A Thrift Extravaganza

Here is my semi-annual report on my Salvation Army, eBay and thrift shop finds.  Intervention not quite necessary yet (in my opinion; perhaps not in yours).  There's nothing on our beds but cats, and nothing on our chairs but books.  When the piles of Victorian Chinoiserie become threatening, then you can call Dr. Zasio from the Hoarders TV show. 

Limoges plates

I thought it would be fun to arrange this blog post in order of my top ten finds of the year. Of course there are more than ten...but these are the best! Oddly enough, there are no duds. (Another thing you may disagree on, as one person's treasure is another's trash.) Herewith, the List:



1.  Hammersley and Roses...and Tiles

All right, that's at least two items.  But if we're going to make this top ten thing work efficiently, I'll have to stuff them in.  Also, I can't decide which I love most, my flowery chintz Hammersley pieces, or my beautiful hand-painted Italian tiles.  Certainly, the lot together makes our pathetic closet of a 1960s kitchenette look Paradisal to me.

 Got these on eBay, from a man in Pennsylvania who brought them back from Naples in the 1970s.  The two together were $15.  Below, a Delft tile, after the Gerard Dou painting, of an old woman reading, and a hand painted Wheeling tile from the 1950s.

Hm, I packed rather a lot into #1.  Let's move on, then, to Plates.

2.  Big plates.  Turkish plate, found in Salvation Army.  I'm told it shows scenes of the comic Turkish folklore figure Nasruddin.

But as long as we're looking at large plates, I also love this one from Portugal (another Sally Ann find), and that also gives me a chance to show a pair of dear little Murano glass red birds.

And here's the plate with a piece of Parian ware on it.  Do you know Parian ware?  I first read of it in Little Women, when Laurie gave a piece to Meg for her wedding:  "I don't think the Parian Psyche Laurie gave lost any of its beauty because John put up the bracket it stood upon."  This reproduction is from the Met, and the price at Sally Ann was about a tenth of retail at the Met.

One more plate.  A Bavarian pretty, which is now home to several of my little animals.

And that brings us to:

3.  Favorite Animal.  Green Murano glass duck bowl with gold flecks is my favorite among the new beasts.

Moving on to another category...Boxes!

4. Blue Dresden Box.

(Paraphrasing Pete Seeger)  Little boxes, on a desktop, little boxes made of porcelain. There's a pink one (lots of pink ones) and a green one and a yellow one.  And they're all made out of porcelain, and Paul thinks they all look just the same. 

Haven't heard the song in awhile?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La21jYGIQ8k

Though actually Malvina Reynolds, the original songwriter, sings it better.

Blue box seen above with Hammersley "Queen Anne" pattern leaf dish. 

Now, just one more box for you.  The square box on the right is new. It's from India, and is made out of hundreds of cut-up pieces of bangle bracelets!   A very intricately made, sturdy little jewelry box.   $10 at Salvation Army...

And now...

5.  The Best Vase

Too wonderful. Cobalt blue Venetian glass with Bacchus scenes hand painted all over it!  And I'm pleased with its surreal setting, with Prince Albert and the naif Japanese cat.

6.  An Interval for Cats

Tully's Blanket.

All the cats love this old-fashioned afghan which I bought on Etsy, but it is most peculiarly Tully's.  She looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, or she wouldn't piss on my shoes, which she most certainly has done.  She has expressed her opinion more than once upon a pair of bright yellow Michael Kors loafers.  (I'm afraid she's right actually.  A cat of good taste, if poor manners.)

Pindy's Footstool

Sorry no pictures of Marshy this time.  She is not a materialistic cat.

Paul Saves the Glassware

Paul narrowly saves a free-form Murano glass modern snake sculpture from almost certain destruction in the neverending war between the Great Enemies, Tully and Pindy. 

People are always asking, "Don't the cats break things?"  Amazingly, no.  Pindy in particular loves to tiptoe across that tinkling sea of flowered china on my computer table, and she places her little paws just so, with extreme delicacy, sometimes inside a dish, sometimes between.  Never breaks anything.  However, when they do break something it's spectacular - like the time Pindy and Marshy flew over Paul's living room with one bound for leverage on the coffee table, and their dual bellyflop strike took out five prized Venetian glass goblets like so many bowling pins. 

7.  Department of Teacups

Let's get this out of the way.  Here is my solution to keeping all the teacups off our tiny kitchen counter or higher in shelves than I can reach:

And here are some pretties.

Venetian Latticino

The most golden one of all. 

Antique Hammersley, sitting on top of the Limoges plates.

8.  A little bouquet of Carnival glass

9.  Starting to move on to the end quickly...Small French Limoges plates.

The pictures are Chamonix, Napoleon and Montreaux respectively.

And speaking of small collections, here are my Eggs:

I can sense you calling Dr. Zasio.  Hoarders!  Well, I'm almost done, so before she gets here...

10.  To finish with a flourish - Paul's Peacock!  Murano glass.

Oh, dear, Marshy (Martial the Epigrammatist Marsh-wiggle Marshmallow) is feeling left out.  She is far more beautiful than a gaudy glass peacock, so I will close with a picture of her instead.  As I said, her sin (if cats can sin, which I doubt) is not Materialism but, alas, Gluttony...

Here she is saying what she thinks of me going on about all these thrift shop baubles, instead of keeping to the proper topic, which is Cats. 

Into King's Canyon

Me and Peter in King's Canyon

It's been a long time since we took a road trip, all three of us together, because usually one of us has to stay home with the cats.  But this time we left them in the good care of neighbors Pam and Richard for a few days and took off to one of our favorite places, Cedar Grove Lodge in King's Canyon National Park, which is the northern part of Sequoia National Park. 

Peter and Paul by the river

Just before Memorial Day is a great time to go, for the crowds haven't arrived yet - and King's Canyon never gets the traffic of the more well known parks like Yosemite.  Perfect weather, but it's been an extremely dry year in the Sierras, so the King's River that flows through the canyon wasn't raging as it normally would be now, but was rather low.  They're predicting a bad fire season.

Cedar Grove Lodge

Cedar Grove is a modest, inexpensive lodge, unchanged in any detail for many years, and that's why we like it.  We used to go to Sequoia all the time - usually every month or so - until they tore down the 1930s cabins ostensibly to protect the sequoia trees, and built a monster modern lodge, Wuksachi, instead.  It's not near the sequoias but is a sterile unatmospheric structure that could be anywhere.  So we quit staying in Sequoia, and when we need our escape from Los Angeles into primeval wilderness, we now choose the area around Mammoth in the Eastern Sierras, or King's Canyon.

Peter and Paul at our favorite spot on the porch.

The great thing about Cedar Grove is the unchanging peacefulness.  You sit on the porch, with the river rushing by, smell the incense cedars and fragrant fresh air, and are visited by Stellar's Blue Jays.  The snack bar is sort of minimal and not cheap (the rooms are inexpensive, though), but you can get an eggy breakfast and a steak or some grilled trout for dinner. Then we went for walks in the forest by the river, which is as soul restorative as anybody could wish.  We didn't see any bears this time, but plenty of deer.  King's Canyon can be hot in summer, as it's in the bottom of a canyon at only 4,000 feet, but in May it was perfect.



With a river behind me

On our last day we drove through Sequoia and had a hike on our old favorite Sugar Pine Trail.  To my surprise, the knee that's so dysfunctional in the city (from post-ballet injury arthritis), ran up and down the trail like a rabbit's joint.  Possible explanations could be 1) endorphins from hiking 2) dirt trails being much easier on the knee than city pavements, and 3) my hiking stride, from the hips, doesn't bend the knees much.  Whatever the reason, it was a double adrenaline joy to realize that I can actually still hike as well as ever!

Indian pinks in Sequoia on the Sugar Pine Trail

On the drive home, we finally gave in to some modern technology and figured out how to use the GPS on Paul's Android, and to very good purpose.  We were wanting to stop for a Basque dinner in Bakersfield, which although an uninspiring Central Valley city, has a Basque community famous for its restaurants.  But we didn't know the names of any, or which were good.  So (since it's a long drive with nothing to do) Paul read out all the restaurant reviews, we picked one, and laughed like savages seeing their first Coke bottle while the GPS lady voice instructed us how to get there.  The Wool Growers proved to be one of the oldest and most famous, and we had a thumping good dinner of hearty bean soup, lovely Frenchy salad, sheep tongues, oxtail, and other hearty delicacies. 

Paul at the Wool Growers Basque restaurant





Road Trip: Monterey and Madonna Inn

Beautiful coastline near Lucia Lodge, Big Sur

I first met my friend Keith on the isle of Skye, around 1985.  He was cheering up a newly divorced friend by hiking him up the Cuillins, and we were the only guests at the b & b as it was early spring.  We hit it off (even though I didn't like Bunnahabhain scotch), and I invited Keith to visit us in California.  He came a few weeks later, and being an Americanophile on his first trip West, he thoroughly enjoyed seeing movie studios, Venice Beach, and Fourth of July celebrations.  The next summer Peter and I were invited to go island-hopping in the Hebrides, which we did in Keith's van, containing his motorcycle, a dinghy, and his wife Anne's paints.  We stayed in castle and fishing hotels, spun around lochs in the dinghy, hiked and enjoyed the white sands, machair and seashells of the islands.   And so a fine friendship began, and nearly every year they came to America, or we visited them at their lovely 15th century farmhouse in Kent. The remains of a German bomber could still be seen in the bluebell woods, and they shot rabbits and pheasants which Anne cooked sublimely.  Memorably, they introduced us to the Lake District, the Scilly Isles, and the hypermarkets of Calais.

Now Keith and Anne have retired, and divide their year between homes in Baja and the Italian lakes. We actually see them more often than ever now, as we are a good stopping point on their long journeys.  This week was their 25th anniversary, and they decided to take a drive up the coast to Monterey.  We had another English house guest this week, Julian, and Peter and Paul stayed at home with him and the cats, but I ventured up north with Keith and Anne. 

Our first stop was Cambria, which though famous for its beauty, mainly interested me because it was chock full of antiques shops. In keeping with the English theme, I bought some Hammersley bone china. Not even a splurge: the cup and saucer cost $9!

 What I love about Hammersley is its beautifully detailed flower paintings.  Since our apartment has no views, no garden, no greenery, I like to surround myself with the stuff, and my computer desk is rather incongruously piled with little-old-lady obsessional collections of china roses.  The cats ignore it disdainfully, but if there's another earthquake I'll simply have to start all over again on eBay.

But I digress.  Here is a flower, presumably a lupine, we saw near Nepenthe.

We stopped to see the elephant seals north of Cambria, as one does.

We spent the first night at Avila Beach, in a hotel where every room has a hot springs tub. Very restful, only Anne lost her passport there, which rather cast a shadow over the rest of the trip.  There was nothing to be done but for them to go to the British Embassy in Los Angeles at trip's end, so we continued on our way and managed to have a good time.  Though I suspect that I enjoyed it more than they did, after that point.

We spent a couple of nights at the very comfortable Spindrift Hotel on Cannery Row in Monterey.  Below, the view from the hotel.  

Of course we visited the Monterey Aquarium, but I must admit none of us enjoyed it much.  The exhibits seemed to have been dumbed down since our last long-ago visit, and the number of truly obnoxious, screaming, pushing, ill-mannered kids was way up.  The fish were nice though.  Here are some sardines:

And here are sardines that we ate in an Italian seafood restaurant later.

My favorites in any aquarium are the seahorses.  I can watch their delicate swaying dance for literally hours, and don't care what I see, as long as I see them.

A rather melancholy little yellow fellow.

A sea dragon. Hard to photograph as they move so fast!

Dwarf seahorses

 

Jellyfish

 

More jellyfish

 

Jellies that look like an alien invasion

 

The masses of noisy kids on school trips were truly insupportable, however, and an hour and a half at the aquarium was all I could endure, though it cost $30!  I was glad that I was going to meet my friends June and Billy for lunch.  They are also very old friends - I worked with June in the 1970s - who have lately retired and moved up to this area.  We had a delightful lunch and then they took me driving around their neighborhood, showing me Pacific Grove, old Monterey, and Asilomar, which I had always wanted to see. 

Asilomar

Asilomar is a conference center and refuge on 100 acres in Pacific Grove, on the Monterey peninsula, founded as a camp in 1913, with Arts and Crafts style buildings designed by the famous architect Julia Morgan.  The Wizard of Oz conferences are held there, and now that I've seen it I think it would be a lovely spot for a JASNA conference...only not being near a major international airport is probably the spoiler.

Me and June at Asilomar

Billy and June

Me on the sand dunes at Asilomar

Leaving Monterey, Keith and Anne and I then drove to the famously kitschy Madonna Inn for a night.

Madonna Inn

Madonna Inn was founded in 1958 by Alex and Phyllis Madonna, and it has remained frozen in time, which is part of its charm.  It's supposed to be over-the-top naff, but I found it attractive, comfortable, and fun, and enjoyed it enormously (which may say something about my taste level).  Throughout the hotel there are stained glass windows, elaborate wood carving and massive stonework, with touches of frou-frou pink and fairy lights.  Each of the 110 guest rooms is decorated in a special style, but we never saw the really fancy ones.  My modest room was called Pioneer and Keith and Anne were in Sonora.  It was cool and silent at night and I slept soundly despite the uneasy sight of the framed gun mounted by my bed.

Me taking a picture in the mirror

Stained glass everywhere

I climbed the hill behind the hotel to get an overview of the place

The lamps were pink

Beautiful flowers everywhere

 

 

As colorful as the flowers was the Carnival glassware. These goblets were on every table.  They were also on sale, so how could I resist buying a few?  I couldn't.

A room with a gun

 

For me, the very best thing about the Madonna Inn was the swimming pool.  Under the sky, with views of the foggy hills, the large pool is heated to 85 F, and is heavenly to swim in.  It was about 55 out and I had the pool entirely to myself.  So I frolicked and did underwater ballet exercises, most exhilarating.

As the evening closed in, Keith and Anne sat by the fire...

And then we had what was the second or third anniversary dinner of the trip.  The pink champagne cake was fresh and delicious - and huge.

Next day we drove back to L.A., and Anne was much relieved to be able to pick up a temporary passport at the British Embassy with a wait of a little less than an hour.  Soon they were off, bound for San Diego and then Milan, and I settled down to tea in a Hammersley cornflower blue cup, with suitably Italian gorgonzola cheese and fig jam, from Trader Joe.