Bad yard sales can be so disheartening. Like the retirement home sale Meghan wrote about last week. Or this one, which just sounds like the worst:

As I wondered through this home, the more I witnessed the less I understood. Why was this stuff here in Morningside? Who were these scraggly looking men who sought to sell these useless goods? Why would anyone think anybody wanted this stuff? Perhaps this sale was not a sale at all but a provocative display depicting the banal evil and waste of planned obsolescence?
I left feeling dirty and disturbed.

The write-up is from Yard Sale Addict – definitely worth taking a look if you aren’t familiar with this fine site! (I secretly think it should be renamed “I Bought Nothing.”)

I also love this totally dead-on Official List of Garage Sale Bummers and this related list of Things I Can Do Without (at thrift stores, but I think they apply equally to yard sales).

Anyway. Thanks to a somewhat flexible work schedule, I occasionally get to hit a few Friday sales. The last few times I’ve done this, they have been so pathetically lame as to not even be worth blogging about. Just the most typical unwanted crap, crap, crap … total waste of time.

Today, finally, I had a worthwhile time at sales on a Friday! I hit a couple crusty estate sales with not a lot of stuff but a few cool and cheap items. The most fun was at the sale of Liz, a gal who came to OUR sale a couple weeks back, where I got a fantastic dress she’d made from vintage fabric (visible at left of trunk photo below). It might fit or it might not, but for a dollar I could not possibly pass it up!

Please note the crazy decorating-with-tinfoil book (with scary ostrich-like beast on the cover). Sure enough, someone out there in internet-land has saved me the trouble of posting some of the most demented photos from this gem.

Total spent was $11 and I bought at least one thing from every sale I went to – except for the estate sale with a sign on the door saying “Open When It Stops Raining.” (Uh, it’s Seattle. Good luck with that.) I even bought two books (including “Why Wait Till Marriage?”) at a sale I meant to avoid based on their ad – “Moving To Paris” intrigued me, but “large lot of Mary Kay products” was a turn-off – but ended up at accidentally since it was on the way from one stop to the next.

And for more Friday Fun we are heading off to a very exciting Friday Night Pre-Sale at a friend’s place momentarily – woohoo!