AnotherWoman'sTreasure

Food Foraging - Oyster Mushrooms

2007-10-09T11:11:00.000-07:00

I've been completely preoccupied by having my house painted, both by hired contractors and by myself. I got so obsessed with it that I've decided not to work on the house at all this week (the contractors finally finished their part) and to try from here on out to limit myself to three hours of house labor per day. Hopefully all this will make it possible for me to get back to blogging more regularly.
Anyway, I was up in New Hampshire this past weekend, helping to organize a big family yard sale. At the yard sale, I ran into a woman I've known for years but who I recently learned is interested in mushroom hunting. We chatted and she told me that Oyster Mushrooms can be found on dead or dying maple trees. As I was driving home yesterday, about 1/2 an hour from my family home, I drove by two large decaying maples with Oyster mushrooms running up it in straight lines, from 2 to 20 feet off the ground. I promptly turned around, parked in front of the house with the maples and knocked on the door. Before I could even finish asking if I could take the mushrooms, the woman at the door said "help yourself". (This gave me even more confidence that these mushrooms were Oysters, because it was clear that I wasn't the first person who had asked to take the mushrooms.) I didn't take all of them (being without a ladder, for one thing), but I did end up with several pounds of beautiful mushrooms. When I got home, I gave some to my neighbors who have taken me mushroom hunting before. I sauteed some up with butter and onions and ate them with some local potatoes - they were absolutely delicious! Then, overwhelmed with how many I had and perplexed by how best to preserve them, I called my friend Frank who has a food dehydrator. I took him a big bag of the mushrooms and got the dehydrator in exchange. Here is what the mushrooms look like: And here is the small cooler I filled: I sliced them up and filled the trays of the dehydrator: they really shrink up when they dry out: I ended up with more than two quart jars of lovely dried mushrooms: We are entering into serious mushroom season around here, where we've had rain and cool weather. I'm really looking forward to harvesting more of what the earth offers up. I love the efficiency of feeding myself with nothing more than the labor it takes to harvest the mushrooms and apples I can find. Hopefully I'll also find the time to pick some wild grapes and make jelly!

Yesterday's Big Haul: Free Squash

2007-09-27T06:28:00.000-07:00

I went to a big lunch at the small liberal arts college where I taught until recently. The theme of the lunch, served outside under tents, was local food brought in by local farmers. Every ingredient, other than the salt, was locally procured. The farmers brought in tons, and I do mean tons, of various squash that were used to decorate the grounds and, I suppose, illustrate the bounty of our local farms. People were allowed to take squash home, and here is what I carried back to my car: While we were eating, my friend Katheryn commented on the tendency to eat to excess at buffets, and wondered why we do this. We all agreed on the general explanation that we are disposed to eat, and keep on eating, whenever we find ourselves in situations of bounty, as a disposition, perhaps even genetic, left over from our hunter-gatherer past, when such a dispositon would be crucial to survival. Eat when there is lots of food available, and you are more likely to survive the periods when there isn't enough. If that explanation is right, and does explain our tendency to gorge ourselves when surrounded by piles of free, ready-to-eat food, then I think that it may also extend to my disposition to take as much free stuff as I can fit into my hatch back when I'm surrounded by free, good stuff! After I got all this squash home, I regretted that I hadn't gone back for more.... I wish I had more of the butternuts, and the carnevales, which you see in front, especially since squash stores well. Now I've got a nice store of squash in a basket in my basement, covered with one of these towels.

Free Foraged Food - Part 2 - Green Beans

2007-09-19T11:44:00.000-07:00

Fall is the time to put food up for the winter, and I'm doing my part. My neighbors, Sam and Marcia, are good scavengers, and yesterday they brought me these green beans, gleaned from some farm up in Poland, NY, which had been a bit mangled by the harvesting machine: I washed them off, cut off the damaged parts of the bigger beans, blanched and froze them. Here's what I ended up with: I'm glad for the beans, and glad to have kept them from going to waste.

Terracycle - Reusing Plastic Bottles

2007-09-18T06:30:00.000-07:00

My friend Frank recently told me about this company: Terracycle. These guys are making plant food by feeding organic waste to worms and then packaging these gardening products in old soda bottles, which would otherwise enter the waste stream. Pretty clever. Of course what we really need to do is to produce far fewer of these plastic bottles in the first place - reusing just isn't enough of an answer to our waste problems. I also would like to know how much fossil fuels these guys are using to make their products. But in any case, there is some clever thinking going on here.

Creative Use for Plastic Bags

2007-09-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

I took some pictures for this blog while travelling in England and Scandanavia this summer, but did very little blogging from there, so I have a little catching up to do. I saw this clever reuse of plastic shopping bags (what the Brits call "carrier bags") one evening while killing a little time before I went to see a play at the Old Red Lion pub, near the Angel tube station. (Pub theater is great. This place was a nice pub downstairs, with a tiny, tiny theater upstairs. You buy your ticket, get a pint, and when the bell rings to let you know to go upstairs, you bring your pint along. I didn't love the play, but I did enjoy the overall theater experience.) So, an empty storefront window had been artfully filled with crumpled plastic bags, affording privacy to whatever was going on behind the window, I suppose. Of course it's too bad that there are so many plastic bags in the world to begin with, but I liked this clever repurposing of them. There are some movements afoot to ban plastic bags, such as this one in San Francisco. Here is another story about the international movement to get rid of them. I'm all for such bans. Here is another site to get you acquainted with the issue.

Old Blanket = New Curtain

2007-09-14T12:20:00.001-07:00

Well, it's coming up on two years since I bought my house, and I'm finally getting around to putting up curtains. (Mr. Happy says that being at my house is like hanging out in a fish bowl...) The first project (first because it was easiest) was to put up a curtain on the one smallish window in my guest room, site-of-my-future-sewing-room. I was rummaging through my not unimpressive fabric collection when I came across a pile of nice old Indian-style woven blankets (all acquired for a mere $5 at an auction a few years ago). And one was just the right size for the window. It doesn't look great when it is down (meaning providing privacy), but I like how it looks swagged, which is how it will be the vast majority of the time. I couldn't get a good shot of the whole window, but here are some pictures that give a good idea of how this little project worked out. It couldn't have been easier: I folded it across the top and put in a seam to create a pocket for the tension curtain rod, then put a simple brass hook to one side for swagging.
Just this morning I finished a set of simple sheers for my bedroom, which I'm very happy with. (But I made them with fabric bought (the-shame-of-it) in a retail store, so I won't include them here.)

What Do Towels and Scissors Have In Common?

2007-09-13T14:07:00.000-07:00

You just can't have too many! I found these four perfectly good towels in the Spring whilst scavenging outside the dorms of my local college after the students had absconded. They leave piles upon piles of good stuff outside the dorms. And I extracted this towel from a snow bank last winter: All these have been added to my pile of what I call "dog towels", i.e., towels too good to throw out but not quite up to my standards of what I'm willing to dry off with. With this many towels, I should think about getting more dogs... maybe big ones who like to swim...

Last Week's Treasures from the Trash

2007-09-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

I got a few good things out of a neighbor's trash last Tuesday. Here's what I came home with: a bunch of nice, new fake flowers. (Fake flowers are very much not my thing, but my next door neighbor likes them, so I picked them up for her. I do, however, feel a little conflict over this, since the detritus of various fake flowers end up migrating into my back gardens. Oh well - she does lots of nice things for me, so it will be nice to do something she will appreciate.) I also got a bunch of file folders, which I don't need, but oak tag paper is so handy to have around for making tags, etc. I also got a brandy new box of push pins, a nice old pair of scissors (can you have too many scissors? I don't think so), a little plastic tray, a box of pearl costume earrings that I will add to my yard sale, and a small spatula. Not bad for a few moments picking. And, on the same day at another house I got another one of these. So that brings the count of perfectly good, white, plastic, kitchen trash cans to four!

More Art on Reused Paper

2007-09-07T19:04:00.000-07:00

I've twice before posted about art on old paper: on newspaper here, and on old book pages here. Well, here is some more, by Susan at Artstream, which I found on her blog, Art Esprit. One of these days (like when I'm once again in possession of an income other than unemployment insurance) I'll have to get one of these pieces.

Would you throw this mug away?

2007-09-07T12:34:00.000-07:00

I found this very nice, handmade mug in the trash of the old woman who lives across the street from me. It was still wrapped up in what I took to be its original wrapping paper. Maybe someone gave it to her as a gift. Mugs are a standard issue, generic gift. Which made me wonder why she, or some member of her family, didn't just regift it. What a waste to throw it away!

Do you have 188 bowling balls that you don't know what to do with?

2007-09-06T15:26:00.000-07:00

My father and I took a trip to Vermont's 'Northeast Kingdom' last week. We had a great time driving around the beautiful countryside. We drove by this one day, and I just had to turn around to get a few pictures. What a great idea! And it really looks terrific. It was on Rte 58 in northern Vermont, a few miles east of Lowell. I checked, and it is bowling balls all the way through. I did the math, and there are 188 bowling balls here. Wow!

Finding things along the road, too!

2007-09-05T12:14:00.000-07:00

I was up in Nottingham, NH last week, visiting my father and other such things. I went out into the woods one day and pulled a few things out of an old dump in the woods, but I left them in a pile by a tree, intending to pick them up with my car later, and then never did get around to getting them. I'm pretty confident that the pile will still be there the next time I go up, when I'll retrieve it and post about that stuff. But, on my way home, walking along the road, I found this dog comb. It is just what I needed. When I came home from England this summer, my dog was in the middle of a major shedding, and I was too cheap to go out and buy a new dog comb, so I used a nice, old wooden comb that I wasn't using anyway. But now I have a real dog comb, so hopefully less of Lu's hair will end up on my couch! We'll see about that, but meanwhile, this little find really does reinforce my view that most things you need are in fact just lying around waiting to be picked up...

A great table straight from the trash

2007-09-04T12:51:00.000-07:00

I just got this table out of the trash, just a few doors down from my house. It has a wooden top and the metal base folds up very easily. I will repaint the top, with an oil-based enamel, and make one very small repair to the hardware on the bottom, then I'll have a brandy new, great little table. It will make a perfect addition to my porch, which I am in the middle of painting, and which I'm looking forward to decorating when I'm done. It is just the right size for playing scrabble, which should convince a certain someone (we'll call him Mr. Happy, 'cause he's a pretty upbeat guy) that dragging things out of the trash isn't quite so awful after all...

Free Foraged Food - Part 1

2007-08-15T12:58:00.000-07:00

I can't believe how long it has been since I last posted! I went to England and Scandanavia for about 6 weeks, where I posted a little, but not much. And since I've been back I've concentrated on getting into a good writing routine, as well as painting my house, getting reacquainted with my dog, and pursuing an unexpected personal project. All this is by way of saying that I've been gone longer than I expected to be, but now I am back, and looking forward to getting back into the bloggy swing of things!

I'm going to a locavore (meaning one who eats local food) potluck tonight, where I'm giving a talk on waste (the topic of the book I'm writing). We are asked to bring a dish with at least one ingredient which is from the local area. I used this as an excuse to forage some lovely apples from a footpath in the Utica Marsh. I had noticed the apples while walking there with a friend recently. So I went back today with a basket and filled it up. I didn't think to bring my camera along, or I would have pictures of the tree. But the tree was loaded, and a man helped me by throwing sticks up into the tree to bring down the apples. Here is what I ended up with: Given how I got the apples out of the tree, they were a bit beat up, which was okay, since I had to cut them up anyway for the pie. I'm going to go back soon with an apple picking basket on a long pole and really stock up for pies and apple sauce. But in the meantime, here is the pretty pie I made with my foraged apples:

More Art Using Recycled Materials - Anti-Consumerist!

2007-06-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

In my last post I wrote about a great painting I saw recently that used newspaper. In the comments there I got a reference to more art using newspaper. Here this artist's site. I really like the juxtaposition of consumerism with the reality of suffering and war. Check it out for yourself and tell me what you think.

More Art Using Recycled Materials

2007-06-26T07:39:00.000-07:00

A while back, I posted about some art that really caught my eye at Artesprit. As I said, I liked it not just because it was lovely, but because it reused old materials, namely pages from old books. Well, while in Cheltenham recently, I spotted this piece in a gallery, which had done something similar, only this time with the front page from a newpaper.At first you might not quite notice the front page lying behind the painting, but then you see it in the corners especially: This piece is by Akash Bhatt, and was on display at Martin's Gallery in Cheltenham Spa, in the Cotswold region of England.

Freegan: An Alternative Consumerism

2007-06-25T07:20:00.000-07:00

My friend Heather just forwarded me this article from The New York Times. Very interesting. Thanks, Heather!

Resisting Temptation to Drag Things from Dumpsters

2007-06-20T01:16:00.000-07:00

I recently spent an altogether lovely weekend in Cheltenham Spa, up in the Cotswolds. It was a 'hen party' weekend for my friend the Lynneguist, who is getting married in a couple of weeks. It was a great town, and we spent a lot of time walking around. If I had been at home, I certainly would have retrieved the nice glass door in this skip (the British word for a dumpster): But oh well, hopefully someone else took it home and put it to good use. I see these skips all over the place, much smaller than ours at home.

Relections on Why I Do What I Do (at least what I report on doing here)...

2007-06-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

So, being away from my usual life, haunts, and activities makes it a little more difficult to post in my usual way. That is, for the next several weeks I don't expect to drag much stuff out of the trash (I doubt that my hostess would appreciate it!). If I can remember to lug my big old camera along, I will take some pictures of relatively relevant things. But meanwhile, I thought I'd reflect on and write about the general content of this blog in a more abstract, general way. (Trained, and for many years employed, as a professional philosopher who, by definition thinks abstractly, this blog has been a welcome change of pace -- into the particular, the specific.) So, the question is, why do I take things from the trash, a practice that others find distasteful, even embarrassing? One reason is that because stuff in the trash is, well, FREE. I'm frugal, some would say cheap. (Here in the U.K. they say "tight". A British friend of mine likes to say "Tight as a gnat's chuff." Don't ask what a chuff is. But visit this great blog by my friend the Lynneguist to learn about all sorts of British/American linguistic quirks.) Why would I buy something that I can freely take from someone's pile of trash instead? Being raised by New Englanders I was early on taught to value my pennies, and this lesson certainly stuck. So, one reason to take stuff from the trash is simply to save money. I like stuff, especially old, used stuff, and trash day is one easy way to get it. Another reason though, is that waste really, really bothers me. The amount of waste in our society is staggering, and the waste we can observe is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. So, when I see some perfectly usable something out with the garbage, my inclination is to take it home and, well, use it. (Or, if I can't use it, find someone who can.) Every used thing that someone else has discarded (either in the trash or by giving it to a thrift store) that I take home is one less thing in a landfill.

I'm away from the Blog!

2007-06-07T07:57:00.000-07:00

Just on the off chance that anyone is actually paying attention, I thought I'd pop in to say that I'll mostly be out for the next several weeks. I'm in London, and I don't expect to do much blogging while I'm here. (Though you never know...)

Never Buy Potting Soil Again

2007-05-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

This is the new thing I've recently started taking out of the trash: abandoned planters with soil still in them. The big square one has pretty nice potting soil in it, which I'm going to hold on to for the next time I need to repot a plant, or something like that. The other two are going to end up in my compost pile. I've thrown some other abandoned soil in it already. All of which brings me around to pointing out that my compost piles (there are in fact two), are in serious need of expansion...

2007-05-27T15:58:00.000-07:00

My sister Martha makes all sorts of great assemblage art pieces out of various kinds of found objects, scrounged materials, and recycled stuff. Her art is a little hard to describe, but Joseph Cornell's boxes come to mind as a comparison. Here is a little piece she made that I have and love. I think the scene in the background and on the back is The Flume, or at least I like to think so. She has a studio in her basement full of great materials for her art, lots of stuff that I covet.

Recycling Old Shirts into Baby Clothes

2007-05-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

My friend Tina just sent me these pics of clothes she made from recycled clothes for her new baby Tycho (I just saw him last night, and he is cute, cute, cute!). Here's what she wrote: "I'd like to make some stuffed toys for Tycho out of old clothes. I've been making him pants out of old shirts--I've sent along a picture of the latest pair and the onesie I raw-edge appliqued a matching patch onto. Despite my poor seamstressing skills, I persevere because I know soon he'll just want to wear jeans and spiderman t-shirts." Tycho's Dad calls them his 'clown clothes'. I think these are great, and her seamstressing skills are much better than she thinks! She suggests this post from another blog for advice on how to make kid's pants from your own pattern.

Fallen Fruit - Saving Good Food

2007-05-25T12:38:00.000-07:00

I just finished The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press 2006). This book is a must-read for anyone interested in food, sustainability, the environment, and so on. I learned a lot about how food is wasted, and how to be a less wasteful eater. Anyway, towards the end of the book, he mentioned the legal principle of 'usufruct' in the context foraging food either from public places or where fruit was going to waste. I like this idea - that if others are allowing something perishable to go to waste, then you may have the right to take it and use it yourself - very interesting. In that context, he gave a footnote to this site: fallenfruit.org. The website is devoted to the idea of foraging fruit in the city (of LA, but they would like to expand their mission across the U.S.). I am very taken with the politics of this idea (I like any idea that keeps private property in its proper place), and the fallen fruit website is very much worth looking at, including the manifesto and maps. There are some apple trees on the edge of a public recreation center a five minutes walk from my house, which I noticed last Fall, and which did have edible apples growing on them. And then, walking my dog, I've discovered an old empty house lot that I think has apple trees. This Fall I am definitely going to go back, pick a bunch, and put up apple sauce. So now what I need to find in the trash is a good old fashioned apple picker! What fruit do you have growing near you that you can collect?

More Trash to Buy (and cheaper this time)

2007-05-24T15:20:00.000-07:00

My friend the Lynneguist just sent me this link to a post on Boing Boing. Here is some more trash you can buy - a smaller and cheaper version of this trash-qua-art that I posted about some time ago. Thanks Lynne!

Great New Found Object Straight from the Trash

2007-05-24T13:03:00.000-07:00

I was walking the dog on a trash night, when I spotted this great old column in front of someone's house. (My dog knows it's trash night, because we go out over and over again - he loves trash night almost as much as I do.) At first I thought it was a log, but as soon as I poked it with my foot, I discovered that it was an old column. It was carved from single piece of wood (so, it was a log, once upon a time). It is about 4 feet high, slightly tapered, with a decorative carving along the top. It has some very old white paint on it, and inside you can see the screw-like carving marks. I wonder how old it is? In any case, I think it's just great, and once I get my porch painted later this summer, it will make a great found object decoration. At the end of summer, I'll move it inside.

Why Do People Throw This Stuff Away?

2007-05-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

I have to admit: I don't get it. Why would someone throw away something as basically useful and necessary as a kitchen trash can? I found each of these in the trash within just a few houses of where I live, over the course of just a few months. Each time, I assumed that it was broken or cracked, but I went to check it out anyway, because I'm always on the lookout for trash cans in which to pile up my 'green waste' (yard clippings, tree limbs, leaves, etc., that the city turns into compost). But each of these trash cans is fine. I just kept piling them up in my garage, and yesterday I gave them a pretty perfunctory cleaning, and so here they are: 3 perfectly good trash cans. Each one is made by Sterlite, which says something about just how ubiquitous their plastic products are. So, what do you think? Why do people just throw stuff like this away?

Recycled Monsters - Great Idea, Great Gift

2007-05-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

I just read this post on Whip-up, about Cotton Monsters, great, one-of-a-kind stuffed monsters made from recycled clothes and linens. Go to the Whip-up post and you find links to her blog and to her site. These would make great, sustainable gifts for children. (Kids get all the good stuff!) I wonder where she gets all her materials - thrift stores, I hope?

A Little Revolving Gallery

2007-05-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

A few months back I posted about how I reclaimed a dirty old box that I found in my basement. It was just right for displaying a few of the smaller pieces from my collection of green handled kitchen utensils. But I also had in mind that I could rotate various things through it: use it as a little revolving gallery of things I collect. So the other day I took out the utensils, threw (well, lightly tossed, really) them back in with the rest of that collection, and then put into the box a new collection that I just started when I was in Brighton, England recently: old b&w photos of people with their dogs. Dogs can make people very happy (mine makes me happy), so I love these photos because they capture a happy moment in the lives of people I'll never know. I'd like to someday have enough of this collection to fill up a small wall with them. You have to look carefully to find the dog here: because the dog blends in so well with the uniforms!. And in this photo I can imagine that the dogs are tired because they've just returned home from a good walk.

My Bulletin Boards are Better Than I Thought!

2007-05-21T16:46:00.000-07:00

A while back, I wrote about putting up multiple bulletin boards around my house, making some of them myself from Homasote. I've just read at Apartment Therapy, via this post on Not Martha, that homasote is a recycled material, made from old newsprint. Cool!

Two of My Favorite Things Come Together: Jewelry and Recycling

2007-05-21T16:34:00.000-07:00

Check out out this post on Inhabitat, about jewelry made from reclaimed and recycled textiles. I went to the artist's site (you can get there from the Inhabitat post linked to here), but alas, my Spanish is way too rusty to be able to read more than the occasional word... I love the necklaces, though I'm not sure I could really pull off the look.

Institutional Surplus - Great Source of Great Stuff

2007-05-21T05:46:00.000-07:00

Various institutions, such as schools, hospitals, etc. sometimes have great stuff that they need to dispose of. I got these crocks from my college's 'barn sale', where they sell the furniture, etc. that come out of building which have been renovated: I paid $5 each. My friends Julie and Joe got a great set of oak chairs to use in their dining room for only $12 each: They are good looking, comfortable chairs, and as you can see, they came from Ohio State University: I heard recently that Colgate University, about half an hour from me, has a regular 'store' for their surplus stuff, so I have it on my already-too-long list of things to do to go there and see what they've got. And I've also heard that somewhere in Boston is a regular surplus sale of Harvard's leftovers. What surplus furniture have you found in your area?

A Use for Vintage Suitcases: Sidetable w/ Storage

2007-05-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

The top suitcase in this photo did come straight out of the trash. Some neighbors were cleaning out an attic when I spied it on top of the dumpster. I asked if I could have it and they gladly handed it to me. (That I didn't get in on the ground floor and get things out of the attic before they were put in the dumpster is a long, sorrowful story...) But the other suitcases I've bought at various thrift stores and garage sales over the last few years. Stacked together they make a cool looking bedside table, and they offer some extra storage space for sheets, towels, etc. And I don't know about you, but I am always in need of extra storage space. (The only thing is that I suggest only using them to store things you don't need very often, since you have to unstack them to gain access. They would work great for holiday decorations, for example.) This is not an original idea, I know, but I think it's good enough to bear repeating.

Bye Bye Clothes Dryer!!!

2007-05-19T12:27:00.000-07:00

So, as I said a while back, my dryer broke about a year ago, and as I was broke myself, I decided to get by with just a washer. (Though this is where I draw the line. I won't be doing my laundry in the sink, or at a laundromat.) For the last year the old, broken dryer has been just a waste of space in my basement, where I need all the space I can get. And one of the many things I love about my neighborhood is that on trash day, there are guys with pickup trucks making the rounds looking for scrap metal. (I love it because it means that all that metal won't end up in a landfill, and won't get wasted.) So, I nabbed one of these guys yesterday, and he took down my address and came back this morning to get it. He took it apart, and it looked to me like he was salvaging all of it: the metal for scrap, the heavy duty cord, the motor. So, here it is in my driveway: And there it goes! Next, I'm going to have him come back and get the old oil tank taking up space in yet another corner of my basement!

What a Waste

2007-05-17T16:45:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of thing that drives me crazy. I bought some new underwear a few days ago, and when, at the cash register, I went to remove them from their little plastic hangers, the cashier said that they would just throw them out, not reuse them. I assume that the manufacturer puts them on the hangers and doesn't want them back. They are recyclable, but still! It is such a waste for all those hangers to get made, and then to have to recycle rather than reuse them.

Thrift Shopping = Green Shopping

2007-05-15T12:43:00.000-07:00

So, I went to the Sal Army in Lancaster, Ohio yesterday with my friend Julie. This store is well worth the visit. If I were you and I were anywhere in the vicinity, I would go out of my way to go to this particular store. (I don't understand the great differences in quality between different Sal Armies. They must have some sort of distribution system that accounts for the fact that some of the stores really suck,as does the one where I live in Utica, NY, and others are great. It is not that they depend on donations from the place where they are located. There is a more complex distribution system than that.) Anyway, spending a couple hours in this store was as close to a religious ecstatic experience as I am likely to have, although nothing compares to the Garage Sales held at the Sal Army in Cleveland. Back on point, (I can stick to a point, I swear), I spent $54 and change, and here is what I got: All together, my $54 got me: a large bag of candles, which one of these days I'm going to recycle into candle cup gifts; a vintage wool blanket, with someone's name tag on it (love that!); a nice old Boater's straw hat, in great condition that I'll put up on Ebay; 2 cool vintage dresses; a very nice antique ironstone serving bowl in great condition; a little old-fashioned nightgown; a pair of brand new tights (I do draw the line at used underwear); a very cute polka dot lightweight jacket by French Dressing; a very cute reversible wrap skirt WITH ITS TAGS STILL ON IT (I swear, buying clothes and giving them to Sal Army without ever having even bothered to take off the tags strikes me as very weird behavior - wouldn't it be simpler just to burn your money from the comfort of your home?); an oldish white cotton slip (no, slips aren't underwear); a nice queen bedskirt, which I very much need; 5 large men's cotton shirts, which I'll use for more of these; 2 old silk scarves; a Texas Ware sugar and creamer, also destined for Ebay; a little white tea cup, which I'm going to use for those candles gifts I mentioned above; a pair of socks (no, socks aren't underwear either); 2 stretchy tops; 2 sleeveless blouses; a basket ware cup; 2 long linen dresses that I'm going to turn into skirts; 2 long linen skirts that I'm going to shorten; a Flax linen shirt I bought just because I like the fabric; and a matching linen skirt and top set. Not bad for $54, huh? Here are some closeup pics:
I am, as you can probably tell, pretty pleased with this score. I spent as much as I could have easily spent on a single thing, and got over 30 things instead. And, given that a few of those things will end up on Ebay (the hat, the sugar & creamer), I may in fact break even or make a little money. But as pleased as I am for myself, I am also disturbed by how much we overproduce in this country. Most Sal Armies have to regularly take things off the racks in order to make room for the enormous quantities of stuff getting delivered daily to their stores. (All the shirts I bought yesterday were 3 for 99 cents, because they are desperate to get rid of inventory. So at the last minute I scooted over to the men's section and quickly picked up the 5 men's shirts I bought.) I'm not sure what happens to all that stuff, but at least some of it simply gets thrown out, or so I suspect. And, it isn't true, as some people assume, that the clothes in thrift stores are worn out, or cheap, or hopelessly stained, and so on. The wrap skirt I bought was brand new, and I saw lots of other things still bearing their original tags. I always carefully look over what I buy, and nothing I bought yesterday is obviously worn, or stained, or torn, etc. Why waste $54 on a single skirt, when you can spend the same amount and get this much instead? So, my suggestion to those of us who are concerned with such issues as sustainability and are distressed by the extent and ubiquity of waste in the world, I say "Thrift Shopping is Green Shopping!" We all have to consume, but we don't have to do it in the 'normal' wasteful ways.

Friends Helping Friends Get Good Stuff from the Trash

2007-05-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

I am visiting friends in Athens, Ohio this week. Yesterday we were sitting in the yard, with the kids (their kids, not my kids) playing in this great sandbox: I asked if Joe had made it, and Julie (my friend Julie, not my sister Julie who I've referred to in these pages before) said that no, a friend in town had called when they spotted it along the road with trash, and they had gone right out to get it. That, and a new cover and bags of sand (replete with shells) from Lowe's, and they had a great new toy in the yard, and a shady spot at that! I love the collectivity of this: not just the actual saving of a thing from the trash, but one friend calling another to tell them about the great thing waiting to be rescued.

Creative Uses for Corks!

2007-05-11T16:46:00.000-07:00

I started saving my corks, mostly champagne, as I don't drink much wine but do occasionally throw big parties where I serve a lot of bubbly, after my contractors pointed out that I could use them to repairs the holes in my baseboards that some lazy person drilled in order to run cable. But now that all those holes are filled, I have at least a large coffee can full of those nice, plump champagne corks. So, here is a great post from another blog about some projects for all your left over corks. Personally, I like this one best:Thanks for sending this to me, Lynneguist!

Some Great Art on Nice Old Paper Book Pages

2007-05-08T20:21:00.000-07:00

I love this art, and if I was more fiscally inclined to spend money these days, these really lovely drawings would make a happy addition to my home (they are quite affordable, but I'm quite broke these days). What appeals to me, if you haven't already guessed, and in addition to their general loveliness, is that they are on old book pages! I love that - what a clever idea. You can check them out here. They are showing in a gallery in NH, which you can check out here.

Another Great Post on Recycling from Boing Boing

2007-05-08T08:18:00.000-07:00

My friend the Lynneguist sent me this link to a post about how to make a play kitchen for kids from an old unwanted entertainment center. I love it! It was posted on Boing Boing, a site I should look at more often. This seems like the very best thing anyone could do with such a thing, better even than oh, I don't know, putting a television in it.

A Great Use for Plastic Containers - Mini Greenhouses!

2007-05-06T06:16:00.000-07:00

I came across this very clever idea at a blog I keep on my bloglines. I think this is a great idea, and I am definitely going to try this next year, when I hope to grow some tomato plants from seed.

Keepin' it all in circulation - A big unexpected gift

2007-05-03T16:57:00.000-07:00

I got one of those little notices from the post office telling me that I had a package to pick up last week. I had to pick it up because it was insured, which meant that I had to sign for it. I wasn't expecting anything, so my best guess was that it was from my brother and sister-in-law. A few weeks back I had sent them some empty glass paperweights, and they were to pick out photos and send them back to me so I could put them in. (Don't know what I'm talking about? Check out this post and see what I'm referring to.) But when I got to the post office, it was from my sister Gwen, in New Mexico. Look what she sent me! Tons and tons of books on dvd. I haven't added it all up, but there is somewhere in the vicinity of 100 hours of books here. I am bowled over. I am driving to Athens, Ohio next week, so the timing is perfect. I mentioned my great good fortune to my friend Frank, and he said he'd like to borrow them when I'm done, so that will mean at least three people will use them. Then, unless I find someone else who wants to borrow them, I will pass them along to the Blaisdell Memorial Library. Let's keep as much as we can in circulation. Thanks Gwen!

Ode to Spring and Clothespins

2007-05-01T05:35:00.000-07:00

I am so happy that Spring is finally upon us. Here in upstate NY we had to wait a while, and grin and bear it through some unseasonably cold weather in April. But now it is reasonably warm, and the daffodils I planted in the Fall are up, and my gardens are beginning to get green. But the best thing about Spring for me is laundry - yes, laundry! My dryer died just about a year ago, and I decided not to replace it. So I resurrected the old clothesline in the yard last summer and used it into the Fall. I had thought I would use it all winter, but it extends out from under the eaves of the back of my house, so once the snow arrives it gets ice bound, along with the rest of the world around here. All winter, then, I hung up my laundry inside, using a wooden rack and radiators - not a good way to do things like sheets and bedspreads. I'm getting all caught up now, though. So the other day I cleaned my clothespins which I had left out all winter. (I soaked them with a little bleach, then rinsed them with a little vinegar). And I finally got around to attaching my clothespins holder to the house next to where the clothesline begins its descent into the yard. I picked up this cheap, aluminum, old colander at a yardsale last summer for a quarter (still a deal at twice the price!): Then I squashed it a little and screwed it right to the side of the house. It sits under the eaves, so it should stay pretty dry, but water will drain out in any case.I find that on a warm, breezy day, laundry dries in less than two hours (except for towels). I do miss the way that the dryer gets rid of lint, though. But in general, not having a dryer hasn't been that much of a sacrifice. I managed without it all winter, except for once when I needed to wash my duvet cover and put it back on my bed on the same day, which I brought to a friend's house to dry.

Another Mirror Saved from the Trash

2007-04-28T12:44:00.000-07:00

I recently posted about a very nice mirror that I found in the trash and rescued. But, alas, I was too far from home to save it for myself, though I am happy to have been able to save it for someone else, even if I'm not sure quite who that someone is. Anyway, that reminded me, after I had gotten home, that this mirror was also rescued from the trash: I retrieved the very nice frame, with a gilt inner edge that I don't think quite shows up in the photo, from the attic of the Molly Root House, which the college I teach at had recently bought and was cleaning out. A little while later I came across a large mirror which had once been attached to a vanity or dresser (at least that was my best educated guess) in the trash a few houses down from my last apartment. So, for $10 I had the mirror cut down and fixed inside the frame by a local glass company - a pretty good deal, I think. The mirror is pretty heavy, so I don't want to try to hang it on the wall myself, but I actually like it leaning up against my bedroom wall anyway.

Manga Man - Someone Else's Treasure

2007-04-26T20:36:00.000-07:00

So, here is a great piece of funky art which my friends Lynne and Phil rescued from the trash outside this store on Orange Row in Brighton, UK. They assume that the store had decided to do some redecorating, and luckily they were there to take this home. It is now on an outside door of their flat. It was very helpful when I was visiting recently, and needed to be sure, instantly, that I was back at the right place!

My New Bloggy Endeavor

2007-04-25T18:11:00.000-07:00

I've started a new blog, as a way to keep track of and write about a new project I've undertaken: becoming a cheese connoiseur (sorry, I realize that this sounds kind of high falutin'...). So, though it has nothing to do with what I write about here, check it out!

Wherever I Go, I Find Treasures!

2007-04-24T06:23:00.000-07:00

I've just come back from a week in England, where I had a great time. The weather was very warm and sunny, and I had a lovely time visiting with friends in London and Brighton, and then a very productive and interesting conference at Oxford, where I presented a version of this paper. One evening, while walking home with the Lynneguist and her soon-to-be-husband from a great dinner of Bangers and Mash at a pub which specializied in about a dozen kinds of sausage, including vegetarian varieties, and at least half a dozen mashed potatoes and gravies, I spied this mirror leaning up against a dumpster: I dutifully carried it back to their home (with help - thanks!), where I was able to inspect it a bit more carefully than I could out on the dark street. It is very nice. It is a pinkish amber color, with a scalloped edge, and virtually ready to hang (it just needs some wire attached to the back). When I left it with them it was in need of a good cleaning, and perhaps a scraping with a razor blade to remove some relatively recalcitrant dirt that you can see on left. But other than that, it really is a lovely mirror, and I was tempted to drag it all the way home myself. (But it's rather heavy, so the idea of carrying it up to Oxford and then out to Heathrow dissuaded me.) They weren't sure whether they would be able to find a spot for it in their home, but I left it in their care assured that if they couldn't use it they would find someone who could. So, even when I'm away from home, I can still manage to remain true to myself!

You Can't Have Too Many Bulletin Boards!

2007-04-11T15:53:00.000-07:00

A couple of years got back, I too got caught up in the clever idea of magnetic bulletin boards, that is, using a metal surface and magnets to post notes, messages, etc., rather than a more traditional push pin type of bulletin board. And I found an old enamel top table at at a yard sale for $10, so I took the top and secured it to a wall in my last apartment, which I thought was really extra clever of me: This takes a bunch of magnets, so that gave me the excuse to make more button magnets (simple to make: hot glue round magnets to the back of old buttons):But then, when I moved into my new house (I've lived here for more than a year now, so I wonder when it will stop feeling 'new'...), I decided that I was over the whole idea of metal bulletin boards. The button magnets, or even more traditional smaller magnets take up a lot more room than do push pins, and how many enamel tables does anyone really want to take apart? (I recently found one in the trash, took it apart, and stuck it in my garage, but I'll leave that for another post.) So, I've returned to regular old bulletin boards, and I actually have four, all over the house, because I find them so useful! (Meanwhile, I put that green enamel top table back together and use it in my craft room.) Here's the cool vintage one I found years ago at the Salvation Army in Cleveland, that I keep in my craft room, with various inspiring images on it: Then there's a little green one, from the same Sal Army in Cleveland, with fish swimming across the top. I use it as a small rotating gallery. It currently has old pictures of my house, kindly given to me by a previous owner. But if I manage to collect a few old chipmunk postcards (such is the kind of ambition to which I'm susceptible) then they will go there next: And, after I had painted the kitchen and the back study, I made two more bulletin boards out of homosote. (This is very easy: go to a lumber yard, and have homosote, a soft cardboard like material which comes in 4' x 8' sheets cut to whatever size you like. Then stretch over it any fabric that can withstand the pushpins and staple it to the back. Finally, attach it to the wall with screws and washers. I learned this from my sister Julie, who teaches me many cool things.) I made a relatively small one just for displaying my modest collection of 'display-worthy' vintage kitchen towels (the collection of usable vintage kitchen towels is far from modest): And I made a larger one for next to my desk, for the usual desk-like things: calendar, movie listings, etc. So, that's four in all, which so far seems to be enough, so I don't even have to put things on my fridge, which I'm glad about. So, all I've got on the fridge is all those left over button magnets!

New York City Garbage as Art!

2007-04-07T07:40:00.000-07:00

I was just sorting through and trying to organize all the sites that I've bookmarked in the past few months, and I came across
this article about Justin Gignac
who collects NYC garbage and packages it as art. (I no longer remember who sent me this link, but thanks!) What he is doing is very cool on many fronts: he's recycling, he's stretching our concept of 'art', he's calling attention to how much stuff gets thrown out (especially in NYC), and to boot he is making money doing it! I love it. You can
check out his site here.

What Treasures Have You Saved from the Trash???

2007-04-05T18:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, so now that you've seen some of the stuff that I've found in the trash, I'd love to see your reclaimed treasures. What's the best thing you've ever found in the trash? Send me a picture and description of what you've found (the better the story the better), so I can share your finds with others (just click on "Contact Celeste" on the left to email me).

A New Use for Old Graters

2007-04-04T15:39:00.000-07:00

I was just browsing through all the iPhoto albums on my Mac, when I came across these pictures: The pictures were taken the day of my nephew Eli's wedding. The reception was at my sister Julie's house, and I made these lights as one of my contributions towards the festivities and decorations. I made them out of the old fashioned graters that come with big old industrial style food graters. I used a string of Christmas lights, cutting them apart, running the wires through holes in the tops of the graters and then rewiring the lights. I think that there must be a better way to do this, but it did the trick at the time. The picture don't show this very well, but they cast a very nice, mildly funky light at night. My sister kept the lights up for quite a while, but eventually returned them to me. I've got to see if I can find them, and put them to use this summer when I hope to host some gathering s in my back yard.

Hardware Store = Art Gallery

2007-03-31T08:19:00.000-07:00

Several months back, a revered old hardware store here in Utica, Doyle's Hardware, closed its doors forever. I was very sad. Doyle's was the perfect place to get all sorts of hardware, including old fashioned screws and parts for lamps that are otherwise hard to find. They originally had five stores throughout Utica, but as those had closed, they had consolidated all their stock into the huge, three story brick store down by the train station. So, the store had all sorts of old things with nice old prices on them. As they were getting ready to close their doors, prices, already low, got slashed. I picked up three of these old brushes for 30% off of $2.65! I picked them up just because I really liked how they looked, and because right off they struck me as having a certain sculptural quality. For a while, they were just piled up on a table in my living room. I really liked how the orange worked with my greenish blue walls. But I knew that I really wanted to hang them on those blue walls, so after I finally got around to painting my stairwell, I found just the right spot for them under the windows on my landing. By then I had already decided that I was going to paint my stair risers a color other than the off-white I use for all my trim and woodwork. So, I hit upon the idea of painting the risers the same orange. I took a brush to J-Kay, where Sam Rudolph (who has been incredibly helpful with many a paint color dilemma) mixed up a quart of paint in that very same orange. The color adds a bit of punch to a color scheme that I sometimes worry heads a little in a conservative direction. The morale of this little story is that you can find art in unexpected places!

Another Cool Item from the Trash - But What Is It?

2007-03-27T17:34:00.000-07:00

I don't have the slightest idea what this thing is: I only know that I like how it looks, and I figure that sooner or later I'll find just the right use for it. Then I'll be so glad that I dragged it home. It was out in front of a neighbor's house, with their trash. I asked them what they thought it might be, and their best guess was that it was some sort of wine rack. (No way -- it's both way to flimsy to hold a bunch of wine bottles, but, more importantly, the individual slots are much too small.) The wooden knobs are for pulling the middle dowel forward, which slides a small wooden piece towards you, like this: A few of the knobs are missing, and one dowel is broken, but these problems will be easy to repair. It stands about 2 1/2 feet high. I think that one of these days it might make a nice plant stand or what my mother always called an "occasional" table. But for now, it is safely stored in a nice, dry corner of my basement, waiting for inspiration to strike. Meanwhile, if you think you know what it might be, do tell!

Big Score at the Utica Zoo Rummage Sale

2007-03-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

Personally, zoos make me sad. All those beautiful animals pacing in their relatively small cages, when they really should be out in the woods or the savannah. Oh well. But the Utica Zoo had a rummage sale this morning, so off I went. There was a medium sized line when I got there, and once the gates opened at 10, in we went. It was a pretty small sale, but there were some good things and they priced by volume. The young woman in charge of pricing and taking money didn't bother to see what exactly we had found. Rather, she just sized up the amount of stuff that we had and priced accordingly. I paid a mere $10 for all of this: I know you can't quite discern all the stuff in this picture, so here is an inventory, more or less clockwise, starting on the left: a nice, though not old, wicker magazine rack which will be perfect for carrying reading material to and from the porch this summer; a set of three inflatable clothes hangers that were way too funky to resist; a bag of tea lights; a set of 6 shot glasses with a carrier; a little box with 13 little old porcelain Christmas bells (I already had 5, now I have 18!!!); a bunch of old linens in a variety of conditions; a pair of jeans that just might fit; a men's shirt with which I can make more of these; a food strainer that I picked up because I have others just like it and one of these days I'm going to fashion them into some oh-so-cool hanging lights; a step on trash can, which, if I can find a bucket that fits, will be perfect in my kitchen for compost (I really need a hands-free way to dump my peelings, etc.); a vintage book on rug-making for my Dad, my favorite rug maker; a metal milk jug carrier; an irresistable vintage white bustier for which I'm too busty but which I'll put up on Ebay; and a zip lock bag full of nice ribbon to replenish my supply. Not a bad haul for $10! I LOVE RUMMAGE SALES!!!

A New Use for 'Tin' Cans

2007-03-23T06:06:00.000-07:00

Now, this is not a particularly new idea, and so I take no credit for it as some sort of original thing. I assume that the idea of putting empty 'tin' cans to use after their contents had been eaten is virtually as old as the 'tin' can itself. (I keep putting 'tin' in quotes like because they are longer actually made of tin, and haven't been for a long time now.) I can just imagine that the person who invented the 'tin' can (was it one of the Shakers?) immediately sold the idea to others by saying "And after you eat the green beans, you've got a great way to organize your rusty nail collection..."! So, nothing new here. But my basement is short on space because it has concrete block walls that I have no idea how to attach anything to, like shelves. So, I have to put whatever space I do have to parsimonious use. I attached these empty tomato cans to a wooden wall with metal screws and a drill and they make a pretty handy way to store some of my painting supplies. I'll probably add more as I make more soup, spaghetti sauce, etc. I like how the labels look, and I think you could easily repeat this with all sorts of different kinds of cans to great effect.

Men's Shirts as Cocktail Napkins

2007-03-17T16:14:00.000-07:00

So, I've long liked the men's shirts at the various thrift stores I'm known to frequent. I love the stripey patterns and smooth fabric, and I usually stop to rifle through them admiringly. But I've never had any idea of what to do with them, other than buy them for my non-existent boyfriend. But recently, somewhere or other on the web, I saw that someone had refashioned a men's shirt into a pillow cover, by very cleverly taking advantage of the buttoned front placket, which does away with the need to bother sewing in a zipper. (I am perfectly incapable of sewing in zippers. I used to cajole my sister into doing it for me through flattery: "But you do zippers so well!". But she caught on pretty quickly, so that gig is up.) So that got me to thinking. Then, a week or so ago, I had a couple of friends over for cocktails. (I finally caught up with the trend, and have been very into having a bar and making cocktails lately. And, oh yeah, drinking more. Want a great cocktail book? Try this one - it's great.) I've been wanting for a while to have more nice cocktail-sized napkins - just big enough to rest a martini glass on. I've got tons and tons of dinner sized cloth napkins, so many that it usually takes a year or so to work through the stash and then spend a long evening ironing. But I didn't have enough little ones. So, I decided to make a little project out of making cocktail napkins from men's shirts. First, I bought a couple of men's shirts with the following criteria in mind: 100% cotton, pleasing pattern, really big for more fabric, and, crucially, half-price. With that in mind, I found these two shirts, for $2 each:So, I cut them up into 12 inch squares, based on some small napkins I already had. (I was somewhat surprised by how few napkins I got out of each. I have to look for even bigger shirts in the future.) Then I ironed a narrow hem all around and pinned these in place. After sewing them all around, I folded and ironed them again, and I was done. Eight new napkins to put on the bar, and an idea for easy hostess or housewarming gifts in the future.And I did this while watching "Ocean's Eleven" on tv, admiring George Clooney's shirts all the while! Now, if only I could get him to take his shirts off for me...

When Did Plants Become Disposable???

2007-03-04T14:09:00.000-08:00

So, I got this lovely orchid plant(it's a Phalaenopsis) as a gift from my brother and sister-in-law several weeks ago, as housewarming gift, when I finally got around to throwing my housewarming party. (The party was a great success, if I say so myself.) When they gave it to me it had a lovely stem with four or five very pretty white blossoms on it. The last of the blooms died recently, and after removing the flower stem, I was reading the tag that came with the plant to find out how best to care for it. Reading the tag, I was rather discouraged to read the last line:It's that last line that really struck me. This is a lovely plant, even without the blooms, but the company that made it would prefer that I throw it away and just buy another one, rather than keep this plant and nurture it while it readies itself to bloom again. Now, throwing it away isn't directly wasteful. If I were to throw it out, I would put it into one of my compost bins (you aren't surprised that I compost, are you?), so the plant itself and its soil would get recycled. (One of the many reasons I look forward to Spring is that I can once again drag home my neighbors dead plants in order to add them to my composting efforts.) But all the energy that went into growing it, watering it, transporting it from Florida to Massachusetts (where my family bought it), would all be a waste. And much of that energy is, of course, in the form of fossil fuels. And so this little example of planned wastefulness strikes me as the perfect microcosm of the biggest source of our environmental woes and coming disasters: our economy depends on all of us wasting as much as we can, which always means, among other things, wasting fossil fuels. The company that grew this Phalaenopsis makes more profit the more we waste these plants by throwing them away and buying more. We are in serious trouble if we don't change our ways and waste less.

Glass Paperweights as a Photo Collage

2007-02-27T07:50:00.000-08:00

Okay, so you are probably familiar with these old glass paperweights. You can find them in a range of sizes and shapes at thrift stores, antique shops, yard sales, and so on. Sometimes you find them empty, and sometimes they have an old image, or sea shells, or dried flowers in them. Several years ago, I took an old one, I don't remember where I had found it or what was in it, and put my own photograph in it. It's one of my very favorite photographs of the seven children in my family, back when we were still children (I'm the little girl on the bottom right). For a long time, that was the only one I had. Then, slowly, I gathered more of the old paperweights, and scrounged around my mother's house for more old photographs, like this one of my father with his brothers, his father standing in the background (his father died a year or so after this photo was taken, so it's a rare image of my grandfather). And so the collection grew. I haven't done any in a while, for reasons of space, and also because I've now represented just about everyone in my family. So, lately I've been thinking of doing these as gifts, but I have yet to follow through on that! I do worry a little about keeping them in front of a window that at some times of year does get direct sunlight, so I am planning on making some sort of simple fabric cover for them so that they don't fade.

Nice Old Hooks on a Board

2007-02-23T16:12:00.000-08:00

Here's another slightly crummy, definitely old, thing I found in my house when I bought it, though this time in the garage, rather than the basement, where I found this dirty old box. This set of hooks on a board was in the garage, where, for all I know, it had been for 100 years, used to hang up the sundry things we keep in our garages. Check out the hooks, aren't they great? And they are all in perfect shape. So, I cleaned it up, both the wood and the hooks, with a wire brush, then I put two coats of polyurethane on both the wood and the hooks. I decided to poly the hooks so that they wouldn't leave rust spots on anything wet that might end up hung on them. I considered painting the hooks black and putting poly on the wood, but decided against it because 1) that would take longer, which would mean that I would get less done that day, and 2) I like the look of the 'raw' iron. Once it was dry, I hung it up next to the shower stall in the back bedroom. I love how the browns of the wall, the wood, and the hooks all complement one another.

Another Item from the Trash

2007-02-22T06:24:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I think of my house as a small scale Humane Society for lost or abandoned things. I take them home, clean them up a little if need be, give them temporary shelter, and then try to find them a permanent home. Take this little lamp for example: I found it in the trash back in the Fall. When I first spied it, on top of a recycling container, I immediately thought "must be broken or something, but maybe the cord will be worth salvaging". But when I got up to it, I saw that there was not a single thing wrong with it - it even had its light bulb. So, I took it home and the next day offered it to a friend, who wanted it, but I held onto it so I could take a picture and post about it. (She has it now.) I really just can't wrap my mind around why someone would just throw it away. Didn't she have a friend who would want it? (I did.) Or couldn't she be bothered to put it in a box with other unwanted items, which, when full, could go to the Salvation Army or some such place? We live in a disposable culture, which is surely going to contribute to our undoing.

From Dirty Old Box to Collection Display

2007-02-20T15:16:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I found this dirty, dusty old wooden box in the basement soon after buying my house. (The fork is there just to give you some sense of its size.) It was holding old tools and hardware, oil cans and door knobs. But I thought I could give it a better life than that. So, first, I cleaned it up by scrubbing it with a dry, stiff brush. (I decided not to wash it in water because I didn't want the wood to warp.) Then, I painted the backs of the compartments with BIN: an alcohol-based primer. I used BIN because 1) it will stick to just about anything and makes a good, clean painting surface and 2) the box had some rust-stained areas, and since BIN is alcohol based, rust stains don't bleed through, as they do with latex primer or paint. Then I rummaged around my paint shelves and settled on the paint left over from the inside of my open kitchen cabinets: Castleton Mist from Benjamin Moore. (I LOVE this color - I used it on all my downstairs ceilings, as well as my bedroom.) Then I rubbed boiled linseed oil over all the wood that was unpainted and would show. The linseed oil brings out the grain, seals the wood, and adds a little sheen. (It is much easier to apply than polyurethane and doesn't need to dry. You just apply it with a rag and then use a clean rag to wipe off the excess.) The next step was to add these hangers: Then it went up on a wall in my kitchen and I promptly filled it with just a taste of my way too large collection of green handled kitchen utensils:

Triple Letter Score - Scrabble Redux

2007-02-17T08:32:00.000-08:00

I recently found this old scrabble game at one of my local thrift shops: the Kirkland Art Center Thrift Shop in Clinton, NY. I paid $1.50 for it. And it's a good thing I found it, because my scrabble tile cache was getting dangerously low, after I used up 482 tiles doing this:The inside of the door to this original-to-my-house medicine cabinet had an indented space that was just perfectly sized for these tiles. So, just a few months into home ownership, I took a break from spackling and sanding and spackling and sanding, and spent a few hours doing this. It was great fun. I worked in a few big, nice words quite intentionally, but then ended up with more words by these two means: the completely fortuitous words, and the almost fortuitous words. These last ones I had to nudge into wordiness by a letter or two. I was surprised that the whole thing took 482 tiles - almost 5 games worth! This dashed my hopes of ever covering even a small wall in tiles! At least not until I've collected a hundred games or so....

Great Shopping Sites, Part 3: Green Glass, Inc.

2007-02-12T11:54:00.000-08:00

I just love the whole idea of this endeavor: taking empty, used wine bottles (and sometimes bottles that are rejected right off the assembly line) and keeping them out of the 'waste stream' (meaning keeping them out of either landfills or keeping them from being traditionally recycled) by turning them into drinking glasses (and other nifty objects as well). Green Glass, Inc. is a small, new company, started in South Africa and now operating in the U.S., doing just this. What a great wedding gift for people who are more environmentally-conscious or, like us, hate to see good things going to waste when there are creative ways to see those things put to new uses.

Great Shopping Sites, Part 2: Elsewares

2007-02-05T18:44:00.000-08:00

Here is another great site for buying handmade, independently produced, artsy stuff: elsewares. To be honest, I haven't yet bought anything from this site, but there is much to admire and lust after.

Great Shopping Sites, Part 1: Etsy

2007-02-02T16:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, so part of my whole deal, and much of what inspired me to start this very blog, is that I eschew the normal, mainstream (and may I say, very wasteful) consumer culture that makes America what it is. Part of this is that I HATE spending any serious amount of time in a soulless mall that makes you feel like you could be anywhere, which feels an awful lot like you are nowhere. And I want to have things, even when I only have them long enough to give them away as a gift, that are unique, handmade, inspired. Moreover, if someone is going to benefit from my spending, I'd rather it be an independent crafts person than a corporation. But even I do have to shop sometimes and so I've become more and more taken with a few great websites that sell great, interesting, handmade, and cool stuff. So I'm going to post about a few of them, and keep a running list of them up at the top of the page.

First, I was introduced to Etsy a few years ago by a good friend. She recommended it as a place I could sell the jewelry I design and produce, which I may or may not do (a tautology, I know) sooner or later. But meanwhile, it is a great site for finding really cool stuff. I've never bought myself anything there (perish that thought), but I have bought various gifts on it. It is a little like Ebay, without the adrenaline-driven thrill of the auction. But Etsy simply provides the site, so that all the transactions take place directly between the buyer and maker/seller.

I've had nothing but good experiences so far, and have found some nice gifts. So save yourself a trip to the mall, support someone who is trying to make a living making things, and check it out!

Dog Tag Fringe Lamp

2007-02-01T16:55:00.000-08:00

I just love this lamp, made by Kathy Neustadt, a Boston area artist. It was back in the summer or fall of 2002 (I think), and my sister had put together a show with a group of fellow artists, whose work is related by their passion for working with found and rescued objects. Here's a site of a show they did a while back. Here are their biographies, including Kathy's. Anyway, I went to the opening and there was this lamp. I was there early to help set up, and so I was able to snag it up right away. I had recently adopted my dog, (who is certainly the best thing I ever recovered from the trash, if you can call being abandoned in a back yard being trashed, which certainly strikes me as fair), and I was in a bit of a canine-philic stage of life (which not everyone thinks I have come out of) so I was very excited by the dog tags being used for the fringe. Kathy had found them all when she rented a house from a former animal control officer in a small town in New Hampshire. The lamp shade is rescued from something else, and the shade has been fitted to a great old fifties lamp. I've had this lamp for all these years now, and I've always given it pride of place.

Not very fancy, but an easy way to recycle...

2007-01-20T15:29:00.000-08:00

So, a while after I had finished painting my living and dining rooms, I was FINALLY able to start having people over again, which was a good thing, since being able to entertain well is a good deal of the reason I wanted a house to being with. Anyway, on two separate occasions, two friends commented that as lovely as the place was (and I must admit, they are right there), my paintings were hung too damn high. So, I dutifully went about the business of lowering them. (These were gay men after all. What was I suppposed to do? Ignore the advice of two gay men on a matter like this?) After I had lowered the art, which DID look better, I had another problem: little holes where the higher picture hangers had been. So I had to spackle and paint them. This little styrofoam thingy came in quite handy. The little rollers are perfect for these kinds of little jobs, but you really do have spread the paint around on it before applying it to the wall. (I learned this the hard way, which resulted in splattered paint and much swearing and running for a wet rag.) So, my method is to dip the roller (carefully) directly into the can to pick up a little paint, then use the styrofoam thing (there must be an actual word for this, but I cannot find it at the moment) to distribute the paint around on the roller, before going to the wall. And it cleans up very easily. I didn't know why I saved it when I did, but now I'm glad I did!

It looks like art to me

2007-01-15T17:39:00.000-08:00

The best kind of trash-to-treasure story is when I can tell you that I just ripped a board off an old building and nailed it to my wall and called it art. Okay, so there was bubble wrap to buy (which went completely against my grain), ticket agents to be placated, planes to be boarded, several states to be flown over, luggage to be retrieved, so on and so forth, between the said ripping and said nailing, but let's not quibble, okay?

It went like this: my sister and brother-in-law (seen here) and I were exploring a great old ghost town in Montana after a family reunion in July 2005 - Elkhorn Abandoned. I saw many things I would have like to save from the eventual ravages of weather and abandonment, but most were well beyond the patience of any ticket agent. Then I found this roof board on a low lying roof of some sort of old mill. I pulled it off pretty easily, but it was about 10 feet long, so my brother-in-law kindly stepped on it just so, shortening it to a manageable 6 feet. Next day, I flew out of Bozeman, back to the East coast, with the board safely stowed in the bellies of the planes. It eventually made it all the way to upstate New York, with its lovely lichen and rusty nails perfectly intact.

When I finally found just the right spot for it, I couldn't figure out how best to hang it, but then I noticed the hole just the right size for a rusty nail I retrieved from my basement. And so here we go - a great piece of trash-to-treasure art!

Things I Dragged Out of the Trash

2007-01-13T16:35:00.001-08:00

Well, since my last couple of posts didn't in fact involve anything actually I found in the trash, I thought I should show a few things that I have, indeed, saved from the eternal obscurity of America's landfills. Truth in advertising, and all that.

First, we have seven lovely pinecones with floral wires, even lovelier, attached. Neighbors had thrown away their Christmas wreath, so these were lying there, in the snow, ripe for the picking. While my dog was shitting at the next house down (yes, I did pick it up), I wrestled these little beauties out of the wreath. They'll come in handy next Christmas, so into the pile they go.
Next is a perfectly good, and nicely sized, dog crate. I found this in the trash in the last town I lived. I intend to give it to a local, donation dependent animal sanctuary which always needs whatever basic supplies they can get. Why I moved this to my new house rather than donate it before I moved is a good question, indeed. But a better question is why people throw out perfectly good stuff that others would be happy to have.I found this perfectly good pair of scissors in the metal dumpster at a dump ( in Nottingham, NH) for which I have great affection. The dump now thinks of itself a recycling center and so there is a place for everything and everything has its place. The metal dumpster is something like 20 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 8 feet deep (or whatever is normal for a normally large dumpster). Everything metal or mostly metal goes in, and these scissors were right on top which meant that, as an extra bonus, I neither had to go beg for a hook from the minders of the dump, nor risk falling in to get them. And, yes, they cut fine. Again, why would someone throw these away? In other words, what exactly is wrong with people?!? Given my predilection for scissors (see here), I was very happy to have found these. There is a little cognitive dissonance going on here: I'm perpetually frustrated by how much America just throws away, but also happy to have treasures to take home...
In the past week alone, I've dragged even more great things from the trash, but this is all I've got time for tonight!

Who Says Christmas Is Over?

2007-01-06T18:00:00.000-08:00

So, why is it that I never have enough time to do Christmassy crafts during, oh, I don't know, Christmas season?!? Oh well, at least I'll have this to use next year. I finally, finally got around to making this Christmas card wreath , the idea of which I got from a magazine god only knows how long ago. I honestly don't remember which magazine, but it certainly has the feel of an MSL idea to me.It was very easy. I bought a wooden embroidery hoop for a couple of dollars at Joann's, and glued the two pieces together. Then I tried different sizes of clothespins, but found that the ones I had were either too big (normal sized) or way too small (minis, at 1"). So, I found some on Ebay which were just right (okay, so now some nursery rhyme has found its way into my head), at 1 3/4 ". I glued them on with wood glue (which swells the wood a bit for a really good attachment), spaced about 2" apart. I put every third one facing into the circle, with the idea that the middle of the circle has less space than outside of it.

Later (and by 'later' I probably mean next year, in a not-enough-time sleep deprived pre-Christmas frenzy) I'll do something ribbony around the top to hide all that wood. And I'll try to get a more reasonably sized bolt, before this one puts my eye out.
Yeah, Christmas never ends!

Double Letter Score

2007-01-02T07:48:00.000-08:00

So, I was working on amassing my little pile of Christmas and belated birthday gifts for my best friend from college, when I hit upon the pretty simple idea of hot gluing some magnets to the backsides of scrabble tiles. I have built up an impressive cache of extra scrabble tiles, usually acquired for a dollar or two per hundred at thrift stores and yard sales, and I've done other fun things with them, which I'll save for future posts. My friend is a competitive scrabble player (meaning that, among other things, she studies the scrabble dictionary for two and three letter words, which can come in very handy), so I thought this would make an especially appropriate gift. (Although it later occurred to me that, living in the UK, she doesn't have an American sized fridge, so she will have to find some other place to use them.) I spelled out a pair of words, and then added a few more letters to the mix. No, these magnets are not an especially original idea, I know. But the importance of originality is overestimated, if you ask me.

The Microcosm of a Half Bath

2006-12-31T12:20:00.000-08:00

So, I've finally at least come close to finishing the half bath, which is off of my kitchen. (I closed on my house on December 15, 2005, and have been working on it pretty much nonstop ever since.) As I was putting in the few finishing touches yesterday, I realized how much of the stuff had come from the trash. I got this cool chrome cup holder with the hook out of the swap shop at my favorite dump in Nottingham, NH. (The same day, I got a perfectly good pair of new scissors out of the metal dumpster. Good thing, since I like to have scissors everywhere, easily accessible. My sister Julie says I get this trait from our maternal grandmother.) The antique linen hand towel came from the Molly Root House (MRH), an estate I got to pick over, and to which I'll have to devote an entire post someday. But look for other MRH treasures in future posts. I found the middle of the towel and attached a small loop of rick-rack (found in my vast collection of vintage rick-rack) so I could make use of the hook on the cup holder, and so guests don't have to mess up the nicely ironed towels, seen below. This light came from a local junk store for a mere $2 and I don't remember where exactly I got the shaving mirror, which I've had kicking around for a while, but I'm sure it came from some thrift store. But I think my favorite thing in this little room is this cool chrome towel rack. I remember very clearly finding it in a trash pile in front of a house down the street from my last apartment. I polished it up yesterday with an sos pad before putting it up. That was all it needed. I think that it is so lovely in any case, but remebering finding it in the trash makes it perfect!

It Appears to be in My Genes!

2006-12-27T07:27:00.000-08:00

Well, the evidence is pretty overwhelming. My prediliction to take old junk and do something new and fun with it runs in the family. See this article (you'll have to register to see the picture - it only takes a minute and is quite worth it) about what my sister did to her husband's car (a bunch of us had great fun helping). What a hoot! This sister makes a lot of great art from old stuff, which I'm sure I'll be posting about in the future.

Saving Christmas Past

2006-12-24T06:37:00.000-08:00

So, in my own view, decorating the outside of your house with Christmas lights comes in four distinct varities. First, there is the elegant look: little white lights, green garlands, red bows, single bulbs in windows. This is fine, although when a town or village does nothing but this, (and I do have a particular NY upstate village in mind here), it makes me think that they think they are just a little too precious. Second, there is the artsy, funky look, such as when someone puts out nothing but little lights of one color. A house I fondly remember from my childhood in Needham, Mass had little blue lights strung along every, and I do remember it as every, line of the house. The effect was very cool. You couldn't quite see the house, just the outline of it. Third, you can always go with a vintage, nostalgic look. I'll say more about that in a minute. Of course, what we really want out there in the vast world of Christmas lights, is a nice mix of these three styles, so that when you walk your dog late at night, you can appreciate the unending variety of human artistic ambitions. Last, there is the ugly. I'm not going to catalog all the many ways in which Christmas lights can go wrong, or, well, I'd get myself worked up into a snit. But I think you know what I have in mind. The little white lights that come as a net and everyone, or at least nearly everyone where I live, just lays across the top of their carefully manicured yews. Or the house that is just overdone, but with no particular theme or idea in mind. (Good things my next-door neighbors don't have a computer, or I'd have to shut up now.). Don't get me wrong, I'm all for over-the-top Christmas lights, and I aspire to have that kind of house one day. But just going back to Walmart to get another blinking or moving or huge Christmas thing because it turns out that there is another square foot between the trash cans and the birdbath (and the garage roof is already full) is not exactly what I have in mind. The newest things in the ugly category, though, are those huge, inflatable figures and such. What the hell? Okay, I feel a snit coming on, so I better move on.
My preference is for the big, colored bulbs of my childhood. Like these:
They look very retro and cool, especially when you've got a lot of them. I've decided that this is going to be the Christmas lights look for me. So, here's the thing: they can be hard to find. When I do find them cheap at thrift stores, they often don't work. I could buy them new, but I want so many of them that I'm going to have to rent a cherry picker to put them up. It turns out, though that the more recently produced ones have little fuses in their plugs, which get blown, which is why they don't work and they end up at thrift stores. The fuses look like this:Now, I could replace the fuses, but then they would just blow again (and I do intend to have the kind, or should I say quantity, of lights that would blow a fuse). So, I realized that I could just replace the plugs, like this:So, for four dollars each (the strings cost me $2 at my local Salvation Army and the new plugs cost $2 at Home Depot), I've got three new strings of old-fashioned lights.
Safety first? I say Christmas first! Anyway, for those of you who do worry about this kind of thing, my lights get plugged into GFI outdoor outlets, so the fuses are redundant anyway. I know today is Christmas Eve, so I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I'm already excited about next year's lights!

Here we go...

2006-12-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

So, here's the basic idea for this new blog o' mine. I love to go to yard sales, scrounge around thrift shops, spend my days in junk stores, and sort through the occasional dumpster. I've got a lot of stuff around my house that started out as something dragged home from these various adventures in alternative consumerism, and here I'm going to share them with the rest of the world.