Of Books and Baskets

I woke up this morning to a promise of a Moving Sale, a roadside yard sale and a VFW Rummage town. I got up, dressed, coffee in the tum and out the door in anticipation. First stop - the Moving sale. This was to be held at the house of one of the Bean's friends. They are downsizing from their big home due to the rough economic times and have a house full of furniture and things to sell. But, for some unknown reason, they weren't set up today as promised. Letdown #1.

On to the roadside yard sale that The Breadman alerted me to last night. This is a place where the same people set up a few times a year and sell their expensive things under a tent and lots of antique furniture outside the tent. The best part is that the take all their "junk" and castoffs, throw them behind the tent on tables and price everything 25¢. I found my $128.00 Steiff Turkey in one of those 25¢ piles. So, I was hyped to get to that sale. How they did it, I will never know, but they were gone. The Breadman saw it all set up yesterday at 2:00, but it was all gone today. Letdown #2. (Are you sensing a theme here?)

So, on to the VFW Rummage sale. Oh. My. Lord. What a piddly amount of old lady crap they had. Old lady clothes, old lady crocheted afghans, old lady knick knacks, old lady books and old lady CD's. And, to top it off, a table full of old ladies keepin' and eye on me and The Bean to make sure we didn't steal any of their old lady crap. I did buy five vintage packages of rickrack, but that wasn't really even photo worthy. Letdown #3.

Next door to the VFW sale was a small children's consignment store. The owner had put a bunch of stuff out to get some of the VFW traffic to her store. I noticed a bunch of books, so we went to look at them. I cannot keep The Bean in reading material lately. He has graduated to adult books (James Patterson currently) so he is on the hunt for new books. Once we started looking, I noticed a bunch of old Children's Reading and Spelling Primers. They were marked $3.00 each, so I was just thumbing through them while The Bean looked. That's when the lady that owned the store stuck her head out and said, "Those books are 10¢ each today." Cool!

Most of these are from the State Of Kansas (birthplace of Me) which I liked and most of them date from about 1917. My Great Grandfather was the Secretary of the Board of Education of Kansas (And he wrote the primers during his terms), but I wasn't lucky enough to find any from the years he served.

I just like the old patina of the books and the thoughts of all the kids that used these books and carried them back and forth from home to school each day. Old books have such charm. When I was little, I loved going to my Great Grandparents house and looking at the books they used as teachers. I suppose these books brought back those memories to me. I ended up with twenty books for $2.00 including a few very old religious books, some old music books and some old agriculture books - all from about 1917.

After that we went to the local Flea market where I used to have my booth. I wanted to prowl, but I really, really needed to use the bathroom. TMI, right? Anyway, I went right to it and it was padlocked shut. So, I went to the counter to ask for the key and was told it was "Out of Order." Yea, right. Like that lady can go all day without peeing.

We took a quick look around to see if we could find any treasures. I was on the look out for tablecloths, but I never found a single one in the entire store. I did find this gathering basket. I have baskets like this in a variety of sizes that I use to carry craft projects, Christmas Cards, gathering vegetables in the garden, gathering flowers in the garden and so forth.

I use them for lots of different things, so I like to have a variety of all sizes on hand. I have an itty bitty one that I use for pens and pencils and several larger ones for other purposes. By large, I mean regular sized. The one you see here is LARGE.
See what I mean? I could gather watermelons and spare tires in that thing. I really don't have a plan for it, but I knew I would never find another one like it, so I spent $6.00 for it. It was worth that, don't you think?

Last Saturday it snowed, but today it was int he 80's. It is very windy too. Tomorrow we are going up on a mountain to a Kite Festival. We've got a bunch of new kites, a cooler full of water, a picnic lunch in the works and lawn chairs at the ready. It should make for a very nice day. Photos to follow, of course!