Another Brimfield Fair

I know I said I'd be posting all these updates from the summer...you'll get them eventually. Instead, here are some photos from the Brimfield Antique Show, which I went to this past weekend. I didn't get quite as much good stuff as last year--a small wood crate for the top of the fridge (something to stash all those loose chip bags in), an off-brand Evergleam Christmas tree (now we just need to find a color wheel), a vintage Copco baking dish, and some wood type. I guess not a bad haul, really. Maybe I just felt more exhausted this time.

Marimekko bowl + avocado dip

I recently made the totally frivolous purchase of two Marimekko bowls from the Crate and Barrel shop in Soho (I had a gift card, though it definitely did not cover it). I've been eyeing a lot of their designs online for quite some time (particularly this dress and this plate) but a pair of bowls seemed the closest to practical choice (we had a couple of bowls break in the past year...see?).

As for what's in the bowl...I gave this avocado dip a try. Not bad, though if you're going to make an avocado dip, you might as well make guacamole, which is just that much better. But it's nice to switch it up every now and then.

It's Christmas all over again

The stockings are hung, the tree is out (though not lit in this photo for some reason), along with all of the other random decorations I've collected over the years. (Funny to see how bare the wall looked last year, as we'd just moved in.) Every year I can't help making (and buying) a few new ornaments to add to the rotation. (I suppose I probably should think about getting rid of some of the ones that I keep confined to the closet.)

I actually made this paper ball ornament last year, using some pages I cut out of a book, but I don't think I ever posted about it. So here it is.

This year I made this paper tree using an old magazine. A little tedious, but super easy. I love how sculptural it looks.

Last fall my step niece developed a bit of an obsession with picking up acorns and shared a handful of them with Dave (which, adorably, he saved). So I already had a dried acorn hat (as I like to call it) for making this ornament, which was only slightly more difficult than the paper tree. I wish I'd had more spare hats because I would have made a whole family of wooden acorn people. (I guess there's still time!)

I also ended up buying a few new holiday things while I was in L.A. I couldn't resist this squirrel candy dish from Yolk. (I like how we have a mix of Christmas and Halloween candy in there. The pumpkins were half price and someone could not turn down a bargain.)

After hemming and hawing over some of the pricier (but beautiful) items at Plastica, I left with just this sweet little wooden Swedish bird ornament. (Note my little acorn friend to the right.)

Here's my garland from last year. Maybe next year I'll make a new one. It's always fun to change it up. I've also promised Dave that next year we'll get a real tree, so that'll be a pretty big change. I've never had a real Christmas tree for as long as I've lived, and I've decided it's probably a good time to go au natural.

The Kansas City haul

Before I move on to other things, I thought I'd share some of the great stuff that I brought back from Kansas City. In addition to about a dozen vintage paperbacks (not shown below), I picked up some beautiful objects around town.

One of my first stops in town was at Hammerpress, where I bought this postcard, printed on a nice, thick stock (more on the books it's resting on tomorrow).

And I couldn't resist grabbing some vintage Missouri advertising pencils. I especially like how the pink one, while primarily for a business that deals with saws, also reminds you to go to church.

The bulk of the purchases were made at the River Market Antique Mall, which consists of four floors filled with an incredible assortment of wares. I found a couple of Cathrineholm lotus bowls, in green

and orange. (They also had blue and yellow but I cut myself off.)

One of my favorite things I bought might be this antique carbolic acid bottle. I love the skulls on the label. I might have to add antique poison bottles to my list of flea market objects to look out for.

I feel like silhouettes are getting a bit played out, but for 5 bucks I decided to grab this one (labeled on the back "November 1962").

Grabbing based on bargain price seemed to be a common occurrence: for $2.95, a striped mug from Japan. Why not?

It was especially helpful that I found this locker basket (of slightly different design from the ones I got at Brimfield), which I used to hold all of the objects I picked up along the way. It's kind of a miracle that we managed to pack it all. We didn't even have to check any of our luggage!

The finds

The locker baskets were definitely my most useful Brimfield find, but I did come home with quite a few more great things.

I finally got some letterpress blocks that actually fit inside the tray I bought awhile back. I didn't want to spell anything, instead selecting a random assortment of letters and numbers based on shape, color, and overall aesthetic value. Like the baskets, I wish I'd bought more. But there's always next time!

Vintage milk bottles are a ubiquitous flea market item I'd always passed up until now. Maybe because they're so ubiquitous, and yet always seem overpriced to me. This one was only $5 (the seller assured me I wouldn't find a cheaper one that day), a decent size, and I really like the orange lettering. It'll make a nice carafe for water. I just wish it didn't say Massachusetts on it (the seller asked me where I was from and when I said "The Bronx" his only reply was "I'm not much of a city person").

The man who sold me this camera claims that it takes 35 mm film and that if I get it professionally cleaned it will work just fine. I'm kind of curious, but mostly I just like the way it looks on my shelf, and for $10 I thought, why not.

And here's my big spend of the day: a Russell Woodard sculptura armchair. I hemmed and hawed over it for a little while but ultimately reasoned that it was priced at less than half of what I've seen them sell for, and thus worth another trip to the ATM. Also, it's really comfortable. And I like it. And it looks good in my living room (I guess I couldn't really determine that until I got home, but I had an inkling).

At Brimfield it's Christmas in July

Saturday we went to the Brimfield Antique Show for the first time. It's the craziest flea market I've ever been to—about a mile long and several hundred yards wide. We arrived around 10am and didn't leave until 5pm. After awhile everything started to blur together into one massive pile of rusty tools, vintage fabric, and mahogany furniture. Not to say that I didn't enjoy myself and come home with some pretty good finds (more on those to come). But first, here's a bit of what we encountered.

Dave took this one. I wish it really were Christmas! (Then it wouldn't be 95 degrees out.)

This seller had nothing but old wind-up Victrolas and their accoutrements. I love these little dogs.

If you like Fiestaware, this is the place to go.

Not sure what these are—sculptures? lawn ornaments?—but they look pretty cool.

A pile of pitch forks.

Not really my style...

I like the church sign (the missing letters only add to it) next to the cartoony room divider.

Piles of letters on the ground (another Dave photo, obviously).

This little vignette is kind of surreal. Where else would you see this juxtaposition of objects? It looks like a weird still life painting.

First flea market trip of the season

On Sunday we woke up extra early and headed up to New Milford, CT, to the Elephant's Trunk flea market. The only thing I was really hoping to find was a vintage industrial style fan (particularly one that worked)...and that's exactly what I came home with! This one pictured above was just $25 (a bargain compared to the asking prices I've seen elsewhere for similar items). I love the sculptural shapes and lines, and better yet, it works incredibly well.

Here it is in action. The blades look a bit ghostly. (They're also pretty sharp. I need to be careful not to chop off a finger.)

That time of year again

I've still got a lot of pictures from our trip that I want to post on here but I'm going to take a break to mention the Renegade craft fair last weekend in Brooklyn, which we came home just in time for. I always find great stuff every year, even though it's often the same sellers (and a lot of the same products and designs).

Every year I manage to come home with a new T-shirt. This one was from M. Carter (my own shirt is currently in the dirty laundry pile so I took this image from their website). I didn't remember seeing them at the last couple of fairs (could be wrong though) but I really liked a lot of their designs.

And of course the obligatory necklaces. The middle one I actually bought in Marfa at Fancy Pony Land--the woman who makes them puts pennies on the railroad track in town and then retrieves the squashed coins to create these necklaces. That story totally sold me on them--even though I could probably make them myself if I had a drill, I love the thought of these pennies sitting out on the tracks in Marfa with a train thundering overhead.

Anyway, the one on the left is from Brooklyn Rehab, and the one on the right is from Species by the Thousands. I don't know if either of them have any good stories behind their creation but that's okay because I just like how they look.

I really wanted to buy something a little out of the ordinary this year--I always seem to come home with T-shirts and necklaces, not that I'm complaining--which I found in the form of this geometric terra cotta planter. I can't find the business card for this seller, nor can I find her on the list of artists on the Renegade fair website, so I'm afraid I can't tell you where to get one of your own.

After the fair we dropped by Sprout Home and picked up this cactus to put in our new planter. I think it suits it pretty well.

Our Christmas present to ourselves

We'd been wanting them for awhile, hopeful for flea market bargains and/or a cast-off pair left on a roadside somewhere, but when we saw a pair of black Bertoia chairs with gray seatpads (!) for sale at Re-Pop, we knew they were the ones. We probably (definitely) spent too much money on them, but they're ours and they're awesome. I'm not ashamed to say that I waved goodbye to them before leaving for work the morning after purchasing them.

We've been on a bit of a spending spree lately, between buying stuff for the apartment and Christmas presents, so now our New Year's resolution (at least for the first couple of months) is to spend as little money as possible. We'll see how that turns out.

Toms=my new favorite shoes

Just sharing my new favorite shoes: the "Barletta Cordones" from Toms. I'd been wanting to get a pair (or two) of the canvas ones since the summer, and when I saw these gray wool beauties in the store I couldn't leave without them. I'm kind of in love with them.

Missing cord/Christmas list!

So I had some great posts lined up surrounding my Dead Horse Bay finds and a recent estate sale purchase, but after taking the photos I realized I have no clue as to where the cord to connect the camera to the computer might be--which of the dozens of yet-to-be-unpacked boxes could it be stashed in? The question is a bit daunting.

Thus, those images are trapped in the camera for now, throwing a wrench into my goal to start easing back into regular posting. So I'm instead relying on other sources for images until I locate the cord.

Which brings me to the actual subject at hand--I was browsing through some of the many links I've bookmarked over time, and noticed this gorgeous breadboard from the Swedish designer Sagaform. Not only is it a beautiful object, but it's also quite functional--I love a loaf of fresh, crusty bread but after slicing it there are always so many crumbs. Thus, breadboard with crumb catcher=brilliance.

And I've been eyeing Alyssa Ettinger's porcelain replicas of vintage milk bottles from various Brooklyn and Queens dairies. I think the one on the left is calling my name.

So come Christmas list compiling time, these are definitely two items making the cut. Otherwise I'm buying a couple of birthday gifts for myself.

The Baltimore haul

I came back from Baltimore with a pretty good treasure trove of stuff.

The American Visionary Art Museum has a great gift shop called Sideshow--it'd probably be worth a visit even if you weren't going to the museum. Their wares include original folk art (such as this adorable little robot made of wood, bolts, keys, and the like), books, vintage ephemera, toys, and other weird little tchotchkes that you never knew you needed.

I also picked up this plastic TV that, when you look into the viewer, shows you images from the museum. And the promotional barf bag from the 1970 film Mark of the Devil...well, who could resist that? I like how it's the first film rated V for violence. (Funny enough, one of the last times I was in Baltimore, for the Rolling Roadshow's John Waters marathon, I came away with a promotional barf bag too. It's become a bit of a tradition.)

I also bought this vintage notebook. (If Dave hadn't dragged me away when he did, who knows what I might have added to the already substantial pile of random stuff that grew with every step around the store.) Each page is lined and numbered, I guess to help you test your spelling skills. Not sure what I'm going to use it for, but I'll think of something.

At Housewerks I bought these antique type blocks. I like the abstract quality of the one on the right, which is half of an "R". I also should mention how insanely heavy these things are. They could double as weapons in a pinch.

There's more about my visit to the shop here.

On Sunday we went to the the Fells Point Second Sunday flea market. While it's certainly no Elephant's Trunk, I did find this great tablecloth. Not that I've ever used a tablecloth before, but I love the colors and the pattern. At first I thought maybe I'd use it as fabric to make pillows or something along those lines, but I'm not sure I can bring myself to cut it up. Maybe I'll start using a tablecloth now.



Monday was the big shopping day on "The Avenue" in Hampden. The first stop was Atomic Books, where I bought two great comics. Later on at Normals I found a used copy of another book by Lilli Carre for $3.

At Red Tree I wanted to buy half the store (as usual), but limited myself to two of these awesome glasses. Not that I even needed any more glasses. But...you know.

At Shine Collective I was pleasantly surprised, as for some reason I remembered them being kind of expensive. But this vintage leather bag was priced pretty reasonably, I think. I was excited enough about having a bag with actual pockets (maybe now I'll actually be able to find my cell phone when it rings).

But then I got home and inspected it further to find these next-level organization options. There's even a place for pens and my train tickets. They're a little hard to pull out so I turned them up for easier access. But it's still pretty handy. This was probably the best thing I bought on vacation.

And finally, I stopped at my favorite clothing store in Baltimore (and maybe one of my favorites in general), Double Dutch. They have a great selection of clothes and accessories from indie labels, and pretty reasonable prices. I of course managed to pick out one of the only dresses in the store that wasn't on sale, but that's all right. It's called vacation! I tried taking a picture of me wearing it but I really just don't photograph well. So I found a picture of the dress online, if you really want to see it.