Alone Again, Thriftily

Last week I was all alone patrolling the local thrift stores; Kathy was in Hawaii, lucky girl!  Fortunately, I was able to find tons o’ bad stuff all by myself.

These Nubian twins are a day late and a dollar short; they should have been around for last week’s “Twofers” post:

Boy, when you need Nubians to decorate your harem, you can’t find a single one.  Here are two just waiting for the aesthetically challenged to snap them up.

There was a whole shelf full of these strange string and greeting card pieces of framed art:

You might want to take a look at the yellow arrows at the top left part of the photo; there are a couple of handmade pieces of art–no string, no discernible talent, but lots of sea shells.

Here are two more photos of the string art, just because they are so fascinating:

These small examples of string art must have been the starter kit.  The more advanced practitioners move on to something like this:

This is an extremely complex piece; now if we could only guess what is being depicted.  Is it a Moorish/Byzantine styled palazzo in Venice or perhaps a Gothic cathedral?  Your guess is as good as mine.  We were just informed in 2019 that this is Notre Dame Cathedral, depicted with string.  So glad our readers know things and share!  Thanks Christine and Lora!

This toaster is lovely; don’t you wish we still made things that are functional and attractive?

I wouldn’t be surprised if this toaster still worked, if anyone could find the plug.  Someone snapped this beauty up, and I don’t blame them at all.  By the way, the pink tinge in the left toaster picture is a reflection of my shirt, which seems to be visible in more than one picture in this post (take a look at the Nubian’s belt).

This was the strangest bag of goodies I’ve seen in a while:

There were six paddles of various sizes in this bag; it was so tightly packed that you couldn’t see how they were decorated.  These weren’t ping-pong paddles, or paddle ball toys; maybe they were souvenir paddles, or sorority paddles–insert your joke here.

I did see some odd dolls:

This poor little Skipper clone wasn’t enhanced by her fuzzy pipe-cleaner dress.  She looks pretty angry about the whole thing.

What do you do with 30 choirboys?  Stop it–I mean 30 choirboy dolls!

I don’t know, and neither did the person who donated these little guys.  Thirty seems a little excessive for a holiday display, don’t you think?  They do have much nicer eyelashes than most storybook girl dolls; life just isn’t fair!

Prior to visiting the thrift stores I did wander through an estate sale, slack-jawed at the prices.  They did have these nice vintage hats, but I wasn’t tempted enough to buy them:

We like old hats and own a few that we bought before the prices jumped all the way up to $15-20.  You could tell that the owner loved these hats and took good care of them.  Kathy and I have been known to wear our vintage hats when there is an opportunity; we think they make us look classy.

How about a little True Confessions to end the post?  I gambled on a basket that was entirely wrapped up, but it looked like a “good thing”, at least by our standards:

There were several layers of plastic on top of the basket, but I thought I could see a needle book.  The lid was under the basket and I didn’t even know it was there until later.  While going through the contents I found an egg for mending socks, plus the wool, an aluminum thimble that said Coolidge & Dawes, an unusual pair of scissors with a green gem in the center and engraving on the handles, a pen nib, a hat pin, and some beautiful mother-of-pearl buttons with engraving.  It felt like I had hit the sewing jackpot!  Plus the top of the Chinese sewing basket was in very good condition.  These baskets were popular from around the 1890’s to the 1930’s and were made for export in China.

I’m glad that I took a little $15 gamble on a plastic bag of things; this time it paid off, although that isn’t always the story.  Thank goodness I’m not on Storage Wars; Beloved Husband and I would be living out of our car in no time flat!