Thrift Thursday

Sorry for the FTP (Failure to Post--I saw that on someone else's blog and thought it was clever. Maybe everyone already knows what it is, and I'm a donkey's tail, but that's normal). I've thought of a million things to post about and never had the pictures--what's a post without pictures?

First, a Tom update: he's doing well and we've settled back into our normal routine.

Now to my thrift story: A week ago Tuesday I made it to the library thrift store in Marble Falls. (Tom says it's the neatest--as in clean--thrift store he's ever been to. It's also a bit high in prices, but it's located just between my hair stylist and where I meet Ginger for lunch. What's not perfect about that?)

I always check fabrics and linens at this store. Sometimes I find good things; sometimes not. Last week I found almost 4 yards of a light denim fabric and 3 of a lovely blue paisley. (I'm in the middle of a project involving those. More later.)

I also found two embroidered tablecloths I couldn't pass up.
This one's a lovely linen 72" round cross stitch in perfect condition. (I had to shoot toward the pantry as my refrigerator has gone out--:P--and while we're waiting for it to be repaired we've brought too small fridges in from our workshops, stacked one on top of the other. Repairman's supposed to come today. Yay!)

The bowl in the center is something I picked up years ago at one of my fave thrift stores in Fort Worth, a wonderful old copper bowl I've filled with pumpkins and a gold-beige candle for the harvest season.)
This is a tea tablecloth, the kind ladies used for their bridge games in the '50s, '60s. My mother never played cards with the ladies--she was too busy raising eleven kids!--but my mother-in-law did. Canasta, I think. She would have used a cloth similar to this.
This is a closer shot of the candle arrangement in the center. Not that you needed a closer shot; I just thought it was pretty.

A closer picture of the embroidery detail.

Once I used cloths like this, but I stopped when I moved into this house. Why? Because the delicacy of hand-embroidery didn't seem to lend itself. There's so much wood--beautiful, but almost masculine, which I do like but which, again, doesn't seem to call for lace and embroidery. Oh, well.

Take care, y'all.

Ta.

Whew!

Tom's home and pretty soon life will be back to normal. Turns out he had 95% blockage in one vessel--everything else was clear. How strange is that? He says that must be the bacon artery.

He's stented and now has 100% blood flow in that vessel. Yay, Dr. Tracey! Tom should feel a lot better, once he gets past the tiredness from spending five days in the hospital. And how lucky is it that he got out in time to play poker this afternoon? (He's not allowed to lift anything heavier than 10 lbs. for the next week so I told him to limit his winnings. He says the most weight he'll probably carry is bringing the Biggest Loser trophy home. Yeah, they have one.)

And now I can get back to posting about funner things. I haven't even visited my studio for a week. Probably covered in cobwebs by now. Maybe I'll dig my way through this afternoon.

Ta, y'all. And thanks for all your good wishes.

Update

Things have been all scrambled up here in our world. Turns out Tom didn't have heart attacks when we feared he did; that was a condition called atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heart rhythm. But the a-fib became so bad during his stress test--treadmill, not chemically induced--that he actually had a small heart attack. That's what the doc calls it: a small attack, determined by the level of enzymes found in his blood. I can tell you this: his small heart attack scared the peewaddling out of me.

He's been in a hospital in Austin since Thursday. Tomorrow they'll do an angiogram to determine the level of damage and stent if necessary. (Beyond that, my mind refuses to go.) Is it serendipity or coincidence or something scarier that tomorrow's the seventeenth anniversary of his quad bypass?

I'm driving into Austin every day. They say I could stay in his room and not have to drive back and forth, but I gotta come home for Max. My poor cat hasn't been outside in quite a while. I get home, I feed him, I feed me, next thing you know it's dark. I'm gonna try to take him out for a little while before I leave this morning.

The house seems so foreign without Tom.

Back Again

It's been awhile, hasn't it? Funny how not posting here makes me feel guilty and the longer I don't the harder it becomes to do. But here I am, trying.

A week ago last Sunday, I think Tom had a heart attack. Looks awful writing it down, but not as bad as the reality. And what's almost as bad is the uncertainty. I think.... Maybe not.... But what if....

By the time the paramedics came, he seemed fine. Still we took him to the ER and they did a number of tests, none of which showed the markers left by heart attacks. The next day, we contacted our cardio guy who scheduled a number of tests. And no it's not Dr. Tracey's fault we're only doing the stress test today. We really had become complacent--there was no evidence of a heart attack either syptomatically or in the tests they ran--so since it didn't fit into his schedule, Tom postponed it. Then we heard anecdotal information about silent heart attacks, and I looked it up on the web. They don't feel like heart attacks, which is why they're called silent, and they don't always leave markers. Now we're worried.

This afternoon he has the stress test. For the first time ever they're chemically inducing it. I don't want to go where that leads: he's always walked the treadmill, even after his quad bypass seventeen years ago. (Funny, that anniversary is next Monday.)

There'll be another test next Monday, and then he sees the doc on Thursday.

When I started this, I hadn't intended to go into so much detail. I haven't deserted y'all, just taking a hiatus until we get in a better place, which I'm hoping will be very soon.

Keep your fingers crossed, y'all. And a prayer or two wouldn't be taken amiss.

Ta.

My Convoluted Path to Creativity

"Amateurs borrow, professionals steal."

I'm not sure where that comes to play in my creativity, but in this instance I'll admit to stealing an idea and embellishing on it. (I lo-ove to embellish!)

A while back I was following links on either Nesting Place or A Soft Place to Land--it was so far back I can't remember which one or where it led. One blogger--hence known as TB--was showing off a chest she'd redone and tablescaped a la the Nester--see why I can't remember which one? Kimba at ASPL does DIY Thursdays and Nester blogged on tablescapes. On top of her chest, TB had arranged a couple of candlesticks with three toile stars made by her mother. The picture wasn't large enough to get a good view of the stars and TB only mentioned them in passing, but they caught my attention immediately.

I had to make one! I searched around online for patterns and instructions and found nothing so made my own pattern--I mean, how hard is a star? Still I didn't want to cut into my good fabric with a practice pattern so I used ticking I've had for a while.

The outcome didn't impress me--I work much better with patterns and instructions. The points weren't stuffed stiffly enough to make it stand and I'd already stitched it shut and didn't want to unstitch but didn't want to throw it away and wouldn't give it away as it was, yadda yadda yadda blah blah blah. So...back to the button box--

It's about ten inches tall (25.4 cm) and it still doesn't stand that great on its tippy-toes. I decided to stitch an elastic band on the back so it can be used as a treetop ornie--I've put too much work in it to stop now!

So is that stealing or borrowing or what?

My Latest Cool Finds

I've reached the stage of my life where I have to say no to most cool stuff I find. I've given away so many neat things it breaks my heart sometimes--and will likely have to downsize at least one more time in my life. Therefore I don't frequent garage sales that often. But a week or so ago Tom and I passed one on our way to breakfast--we eat breakfast out at least once a week. I had to stop, even though I didn't find much worth taking home--some neat artist brushes, brandy new, that will come in handy--and these neat dominoes. (I'm a sucker for games, even though we rarely play them, but for a buck these were well worth the price.)
The box has a bit of a shine cuz I used Howard's Feed and Wax on it and it hadn't soaked in good when I took the pic. And the dominoes had some spots when I bought them--I have a fantasy about two couples having drinks while they played Forty-Two back in the '70s and somebody had a little too much and knocked his drink over on the whole dang table.

I cleaned the dominoes with baking soda and a toothbrush . It worked great!

They're made of three layers of some kind of plastic: white on the bottom, a metallic-y copper/bronzish color in the middle and black on top.

I love when people mark things with dates, though I can't read all of this that well. I can distinguish the 1971 date, and the other appears to read either From McDonald's or Fern McDonald's.

Pretty cool, huh? For a buck, no less.

And here's my second find. Actually it was a freebie from my hair stylist. She travels around the country teaching people to use a brand of hair products and uses mannequin heads as practice dummies. Stella here had already been dyed four times and thus outlived her usefulness. Since I was looking for something to display hair ornies on, I thought she'd work great. What d'ya think? A keeper?
I'm going to try fabric softener sheets to tame her hair. I think that might work.

Hope y'all are having a great weekend. I've been working my hiney off trying to change the ink in my new printer. Can't find the owners manual and tried to download it several times but have hit a glitch each time. Finally found a review of the printer that told where the ink cartridges go--I could not find hide nor hair of them. Now it's all done. (Of course, Mr. Scrooge Tom is worrying about any future problems we might have with no owner's manual. Me, I figure by then it'll have turned up. Keep your fingers crossed!)

Ta, y'all.

Snakes and Snails...

Years ago, my mother befriended a snake who came up through the walls of her old house and made a nest in her linen closet. I don't remember what kind of snake it was, not sure I ever knew, but it obviously wasn't poisonous. She said it looked at her as if it knew her. It wasn't afraid of her, nor she of it.

This summer, Tom made friends with a little garter snake in our back yard. It likes the pond, likes to take a dip in the heat of the afternoon. (No fool, he. We've had lots of those super hot afternoons this summer.)
Here it is peering at Tom over the edge of the pond. (The concrete at the top of the picture is my house foundation. At the bottom is the pond edge.) That's as close as the snake gets to going into the water when it knows someone's watching, but Tom often sees it slither from the big sage bush at the corner of my herb garden and into the pond at the other end. (I see nothing when I'm outside, at least nothing smaller than Max.) I worried about the little fishies at first--we have three goldfish--but they seem to have fared well.

Today's the first really coolish day we've had since last spring--I think it's still only in the 70s. Come on, fall!