Landscape, 1971

Frederic Church, meet Domebook 2.

textiles

Click to enlarge each of these.

top: From a yard sale last weekend, 6'x5' wool patchwork blanket, backed in wool. The woman told us "a girl made it for my husband back in the 70's". It's in perfect condition- probably taken from the back seat of the Volvo wagon directly into storage. She said she'd take the 4 dollars and buy herself a martini.

Middle: Fantastic 8' Turkish runner from an estate sale. The edges are frayed but they can be trimmed and fringe added back on.

Bottom: From the 30's, an awesome crazy-quilting patchwork of denim and twills, with a few odd-shaped pieces within each square. 

Hare Krishna Ramalama ding dong

From the flea market on a virtually empty day last week- but, another old headband and another old belt buckle! 

Knotical

Last year Linda and I went to a garage sale up in Falmouth, Maine. The garage was really a newly built barn, with pulleys and hanging canoes and kayaks, snowboards, skis, etc... of a very outdoorsy family. Mixed in with some newer furniture and knick knacks were some old camping equipment and these intricately knotted, awesome, immense macrame rope hangings. The man told me they were made by his late father while at sea as an officer in the Navy during World War II, during the down time, as knot practice. These are the type of beautiful, cool, handmade, one-of-a kind things we love finding, and as much as we would've liked to have kept the pair together, at 20 dollars each, both were unfortunately out of our budget, even for masterpieces of American maritime craft (it was a lean year). So we chose the more intricate one with the three baskets, and drove away, my face symbolically pressed forlornly against the back window. 

Then, as luck would have it, a few weeks ago the same family had another sale, and the other macrame was still there, draped over a canoe, apparently unwanted by anyone but us, and this time for 10 dollars- a nice reward for spending the past year on the widow's walk.

wind, sand, stars, and clubs

Antoine De Saint-Exupery and Ludwig Bemelmans, two wonderful author/illustrators, from L'Ecole Francaise du Maine's yard sale in Freeport. (Actually it was at the church across the street; but for context's sake...)

ex libris

Time for a new chapter in the guest room/library.

Tomorrow we're dismantling it and bringing the bed and furniture downstairs for the new guest apartment, which should be a pretty fun project. This upstairs room will turn into something completely different.

It'll be nice to free up the space- the bed is looking a little Erwin Wurm-ly, and there are four pieces of nice George Nelson furniture, books galore, and an old Pfaff leather sewing machine that all need some newfound appreciation. On the other hand it'll be somewhat sad to uproot them, as their Sanford & Sonned arrangements are part of what gave the room its Gypsy/Bohemian charm.

Hippie Beautility

1970's Sweet-Orr jeans from an estate sale in Connecticut a few years ago. Lovingly and Bohemianly embroidered with flowers, a rainbow, "Catherine" (Cat) and the Yes and Chicago logos. A near perfect object, with personalization, signs of use, and the golden hat trick of  hippie handicraft, typography, and utility. 

natural high

Handmade beaded hippie headband I found rolled up inside an old prescription bottle at the Melrose/Fairfax flea market ten years ago. I was going to use it as a prop for a hippie-esque room we designed for the opening of Anthropologie Tampa in 1999, but it was just too cool to leave there. However I did use it on the cover of the store opening report. Click to enlarge.

love in the afternoon

score of the week

This pair of awesome wicker peacock chairs found at a yard sale up in Brunswick. $50 for the set (including the stool).

Florida Keys

Spring is here, and finally it's yard sale season again. We spent the fall and winter putting the finishing edits on our book "Wary Meyers Tossed & Found", and then celebrated by driving down to the Florida Keys, where Linda's parents' put us up in their beautiful basement. The days were spent going to the beach, and thrift shops, and the weekends yard saling and checking out interesting architecture, wondering why there aren't any round rotating brutalist houses or Lego-like postmodern chateaux in Maine. Nights were spent painting my father in-laws fishing buddy's wife on a swordfish bill. Yard saling there wasn't as great as in previous years, but Linda found some nice Patrick Nagel prints and enough Kino sandals to last a lifetime.