Today’s thrift store finds
Jason and I visited Goodwill yesterday to browse for interesting stuff. I found a bag of vintage thread; the green ones are pictured here, but there were a lot more. Almost all of them have old fashioned wooden spools, and many are unused. Some are silk thread, but most are cotton.
I suppose that cutting down trees to make spools is not ideal, but on the other hand, it’s a lot more sound than using petroleum to make plastic ones that will never degrade. And these wooden ones seemed to have more reuse potential, too. When I was very young, my mom had some thread on wooden spools (I don’t know if it was already old even then), but ever since then all I have seen for sale is plastic. These are much nicer. Maybe bamboo could be used for spools somehow, which would be even more environmentally sound, and quite nice-looking too.
I also found some tiki mugs, a dashboard hula girl, a (faux-)vintage tin sign, and a couple of nice salwar kameez suits I am planning to resell since they don’t really fit me but are pretty nice.
Jason got a Casio SK-5 sampling keyboard, one of those late ’80s toy keyboards. I had an SK-1 myself. I got it for Christmas in 1986. They are a lot of fun to goof around with.
Hello there. I have been looking at your photos on flickr — I am a fellow rainbow-colour-order fiend over here in England. But what struck me apart from your fantastic cake decorating was your plates with the cutlery all around the edges. I have a huge collection of black and white graphic china and I have to ask you: What is that china? And where can I get some?
Yours in continuing admiration,
Jan Hatwell
Hello and thanks! I got those dishes from Pier 1 about 10 years ago. Unfortunately I think they were already discontinued even then — we had to call around to several stores to put together a whole set. (The cereal bowls are wonderful — very deep. But I have broken a couple of them since then, along with one of the soup/pasta bowls. I think I still have all of the plates, though.) I haven’t seen them for sale since. They don’t have a specific name on them, just “Exclusively for Pier 1, Monno Bangladesh” so they are very difficult to Google for.
I just found some of them by searching for “Pier 1 dinnerware” — here, and here.
Thanks so much!