Lovely Sunday with a cherry on top

Sunday was so nice - a friend suggested after church that we check out the Indie Craft Revolution, at the Mad Art Gallery in Soulard.  I was all for that, for a number of reasons, so we went, and had such a nice time.  With pretty piles of clouds in the sky and the smell of the brewery infusing everything, we got to check out the gorgeous 1930s police station that Mad Art is housed in:

The only pic I remembered to take - Melanie in Craft Jail.
I definitely have to go back to get pics of the building, for real!

We met a crafter who does gorgeous pottery who it just so happens goes to our church, saw all sorts of clever crafts, watched my friend Todd fall in love with and buy "for his wife" an adorable sleepy-eyed plushy creature and saw the completely lovely vintage-boutique-trailer that a local St. Louis vintage seller/blogger rolled out for the first time this weekend.  And I bought a rock. Actually, I pawed and inspected a bunch of rocks before buying one.  I can't help it.  I have a thing for rocks, as this shot of my kitchen windowsill suggests:

My bathroom sink houses even more of them :) 

So when I saw a table covered in fist to softball sized rocks cut in perfect slices with little rubbery feet added to each slice to make a natural, sculptural, puzzle-y set of stone coasters, I was entrigued.  Here's a shot of one, from his website,  http://www.stonesters.com:

Check out the website if you're at all interested.  I love them - each one a unique collaboration between the crafter and the creator.  Reminds me of a hero of mine, Andy Goldsworthy.  Here are a couple of his art/nature collaborations:

From:  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/goldsworthy.html# 

From:  http://thinkorthwim.com/2010/02/17/andy-goldsworthy/ 

So I couldn't help myself.  I bought a rock for my Dad for his birthday.  And I think he even likes it.

When we'd finished perusing the craft show, we went looking for an estate sale I'd heard about in the same general neighborhood.  We found it (Yay!), but it had ended (rats!).  But wait, there were people lined up outside the door still (huh?).  So we went to check it out, and there was a sign on the door that said the sale had ended about 20 minutes before, but in 10 minutes they would be re-opening the doors, and anything that they gave the ok on, you could have it.  For free (my favorite price - YAY!).

If we had had a big truck or something, we'd have snatched up so much stuff!  But even without it, we scored pretty big!  Melanie got 4 nice old wooden chairs for her dining table and Todd and Beth got 8 or 10 awesome stack-able molded plastic-seated chairs in a range of mid-century colors that were filthy but nifty, and I got two vintage suitcases, a very cool sort of depression-era outsider-art looking mirror, and this thing:

A little chicken house?  Rabbit, maybe? Sorry about the slant, it was wedged in
between the legs of a chair.

It's amazing and rustic and clearly improvised.  Do you see the two totally different hinges on the little door?  And the metal roof?  If you look inside and up, you can see that it was once an old sign.  

And here's a slightly better shot of the chairs, with one of the old suitcases I picked up visible as well:

There were, I believe, 4 different colors of the chairs, all in this sort of robot-y stacking shape.

Do you see the tag laying there?  They were practically giving these chairs away to begin with at $5.00 apiece, but we're such accidental pros that they got them completely free!  But I feel like I made an even bigger steal, since the chicken house thingy (did I mention it has a handle on top?) was marked $75.00, and nobody stopped me from walking out with it for nothing!

Free stuff - the cherry on top of a nearly perfect Sunday!  How about you?  Any treasures lately?  

I'm sharing my treasures in these link-ups again this week:

Her Library Adventures Flea Market Finds, Me and My Shadow's Magpie Mondays, Cap Creations Thrifty Love Link Party, and Beez Rental Design's Frugal Treasures Tuesday and Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share Monday (welcome back!).  Go check them out!

And also, if you haven't yet, go Like http://www.facebook.com/2ndhandMoon, where I'll post regular updates and pics from the booth and where first news of deals, sales and events will go!

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