He knows me so well.

Yesterday, I mentioned that one of Rob's older friends was moving from her house into an apt and was having a garage sale this weekend, and we were going. But, Rob, who knows I have no ability to resist a bargain or an antique and who knows Sydney is a beast if wakened too early on the weekend, had the wisdom to get a sneak preview, which makes it easier to squeeze in the quilt show this weekend. And, he knows me so well, he knew exactly what to bring home.

This is a meat grinder, just like the one his Grandmother had. The lady is trying to find the rest of it, she's sure she has it. Sydney has no concept of grinding meat, so he brought it home to show her how it was done in the old days. The sticks are knitting pins. Unfortunately, there's only one actual pair there, but hey, I think all these things were free, so I'm not going to complain about a great set of knitting pins. They're wood, but so smooth. It's amazing and I can't wait to try them out.



And, look at this little treasure. It had a broken leg and by the time I got home from work yesterday, he had it glued and drying. I think we've all gotten tired of me trying to keep the cats and dogs off my balls of yarn and this should solve that problem admirably. Just needs some cleaning and oiling.


One of the items he brought home was on the dining table and I thought it was a hat box. Hmmm. A hat box???


But, it's not. It's a sewing box. And, I have the perfect hand sewing project to put in here, soon as I get it cleaned up a bit.


He also knew that one of my favorite things is other people's recipes. We all have one. It's either a binder like this one, or a box of index cards. But what happens to it after we stop cooking? Well, this lady had hers in a bin of books for a dollar each. The binder itself has a stamp in the inside cover from when the lady was in a music class. She played the french horn...in the 30's!!!


The binder is packed full of notebook pages with recipes glued to them. Pages and pages of recipes. Last night, as I was flipping through, I had a fantasy of how Julie/Julia played out, where I made every recipe in this book. Most of the book is desserts...Yummmmmm. But, there are enough recipes for party foods and entrees to keep us eating for a while. Except they're all from the 50's and assume I have countless hours of time to prepare a weeknight meal for the family. There is even a cooking excerpt from the Corpus Christi newspaper that features 4 cooks and is packed full of recipes and advertisements from 1951! A stove, huge, steel, double oven, double broiler, four burners and a griddle for $250. Haaahaaa! And, Kraft salad dressing for 31 cents a bottle. Ham was 47 cents a pound.

This is one of the favorite things he brought home. It's a diary from 1937.

We know from cheating and reading the last page that she committed to write in it every day for a year, and every page seems filled in. Last night, I started reading it aloud. I think we're going to try to read the whole thing that way. Unfortunately, the lady's name can't be found yet. I'm hoping that at some point, I can find her name and if not, she lists the names of everyone on her cmas card list that year. The year starts with her on vacation to Pasadena, CA and she writes the names of every person she writes to, or sends a card to. She also includes the names of the people she is staying with and the people that "come to call in the PM".

It's very routine stuff, but fascinating to have this look into the life of a woman of the time.

And, Rob got himself some tools. This is some of them. He said she had a garage full of woodworking tools that he would have loved to have, but didn't have the room to store. Poor him. I get my air conditioned sewing room and he gets half of the garage as our creative spaces. And, we have both those areas packed to the gills with our own favorite tools.



So, you can see that he knows me well enough to know exactly the things I would like. Sewing boxes, recipe books. And, one other thing that I'll be showing soon. A hand made Crazy quilt, pieced with all the old silks and velvets and in fabulous shape. I only found one set of seams that had let go and one piece of torn silk. the embroidery work is fabulous; spider webs, flowers, an anchor, a cat's face, painted flowers on silk. But, I didn't have time to really look at it. We unfolded it and gave it a cursory going over and he explained the quilt's history, how it came to his friend and that it came from a well known Texas family. I'll be doing some research when I get ready to post it. Then, I wrapped it carefully in a clean sheet. For this piece, I will be investing in archival tissue and box. I am truly amazed at how lucky I am to have gotten an item so fine and in such good condition. I've only seen them with serious damage before and this one is so totally repairable. I just have to research how to repair it.

And, why didn't I have time to sit down and study every inch of a new quilt? We needed to rush to the volleyball game last night. Both our teams won. And, who scored the winning point? My widdle Sydney, that's who!!! Yes, they won their first game and the end was a real nailbiter, especially when we realized the final serve would be Sydney's. In just a few seconds, I envisioned how bad it would be if the game were on her shoulders and she didn't do well; how she would beat herself up and how hopeless we would be to stop her, despite protests of how well she had played the whole game. Thank goodness that did not come true and we're still celebrating and I've taken to calling her "my little winner".

Okay, so that's my lucky bountiful life for the week. Take care and have a great Friday. I can't wait to get to the quilt show tomorrow! Lane