Caution: low flying pig.....

Another frantic week with the necessity of earning a living cutting into the actually enjoyable stuff.  I was having a chat with my neighbour on the front veranda this morning and we both agreed it's almost time to come out of hibernation and blink in the evening light  of Spring.  Not as much evening light as those lucky ducks with daylight saving, but we mustn't forget that this is the land where cows fade and the curtains don't give milk if the clock is altered.  

But the evenings are getting longer and I'll have to squeeze as much in as possible.  To that end, I cleared everything off the back veranda, added some canvas shade for the anticipation of sunny days, installed new (free, via the verge collection) carpets, spring cleaned and generally made ready for lazing about on warm days. It's still a bit of a work in progress, but it will all come together and hopefully allow for even candlelit evenings.  Note to self: buy mozzie repellent - a lot of it.

Just to be sure, to be sure, yesterday we re-strung the clothesline - long overdue - as well.  Between the cleaning up and the installation of the shade maker and the baby-sitting of the baby girl's little dog it's been all go. I have a bruise on one arm from donating blood, and one on the other arm where I tripped over the blonde puppy and landed on the hammer.

On Thursday a visiting friend mentioned that the last suburb had still not had their verge outgoings cleaned up, so we paid one last visit for the year.  Surprisingly, there were even more treasures to be found and we managed to fill the car that one last time.  I was again very restrained and the only big item for me was a wooden sun lounger with brass fittings - refer lazing about on the back veranda, as mentioned above.  I knew there was a reason I picked up the down cushions last weekend...

I dusted off the Hymn board and brought it inside, where it has had envious looks and gasps of delight from all who see it.  One friend even said she would lose sleep, craving it tonight.  High praise indeed, I know exactly what she means.  The photo is pretty average but it's been a busy weekend.

I've been working on a few other things, here's a preview of my flying pig in a cage - I think the pig will end up another colour yet, so mark it down as a work in progress. There will be a heap of jewellery and some new fish in the next week or so, if I manage to make use of the longer evenings.

I just hope that staying outside later in the evenings doesn't cause me to fade.....

The puppy, the witch and the industrial chic shelving

My baby girl has turned 18, in a veritable festival of dinners, party, beach and more dinners. It seems like only yesterday, etc, etc. I got to puppy-sit. 

While the puppy was here, she helped to put up the tent I found last week.  There were two reasons to put it up, one: to dry out any residual dampness, and two: to see whether all the bits were there.  I always enjoy a challenge and putting up a tent when you don't know what it should look like certainly counts.  OK, so the puppy actually just chewed a tennis ball and generally got underfoot, but the tent is a veritable townhouse.  I'm thinking that I may sleep there over the summer.

It's been the last few days of the verge collection.  It's also known as 'bring out your dead' for a reason and some of the piles of stuff were certainly past it.  In a veritable burst of energy we did the whole three days and found some great stuff; tied some brilliant knots; ate a lot of icecreams; packed a lot of stuff into and out of the car; went to places I didn't know even existed; met a bunch of people who drive too fast, really badly and right on the back bumper; lifted, carried, hauled, dragged and carted; and narrowly missed a snake under a rural pile.  Luckily, the person before us would appear to have dealt with that problem and what confronted us was a very recently ex-snake beside the pile.  There's a reason I make sure I wear heavy boots, socks, and jeans for the rural sites, even on the hottest of days.

The biggest disappointment was missing out on a huge and hugely kitsch flying bird made of steel, fibreglass and some sort of plaster. I left it behind last night due to the lack of room left in the vehicle, and just as we got there this morning a chap threw (and I do mean threw) it into the back of his ute.  I'm thinking that he wasn't going to carefully restore and repurpose it as an artwork, by the way he threw it (and the way it landed).  Probably just as well, the thing was enormous, but o, the possibilities! 

                        
A slightly lesser disappointment was the range of couches, chairs and daybeds which were left behind due to lack of storage space.  One day I'll have the time and space to be able to re-upholster some of those beauties but I take solace in the fact that someone else has taken them to do just that. And if I ever find the moron who graffitti'd the two perfect club armchairs, I'll patiently explain the error of their ways while demonstrating to them an internal storage application for their markers and spraycans. 


It was a pity to leave behind the early portable record player, where the lid came apart with two speakers.  Very 60's. There were radiograms and some big units which would have made excellent industrial chic shelving.





The best and most unexpected score was probably the hymn board from a church, found literally buried in a pile of stuff.

 


  

There was that stop breathing moment of excitement, when you realise it's not just an interestingly carved wooden nob...but there's something fabulous attached to it.   I'm also excited about the long (about 1.7m) wooden ammunition box, which will be repurposed into some tall, thin shelves. There's an oak mirror, and some 50's/60's wire shop mannequins too.

And so many suitcases.  But I can't resist a suitcase.

A woman, a sideboard and a bookshelf

One of the activities we squeezed in last weekend was a quick trip to Ikea.  I love Ikea, it's one of my happy places.  I know that it's generally not liked by the chaps, and certainly we passed our share of undergruntled gentlemen in the carpark, no doubt waiting for their partners to return to them loaded with the best of the Snurgg range.  There were guys actually in the shop, following their partners with that slump-shouldered look of surrender which shows they lost the fight before they even got to the carpark.

I did overhear one male moan to his wife/partner/girlfriend/significant other that she didn't need whatever it was she was looking at.  I shivered. There was a sharp intake of breath from the women around her, and for a moment there you could have heard a pin drop. I gently leaned over and said 'Of course you do'.  She fixed him with one of those special looks and replied 'I know.'  I wonder how his evening went? Perhaps some sort of man-minding room would be a good idea, they do it for the kids.

Among the things we women dragged to the bollards (you can't take the trolleys further) and thence to the vehicle was that old fave, the Billy bookcase.

*You have to respect your next door neighbor when she can tell the contents of an Ikea box in a trailer from afar by name - but then she is from Sweden originally.

So, having had 30 kilos of woman-handled Billy taking up floorspace all week, I decided to sort out the loungeroom on Saturday.  

I had been very pleased with the way the Danish mid-century modern sideboard had polished up.  There were some major and minor marks on the finish, as one might expect from something from the tip shop.  Earlier in the week I invested wisely in some of my favourite restorative products.  Here's an example of what this stuff can do.  And it's made in Western Australia, too.

before

after

My tried and true technique for furniture moving had the sideboard in place in a snip.

Feeling rather smug, I moved on to assemble the Billy.  Given the size and weight of it,  I put it together in the lounge.  Easy peasy, I really don't know what husbands make such a fuss of.  Read the instructions, follow the instructions. Wrestling with it by myself in a confined space added a piquant pinch of degree of difficulty but it was pretty straightforward.  Then, I got to play bookshelf shuffle as those displaced were moved about, finally expelling the smallest and most expendable onto the back veranda.

The pickings in the opshops here were pretty good on Friday. Amongst my entire summer wardrobe of light cotton and/or linen pants, books, an old tin and quite a lot of broken jewellery, I picked up a 9kt solid gold bracelet and a hollow bangle, also 9kt.  Somedays, the force is truly with you.

Saturday's round of  garage sales were much more limited, although  I got a lovely homegrown pumpkin for $2 at the Baptist fundraiser, and a nice hoard of stuff from an estate sale, including a watch fob - soon to be a bracelet, another sieve cum shadow box, some plastic dogs exactly like the ones I had as a child, and a big bag of matchbox covers.  The bag also included an unused label from the local (now defunct) fish cannery, some WA Railways parcel stamps, a sign from a drycleaners, and some gorgeous old  WA matchbox covers.  It was a bag of history, right there in my hand.

The thing I like about these funny old things is that now I'll go and do some research on them and poke about and find out a whole heap of stuff about this place I never knew.  The monetary value isn't important, but I like to think that the nice gentleman who collected them would appreciate my enjoyment of them.  I may put some of them in frames because I think they would make a rather nice display of local history.

 

If I find out anything really exciting, I promise to share it with you.