Weekend Finds: 1950's Australian Aborigine Tea Towel by John Rodriquez (Say THAT Five Times Fast)

Good morning!

Whew, boy, hasn't it been a rainy but productive week over here. I went to the flea market last weekend and while it threatened rain a good part of the time I was there, I did manage to make out like a bandit. My loot? Full length raccoon fur coat , a tv lamp shaped suspiciously like a Billy Haines design from the forties' (this one is its twin, except mine is a pale grey blue instead of yellow), a ceramic desk clock shaped like a rotary phone (!!), and this, my favorite of all of them, a framed tea towel featuring Australian aborigines in full, abstract attire. If you follow me on Instagram, you saw this same-day, but I've been too lazy to take more pictures, so here it is again in its full, slightly blurry glory:

I had spent a perfectly uneventful hour walking the fairgrounds being disappointed by either the dearth of things I wanted to buy or the prohibitively expensive cost of things I DID want to buy. See: a Victorian mourning/memento mori hair wreath [similar to this one] that was in a reasonable $10-$50 price range type booth under one of the sheds...when I asked the price, the guy quoted me $350 without batting an eye...which...it is definitely worth in a retail setting...but everything else in his booth COMBINED wasn't $350, probably (I walked off carrying my crushed hopes alond with me). In a Charlie Brown kicking-the-dirt type mood, I was passing by a large spread near one of the building that every month features a boatload of bargain-basement-priced vintage and antique furniture, when I saw this leaning up against the trailer. I stopped talking to my mom midsentence ("Hang on a second...") and wandered over to hover behind a couple that was trying to decide whether or not a large antique window was suitable for converting into a picture frame (I guess it wasn't, Pinterest be damned, as they walked off without it). The colors, patterns, and weird subject matter pulled me inexorably toward my inevitable purchase-- I just had to hope it was somewhere vaguely in my price range.

I mean...seriously....the one second from the right is my favorite.

When I walked up to a lady in a folding chair asking about the price, she just pointed mutely behind me. There was a gaggle of people standing near the concrete retaining wall and I looked back like, "Which one of these people are affiliated with you, please?" She pointed again, I looked again, and looked back again. Finally, she called out the guy's name and a single figure in a white t shirt and ball cap walked towards me, holding the picture against my chest like a sandwich board. 

"How much are you asking on this one?"

"Gotta have $15 on that."

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

While this even-less-than-the-$20-I-wanted-to-spend-on-it price should have been good enough, I couldn't resist trying to bargain down to $10...you never know when someone will knock another dollar or two off to meet you in the middle! He demurred, and after a proper period of hem and hawwing to intimate that I wasn't completely willing to pay the $15 out of the gate and am just a cheapskate (which was true, but you have to keep your pride intact), I set the picture against my knees to fish three fives out of my satchel. Success!! The man said as I was handing him his money that the picture had come out of a career Navy officer's estate and that there were more Asian drawings in a pile on one of the tables, but as the plywood-and-glass frame was a little ungainly to carry around the narrow rows, I threw a cursory glance over the table and rejoined my parents.

Dad: What is it? [looking picture over doubtfully]
Me : [cheerfully] I don't know, but I hope it's haunted!
Dad: Nice frame....
Me: I know I need another picture like I need an actual hole in my head, but look at it! [shrugging] I don't care, I wanted it.
Mom: Knowing you, you'll find the perfect place to put it and it'll look fabulous. Or you'll sell it on Craigslist and make some money. So don't worry about it! [possibly the nicest thing my mom has ever said to me, so I had to memorialize this conversation in blog form]

When I got home, I (naturally) googled my find in a fit of curiosity as to what exactly I had on my hands (and, obvs, to make sure I hadn't paid too much at $15). The cursive script at the bottom of the textile reads "Australian Aboriginal Boomerang Corraborra" and what I thought was the surname "Rodriguez". Turns out, it's RodriQuez, as in John Rodriquez, who ran an eponymous business down under, specializing in abstract, Australian-themed designs. I was able to find a number of examples of his work on the Museum Victoria website. The MV owns a large collection of locally produced historic textiles among its holdings, and maybe a hundred digital images there are of items by Rodriquez. 

Like this one!

Brothers to my group above...a little more subtle, but still great.

From the website's catalog entries:

John Rodriquez studied art and design at RMIT in the late 1940s and became well known for his screen-printed textile designs in the early 1950s. From 1950 to 1980 he was one of a handful of Australian textile designers who developed a new contemporary style with innovative use of colour. His designs in the early 1950s were mostly of Aboriginal or geometric style. Later he turned to more abstract designs in the Scandinavian style. Later still he made bold use of colour. Rodriquez introduced unique Australian styles which have been imitated often since. He always stressed the importance of innovation. Many homes in Australia and overseas still have his art works in the linen cupboard. 

John Rodriquez retired in 1988, handing the Rodriquez company to his son Rimian, who has computerised the screen printing and mostly employs other designers for the products, but still uses a few of his father's most popular designs. Rodriquez passed away in 2000.

And from tea towels to fabric calendars to upholstery fabric to greeting cards, the collection really runs the gamut of items you could buy from the textile house. I bet the Navy man mentioned by the flea market dealer bought this as a souvenir of his travels in Australia and brought it home framed to commemorate his trip. I LOVE. ALL THE WEIRD THINGS. YOU WILL FIND. WHILE ESTATE SALE/THRIFT STORE/ FLEA MARKETING. Sometimes I wonder how people shop for non-essentials at retail department stores when there are all these weird and wacky second hand goods to be had (and usually for a pittance). But, as you can imagine, I'm biased.

More designs from Rodriquez, including some fashion sketches for a triad of mid century marvelous circle skirts (I'll take one of each, please):

Place Mat - Human Figures With Headdresses & Spears, Blue on Cream, 1960

Greeting Card - Man With Tools, Blue & Red, No. A0076, circa 1954

Place Mat - Human Figures With Headdresses & Spears, Maroon & Red, circa 1950s

Greeting Card - Shields, Bark Painting & Men Dancing, Blue & Red, circa 1949-1955

Artwork - Fabric Design, John Rodriquez, 1950s

Aforementioned skirts...are they not perfect?

Greeting card

A commemorative fabric from the 1956 Summer Olympics, held in Melbourne 

Greeting Card - Human Figures & Shields, Green & Brown, circa 1949-1955

What I look like in my mind's eye (another greeting card)

Business card, circa 1970

I pause now to tell you that I've spent the past twenty minutes trying to find more information about Aboriginal dress, hats and ornamentation, as seen in the tea towel's illustration. In spite of my finely honed Googling skills, from years at the library's reference desk, I have not been able to find information on said topic. But I WILL share with your what I have found:

• A Youtube video called "Aborigine hunt huge bats with boomerangs", which, in spite of my loyalty and love of bats, is possibly one of the most metal/amazingly weird things I have seen on the internet, and that is saying something.
• A wikipedia article about Kotekas, which I will leave you to discover on your own if you dare click the link (but if you do, please let's discuss).
• This 1939 Life article about Boomerangs becoming a novelty in the US, which contains the following (instructive) statement: "Catching an Australian boomerang is dangerous, may result in a broken head". 

Needless to say, I was not a very good factfinder with regards to this particular query, but I thought you might be interested in that information in spite of its lack of relevance to my original research goals. Another job for another day!

How about you? Found anything great out at the sales or the flea market lately? What kind of things trigger your impulse-buy impulse? Do you have any crazy textiles proudly framed and hung in your house? Where do some of the weirder/far flung items in your house come from? Let's talk!

That's all for today...have a great Wednesday and I'll talk you soon! :D

Weekend Finds: Cabinet Cards from the Flea Market (1880's-1900's)

Good morning!

Hope your Tuesday is treating you well thus far! I am sleepy, sleepy, sleepy-- I went to bed yesterday listening to Kumail Nanjiani's The X-Files Files podcast and had appropriately weird dreams all night...thinking of Flukeman just before you wander off to the land of Nod can do that to you, I guess. But, sleepiness aside, I woke up this morning and did manage to photograph some photographs for you in order to include the photographs of the photographs in today's blog post! How's that suit you?

Take a look:

I was at the flea market on Saturday with my dad when he was waylaid by the sight of a WWII-era Russian rifle in one of the sheds...as he paused to drink in the details, I wandered on into another stall and came across a table that had a file card index sized box (think about half the length of a card-catalog drawer) completely filled with cabinet cards! Markered on the end of the box was the legend "Old Photographs, $2 each". Does heck go with yes? I've been being good about not buying pictures that aren't those large format, framed portraits I like to scare houseguests with, but this was too good to pass up. I flipped through probably a hundred cards, carefully placing the ones I wanted to take a second look at in a pile to my left, and in the end, chose six cards I had to have. Grouped together on my kitchen table, they look like this:

Not bad, huh? I recently came across a package of black cardstock I'd forgotten I had, and I think I might use that as a background to frame the photos. Don't they look stark and lovely against that color! Historically, cabinet cards dethroned the carte de visite sometime in the mid 1880's as the preferred format in which to preserve one's image for generations to come. While their popularity waned as vernacular and amateur photography began to supplant studio-made portraiture at the turn of the century, cabinet cards remained in use by professional photographers until the 1920's. These photos seem to date from the 1880's to the 1900's. My only question, which I should have daddurn asked the guy in the booth, was where he happened to get so many cards. At most, I've seen maybe twenty or thirty of these cards together with the less sturdy snapshots and prints of a home camera in a box at an estate sale or antique mall-- this guy must have had a hundred, all neatly uniform in time period and format if varying by subject and decorative detail. Maybe he'll be there next month so I can ask him if he raided an out-of-business photography studio in a ghost town or from whence sprang this font of more than a hundred years old pictures.

The ones I chose from the bunch:

Honestly, I mainly choose old photographs by how attractive or interesting the person in the picture is. There are plenty of pictures I've passed up in the past for not being interested in the subject... too banal an expression or too homely of a bachelor even in an old or unique setting isn't gonna cut it. So this gal, with her pinned up, bob-like hair arrangement, carefully hot ironed in waves to one side, and her "I would wear that now" gown was a shoo-in for the "keep" pile. How do you like the ribboned straps and bareshouldered line of the bodice? Those stripes? The milkmaid-esque ruffles? I vote this gal best dressed from the sextet of pictures that came home with me, and that's a competitive category. Look at the decorative black trim of the card and how the oval is way longer than the portrait really demands. It makes me wonder why the photographer didn't capture the rest of the dress instead of the wall two feet above the subject's head! Still, a lovely girl:

This picture I almost put back twice, as I was only going to get five pictures, and finally just caved and bought. Note the tight, mutton sleeves of the jacket, its three pleats to the right and inch wide trim of the ribbon running down the left of the dress. See how the high collar blouse under the dress is embellished with two pins and a little ruffle of lace at the top of the neck? I wonder, fashion-wise, what dictated where you put the brooches on this outfit-- I would have tried to put them, military-style, where a medal would go on the right lapel, but that would have interrupted the pleats. Also notice how child-sized small this obviously grown woman is-- women like her are the ones who could comfortably don those teeny tiny Victorian clothes I'm always chasing after at the flea market. I like the decorative edge of the card, too, and caved when it came time to pay the man.

Here she is even closer, so you can see the pins better:

This card features another woman who, like the first card's subject, would have been better served by a full-portrait...I want to see what the rest of her dress looks like! In the meantime, I can content myself with her interesting hairstyle and what look like scissors in the brooch at her throat. That coupled with the velvet lapels and collar of the dress, and what look like inset velvet stripes down the length of the sleeves, makes me wonder if the sitter wasn't some kind of seamstress.

Isn't she pretty in the closeup? Among other plain Janes of the same time period, this woman stood out particularly.

This next guy is so handsome! Reminds me of Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line-- not the Man in Black himself, but his softer faced movie double. How about that almost-pompadour, those dark eyebrows and eyes, and the sharp cut of his suit? He must have been a popular guy in Corydon, Indiana, if he lived where the photo was taken, a Hoosier state town just over the border from Kentucky, about thirty minutes from Louisville. 

In this picture, I was struck by the stiff posture that makes people on Pinterest think everything is a postmortem photograph. While a fair number of people did take ghoulish-to-modern-eyes photos of themselves with their predeceased loved ones (see here if you're feeling brave), lots of times the rigid body language was more the posed subject staying stock still to ensure a good outcome in the easily-botched-by-movement medium of 19th century photography. You know how frustrating it is to try and hold a smile for a minute as someone unfamiliar with your camera or iPhone tries to take a picture? And how, if the person did manage to take the picture after a minute or two of fidgeting with the buttons, the strained smile of the subject is anything but natural looking? Imagine holding a smile for up to five minutes-- you're going to look like Charles Manson by the time the image has been captured on film. As a result, it was accepted practice for people in the earlier days of the medium to assume a stoic expression which was easier to maintain until the picture was made. I still think this guy comes out looking great:

This photograph was interesting for being so artistically composed-- what a dramatic effect the black background makes on the sepia toned subject!

Her expression and hair made this must-have. I wonder, in those pre-hairspray days, if the trick to styling ones hair this high was just a lot of teasing and bolstering with hair rats and other "stuffing"? Or what kinds of products were on the market back then to make sure every hair stayed where it was meant to stay? Whatever sorcery this lady is working over her coiffure, I think it looks wonderful (as you see me come to work tomorrow with a full Gibson girl wave).

Last but not least, this photo was the only non-studio portrait of the entire group-- not just the ones I bought, but the ones in the box, too. I think this is probably a dad (and a dandy of one, too!) posted on the front steps of his clapboard house with his two daughters. How about how tiny, tiny the daughter on the right is (look at that waist!), looking like a shrunk-down version of the healthier appearing daughter on the left. Maybe one was a pre-teen and the other an almost-adult? I can never tell with antique photos whether the subjects, in some cases, are adolescents or adults-- the grown-up clothing can camouflage age like nobody's business!

Look at the details on their dresses...so many ruffles and flounces! And the dad's hat, mustache, suit, and boutonnière seem to reinforce my earlier identification of the gent as a dapper dresser.

There were a few more things I scooped up at the flea, but I'll have to tell you about them another day, I've prattled on long enough as it is! Anyway, I love these, and think they're a great addition to my photo collection, which is becoming more and more pre-1920 by the day!

What do you think? Which of these 19th century photographs is your favorite? Do you have any pictures of similar antiquity in your collection? What kinds of criteria do put vintage photographs through before you buy them? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I'll catch you back here tomorrow with more vintage tips and quips. Have a great Tuesday! See you then.

Finally! Flea Market and Goodwill Finds

Good morning!

 How's tricks, kids? It's Thursday/Friday for me, as I am offfff this weekeeeennnd...! Roll out the barrels, I'm not sure what I'm doing, but I'm doing something! :D As promised both Tuesday and Wednesday, here is your day-late, dollar-short report from the flea market this past Saturday! My favorite thing I rounded up (other than the purse we spoke about on Tuesday), is this pair of clip earrings. Aren't they GORGEOUS?

The last couple of months I have been really lucky at picking up these baubles for almost nothing in the sheds...this pair, winking at me from among the other trinkets, was $3 (that's a buck fifty a clip on, people...can't beat it with a stick). Compare that to the ebay or online prices of similar sixties' earrings and you could see where I would be giddy with excitement over serving Joan-Crawford-on-a-Pepsi-Cola-promotional-tour realness in my choice of jewelry for less than the price of a takeout sandwich. They pinch like the devil, and I don't like the spacers you can buy as a kind of Scholl's pad for your earlobes, so I'm grinning through it today! The black jet beads were also from the flea market; I forgot to take a better picture of them, but they are chic as chic can be and similarly inexpensive.

These two pins were brought back together this week....remember when I bought the devil pin in March? I looked and looked and LOOKED, combing through the other various pieces on a table, and came up goose eggs for the angel I had a hunch was part of a two-brooch set as I'd seen them on other lucky so-and-so's blogs and Ebay/Etsy before. Then I looked again last month, nada. This month, as I was getting the earrings, what to my wondering eyes should appear but the missing brooch! Can I almost not wait to wear one on one shoulder and one on the other? I cannot.

Inside the Exhibition Building, my dad and I stopped at a vendor booth just inside the west-facing door and were stopped cold by a suite of Barbara Mandrell autographed items perched on a fruit crate. What are the odds?! Barbara Mandrell superfan runs smack into a whole slew of Mandrell-o-bilia, including an autographed copy of the audiobook Get to the Heart, a signed photo, SANS name, of the country queen (maybe I'm weird but I don't want to shell out for a photo inscribed "To Jerry with love"), and a pair of turquoise two-tone boots with "BM" emblazoned on either side. Sadly, they were sold together for $200, and that was way more than either of us was willing to shell out, but in the same booth, I found the following:

One: Acid pink floral-and-green-velvet-ribboned hat? This isn't a very good shot of it, but with my melon-like cabesa I'm always on the lookout for hats that will sit boater-style on my head, and this one fits the bill!

Two: This crazy thing:

This is a mother-of-pearl oyster shell that opens into a change purse. Kooky enough, right? I think the paint on the outside must have a floral embellishment of some kind like the ones you see here. What really got me interested in it was the date written inside: "Nov 30, 1894". Oh reeeeeally? she says. Imagine some little turn of the century Gibson girl snatching this up as a souvenir of her beachside vacation. I should start carrying this around in my larger purse-- can you imagine the effect of "Oh, wait, I think I have the change--" at Goodwill when I whip out a clamshell and produce the required coinage. TRUE LIFE SUCCESS.

And third: This strange little picture, which is 3D, GUYS. IT'S 3D. I usually find roses or religious art in this format, but a children's picture featuring dolls as storybook characters? Yeah, let's just go ahead and do that, thanks, yes, take my money. I love the detail of the tableau and also the fact that the owner scrawled her name across the back of the picture in a child's looping scrawl, "MARY".

Both my clothes people in the Antique shed were MIA this month (Bobby COME BAAAAACK), but I did grab this surprisingly heavy real estate sign for a couple bucks. There were three others that said "INDUSTRIAL", "COMMERCIAL", and something else, but I liked this one best for the bold, plain typography. What I'm going to do with it...search me. But sometimes liking something is enough! My dad found three WWI brass ammunition casings at a booth I'd bought some oversized earrings from sometime earlier in the year. Not bad, huh? We were settin' 'em up and knockin' 'em down (deals, that is, not the brass casings). I still wish I'd found some clothes, though.

At Goodwill on Monday, I found two skirts, two dresses, and a couple weirdies, like this record:

I think it's a training record for med students to learn what a heart murmur sounds like through a stethoscope? I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that my recent binge-watching of Grey's Anatomy does not actually count as medical training.

I ran across these books, interested in both the museum overview and Panorama color slide aspect of the titles, and there was a secret bonus!

One, they came through on their promise of color slides...now I just need a Panorama projector to truly benefit from this boon.

But that's not the best part....THE BEST PART is the three record set of my pal Vincent Price taking me on a personalized tour of the art exhibitions. Veeeeep! I missed ya, buddy! Remember the Vincentennial party I threw oh my God three years ago? We need to have a 104th birthday party for this guy next year.

Well, that's all the news that's fit to print. What did you grab at the sales or the flea market this weekend? Had any unusual record finds lately? What should I be looking forward to seeing this weekend estate-sale wise, anybody got the inside scoop? Let's talk!

Have a great Thursday and I'll see you tomorrow for Photo Friday-- til then!

Dreams Do Come True: My Gary Gail of Dallas House Purse!

Good morning!

Boy oh boy, what a weekend. Mine was split in two by Saturday off (flea markettttt....), a Sunday shift, and a Monday holiday, but as I would tell anyone that would listen, any time off of work is ok for any reason is ok with me! I'll spill the goods on the rest of the things I brought home with me tomorrow, but how about this bright, shining example of the junker's maxim: "If you look for something hard enough, you usually end up finding it" ?

Behold... A Gary Gail of Dallas House Purse! And mine, all mine:

Remember the post I did in February about my unmet need for a house-shaped purse? Well! My dad and I were seeking shelter from the sweltering conditions dehors at the fairgrounds Saturday in the Antiques building, and wasn't that a mistake? "I think it's actually hotter in here," he said, as both of us reached for our respective hankerchieves (his plain, mine floral), to dab the sweat from our faces, like the dainty 1920's Egyptian explorers we are. "Let's just do a quick run around the aisles and we'll try for the exhibition building. It's bound to be more temperature controlled, think about it, this is an arena, and the other is an exhibition hall, you know they're not sweating over quilts and pies come fair time," I posited, and he acceded. While wheeling around a corner and resisting the temptation of a 1939 Army Basic Training group photo, I ran smack into this purse in one of the regular dealer's booths. It was marked $10, and when I asked the woman running the booth if she could do any better, she knocked another three dollars off. It never ceases to thrill me when people even give me a dollar's discount on something at the flea market or an estate sale-- try that at Kroger's or Target and see where it gets you (i.e. nowhere).

Seven bucks! And it was a done deal. She grabbed a plastic bag for me to cart my wooden bag in while a man from across the way hooted of another dealer, "Look at Jerry over there! He's looking for his glasses to see what the marking on that lure is and they're on his face!" I never did get to see if poor myopic Jerry did have his glasses on his face while he was looking for them-- I only had eyes for THIS PURSE. 

I wasn't able to find any information about "Gary Gail of Dallas" besides Ebay and Etsy listings for other purses of his. From what I could cobble together from those, Gary Gail purses were inexpensive accessories made in Japan to meet the demand for wackadoodle, gaudily embellished handbags created by sainted Enid Collins of Texas. While Enid's still my girl, I am a big fan of this purse because it meets several requirements on my handbag list-- unusual, eyecatching, and not-likely-to-be-duplicated by others around the town. While it's no match for my clock purse (which, for the record, has probably drawn more attention than any actual accessory I have ever worn-- my dad's taken to whetting an imaginary pencil and marking an imaginary scoreboard every time someone says something about it while we're out and about), I love how dainty and cute this purse is...plus, do you see the little guy in the window looking out at you? I AM SLAIN BY THIS DETAIL. SLAIN.

Besides the roof and flowery front step of the house purse, each side has a window as well. I'm not sure if that's supposed to be what we see outside the window or inside, but if it's inside, you've got a strange, Surrealist living room, little disproportionate stick figure tenant of this house purse. I love the little shingles on the roof. While, technically, yes, maybe this is something I could make at home with determination and materials, isn't it more fun to just grab one up for less than the price of an Indian lunch buffet? (I have chana masala on the brain, it's almost lunch time for me)

Do YOU have an insatiable hunger for Indian buffet Gary Gail purses? Well then, it's high time you check out what kind of purse real estate there is out there on the world wide web. I found several copies of the house above on Ebay (though none as inexpensive, she gloats quietly) and a couple other models on Etsy. Take a look, and marvel at how tempting it is to build a whole subdivision of purses in your closet:

Vintage Gary Gail Dallas Wooden Purse Cottage House White

Vintage Gary Gail Dallas Wooden Purse Cottage/House

How about you? Do you know any more about this mysterious Gary Gail? Which of these houses is the cutest (YOU KNOW YOU KNOW WHAT THE ANSWER IS, haha)? What's the most unusual shaped purse you have in your own collection? Let's talk!

Well, that's it for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with some various flea market finds here and there! Have a great Tuesday, and I'll see you then. Take care!

Weekend Finds: Flea Market Goodies (WWII Jacket, Wiggle Dress, Charm Bracelet)

Good morning!

How's your Wednesday going so far? I was true to my word this morning and managed to photograph my flea market finds, so without further ado, let's get to the goods!

This pink and gold embroidered wiggle dress was at my favorite clothing dealer's both in the antiques shed (not Andy Devine, but the tall skinny guy...I think his name is Bobby?). He had some clothes hung up this month, but the majority of the haul was in a huge pile on two tables. As a moth to the flame, I started to dig through the piles, not paying any attention to the top heaviness of several leather nineties' overcoats and jackets until...A-V-A-L-A-N-C-H-E. As if in front of an entire-school assembly, I turned around sheepishly and several shoppers made the obligatory, "Oooh, that was bound to happen" type remarks as I tried to de-dust and pile back the actual mountain of clothes I'd managed to knock off the table. Bobby and another shopper helped me pile things back up, and as I was scooping the coats to one side, I found this gem shimmering from the very bottom. Even though I was red-faced, at least the experience yielded this up from the murky depths!

Best part? Easily the label:

"Champagne Lady" indeed!

In the same mound of clothes was this button up blouse, which I'm pretty sure is too big in all the wrong places, but I couldn't resist the pattern, wait until you see it up close:

Besides being a beautiful inky color palette of blues and purples and pinks, the print features phonographs, candlestick telephones, alarm clocks, plate-view cameras...I AM DELIGHTED BY THIS.

And the third item from the pile, this silk smoking jacket with a weird wrap around cut, built in fringed sash, and embroidered anchors on two pockets (there's another on the left there where the red piping is to match the one on the right. Swank, swank, swank! Total expenditure: Fifteen dollars for the three pieces and a certain loss of self-pride from the throwing-everything-on-the-ground gaffe. Ah, well! It was worth it.

Honestly, I need another Ike jacket like I need a hole in my head, but I bought one anyway. I was in the Swine barn and one of the sellers next to the discount detergent and hand soap that's always set up dead center in that pavilion had boxes and boxes of old army and navy issue uniforms. You know how the flea market can be-- these clothes could either cost a buck a piece or a hunnert dollars a piece, it all depends on the dealer. A friendly middle aged guy came up to ask if I needed any help, and invited me to dig on through the boxes (y'ain't gotta tell me twice, mister). I pulled this out and looked it over, to find an inside label dating it to 1944. YES, YES. At twenty bucks, it wasn't a steal, but it's in perfect shape and priced at exactly the limit of what I would have paid for it. I like the good condition and the fact that there are no regimental labels or patches on it-- I have a really neat jacket just like this with insignia all over and I feel like wearing it would be too costume-y. I also love that I size things for Matthew on trips like this based on if it's just a smidge big on me (he has broad shoulders and I have bird shoulders) and too short...it fits him perfectly and he looks like a dashing sort of dude in it. SUCCESS.

I talked a lady in one of the exhibit stalls down to $12 from $15 on this Enid-Collins-like purse as she told me I reminded her of some eighties' pop star she couldn't remember the name of (that's a win-win situation, there). I LOOOVE the fact that it's a black-background purse (I have about five real Enids that I hardly ever carry because they're taupe on white, and all I ever wear is black) and the fiery reds and golds of the embellishment. It's missing maybe like ONE sequin there, but overall, isn't it a knockout?

This bracelet was in one of the stalls from the same lady I bought all those earrings from a month ago, AND I AM OBSESSED WITH IT. Six bucks. I'm pretty sure it's "silver tone" as opposed to any actual jewelry grade metal, but look at the charms. They're all crazy Southwestern American Indian creatures of varying weirdness! Each time I've worn it this week I find myself catching one of them out of the corner of my eye and being delighted by it all over again.

Last but not least, these African-mask inspired screwback earrings were in a booth I was positive everything was going to be at least $500 dollars in, but the lady let me have these for I think $3, and they were by far the best thing in it. I had to interrupt her trying to sell a woman some kind of semi-precious jewel necklace and earring set for literally two hundred dollars, so I guess these costume baubles didn't look like a big loss to her by comparison! I went home and promptly dropped one when I was trying to show Matthew (this is why I can't have nice things!), which popped out one of the little green jewels, but I'll super glue it back in and it should be good as new. Aren't they unusual!

I did better than I've done in months past in that I only bought things I actually couldn't leave without-- there was a weird Masonic poster I almost bought in one of the stalls, but as I haven't yet found a good place for the one I already have, I resisted temptation. And the Lisa of two years ago would have bought ALL the army surplus pieces, rather than just the one, standalone Ike jacket. I feel like I'm improving, however little by little, at not buying EVERYTHING that I'm interested in?

So! What did you find at the flea? What are some things you find yourself drawn to no matter how many you already have in your collection? What do you think I got the best deal on?  When's the last time you've embarrassed yourself good and proper in public? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I'll catch you back here tomorrow (one day closer to the weekend)! Be good, enjoy the sunshine, and we'll talk then. Ciao!