The haul

While in Arizona I picked up a few interesting things along the way. Not the most impressive haul I've ever returned from a vacation with, but not too shabby nonetheless.

While wandering around in Sedona I took a peek into one store and almost walked out without checking out the back room, where I found bins full of claws and bones, piles of antlers, cowhides, and so on--a little Texas Chainsaw Massacre-ish, but also pretty cool. I bought some beads and buttons made of bone, a feather pendant (also made of bone), a coyote claw, and some postcards. (The Wyatt Earp penny is from the O.K. Corral.)

The receipt from that store is pretty great.

Also in Sedona I bought these bracelets that, according to the woman who sold them to me, were hand stamped by a Navajo boy named Irvin.

At a so-called toy bodega in Tucson I picked up this...erm...zipper pull? Key chain? I was mostly attracted to the illustrations, and the fact that I didn't really knowing what I was going to find inside this tiny box.

I opened the box to find a couple of pills. They're cute, but when you look at all of the other possibilities, I have to feel like I was a little bit gypped. Come on, the lemon with the straw in it? The meat wearing a hat? My friend decided to buy one too and also got the pills but in a different color scheme. I sense there's a conspiracy here.

In Tucson and Bisbee I picked up a few old paperbacks, the top one mostly for the title.

Of particular note is The Landlord, the basis for Hal Ashby's directorial debut.

I bought this sweet little tea towel at the High Desert Market in Bisbee. I particularly love the handwriting.

Right after buying the tomato towel I found this 1962 calendar at an antique store.

I figured one can't have too many tea towels. The colors, the drawing style--it's all perfect.

I was pretty excited to find a selection of letterpress blocks a few doors down, though they were priced a little steep (to me) at $10 a letter. So I just got these two, which I picked for aesthetic reasons (though Dave and the lady behind the counter were both grilling me as to who "A.M." is).

On the way out of Phoenix we passed by an antique store that looked like it might have some good stuff, so I made Dave pull over. There I bought this midcentury desk lamp, though the concrete in the base broke in half on the plane ride over. I'm working on gluing it back together (in this picture it's just sort of balancing on its own but a little J-B Weld probably wouldn't hurt).

At the same store I found this awesome desk organizer.* You store your pens in the hole on the top and stick notes and reminders into the cork. I think you're supposed to put in photos of your kids or something but I printed out this illustration instead. My desk at work is going to look spiffy tomorrow.


*I hate to admit but it definitely beats the cork-covered cup, which did not prove to be as effective as I had initially hoped it would be. (The cork is too thin for the thumb tacks to really get a hold.)