Crazy Spring

 It was summer all through March, and now that it is officially spring and April, winter is back! Snow and cold and so much gloom.  I have been so crazy busy.  For almost a year, I have been saying "once this is done, I will have time to breathe"... "Just get through my daughters wedding, then I can breathe"...no wait, crazy Christmas season is upon us, so "Just get through the Christmas rush, then I can breathe"...no wait, everyone is still shopping, I am shipping a million packages a day.  My somewhat messy house becomes a disaster area and there is never time to fix it.  Now, I am in the "just let me get the taxes done", or maybe "what can I do to avoid doing the taxes?"  After all, internet full of end of world during the eclipse, so I wouldn't want to waste my last days.  So here I am, when I should be listing things.  Sales have slowed dramatically, so a bit more time, but not enough ever.  

Oh, and here in the middle of winter, in the city, and I avoid the outdoors at all costs, I have contracted Lyme disease.  Broke out in a rash all up and down one arm, no other symptoms, thought I got bug bites from playing with some puppies, but no, it turned out to be the stuff of horror films.  My husband found a deer tick on the shower wall one morning.  We assume it landed on him when he was cutting brush.  Weeks pass, I am changing bed sheets, and I find 2 deer ticks on his pillow.  My rash is just horrible, but just on the one arm, then I get bites on my legs.  I strip the bed, wash EVERYTHING.  We take the animals and check them, they  have no bugs.  Grace and I take the dog and bunny out to the car and bug bomb the house, spend 4 hours driving around with the pets.  Next day, I find another tick on the bed and about freak out.  This is the first time I think to look up.  My sheer curtains on the window behind my bed have a line of black throughout the rod pocket.  I get on a ladder and find the rod pocket full of ticks. How they got there, I will never know.  There are a lot of deer roaming the city, we love seeing them, they are so pretty, but apparently they brought guests.  We must have brought a pregnant tick in without knowing it and she started a family in the curtain.  James and I both are on the antibiotics, and I still jump every time I see a black speck any where.  Just telling the story is making me itch.  Hope they are gone never to return.

This may be why I turned to all white for the latest creations.

What Are the Chances? With me, 100 Percent

 

I have "framed" cross stitch samplers that I or my daughter have made by putting them on old tins, old slates, anything odd like that.  I love love love how they turn out, but selling them is very cost prohibitive.  First, you have the expensive tin or slate, then add the cost of the sampler, even if I only pay myself 25 cents an hour for the stitching, which takes forever...  Anyway, I got the brilliant idea to search for antique sampler images on Pinterest and make prints to get the look without the cost. After printing one out, I realize it was made in 2010, not the antique look I was going for.  I had a small tin and thought, oh what the heck, I will cut off a little part of the print at the top and put that on the tin.  Now the Pinterest post was just the sampler, no mention of where it came from.  What are the chances that the designer of 14 years ago would be sitting in her home in the Netherlands and open eBay 5 minutes after I list the tin and immediately message me that I am not allowed to use the image?  I don't mind taking it down or being told I can't use it, but really, what are the chances???? 

 Also, someone else told me I was being deceiving for making something look like a real sampler when it wasn't on this tin, even though I said it was a print and not a real sampler.  Maybe this wasn't the brilliant idea I thought it was.

In the meantime, who knew Valentine goods were a thing?  Not me.  I usually put up a few heart tins and go on my merry blue way, but I realized the red stuff that I didn't get done in time for Christmas could be reimagined as Valentines and I got obsessed with spelling things with old blocks, starting with one little "LOVE" set.  Before I knew it, I was in the Valentine biz and I swear it sold better than my Christmas things did.  Did not expect to continue to be so busy.  Guess it is mostly keeping the usual winter angst at bay.

Sarcasm, My Friend

 I continue my imaginary argument...

She writes again.

I send a new missive.

Thank God you have returned!  Hurry we only have a moment before she returns.  Help us PLEASE!  She has us trapped in her factory of paint and fabric nonsense.  She refuses to get educated and keeps muttering about us being mass produced and factory made.  It is so demeaning.  We are old, and nothing old should ever be changed.  We love being like all the other bowls, we don't want to become bowls of color. We don't want to be unique, help us, help us! NO!  She is mixing the milk paint!  I fear it is too late for us, but perhaps you can save the others.  Call the antique police, we beg you.  Have her sent to an internment camp and force her to learn the errors of her ways. Farewell....oh noooooo, I am going to be blue....

The Bowls

At least I think I'm funny.

The Letter I Can't Send on eBay But Really Want To

Behold, the bowl of offensiveness, ruined in its prime by the evil ruiner of antiques, Elaine.  She must be stopped!  She must educate herself and stop her evil deeds!  Only a kind well meaning person can help and she sends an email to the villainess demanding she cease and desist.

So, this is how she did it.  I get a message something like this:

You have destroyed so many beautiful antiques with your nonsense paint fabric and other cheap things.  Stop it!  Then you may actually sell something.

I know I should ignore and delete, but I am a ruiner after all, so I reply with sarcasm:

Nothing I enjoy more than browsing in a shop, then sending the owner a nasty message, because I know everything and they know nothing.

2 days, no response, until....

There was nothing unkind in my note.  I would be a buyer myself if the items were not devalued by paint fabric etc.  check with other dealers if you take my comments not to be constructive.

Good Elaine says, just delete it.

Uh, oh, evil ruiner has taken over and forces me to reply:

You are mean.  Insulting. Condescending.  Read your hateful note one more time and tell me how it is helpful.  Nonsense paint and fabric?  Cheap things?  Stop it!?  Go away.

Then she comes back with

Talk to antique people.  Get educated.  Then your business may improve!

I am really sad that I only replied with Go away again.  Now I can't write my smart ass story that I just concocted, so will just have to write it here, where sadly she will never see it, but maybe somewhere in the future, the good reply that I wish I had written...

Ah, my dear friend, the pompous windbag!  How kind of you to return and regale me with more unsolicited and unwanted advice on how to do the job I have been doing for 40 years.  I am but a humble peasant, purchasing old wares for a small amount of money and selling them for a larger amount of money.  I so stupidly thought that since it is more, as in greater than, that it meant more value.  I have been corrected.  More is actually less, at least that is what you tell me.  And all those customers, who like a little color in their home decor, why they are wrong as well.  BROWN!  All you get is brown, and you had better start liking it.  Because she has spoken and none shall argue.  Talk to antique people? I am an antique people.   I talk to other antique people ALL the time.  They know what I do and they don't care because I pay for the merchandise they are selling and they are kind and decent people.  Oh, and also, the tin cocoa can that Grandpa stored his nails in is not an ancient relic deserving space in a museum.  It is just an old can and if I want to sew calico around it, I can.  The bowl in question?  About 110 years old or so, but mass-produced, factory made, 1000s just like it, not a handmade rarity, so I can damn well paint that too.

P.S.  What on earth can you have against calico?  What has it ever done to you?

Thank you for listening.

 

Going Green

 I got the green group finished, giant pile of wonderful things await the red milk paint, so hoping I find time to do it.  We went Christmas shopping for the first time yesterday, and trying to put up the trees today in addition to finishing listing these and all the shipping.  Breathing deeply!~

Cute Little Green and Red Toys

 There is a new dealer in a nearby antique mall that has been bringing in the cutest vintage toys, and so many in that 1940s  green and bright red, so Christmas perfect.  Here are the pieces I have reimagined for my shop.

I also have been buying up old blocks and Christmasing them up:

Sold Almost Before I Listed Them

 It has been the craziest busy Christmas season I can remember.  Still working all day, shipping and listing, listing and shipping.  I keep filling up the memory card on my camera on photo days, also a first.  Basically doing at least 800 pictures about 3 times a week.  I still have not found time to clean the house or paint my antique projects.  The dog needs a bath again too.  I mostly have kept the family fed, but that is about it.  Here are goods that sold very fast, wanted to remember them when I get to sit and remember some day...