Yard Sale Bloodbath

Last Saturday was a pretty great sale day. I’ll give you the full recap soon … meanwhile, please enjoy these fine pieces of fan art (for lack of a better term) which we spotted at two separate sales.

No, we did not buy them.

I made a quick stop at a senior center’s annual rummage sale today. It has been pretty bad every time I’ve gone (over the past 5 or 6 years) so I’m not sure why I bothered, but there is something about junking that breeds unjustified optimism in spite of all evidence to the contrary, no?

Anyway, I found nothing I wanted. But I did get a little taste of what happens when your cat figurine collection gets way out of control.

Pretty insane, right? But that wasn’t all of it …

Most of them were small and relatively unobtrusive (except for the fact that there were like 4,000 of them), but I was so stunned by the shocking awfulness of this larger specimen that I had to take a picture of it.

I would venture to say that the odds of more than a handful of these cats getting purchased are extremely low.

Maybe next year I will get smart and just skip this sale …

Question … Who would buy this?

I mean, I am not even sure who would buy this new, but buying someone’s used Kneading Fingers at a moving sale is just icky.

I think it’s funny that it’s on top of some kind of Barbie item, since the woman on the box seems to have stolen Barbie’s aerobics wear. And somehow I’m thinking that she is just the kinda gal who woulda loved this fine item we came across recently.

It’s really good that we find things we actually want to buy at yard sales sometimes to balance out crap like this.

A few weeks ago Jenny and I hit an estate sale at a beautiful (non-restored) home in Olympic Manor. Those of you that follow us or know much about this North Ballard planned community may know that this is one of the most amazing planned areas in Seattle, filled with ’50s and ’60s homes in fantastic condition. Significant Northwest Modernist residential architects designed many of the homes in Olympic Manor and it is always great to drive through the neighborhood for sales or other purposes (they get pretty into their Christmas decor there and that’s always fun to see).

Every midcentury modern house-hunter’s dream? The 1950s indoor planter! I think the photos speak for themselves.

This is what happens when good style goes bad.

It’s been a while since we’ve posted. You know why? Sales around here in February provide almost nothing to write about. Not that we’ve even hit too many. But we did venture out for a quick estate sale run yesterday. We got there two hours after it opened and there was still a line out the door. Two hours! There just isn’t much out there so all the yard sale regulars are at the same sales — we saw quite a few of the usual suspects while we were standing around freezing our butts off.

Finally after about 20 minutes we made it onto the porch, where there were at least a couple of boxes of free stuff to paw through. The most intriguing item was this:

Yeah. We left it there for some would-be aerobicizer (or aerobics fetishizer) to pick up later.

When we were finally allowed to enter, the sale was okay — lots of stuff, decent prices, but not a lot I was really interested in. We each bought a few things, but nothing even worth detailing. I bought some address labels, if that gives you an idea of the level of excitement we’re talking about.

Thanks for bearing with us through these lean times in yard sale land.

We did not go to this sale.

I missed out on all of those lame sales Meghan suffered through last Saturday because I was in Vancouver, BC for the weekend. Hitting the area’s thrift stores used to be a required part of any visit there (or almost anywhere else). I still have tons of Canadian thrifted goodies in my house. But I find more and more that I just can’t be bothered with thrift stores, at home or anywhere else. Sometimes I’m kind of sad that the thrill is gone, but I’m pretty much okay with it.

We drove by this thrift store and I was fascinated (and somewhat disturbed) by this painting that was on display in front of the store. Not fascinated enough to stop and get a closer look, but definitely fascinated enough to snap this picture from the car window to share with you all.

We had a brief debate about whether My Little Pony stuff was collectible or not. Our unscientific verdict was that the older ones probably were but the newer ones probably weren’t. Regardless, this sign made us laugh.