Tag Archive | antiquing

Anniversary Mini-Break

Today, the husband and I celebrate 20 years of marriage. Yep, two whole decades. That’s half my life. And the majority of those years have been pretty darn good, so I think we’re lucky. To mark the occasion we both took the day off work, spent last night at our favorite B&B (Southmoreland on the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City), and spent today antiquing. We were hoping to find more Mission-style furniture for our house, but didn’t find a thing. We hit a couple of small towns that were kind of sad and run-down, though we did find a bookstore. And look what I found at one of the antique stores:

A yarn section!! It wasn’t a great selection but I still walked out with two lovely skeins of sock yarn:

And at another antique store, I found these little goodies. I didn’t need either of them, but at $2 each, they still came home with me.

We were a little discouraged at not finding any furniture treasures, but we ended the day in Parkville, MO, and found an awesome store called Cool Vintage Watches. They had watches, of course, but they also had several vintage pens too. I really liked the silver/gold Montblanc ballpoint, but that didn’t really fit my budget. Instead I brought home this beauty.

It’s a Sheaffer Targa 1020 M in Imperial Brass with a 14k gold nib. It came with the converter but also takes cartridges, and since I don’t have any bottled ink, I put in one of those and it writes like a dream.

The pen is in beautiful shape. I can’t find a flaw anywhere. Plus, I already had a stainless steel Targa, so it pleases the completist in me to have a brass one as well.

It came with this nifty brass case, which has only a couple of tiny scratches on the bottom.

So, yeah, happy anniversary to me, right? I’m really pleased with my finds, and it was a treat to spend a relaxing day with the husband. We don’t get those as often as we’d like!

Vintage Yarn Crafting

Feb26

Yesterday the husband and I spent the day antiquing, and I saw all kinds of fun yarny things, like this cool swift:

It was functional enough that I was a little tempted, but it also would take up more space than my current swift, so I resisted.

I’m not a rug-hooker but I can certainly appreciate the colors and textures in this wall of wool:

I also came across what I think are spinning supplies. (I can’t remember what those wooden things are called, but they’re for spinning, right?)

And then I just liked this “Wool” sign. It would be pretty cute in my craft room.

This handknit child’s sweater was priced at only $25, which seems a little sad because I know how many hours when into the making of it. I mean, look at those cables!

But I successfully resisted making any impulse purchases. At the end of the day, we even stopped by a yarn store, and despite the call of the Anzula, I walked out with just the 9″ circs I wanted for making socks. Hooray for willpower!

I bought more yarn

Jan24

This proves it: I am weak. I couldn’t even go a month without buying new yarn. I lasted 23 days. Then I made the mistake of going to Michaels. I was just going to get some Yoda green yarn to have on hand, and darn it, all the yarn was on sale. Even with that, I resisted until the very end, when I found some lovely variegated bulky skeins. Mostly acrylic but with a nice wooly feel to them. Then I found a display with these value packs, two skeins (1060 yards total) for $5.99. That seemed like too good a deal to resist. Sure it’s all acrylic, but they’ll make great inexpensive pieces for kids and my craft shows. The bags were sealed but someone had torn one open so I made sure to get a feel for the yarn before I bought it. Aren’t these awesome colors?

That wasn’t too terrible, but then yesterday we took a day trip to northwest Missouri. The girl was in an all-day honor band at Northwest Missouri State in Maryville, which is about an hour and a half away from us. At first we figured we’d stay in Maryville…but even the lone Starbucks inside the library was closed, and the biggest attraction in town was Walmart. So instead we drove to St. Joseph for the day, where we toured four antique malls and a real live yarn store! The Red Barn Yarn Farm was small but had a fantastic selection of yarns, and the staff was super friendly and helpful. Of course I needed some souvenir yarn, right?Malabrigo Worsted in Periwinkle. Malabrigo Worsted in Pink Frost.This Lustra isn’t the softest yarn against my cheek but I adore the color and the sheen. It won’t be something for me but I had to have some to play with.

I did have a bit of knitting time too. I wanted to work on this hat but forgot to bring the bigger needles for when it was time to switch to the body, oops! Fortunately, I’d brought my black scarf commission with me and I made good progress on that. I forgot! I found buttons at the antique mall too! Most of the time they’re loose in jars and I don’t want to pay $15 for a jar of tiny random buttons. But I love it when I find the cards of vintage buttons for a good price.So yeah, I broke my streak big time. But it sure was fun! And I’m back in the mode of “Knit all the things NOW!” I’ve got so many WIPs on my needles and so many ideas for new projects that I think it’s the tiniest bit overwhelming. Today I might focus on the scarf; that’s the highest priority and getting done will ease my mind. What do you think, can I knit 3/4 of a scarf in one day?