What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been

I have just got back from a holiday trip that involved about 4500 miles of driving, if you can imagine. We made a quick stop in Texas to see my sister-in-law and nephew. It was far too short, but we hadn’t even laid eyes on each other for two and a half years, so we just couldn’t drive by without stopping. We were on our way to Florida to see my mother as this was going to be her first Christmas without my dad in 65 years. Then we drove up to Michigan to see my other siblings for New Year’s, and planned to drive back to Colorado in about a week. It goes without saying that it was wonderful to see our families, and the weather was warm in FL, just like you wanted, and seasonal in TX and MI, meaning rain in one place and snow in the other. Thank goodness that we had those balmy eight days in between.

The night before we were set to leave, our car was parked on the street while my sister ran to pick up some Thai takeout. Wouldn’t you know it, her neighbor backed his big truck right into the front of our car! I’m not sure how fast he was going, but the hood is messed up, the bumper was almost taken off, and something is wrong with the driver’s side door. The insurance agent was very nice, but the earliest our car can be worked on is March, and it isn’t drivable. Poor little Prius, which has been a good car, is sitting in my sisters’ driveway and we had to rent a car to drive back to CO. I was kind of hoping that bad things would stop happening with the new year, but I’m kind of skeptical right this minute. At least no one was in the car so there’s no argument about who’s at fault, and no one was hurt in the big tank that ran over my car. But, this isn’t an auspicious start to 2022!

While I was in TX, of course I went shopping with Dorothy and we went to a new antique mall and a thrift shop. I found blogworthy things at both places:

Doesn’t the girl behind this plastic case look excited? I didn’t even notice her until I was cropping the picture. I was interested in seeing what was inside this cheerful container with the metal flower on top.

Do you remember when everything came in a pretty box?

This way you could keep your Lady Remington on top of the bathroom counter and no one would know what it was and you could pretend that you just naturally had hairless legs—and other areas, depending on how adventurous you were.

I’ve seen glove molds before, but these were the biggest ever:

They were for industrial gloves, size 9 and 22 inches long, that I can imagine Dr. Frankenstein wearing while performing his experiments. I’m not sure why they felt compelled to label them right and left, since most dyslexic people can look at their own hands and figure it out. I’m also not sure what you would do with these besides make more gloves. If we were in the other antique mall in Dorothy’s town, I’m sure at least one of these would have been converted into a lamp with a weird shade! It seems to be a compulsion in that shop.

We also went to Goodwill, and saw numerous awful things, but one really stood out:

She had to be an Amazon just to carry this!

This is my s-i-l holding the bouquet and she was close to six feet tall when I first met her. She is still a tall woman, and this bridal bouquet looked to be just right for her. I just can’t imagine carrying this huge silk and plastic monstrosity during a wedding. It would take both hands for most women and you wouldn’t be doing your maid of honor any favors when handing it off to her to wrangle during the ceremony. You might be courting disaster trying to manage your train, veil, and this bouquet while trying to glide down the aisle.

Poor Dorothy had to have a death grip on it for this picture. In the other, she could use both hands. I think they’re dreaming if they think someone is going to pay 99 cents for this, unless it was for a ’70s wedding costume for Halloween.

The rest of the pictures are from our local thrift store. I don’t want you to think that TX has the market cornered in weird sh!t, as one of our readers called our finds:

What is the deal with this color scheme? It seems a bit too much to be just using up leftover yarn. This was a pretty good-sized afghan folded over a hanger. If you had that much pink, yellow, and purple yarn, maybe you could do something else a little more attractive with them.

No, I didn’t mean this!

Although, if this girl had been dressed in pink, yellow, and purple, she might not be so saccharine-sweet looking. This is the second photo bomb I noticed while cropping. Here I thought this doll was so wholesome and innocent, and then you notice the doll below looking right up her dress and not even trying to hide her interest!

Since we’re talking dolls and crochet, might as well throw in another picture taken weeks before:

These are some ’70s light-weight fashion dolls that vaguely look like Skipper, Barbie’s little sister. The big one isn’t a Barbie clone, she’s just her own self. B.H. says that she looks like she’s been hitting the cooking sherry. I just can’t get over the yarn used for the smaller doll clothes.

The scale is so out-of-whack that it’s hard to believe that Grandma didn’t notice it. There are numerous knitters and crocheters that make doll clothes and use lovely fine yarn to make the scale match the size of the wearer. Just imagine if you had to wear an outfit made of the same scale yarn; I bet you would have trouble moving around. It would be like that velvet rope that keeps the hoi polloi out.

We’ve been noticing a lot of pretty china in the last couple of months:

I wish I had taken a picture of the marks, because this is an elegant and unusual pattern. I really like how the branch curves with the edge of the plate and then is just a single smaller branch on the creamer and sugar. I think these are probably from the Fifties or Sixties because it’s a more modern looking design.

One last trip picture. We were driving home on Tuesday afternoon, and this was the scenery between Fort Collins and Wyoming:

Snow, mountains, and lots of blue sky. It’s good to be back!