Latest treasures

Spent some time at booth 78 at Kenrick Antique Mall today.  I was pleasantly surprised upon walking in the door to see the little bookshelf I thrifted this summer on the way back from taking a friend on a college visit to Iowa sitting by the register, getting ready to move on to it's new home.  Here it was fully laden during it's time in the booth, although you can't really fully see its niftitude in this picture.:

Nice little wooden shelf, purchased in Qunicy, IL, has found a new home in the 'Lou!

I also noticed a small white hard-sided suitcase had sold, and the green-background crewelwork piece that I thought once before had been purchased has gone MIA again.  Hopefully this time it actually did find a new home, rather than just going on walkabout somewhere else in the store.

But with the small-but-still-big-for-an-8x8-space bookshelf gone, I needed somewhere to put all those books and whatnot.  Perfect timing, as the purchase I made at an estate sale the weekend before this past one was just waiting in the wings for a space to call its own:

The table top, in the back of hank.

I liked the blue and white enamel top immediately, and the legs are all chippy old white paint with slight traces of blue trim left in spots.  Obviously it's not in perfect condition - there's some rust, and I only ever got around to wiping the top down with some basic cleaner, so I'm not sure if those rings will come out or not with something a little beefier, but I learned the main issue when I went to put the legs on.  It seems to have been somewhat home-made, or perhaps re-purposed at some point.  The legs each have a two-ended bolt in them that goes through a drilled hole in the wood under the enamel top, and then you toss a wing nut on the  bolt and tighten it down.  The problem is, one of the bolts has been somewhat damaged at the tip so that I personally couldn't get the wing nut started on the threads.  I'm not sure if the problem is just me and my weak girl-fingers - someone else may be able to get it on there, but in the mean time, I've taped the nut to the side of the table, and it still stands fine even with one leg not tightened down.  Here it is in it's new spot in the booth, already piled up with all the books from the little shelf:

Not bad for a mildly gimpy table!  You can kind of see the wing-nuts on the sides there,
as well as the hint of old blue  trim toward the tops of the legs.

How insanely awesome is that LeeWards craft book cover with the owl?  And I can't even tell you what a kick I get out of the insane 70s fashions in that "Sewing for Men and Boys" book.

Anyway, I added a few other bits of thrifted vintage to the booth as well:

An adorable little mushroom-house bank.

Love the cool wood-grain back and edging on this Treasure Craft drip-glazed serving dish.

Cute small un-Blendo pitcher with gold starbursts.

Two gorgeous small afghans.

I love the above.  Both are very small.  The blue and yellow one is round, and made of all these little pie-shaped bits.  The purple/blue/white one is amazingly bright and graphic, but quite lopsided in execution.  Both are small.  Not really more than lap-sized, but I love them!  Close-ups of each to the side and below (click if you want to see them big).







By the way, I was planning on ending the 50% off sale on vintage clothing and accessories on August 31st, but I've decided to leave it through Labor Day weekend, so if you're in the market for a vintage hat, purse, scarf, shirt, skirt, dress, or shoes, you've got through next Monday to get them for half price!

And as a reminder, 2ndhand Moon is on Facebook.  Like us and you'll be the first to know about the next big sale!



Anyway, I hope everyone's having lots of thrifting luck here lately!  To see some of the treasures found by people who definitely are, check out these link-ups I'm joining in on this week:

Coastal Charm's Nifty Thrifty Tuesday and Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share Monday

Strange coincidence

Of all the posts I've done since I started this little enterprise last December, one from last February has had way, way, way more hits than any other, mostly due to Google searches involving either a certain kind of Le Creuset hollow-handled sacepan or Dru Holland cast iron cookware (you can read that whole post here if you like).  The strange coincidence of my post title today involves the saucepans:

Le Creuset hollow-handled saucepans.

The research I did at the time lead me to believe that this particular style of Le Creuset pans with the fat hollow metal handles that are all of a piece with the rest of the pot originated with another company, Cousances, that was bought out by Le Creuset in 1957.  The serendipitous new find I've made throws a whole new element into the game:

Sorry, rather crummy phone pic here.

As you can see, there is a definite resemblance between these two little pots and the little pots above!  The handles and style are the same, and then there's that gorgeous orange flame enamel.  The interiors are different - gray on these, and white on the Le Creusets - and unfortunately there's only one lid with this set, and it may not be original to the set, despite the color match - it's not cast iron, it's much lighter.  Also these two are the same size.  I haven't gotten all four of them together in the same place for comparison, but I don't think these are any bigger than the larger of the two Le Creusets.  

But where it gets interesting is this.  These are neither Le Creuset nor Cousances.  These are marked Trianon, Made in Belgium.  So of course, I asked good old Google about "enamel cast iron trianon", and found... not a ton of information.  The first thing returned is the most interesting.  It's a page from the Milwaukee Journal from December 5th, 1952 with an ad for Trianon "Terraflame":

As you can see it shows not-very-good black and white illustrations of various pots and pans, lettered, with prices listed like in a catalog.  G. looks awfully familiar with its fat little handle, and apparently, for Christmas 1952, it could be had (size-depending, I assume) for $3.20-$5.70.  The image is terrible, so it's hard to say if the lid looks anything like the one I got with my thrifted treasures.

But what interests me about the whole thing is... I thought I had settled in my mind that the design of these little pots came from the Cousances company, since they predated the ones made by Le Creuset.  But Le Creuset bought out Cousances in 1957.  The above ad proves the same design was being made by Trianon at least as early as 1952, so they could well have been doing it first, but I can't find much else out there about Trianon enameled cast iron.  Anybody out there a connoisseur who can fill me in with the scoop?

In the mean time, check out a couple of great link-ups here:

 

Cap Creation's Thrifty Love Link Party and The Thrifty Groove's Thrifty Things Friday

Yes, I thrifted. And I can't even regret it.

Saturday morning, along with some friends, I helped (largely watched the moms in the group help) a dear young friend move into her dorm room for her Freshman year at a small Christian College in North St Louis County.  Being me, I always check EstateSales.net every week, even when I know I can't go to any sales, I torture myself with the pictures of all the lovely things I can't have.  So I happened to know that there was a sale in Ferguson, not far from where we were, and when it came time to say goodbye and let our little bird fly into this exciting new chapter of her life, I nonchalantly mentioned it to my cohorts, who were all for checking out an estate sale (loophole!  If other people want to go, I don't want to be a party pooper!  And of course I found something for the booth.  Something I have thus far failed to photograph, much less take to the booth, so you'll just have to wait to see that next time.  But after the estate sale, with the ice broken, we headed over to the St Vincent De Paul on West Florissant, where I like to look at the lovely Irish eyes of the manager, which remind me of my Uncle Jerry.

There I found one Sabine china plate that goes with a partial set I have in the booth:

I love the colors in this - a bit of a tweak for the era.

I also found a very nice snakeskin-embossed leather frame purse:

And an absolute mother-load of vintage patterns which, even if they turn out not to be intact, are totally worth it for the illustrations alone (especially since "it" was a very, very good price):

Can you spot the real-live poodle skirt pattern?  And look at the sweet baby dresses!

A little closeup on some of the baby dresses - so, so sweet!

And a pair of cross-stitch benedictions for your home:

A small one in blue and red

A bigger one in brown/orange/turquoise

Both of these could use a better framing situation, but the cross-stitches themselves are such vintage lovelies! All of the above already went into the booth on Sunday afternoon except for the patterns, which I need to put in zip-locks and figure out how to price considering that I can't guarantee they're all 100% intact.  Has anyone else sold vintage patterns and have advice or suggestions?

Since I couldn't put the patterns in yet, and I couldn't add more to the house without taking something else away, I also took these up to the booth, which I've been collecting awhile:

This is only a partial shot of the bunch I took up there, so if you
need any lovely crotcheted bits, head on over to booth 78 at
Kenrick Antique Mall - you know the drill!

And also a very old, lovely train case which I apparently also failed to photograph.  I'm heading back over to the booth now with some other great vintage finds, so I'll take some pics of those there and post them next time.  Until then, enjoy all the great finds other folks have made at these fun link-ups:

Coastal Charm's Nifty Thrifty Tuesday, Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share Monday, Cap Creation's Thrifty Love Link Party, The Thrifty Groove's Thrifty Things Friday, Me and My Shadow's Magpie Monday and Chic on a Shoestring's Flaunt it Friday

Some of the thrifted treasures headed for the booth tomorrow

Even with the spare room is so nicely organized, I am still not ready to add more inventory to my enormous stockpile, so I'm still shopping my garage (since that space is decidedly not organized, it's good to get bits out of there).  Here are a few of the treasures I pulled out to take to the booth tomorrow:

HATS:

Pair of men's wool Kangols

Totally 80s straw cowgirl hat with suede, feathers, fur, beads and one
of those silvery thingies.

SHOES:

Lovely gold metallic open-toed mules marked Famous Barr Co on one
shoe and "Leisure Loungers" on the other.
I love that these were once considered loungewear!

CLOTHES:

'60s Arrow Decton "Perma-Iron" poly/
cotton short-sleeved shirt.

JC Penney poly/cotton pale green short-
sleeved shirt with dark stitching.

Large-collar funky-print shirt.
No label.  So soft!

Large-collar green/white poly/cotton
shirt labelled Famous Barr Supre-Vino

Pink poly/rayon/flax cap-sleeved dress,
non-metal zipper, California Girl label.

Ecru lace over slightly darker color dress,
satiny lining, metal zipper, no label.

Black/silver lamé vavoom dress.  Small tag inside
says size 13, no other label.  Metal zipper.

Remember - all clothing and accessories are still 50% off through the month of August, even these new arrivals, so if you're local, get thee to Kenrick Antique Mall booth 78 tomorrow afternoon and all these new treasures can be yours!

BOOKS:

Little Golden Heidi - 1954 and The Three Bears - 1948

Actually, these will not go into the booth.  I snapped them up without a thought at the Goodwill Pound Store, where together they cost less than $0.39, since they don't weigh a pound, but upon inspection, too many of the pages have been scribbled.  I think I'm looking at a crafty project with the remaining good bits.  I'm open to any suggestions!

The Story Road - 1952 edition reading book

A well-used Wizard of Oz cookbook, surprisingly from 1981

Random children's book Fur & Feathers - 1965

LeeWards Illustrated Library of Arts and Crafts -
1974.  Check out that cover art - Fabulous!

 Peeks at some of the illustrations in a few of these (click if you want to see them bigger):

Also from The Story Road

One of the intact Heidi pages. 

From The Story Road

Fur and Feathers

Wizard of Oz cookbook

Linking up to these great link parties:

Beez Rental Designs' Frugal Treasures Tuesday, Coastal Charm's Nifty Thrifty Tuesday, and Me and My Shadow's Magpie Monday.

Gettin' Crafty, part two!

Hey guys, remember Friday, when I told you all about my brilliant plan for a scruffy old stand-less globe I found at the thrift store, and some light-bright style colored pegs?

Globe

Pegs

The plan was to mark places on the globe that were significant to me with the pegs, and rig it up as a light, but all I could find around the house to poke holes for the pegs was a thumbtack, which was less than ideal, so I didn't get very far that night.  Well I worked 12 hours Saturday, so there was no time to go buy a better hole-poking tool, but I did have a screw loose somewhere (as you've probably already figured out about me!) that was about the right size to make holes for the bigger pegs, and the thumbtack made a good starter for the smaller ones, so I just kept poking and pegging last night.  Then this afternoon between lunch after church and helping my friend pick up my Dad's old weight bench and weights, we stopped by Home Depot and I bought a swag/pendant light cord/chain kit and a light socket, and I just spent the last hour or so rigging that up.  It's not completely finished; I need to hang another hook for the chain/cord, as it's currently just hanging down and dragging the floor, and the raw edge where I badly exacto'd out Antarctica could use some cleanup, and to be perfectly honest, I need to visit Asia and more of the Southern Hemisphere so I can make it look more interesting, but I'm pretty proud of it so far!

I used to have a candelabra thingy on this hook, but candles dripped everywhere
if I lit them, and my living room was way too dark.  Improvement!

I used the bigger, pointy-topped pegs to mark places I've lived: St. Louis, MO; Abilene, TX; Brussels, Belgium and Mauritius (I left out Columbia, MO because the globe is just not big enough for two big pegs that close together).  Then the smaller pegs mark other places I've been that are important to me, either because people I care for live/d there, or because I enjoyed them so much myself.  Here are a few close-ups, to give you a better idea:

Like I said, it's not perfect, but I'm pleased; my living room is brighter and there's a little bit of my wanderlust right here on display!  What do you think?

Found link-up to join for my little fit of craftiness - check it out!:
Craft-o-maniac's Craft-o-Maniac Monday.
Also linking to last Friday's Cap Creations Thrifty Love Link Party (where my fancy, fancy china was featured from last week's link-up!), Chic on a Shoestring's Flaunt it Friday and The Thrifty Groove's Thrifty Things Friday and Between Naps on the Porch's Metamorphosis Monday.

Gettin' crafty

Remember when you were a little kid, and you'd have your army men or your Barbies, or your My Little Ponies, or your Matchbox cars?  Action figures?  Muppet Babies?  Whatever they were, do you remember how fun it was to make up little worlds for them?  My best friend in elementary school had this awesome area in her backyard that was like the rain forest for Barbie.  If we turned the sprinkler on there was even a waterfall.  And shoe box villages for Fisher Price Little People were at least as fun as the store bought schoolhouses and things (with the exception of the houseboat, because you could totally play with that in the bathtub!).  In the summers at the Lake of the Ozarks with my cousins, we would build mazes out of Legos and try to make the frogs we caught hop through them.  And who hasn't spent hours building elaborate blanket forts?

To me, there's always been something of that same feeling in maps.  When I unfold a road map and trace my finger along a highway, that whole world of imagined possibilities opens up again.

Map of Missouri, my home state

Probably most trips along the line I'm tracing are just long, tedious drives to get from point A to point B, just like the Barbie rain forest in my friend's backyard was just a tangle of weeds her dad had to deal with.  But looking at the map, reading off the names of towns I've never visited, I can just about feel the wind buffeting my hand as I let it dip and rise out the car window, and I can picture the greasy spoons and the 'World's Largest Somethingorother' in that pretend place in my mind, where everything's like the fun parts of Thelma and Louise.  On a world map, I'm Indiana Jones, my finger tracing flights to exotic adventures:

Or take a globe... I defy you to spend more than 5 minutes in a room alone with a globe without playing the game.  You know the game - we all do!  You spin the globe, you close your eyes, and you put your finger down and see where you end up, and you hope it's Paris, or Tibet, or maybe Alaska, but if it's someplace like Uzbekistan, you make a mental note to see what Wikipedia says about Uzbekistan, because that's kind of awesome too.  Maps let me play pretend, and globes let me dream big, and when I spotted a poor battered globe without a stand on half-price day at Value Village a few months ago, I immediately new exactly why I needed it.

I'm not terribly crafty outside the confines of my skull.  In there, I'm always making stuff, and it always turns out great.  In the real world, I'm like the kid who can't quite cut on the lines, or who glues my fingers together.  But the minute I spotted the globe, I flashed back to a few months prior to that, when I came across a whole bag of Lite Brite pegs at Unique Thrift, and foolishly passed them up.  I picked them up, even put them in my cart, but then I scolded myself and put them back because I had no practical use for them and really, really didn't need them.  And now I had a globe, and an idea, but no Lite Brite pegs to make it happen!

I looked into buying pegs and was not thrilled with the prices, and then the other reason I'm not really all that crafty kicked in.  I'm easily distracted, and generally bad at follow-through.  All idea, no execution.  But after Monday, I feel so motivated, that I did the unthinkable on my lunch break this afternoon.  I followed through!  Well, partly.  I stopped in at Hobby Lobby, and while they don't have Lite Brite pegs per se, they do have these, in the doll house section:

I bought two kinds.

I'm sure by now you've probably sussed out my clever plan.  I'm going to poke these into the globe in places that are significant to me like pins in a map on the wall, and make a light fixture (lampshade? pendant light?).

So here's the before:

Sitting in a bowl so it will hold still.  At half off of $1.51, it was a no-brainer!

I cleaned the price off with a damp napkin and took an exacto knife to Antarctica:

Still not great at cutting on the line, but it's round-ish!

Mary Poppins was intrigued:

Now the problem is getting the pegs into the thick cardboard with nothing but a thumbtack as a piercing tool.  I've got half a dozen or so in, but then my thumbs got tired, so that's as far as I've gotten so far.  Stay tuned! Once I get some sort of actual tool and get all the pegs in, I'll have to come up with a plan for exactly how to make it into a light.  What do you think?  I'm always open for advice!