A few new thrift finds (shh... don't tell!)

Confession time:

My spare bedroom is completely full of awesome vintage goodness, and my garage is... also full, save a central area so I can get in there and reach things.  So I've officially stopped buying, for now.  As you may recall, we had another nice big sale at Kenrick Antique Mall this past week.  Again I was hoping it would mean big empty gaps where I could bring in tons of new lovely things and thus clear out some space in my house, and again I was somewhat disappointed.  I think I'm on pace to do quite well for July, but I'm always daydreaming that one of the sales will result in huge swaths of things being snapped up so that I can start nearly from scratch filling up the booth with more lovely vintage tchotchkes, gewgaws and whatnots.  Which would, in turn, clear out some space in the house.  Not to fill up with more stuff, though!  Honest!  The idea is to make that central area in the spare room, like in the garage, to get to things and maybe get organized a bit, so I can easily find items and know what to grab when there are more nice gaps to fill in the booth, and so on.

So, like I said, I am officially not buying anything new unless it's something I actually need, and need right now.  Unofficially, however...

See, I have a problem with road trips.  On road trips, all bets are off.  I mean, you have to bring home souvenirs, don't you?  And I have a venue at which to sell off said souvenirs,even, right?

And then there's social shopping.  I can't be held responsible, if my friends, on a Sunday afternoon, get a wild hair and decide it's time to do a little junk shopping.  Can I?

So here are a few shots of recent thrifted treasures that fall under my thrifting loopholes.

Pretty peacock-feather hat.

Closer and with flash, for detail.

The label

 I was pretty shocked by what I've found out so far about this one.  I have thrifted a couple of Mr John hats before that I was super proud to have found, and if you ask Google about Jack McConnell, you mostly get information about the Baron of Glenscorrodale.  So I wasn't expecting much, but if you search for "Jack McConnell hats"... wow!  If you do a Google shopping search for Mr John hats, the most expensive it lists is this one, on Ebay, for $264.99.  The same search for Jack McConnell hats gives you a high-end of this!  Ruby Lane confirms the significant difference in price, and even Etsy seems to, to a lesser extent, so obviously a bit more research is in order.  I'm definitely not just tossing this one in the booth.

Pretty gold/black/white porcelain compote

Marked Italy, 10/24 B

I asked good old Google about this guy, too, and while I am none the wiser on it's origin, I did learn that the hatchmarking technique on it is called sgraffito, which is the name for scratching the surface layer to expose another color underneath.  I also found one of its cousins, without any further information:

from this forum.

If anybody knows anything about it, I'd love to hear it - it's lovely, if damaged.  I didn't get a picture of it, but the glaze is chipped off in a couple of spots on the inside of the bowl of the compote - it almost looks like there were bubbles when it was fired, if that's a thing.  You might be able to tell I know very little about ceramics/pottery/porcelain, down to the fact that I don't know when to use which name!

Two pretty planters

I'm having a bit of buyers remorse for the green one.  It's unmarked and unnecessary, but I liked the speckledy glaze.  The textured one in the background I had to buy.  I have a slightly larger, slightly pinker version that's marked Shawnee, but this is definitely not.  The bottom is flat (unlike the Shawnee), and it's marked C-6-2B on top, USA on bottom and in the middle it looks like two capital letter Cs with a line going through the bottom of the top C and the top of the bottom C.  Not a mark I've seen before, and I don't think it's on the same level as the Shawnee piece, but it matched it, and it was cheap, so I picked it up.

Big owl and little owl.

The small one is obviously an old Avon bottle, and is already spoken for.  The big one has Nagel written in cursive on the bottom, which gave me a laugh.  Remember Nagel?  If he had made ceramic owls, they would definitely not have looked like this one.  Not sure who the Nagel in question was, but I like his cute owl!

Cute plastic Eastery toy.

The bunny cart above was actually from the very stuffy attic of an estate sale awhile back, but I had just brought it in out of the car when I was taking the rest of these pictures, so here you go - some probably 70s or 80s cuteness.  And while we're on toys, the item I am most excited about - something I've wanted for many, many years.  My very favorite toy as a small child, which was given away at some point because supposedly I grew up or something.  Re-found!:

The Fisher Price houseboat! 

It's a bit dirty, but I fully intend to fill up the tub and play with it some time soon.  It's in good shape otherwise - the flag-on-a-spring and the plastic pull-out diving board are intact.  All I need now are the dingy and the bright yellow deck chairs and life preservers I used to love, and a handfull of Fisher Price Little People, original flavor.  Especially this one, but maybe a little cleaner example.  Of course, now I'm also remembering my second favorite toy that's gone, the Fisher Price Little People A-Frame. Sigh.  On the upside, you know what my parents kept, which I adore?:

The Tonka Winnebago!  Image totally stolen from an old Minneapolis Craigslist ad.

What about you?  What was your favorite childhood toy?  If you found it at Value Village for $2.82, would you let your friend talk you out of buying it just because you're maybe kind of a little bit of a hoarder?  :)

That's me, out.  Linking to a few linky dinkies:

Her Library Adventures Flea Market Finds (I hope it's ok mine are from thrift stores and estate sales!), Magpie Mondays at Me and my Shadow, Caps Creations Thrifty Love Link Party and Beez Rental Designs' Frugal Treasures Party, where I totally screwed up my link, but oh well!

Pin It