Friday, June 19, 2009

My first estate sale

I went to an estate sale in Corrales today. I was eating my breakfast and thumbing through the paper when I saw "estate sale" in the classifieds. I had been thinking of going to one for a while, but always forgot to. It's my day off, so I decided to check it out. Corrales is a rural village just minutes away from my home.

I felt a little bad picking over the belongings of some old widow who is now in a nursing home. I found a few pillowcases, some creepy cats and some lace other notions.

Off on a tangent, remember the Nine Pillowcase Quilt on Oh, Fransson's blog that I have been dying to make for months? Well she finally posted the tutorial (now called the Clothesline Quilt). It was supposed to be ready in March, and as I patiently (or not) waited for months, I collected my vintage linens. Today I went to select my nine fabrics and realized how overboard I went on the vintage linens purchasing. Maybe I should make a 20 Pillowcase Quilt.

Here are the two I added today:

vintage sheets

I also found some pieces of lace and ribbon, and tons of snaps and hooks and eye, even some hand sewing needles.

Lace and notionsNotions from estate sale

I spotted these antique cats, which in hindsight are a bit scary looking. What's with the eyeglasses? They need cleaning, but I'm not sure how, what with the fur glued on them.

antique cats

They are like these cats that I got from my grandmother-in-law when she died.

antique cats

Finally, for the real and not creepy cats in my life, I got this box to carry my stuff in:

cats

OK, so once I put the stuff in the box, I went up to the man and asked how much it would cost. He said, "Well, I'll look at it and make an offer. These cats are collectibles."

Now I'm thinking he's going to charge a lot. And I only have $16 in cash with me, but I was thinking that would be fair for the lot of stuff, since it does go to feed the old lady in the nursing home, after all.

Then he says, "For the whole box of stuff, $5."

Uh, OK. And off I ran, feeling like a thief.

1 comment:

Emily said...

lucky you!! I'm still cracking up about his comment regarding the cats! I guess just because something is a collectible doesn't mean it's expensive, right? I'm excited for you to start the clothesline quilt. I, too, have been waiting for it, but I don't think I'm going to make one just quite yet.