wrapping up the week

Today we leave for Dallas. We found an alternate route that keeps us off the interstate almost the whole way and it only takes 3 minutes longer...5 hours and 15 minutes in all. I thought it would take 6 minimum. We are going to attend and celebrate our great-nephew's Bar Mitzvah. I can't believe that kid is 13 already, especially since we went to his father's Bar Mitzvah. 

While we're in Dallas I hope to be able to drop in on the gallery there that has some of our work, Kittrell/Riffkind, especially since we got a check in the mail from them this week. They sold the Wren Box.

I finally got a start on the new flower bed I've been wanting to put in towards the back of the Big Backyard but in front of the one where the poppies and banana trees are. Eventually I'll connect it with the long bed on the side. Anyway, I got the perimeter stones moved back there and put in place. And put the plants still in their pots inside the perimeter. Now I'm slowly digging up the grass, something I'm less than enthusiastic about. It will all have to wait now til we get back.

My sister and I went to another estate sale today but it was, like the last half dozen or more lately, just a bunch of junk, although I did buy one item at this one and one at the one before, both purchases setting me back $2 each. One was this little cluster of vases which I've had filled with pansies this week but forgot to take a picture when they were fresh 

and the other, a glass chimney for a lamp. I bought an antique lamp a year or so ago at one of these sales and decided it used to have a chimney that helped keep the top globe in place so I've been on the lookout for one. This sale was out in the middle of nowhere and it confused Siri as she was telling us we had reached our destination when there wasn't a house to be seen in any direction. You never know what you are going to come across driving on these county and small town back roads and so on our way back we passed this field full of plastic car bumpers. 

I suppose you could say they have a bumper crop! (OK, I stole that joke from my sister.)

So some of you might remember when I choked last summer (and all the other grisly details)? Well, I had my annual physical Tuesday and I mentioned to her about the whole spastic throat thing and the whole choking thing and the having to be heimliched three times thing and before I was through talking she was ordering an x-ray, which they did then, and now I have to go back Monday for a modified upper GI and a barium swallow on an empty stomach and my appointment isn't until almost noon and then I have to go see an ENT doctor. So, I've kept my promise and been to the doctor about it.

I meant to take a picture of the baptismal bowl slumped in the mold that our friend Gene was making here last week but I forgot (you can see a picture of the fused blank here) but this is what the finished bowl looks like.

Well, I guess I ought to get these last minute things taken care of so we can get on the road.

more of the same

It's been almost a week since my last post...sounds like I'm in a BA group - Bloggers Anonymous...but I haven't been doing anything out of the ordinary. Just working, finished the model for the feather on the beach and then put that stuff away to start on the intermediate sized 24” wide drawings for the A&M job. Finished one, started on another, and I figured y'all are probably tired of seeing these models and drawings over and over but here's the pictures anyway (and before anyone gets all excited about how great the drawing is, I traced it from a photograph onto mylar from which I will get a print).

Saturday I worked at the antique store and sold a sweet little dresser that I really liked. It came in just after I bought the larger striped oak dresser and if it hadn't been about the same size as the one I replaced I would have switched the new one out for it. But the whole point in getting a new dresser was getting a bigger dresser. Anyway this lady came in and just loved it but it was twice what her budget was and wanted to know if she could get a 25% discount. I confabbed with my sister and long story short, I offered her 25% off but she had to buy it right now. If she decided to look around and then came back, the price would be higher, still discounted, but higher. So she went for the deal.

Speaking of deals, my sister and I went to an estate sale up the road last week and I got 6 wind chimes/bells for $6 each but they aren't the cheap cheesy mass manufactured kind but, all bar one, artisan made. I'd take pictures but it's raining outside. Been raining all day so far. It started yesterday afternoon depriving me of my dedicated day out in the yard but we really need the rain so I don't really mind. It gave me some time to make progress in the book I'm reading.  well, the rain let up enough for me to run out and get these pics...

   

Recognizing that the rain is good, still it has me in a funky mood and I've made no progress so far today on the second drawing. I've been trying to put together a political post for weeks, months even, but the whole sorry spectacle is just too fucking depressing. Not just the candidates but the general nastiness that passes for social interaction these days. My poor little psyche can't take it. It makes me want to retreat even more into the natural world and my non-political-without-content art.

day trip

I came home Thursday with a deposit check for the little residential job. Friday, the check for the big job came. But that one I'm not cashing yet.

So now, I am back to work. This little residential job is a full lite door to the bedroom and 8 cabinet doors in the kitchen. I'll start on the full size art work Monday, or rather, Tuesday. Monday is already accounted for. I'm having a 'well woman' exam. This is a big deal. I don't go to the doctor unless I need to and I don't get sick so I hardly ever need to. As my retired neurosurgeon friend told us, don't go to the doctor, they'll always find something wrong. But now I have insurance yay Medicare and it's been about 10 years at least since I've been poked and prodded. Just want to make sure the lady parts are still in good form.

But I digress.

So, Friday, my sister and I went to another estate sale up in the Hill Country. This one was beyond our usual radius, it took us an hour to get there, but we thought it would be worth the drive...a house, a barn, and a 2,000 sq ft storage building that was 'filled with antiques and all sorts of stuff'. Sounded like a picker's dream. In reality, not so much. 

It was filled with stuff all right, but mostly junk. Like this pink beaded and glammed up chandelier.

Or a skull decorated with buttons and feathers for $25.

The antiques were all in really bad shape and the rest of the stuff in almost decent shape was not to our taste.

I liked this old metal kitchen counter that needed lots of work that they had an outlandish price on.

The house was actually attached to the horse barn. Walk out the front door and there are the horse stalls with the tack room/barn at the other end.

Some of these sales just leave you scratching your head not only at the stuff they are selling but the prices attached to it. Like sections of cedar tree trunk or containers of rocks for $10.

 

When we left there we decided to go to another estate sale that was about 16 miles away, four houses. Siri took us on every back county road to get there

and I swear it took twice as long as just going down the state highway but it was a nice scenic drive and we got to see some cool stuff like this old church and cemetery out in the middle of nowhere

and this country store in Moravia, population 26 (the sign reads 'one of the oldest country stores in Texas'). Food, music, and pool; what more could you ask for. 

We would just stop in the middle of the road to take pictures

like this acacia tree in full bloom.

As it turned out, that particular estate sale didn't start until the next day oops. So we headed into Schulenburg (population 2,852) to find some lunch and stumbled on this cute little Garden Company and Marketplace Cafe. We ate on the patio out back. Wonderful atmosphere and great food. This dinky little town has a better place than the whole of Wharton with it's 8,000+ people.

After we browsed through the little nursery and gift shops we headed home.

eating the dead

My sister and I go to estate sales on Thursdays or Fridays though we limit our area to about a 30 mile radius. Sometimes we find some neat stuff and sometimes we come away with nothing. They're all basically the same...all the accumulations of the deceased laid out on tables and counters...china and crystal and pottery, collectibles, books, decorations, pictures, jewelry, watches, records (I'm always curious what music they listened to), furniture, clothes, linens, whole kitchens, yard tools, tools, even down to their personal grooming items and cleaning supplies. Sometimes though, you come across a picker's dream. Last Friday we went to one in a blink of a little town, two houses, one of which used to be a church converted into a residence, full of gorgeous antiques and just all kinds of really neat stuff plus a shed, and a big barn. I could have done a whole post on just this one house if I had thought to take pictures. I spent about $40 and this is what I bought:

this very cool pitcher

and this juicer

4 glass knobs

this small wood printers tray

a tabletop table saw

and a wine bottle opener (I broke mine recently) and a putty knife. We had planned to go to a different one but my sister and our boss at the antique store went to this one on Thursday where Donna bought some gorgeous furniture for the store and Pam convinced me that this one was worth going back to. She was right.

I got a lot of the glassware I used in the totems at these sales. I have things I look for like wind chimes (they usually need a little bit of repair).

I  especially like the one above. I had to completely restring it and come up with a substitute for the small glass tube 'ringer' as it was missing and I had to make new thin cardboard 'vanes' and paint them gold as the old ones were torn or missing. It hangs inside just inside the door to the garage and when it's open or the other back door is open, the air coming in will make it tinkle.

And birdhouses

and certain tools. I've picked up some nice wooden spoons and small kitchen knives and a really nice 10” cast iron skillet and I finally got a three tiered hanging wire basket set for the root vegetables. I've been looking out for one of those for a while. My sister was quicker and she got the first one we came across.

Occasionally I run across something that is too good to pass up like this antique lamp for $35 that I have no idea where I am going to put.