Blogs I Miss! (2010-2012)

Good morning!

In the haze of trying to get a blog together for this morning, I was thinking about some of the blogs I followed in years past that are no longer updated on a regular basis. And it's no wonder why! Life, and all the constant attention that minutae relating to day-to-day blog operations demands, can get in the way of producing stellar content and witty commentary indefinitely, even from the best of us. In light of their contributions to my own vintage knowledge, I thereby tip my cap to three OUTSTANDING blogs which are no longer au courant, but still hold a great deal of good information for those who weren't aware of them. You need to know about these if you don't already!

Let's look, shall we?

Website: A Sip of Sarsparilla (http://sip-of-sarsaparilla.blogspot.com/)

Author: Susie

Dates of Operation: April 2010- March 2011

I miss this website! I miss all of them, but I remember particularly that when I got into "for real, we are blogging all the time, we are never stopping" blog authorship, this was one of the vintage sites that set the bar  for what kinds of things I'd like to showcase on my own blog. Susie is a picker extraordinaire, with a passion and an eye for really good vintage stuff. Do you ever think "Man, as long as she didn't beat me to the good stuff, wouldn't it be FUN to go picking with this blogger?" I do! And this gal made me think that every time she showed off one of her hauls on this blog, circa 2010. One of Susie's last posts was actually one of my favorites-- she found the three vintage swimsuits in the pocket of the case she photographed them with at an estate sale, and don't you know those cashiers would have kicked themselves if they'd realized there was JANTZEN GOLD in the zippered portion of the hat box below:

Look! At the SHARKS! On those briefs!

What I liked best about this blog was the warmth and true love-of-the-hunt that came through in each of Susie's "finds" posts, along with the actual vintage scholarship she put into her informational posts. This Dec 2011 post, entitled "Sears Roebuck 1938 Catalog...Glorious Colors 'Good Enough To Eat' ", features ice cream delicious patterns and pastels from the pages of that years' women's fashion spreads:

You can still see Susie's trinkets and treasures via her Etsy store, which is on vacation for the summer but still in operation, as far as recently sold items indicate. Look through her archives for more gorgeous and informative posts on bygone fads and fashions, and make sure you stop by her store at the end of the summer in case it's up and running by then! You'll be glad you did.

Website: I Heart Everything (http://ihearteverythingblog.blogspot.com/)

Author: Amber von Felts

Dates of Operation: February 2010- April 2012

Here's another blog I discovered just as I was starting out with regular weekly or daily postings, and was it a lot of fun or what. You can see by Amber's profile picture (in a bejeweled fez and with pipe, natch) and the cheery, Googie-inspired banner that this girl knows her midcentury kitsch, AND HOW. The kinds of things she would find at estate sales and thrift stores in her native California would just blow your mind, and FOR STEALS. Call me a reverse-snob, but I have always given great props to vintage collectors who can pull together breathtaking collections the old fashioned way-- not from curated inventory at consignment and resale boutiques, but with their own grit and determination in line at estate sales or in the oppressive summer heat of their fiftieth yard sale that weekend. Digging and getting actual dirt on their hands at thrift stores in sketchy parts of town because that's where the good stuff is. There's something to be said about that! See Amber's $15 fiberglass shaded thrift store pair of exotica lamps here or her actual Eames and Eames-esque wire chairs, the former from a dumpster and the latter from an estate sale for less than $30, here. I crowned Amber a junkster from the same tribe as me from first read, and was sad when her new job kept her from having enough time for regular postings.

You can still see her sold Etsy listings here, though I didn't spot anything new in the shop. Cheers to you, Amber, wherever you are! I hope you're still finding insane vintage stuff at insanely low prices with your hawk-like eye for goodies.

Her wire chairs...I die.

Website: Honey Hi Vintage (http://honeyhivintage.blogspot.com/)

Author: Janine

Dates of Operation: December 2010- February 2012

Hello, Janine's blog is named after a song that opens the fourth side of the double record Tusk, in my top five of favorite albums of all time-- how was I not supposed to love this site? What I loved about this blog was, like the other two I've described today, Janine's particular eye for vintage items. She wasn't per se looking for ONLY this kind of antique or JUST this value-book-approved type of tchochtke, but consistently showed her unique style and relic-divining-rod in what she DID bring home. Her blog post "Hairy Babies and Silky Blankets" (which sounds terrible, but is not), clued me in to the folk art practice of adding a baby's first haircut curls and baby blanket to a similarly sized magazine cutout of a baby and framing it for display in the home, which I had never heard of before. It was because of this post that I was positive I'd found something spectacular when I pulled this print out of a basement in a house off Briley Parkway in May of last year. Posts on one of the first celebrity movie-star couples, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, 1940's carved wedges, and early 70's rock and roll groupie magazines just make me want to pick her brain for more things I want to know more about. If "Awesome Taste" were a graded subject, her card would sport an "A++++++++++!!" all in red felt tip pen.

This dress is museum quality and in her Etsy shop right now...I wish I had that kind of dough!!

Janine's Etsy shop, Guermante's Vintage, is still up and running, lively as the day is long, AND FULL OF OH MY GOD MOMENTS when it comes to looking at some of the stellar dresses dedans. I actually die thinking of having some of these things in my closet. I don't know what you're waiting for, go look already! :)


How about you? Are there any blogs out there that you miss being updated on a regular basis? If you're a blogger yourself, do you have any hard and fast rules about how and when and about what you post? What keeps you reading a blog even after it's no longer current? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I'll see you back here tomorrow for Photo Friday. Til then!