I don't really need it . . .

Every week or so I get an announcement from Replacements Ltd. telling me they have GREAT PRICES on my good china.

The only problem is, we have different definitions on what's a great price. Great price for me is CHEAP. Great price for them is "your order could buy me a new Mercedes!"

My china is Royal Albert's Silver Maple design, which has been discontinued for years.  Many years ago, my grandmother gave my mother a tea set of the pattern and the truth is my mother wasn't exactly thrilled.  But I loved it from the day I saw it and I was thrilled when Mum gave it to me after I got married.

But it was only a tea set.  Cups, saucers, cake plates.  So one year, with my work bonus, I bought eight place settings.  Not the additional serving pieces, just the dinner plates, cups saucers and yet again cake plates.  Since then I've bought a few odd pieces--and I do mean odd.  I now have a bon-bon dish, a sugar and creamer, 1 salt shaker, 1 egg cup, and 2 small platters.

For all the years I have been receiving those emails, I've longed to get a teapot that would go with my good dishes.  The fact that I only use the dishes once a year (because I'm not putting them in the dishwasher, and during a big family dinner, I don't have the time or room (in my tiny kitchen) to stack and hand wash them.  So once a year it is.

And no teapot.

Oh, but I want that teapot.  I dream about it. I visualize how I would rearrange my entire china cabinet just to accommodate it.

Then I look at the price list and say:  $189 (plus shipping) for a teapot you will never use?
Get real, girl!

Somewhere there's a spendthrift inside me just aching to bust loose.  But until that teapot comes down in price (or hell freezes over), that isn't going to happen.

What frivolous thing  have you been denying yourself?

The Quest

Can it really be three years since I gave up my booth in the antiques arcade?

Of course, my booth was never as cool as I wanted it to be.  First of all, I never had the money to invest in the kind of stock I wanted to sell.  And there's no guarantee if I had better stock that I would have had better sales.  (Many of my co-op neighbors had the kind of stock I wanted to sell, and they weren't doing any better than me.)

I bought most of my stock from garage/tag sales.  I used to start shopping for stuff I could resell in early April, going to any and every garage sale.  With the price of gas, I haven't been to many sales this year.  But this weekend, we did make the rounds.

It's painful not to be able to buy the stuff I normally would.  I saw so many vintage orange juice glasses in mint condition for a quarter (which were guaranteed to sell for $2.99 each...eventually), and jewelry, and dishware, and Pyrex and....

These days I "shop" for other things.  My family puts in requests and I go find them.  My mother collects hankies with crocheted edges.  Got two of them for her on Friday.  Mr. Ivy wanted a meat tenderizer.  Got one of them.  For myself, I'm looking for blue plates.  (I'm decorating a bedroom and have chosen blue and white plates.)  Found a really old one for a quarter and, even better, a bag of plate hangers (at least 15--they're a bit tangled) for $2.

A portion of my booth was devoted to used books.  I can't stop looking at all the titles when I walk into a sale, and Saturday I found something I've been looking for for about a year:  a beautiful hardcover edition of A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett (illustrated by Tasha Tudor) for fifty cents.  (I've already read half of it.  I'd seen two movie versions of the story, but never read the book.)

And then the holy grail of my searches:  1950s "Made In Japan" Christmas figurines.  First up, a Santa & Mrs. Claus sitting on a see-saw music box; wind it up and it plays "Jingle Bells" while the Santa and Mrs. bop up and down (for $2).  And then at the North Rose Ladies Auxilery sale at the fire hall, a duplicate of what started my collection about 15 years ago:  a Santa and reindeer "candelabra" that spells out NOEL.  Now, do I really need a second one?  Of course not, but it was only a buck.  In mint condition--IN THE ORIGINAL BOX!!!!!!

In all, I spent less than $10, but boy, what cheap entertainment.

What are you looking for at tag sales and flea markets?

Getting primed for a Royal Wedding

I collect stuff.  Lots of stuff.  And one of the things I collect is Royal Family memorabilia. 

This is the latest addition to my collection.




Are you looking forward to the royal wedding?

And Sheep May Safely Graze

Back when we were courting (don't you just love that phrase?), Mr. Ivy bought me a Christmas cassette (tells you how long ago THAT was) called Celtic Christmas, harp music by Kim Robertson.  I fell in love with one piece called "And Sheep May Safely Graze" by, of all people, Johann Sebastian Bach.  (Can you believe it, I'd never heard the piece before.)  I loved this piece of music so much, I hired a harpist to play it at my wedding.  (Sadly, she wasn't as good as Kim Robertson.)

I think that's when I got this thing for sheep.  I started buying them.  Oh, not the actual creatures.  Get real--I live in the suburbs.  My first sheep was a stuffed toy.  But I'm not really into stuffed animals (although I do seem to have more than my fair share).  I like that they're placid animals--at least as figurines.  They sit quietly in my cabinet and seem to have a calming effect on me when I'm ready to yank out my hair over some idiotic situation.  Although an acquaintance of mine who works at a "living museum" (think Sturbridge--but not as grand) says sheep can be really stoooopid--and even throw tantrums.  Who knew?

About ten years ago I bought my first orphaned sheep at an estate sale.  Somehow they'd been separated from the other nativity figurines.  I wasn't exactly sure what to do with them until after a trip to Italy, where I got a St. Francis figurine.  Then my little display kind of evolved, including an orphaned lamb.

Things haven't exactly gotten out of hand, but I do try to pick up as many orphaned nativity sheep as I can find at garage sales and such, and I usually don't pay more than 50 cents for them.  My first ram came from a charity shop in England (a gift from my mother--he's the one with the black horns).  One Christmas my friend Janette even gave me a Cherished Teddy (in a kilt and holding a lamb!) to act as shepherd for my flock.

I don't think I added anything to my collection for more than a year before these guys showed up just days ago.

They needed a home ... and I'm happy to give it to them.

How about you?  What do you collect?

Oh, how I love brown transferware

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Michael's looking for something to hang christmas ornaments (yes, I do realize I don't need to do so for another 10 months), and saw they were selling calendars for 30 cents.

Yes, THIRTY CENTS!

Well, I'm not one to turn down a bargain when I see it.  This calendar is about collectibles, and this month's picture was of brown transferware cups with a couple of quails.  When I saw it, I immediately knew I had to have it.

You see, I've got this thing for brown transferware.  I collect it. I've got some really old pieces, and some quite new ones.  I have a bunch of brown transferware plates hanging near the ceiling in my dining room. (Here's just a sample (above).) 

 But even cooler, when I studied the quail pattern, I realized I have a piece of quail pottery in my transferware collection.  My mother's friend gave it to me to sell back in the days when I had a booth in an antiques arcade, but I loved it too much to part with it. 

As you can see, it's marked FURNIVALS QUAIL 1913 -- I don't think it's that old--but I've been wrong before.  It has other markings, but I haven't yet investigated them.  I just like it and think it's pretty. 

It's getting harder and harder to find the older brown transferware for reasonable prices (probably because so many decorating magazines keep telling people it's worth a LOT of money).  Then again, my definition of a reasonable price is a lot lower than these magazines.  And have you noticed that the magazines based in New York tell you that something is reasonable when it's under $2-3,000.  Yikes!  What real person has that much to blow?  Not this girl!

But that won't stop me from keeping my eyes out for more transferware.

What do you collect?