even cover my navel.) So I might go thrift another sweater for the project* and save the one that came with the kit to fix up and wear.

I also ordered some medium mendable tops in hopes something would come that I could fix up for Kat during her visit. This gauzy blouse is a pretty sea glass green.

Will be a challenge, too, fixing the big hole in the back.

This gray synthetic shirt with side ruching had no flaws or problems that I could find, so I've got at least one shirt for her ready to go. :)

*Which I did (the ivory fleece Maine hoodie.)

Kat

Happy Birthday, Sweetie. Even if you're on the other side of the world, you're always right here in my heart.

Back Then

You don't have to jump into a wayback machine to time travel. Sometimes you just have to spend a couple of bucks on a thrift auction.

Here's my trip to the past: a handmade sewing box. It's definitely one of a kind, and I'm hoping it contains lot of treasures from the past.

There's an inside tray with lots of interesting stuff here.

Beneath it even more bits and bobs.

These pinking shears are in the original box -- I'm guessing from the fifties or sixties -- and are in mint condition.

Look at all the scissors. My grandmother had a pair like the one with the black handles, so this may date back quite a ways.

Lots of thimbles, too. Stay tuned to the blog for part two and I'll show you some more vintage wonders.

Let the Love Begin

In one of the linen lots I thrifted this year was this pre-quilted panel of Christmas kitchen things. In keeping with my promise to stop hating the holidays I decided to cut them out and finish them.

I think I did a baby blanket from a panel like this when I first started quilting, back in the Jurassic era, but that's all I've done with panels. Basically you cut out the pieces and sew on bias tape, which isn't hard at all. It also gave me a chance to practice using my sewing machine to attach binding, something I want to learn to do well. I used vintage bias tape I've been saving from other thrifts.

Here are the finished apron, oven mitt and potholders.

Spicy

You remember than skein of handspun art yarn I picked up at the weaver guild's show?

Although there's not a lot one can make with 34 yards of art yarn, I decided to crochet a pumpkin out of it and add it to a canvas tote.

Only the black tote I chose made it look more like a pizza, so I changed my mind on the color of the tote.

A neutral tote worked much better. I also crocheted the pumpkin stem and added some embroidery around it.

Art Thrift

Today used to be my favorite day of the year, but since I promised the universe I'd stop hating Christmas I've got to quit thinking that way (still, 365 days until the next one. It's okay to feel good about that, right?) Now let's talk about a wonderful piece of art.

I can't show you the unboxing of this original watercolor painting, as the glass covering it had shattered during shipping or delivery, and we had a big mess to clean up. But luckily the broken glass did no harm to the art, which depicts a quilt show. The subject, the gorgeous colors and the obvious affection of the artist for his work are what first caught my eye as I was browsing some art auctions on ShopGoodwill.com for a new painting for my home office. Then I saw what the artist wrote on the back of the piece and knew it was painted by an experienced pro.

Byron Rodarmel, the artist who painted it on 1978, evidently worked in the movie industry before passing away in 2007. I couldn't find out much more about him than that. His rep didn't really interest me as much as the art, so I placed the minimum bid on it. No one challenged me, and I won the auction.

Would you believe I paid $14.95 for the painting? Because I did, and I'm guessing I could probably resell it for twenty times that. But I'm keeping it in my home office instead, to inspire me and remind me of what I love.

Wishing You

Merry Christmas from Valerean.

Gifts

This is a story that starts out very sadly, so if you're depressed by the holidays you might want to skip the first part.

Back in 1979 I was in military basic training during my first Christmas away from home. Because we were poor and our parents had major relationship and addiction issues, and we belonged to a strict religion, the holidays were always pretty unhappy at our house. My mother had been very angry with me for joining the military without her permission, so I didn't expect even a Christmas card from her. Instead she sent a box of oranges to me to share with my squad, and a little stocking filled with her homemade fudge.

That was the last time someone made a Christmas stocking for me. In the 44 years since then I've always put up stockings for my family and filled them with treats. I even made new stockings for everyone a few times. Each Christmas I would wait to see a stocking hung up for me, but no one ever did that. The stocking you see up there was one I made for myself and hung up one year, hoping someone would put something in it. On Christmas morning I looked and found it was empty. I really don't like being left out, or reminded every holiday that no one thought enough of me to bother, so I didn't hang it up the next year.

To be fair to my family I never asked them to make a stocking for me. Since I bought all the treats and hung up the stockings for Christmas they probably assumed I would make one for myself. But every year that empty space (and especially the year of the empty stocking) really hurt me.

Fast forward to this year, with all the usual bad luck that came with the holidays. It's exhausting (the new computer) and heartbreaking (losing our citrus trees). I've also had food poisoning -- not a terrrible case, but just miserable enough to make me weak as well as upset. The birthday/Christmas package I sent to Katherine inexplicably vanished, and after two weeks I knew it was probably lost for good or stolen. There were several things in the package I could not replace, either. Her roomates are leaving to visit their families so she'll be alone for Christmas, and it just killed me to think of her on the other side of the world with nothing on Christmas morning. It made me angry, too. It's fine for the universe to do all this crap to me, but not to my kid.

I don't know why I asked an artist friend I've known for a few years if they would like to do a holiday gift exchange to help dispel our Christmas blues a bit. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment. Anyway, we ended up agreeing on making a stocking for each other (I didn't say anything about my unhappy experiences in the past.) I really thought I'd gotten over the Christmas stocking thing and hoping for something no one was ever going to give me. Then the package arrived with this lovely handmade quilted stocking stuffed full of lovely goodies for my art quilting, and all I did was cry for most of the day. Then I prayed to the universe and promised to stop hating Christmas if it would just find my kid's package and get it to her. Silly, I know.

The next day (I mean literally, the next day) my lost package showed up on the USPS tracking page in, of all places, San Francisco. 16 days after I shipped it the package reached Katherine's doorstep in Hawaii, and nothing was lost or stolen. As you can see here she was able to set up a little corner in her room with the gifts we sent and the wee Christmas tree, which lights up and plays music, too. That was my Christmas stocking from the universe.

I confess, I still hate the holidays, but not with the venomous loathing I had before this one. I've always spent them trying to do nice things for others because I didn't think anyone should hate Christmas as much as I have. As you know my Christmas last year was pretty much horrible, and this year has been a nonstop nightmare. Except for a few things, like this stocking, and that package appearing out of nowhere -- and the universe finally taking pity on me. So now I have to find ways to stop hating this time of year, because I never welsh on a promise.

I'll start now: Merry Christmas, my friends.

A Trio of Thrifted Rewards

I always buy myself a little got-through-Christmas reward every year; it's a tradition that helps me cope with the stress of the holidays. I really needed this ritual this year, too. My budget is always $50.00. This year I decided to try thrifting what I wanted with the same budget, and first bid on and won this vintage floral brooch collection for $9.99, or about 55 cents each.

My next thrift was this bundle of twelve McCall's Quilting magazines. This is my favorite quilting magazine dating back to the eighties, and I don't own any of these issues. Cost: $7.50, or about 62 cents each.

Finally I needed a few more colors of yarn for my 2024 calendar crochet blanket, so I bid on and won this 22 lb. lot of colorful yarn for $11.99, which works out to 54 cents a pound. Altogether I spent $29.48 on the three lots, which is well within my annual budget. :)

Cute

After getting back into crochet in a big way I invested in a British magazine that offered this pattern for three little holiday stuffies. Of course the pattern is written in UK crochet terms, which is sometimes completely different from US terms (what the Brits call double crochet we call single crochet, for example) so I had to translate everything first. Also the size of the eyes was misprinted; it's 1 cm, not 1 mm. But I perservered and started working on the first one.

All three of these are called amigurumi, which is a Japanese word for small crocheted or knitting stuffy creatures. It's a craft that has been around a long time in Japan, but only reached the West about 20 years ago.

I worked up this little guy in one evening, using just the materials I had on hand. I swapped out the little pompom on top for a starfish charm, too. While he's a little lumpy and misshapen, I think I did pretty well for a first try.

One More Disaster

It seems our grapefruit and orange tree (and possibly our lemon, too) have developed citrus greening disease. We're going to have them tested, but what's happening to them matches all the example photos. There is no cure and the trees have to be destroyed to prevent the disease from spreading.

I think that makes this the worst Christmas season for bad luck in memory. Ah, well. Having the fruit trees was nice for a few years.

The Games We (Don't/Shouldn't/Wouldn't) Play

I don't know why I'm curious about video game dramas lately, but watching the Chinese romantic gaming drama Falling into Your Smile mostly made me glad I've never much liked video games beyond the occasional bout of Scrabble with the computer, or wordl. It did have some moments that nearly redeemed its predictable plot, its unwavering focus on the unimportant, and the weirdly missed excellent storytelling opportunities. The video game they used for the series seemed pretty bizarre and yet boring, which is a rather odd combination, but I won't complain about that because I don't know anything about these games.

The premise: after graduating college a young woman named Tong Yao (Cheng Xiao) is wasting her time mainly playing group video games when she's recruited to join the professional gaming team ZGDX. This is supposedly due to her outstanding performance in playing this one video game, but as she becomes the only female professional player in China that seems suspect. Her teammates show a few glimmers of doubt before fully embracing her as one of their own, which seemed unlikely, too. Yao starts butting heads with her team captain, the tall and fabulous Lu Sicheng (Xu Kai) as they play their way toward the national championships, and then of course they fall in love.

What had me scratching my head from the start was the romance between Yao and Cheng. As a character she's not especially likeable or relatable, cries too much, and otherwise just stands around in the presence of her BFF or a bunch of guys for the most part. Cheng is interesting, broody and mysterious (at least he is for two episodes before his inexplicable love for Yao turns him into a quivering bunny boy.) They have zero chemistry and I had no sense of why they even liked each other. I thought the wealthy gal who plays in the secondary romance was the better character, and would have suited Cheng much more. But no, she's off falling in love with this kid on an opposing team who with her has a hundred times more chemistry than the leads.

Another thing that puzzled me: while the different subconflicts were fine, there were so many chances at better storytelling that were there but strangely left to fizzle out. An ongoing rivalry between Cheng and a South Korean player called Hierophant that seemed like it was going to become epic, as it had so much potential -- the need to dominate each other, possibly a third for a romantic triangle, and definitely the dark and sinister vibe coming from Hierophant, but nope. They just presented the conflicts, did nothing with them, and let all the possibility evaporate. Same thing with Yao's ex-boyfriend, who is another professional player -- he could have caused them both some major problems. Mostly all he did was sulk until at the end, when he praises his ex. Sure, he would.

Falling into Your Smile will likely appeal to the youngsters who are heavily invested in video gaming and such. For me it was a lesson in romance failure, and what not to do with storytelling opportunities. Available on Viki.com and Netflix.

Bargain Duo

I have a project for which I need a Christmas sweater (more details on that in a future post), so I headed over to our local thrift store to see what I could find. I didn't like anything they had in my size/Christmas colors, but this ivory fleece hoodie caught my eye (anything with Maine on it grabs my attention.) It's in spotless, like-new condition, and should work for my idea.

Can't beat the price, either. Fleece hoodies are fairly expensive these days; I priced similar online, and they range from $30.00 to $85.00, depending on the style and label. Compared to one at the cheapest price I saved $23.01.

I always check the book section in this store, as they have a shelf devoted to cookbooks, and they're all in pretty decent condition. I really like one pot meals, so I thought I'd give some recipes from this a try.

I paid $1.99 for the cookbook, which is still sold by the publisher for $19.99 (although it was probably remaindered and bargain priced at $15.99; I see the remains of what could be a lot/outlet store's sticker.) Savings: $18.00.

Success

Rarely does an idea I have work out exactly as I envision it, but this time it did. You remember the lot of faux pearls I thrifted (that included some real pieces?)

I got some recycled styrofoam cones, thrifted white yarn, my hot glue gun and then went to work on my idea.

The end result: pearl Christmas trees. The silver stars on top were cut from some ornament hangers.