Famous People I Have Known

This book is so entertaining! It's a great look at some really interesting people. And the cover art is by Robert Crumb. Wowee!

What will I do with it?
Sell it here, of course. I've gone mad over here thinking that each little tiny thing I own is so special that I must find a way to keep it. But really that's just not the case. I'm now trying to enter a mindset of wanting to share my treasures with the universe.

UPDATE:
It sold, but you can find your own copy here.

Baby Gifts

Oh, just look at those sweet booties! There are so many lovely little projects for a baby in this book. And the pictures are so pretty as well!

What will I do with it?
Well, my baby's almost a toddler now, so I'm going to sell it on to some other future mama. You can buy it right here.

The State of Stuff Today

I've just looked in my little Blogger dashboard and I have 55 published posts and 89 drafts waiting to be written, edited, and published. I've just been in the basement where all of my possessions sit in boxes waiting for the ultimate decision on their fate. I've only made it through 2 boxes in 1 month of work. So it's time to buckle down. I'm going to try to write 200 posts this week. I'll stuff some of these posts in the June folder so they're not too near the top of the blog, because I'm certain they won't be very interesting or readable, but for the sake of documentation, they must be blogged.

Goofy in Giant Trouble

Hoo, what a funny book. I loved the pictures, so bright and colorful. And I loved the chunky size. But it's a little weird, now. I can't really explain

What will I do with it?
Sell it here!

And Something To Be Proud Of

And I was so happy to learn that these little ladies are featured on this cute new blog. What's especially exciting is that I had just listed them that day. So it's nice to receive immediate approval from fellow bloggers.

What will I do with it?
I should write to thank them and wish them luck with their own blogging endeavor. It really is a cute site with all kinds of cute items for parents to buy for their kids. Do check it out!

New Stuff to Sell

Epi-Log

I used to work in a bookstore and I'd pick up a few new magazines a week because their covers were so alluring. This is one such cover. I love this photo of Samantha and Tabitha. And I'd really love to see those toys in person. (Especially that turtle!)

But I've read it a few times and will probably never read it again.

What will I do with it?
I'm selling it here. But I think I'm also going to try to make a little turtle inspired by this photo. It's so cute and look sort of simple.

Giant Robot Snoopy Issue

I love the work of Charles Schulz. He's been a significant force in my life for as long as I can remember. So, it was with much excitement that I got this issue of Giant Robot, because it showed the first glimpse I had of the Schulz museum in Santa Rosa, California.

The Schulz Museum is important to me not just because it's dedicated to the work of Charles Schulz, but because my husband and I had one of our first dates there. We drove up from Los Angeles, the first week we met in person and had such a lovely time. The date certainly confirmed for me all of the wonderful things I suspected of him.

What will I do with it?
This isn't a souvenir from my actual visit to the place, so I can sell it. You can buy it right here.

REM Work Tour Program

This was a great concert, but I know this program will be destroyed by all my traveling and future moving.

What will I do with it?
It's up for auction on ebay right here. If it doesn't sell, I might give it to my brother because I think he went with me to see this concert. Maybe?

UPDATE:
It sold to someone who sounds like a very big Mike Mills fan. I'm so happy for her and for this tour program. They should be very happy together.

Gary Baseman Mouths

At the risk of turning this blog into a blog about my child's scribbles, I present to you my little boy's latest drawing.

He does a lot of scribbles, but occasionally, he works a little bit harder on drawing genuine figures.

He's obsessed with the Cranium artwork and pretends to play it a lot just so he can look at the Creative Cat and Word Worm. So it only surprised me a little bit to see that now he's drawing his characters' faces with Baseman-esque mouths!

Have a look at the inspiration:




What will I do with it?
Keep it! It's kind of a milestone for him and he was awfully proud of it.

Bunnyhop Magazine

Oooh, this one's controversial! And rare!

This magazine was around for a few issues. It was about bunnies, so the cover art for this issue showed Matt Groening's Binky punching out the Trix rabbit. By some standards, Bunnyhop was a zine and zines of all kinds used re-appropriated images to embellish their pages and make things a bit more interesting. In this case, though, the copyrighted characters were too famous and too contemporary to be re-appropriated for profit.

From the zinester's side, the argument is that Matt Groening should support independent publications and that it's hypocritical to make your living off of subtle pop culture references and parodies and then sue a magazine who parodies one of your characters.

From Groening's side, by law, he has to defend his copyright against all infringements or he loses his copyright. He also says that the image is so true to his style that it looks as if he drew a picture which infringed on the Trix copyright which would make him suspect in any copyright infringement case.

What do you think?

What will I do with it?
I have it for sale here.

Mommy and I are One

This is a great zine from back in the day.

I think I bought it for the Dame Darcy content and kept it for the Neutral Milk Hotel. Somewhere along the way, I've lost the cover. I can't even remember what it looks like!

What will I do with it?
It's currently on auction here!

UPDATE:
And it sold! I get so excited when things sell. I feel as if I'm stirring up some kind of good energy by passing along my old stuff to new owners.

Blank Scrapbook

This was a wedding gift, but I don't know how to scrapbook and although I love the accessories and tools, it's too expensive a hobby to really get into.

What will I do with it?
I think I'll try to turn it into a photo album of some sort to give to my husband. He loves pictures and it seems the right thing to do with our wedding gift.

Copy Cat

I don't know if you can tell, but there's the faintest little wobbly free-form copy of a cat's head shape. My little boy drew it a few months ago. I'm so very impressed with his copy attempts and get excited when I pick up little scraps of paper and see how he's trying to teach himself to draw.

What will I do with it?
Add it to the portfolio, of course.

Copying the Masters

We don't have a lot of coloring books around the house, because we worry about stifling our child's creativity. Maybe if he shows a strong interest in coloring books, we'll get some more for him. I'm quite fond of the Dover coloring books and will probably purchase a few of those when he seems ready.

Any way. . . my little boy received a stack of Peanuts coloring books from his grandmother. I was hesitant to let him use them at first, but he loves to try to trace the pictures and draw shadow images of the pictures in the book. This is an example. Can you see what he's done in the picture? He's drawn an extra outline of the face. He's done this on so many pages now, and he's started drawing his own faces now, too. And you should SEE the pages with motion lines. My little boy goes nuts with embellishing them.

And in a way, it's sweet that he can connect with the artwork of a 70 year old man. And in another way it's sad, that Schulz, no longer able to completely control his hands, drew in a wavy way so similar to a toddler.

What will I do with it?
Encourage his efforts and maybe get him a Dover coloring book to learn about and draw some other different things.

King-Cat Comics

John Porcellino's artwork is so simple and sweet. My little boy loves to look at the pictures and I think it will inspire his own artwork some day. (Have I told you that he's an artist? Just ask him. He'll tell you.)

What will I do with it?
I have extras, so I'm going to sell one here.

The Journals of Sylvia Plath

There is a disturbing trend in some of my possessions. A lot of my books and music are the works of successful suicides. It's not that I'm particularly drawn to suicide, but I'm intensely drawn to the works of passionate, dramatic people. And passionate, dramatic people often meet passionate, dramatic ends.

In fact, I completely avoided the works of Sylvia Plath for a while, because I just knew of her as the suicide writer. It never occurred to me that she might actually also be really good. So, in one of my many college English courses, I was assigned her beekeeper poems. And I fell in love with her work. It was passionate, direct, and frighteningly insightful.

And so, I was given this book when it came out. And being so close in age to her at the time of her death and feeling so doomed myself, I ignored it. I've never read the entire book. Part of me thinks that it's none of my business and another part of me feels so pained by the way it all ends that I just don't want to look.

Maybe I never will look. It just hasn't felt right.

What will I do with it?
It's too painful to read. I'm going to sell it here.

And a Baby Rattle Too

More from that store. This little rattle is perfect for my teething baby's tiny hands. He chews, throws, and shakes it, just like a baby should!

What will I do with it?
Keep it, of course. Since we're Montessori-ing it, he has a total of 3 toys, so each one is very important.

Dog on Wheels

Just bought a new toy for my little boy. I was trying to get him to pick one of the cheaper little cars that they keep in big jars near the front of the store, but he kept saying, "I want the car that you liked." And he meant this little wooden pull-toy dog that I had commented on when we first visited. And if you could see him when he is so matter of fact about things and when he talks like such a tiny adult about such things, you'd see how useless it is to resist. So it's best to act as if it were your idea in the first place and go along with it.

Besides, it reminded me of my favorite Belle and Sebastian song here:



What will I do with it?
We bought it and I'm sure it will serve us well in many years to come. Besides, he just gave up diapers, so we've saved enough money to buy 4 dogs just in the month he's been pottying.

After the Sun Sets

I think it's vintage textbook day! I just found 3 old textbooks that I've had around for a while. I love these old graphics. And I love the simple morality tales.

I bought these back in the days when I used to edit a zine. Ah, the early '90s, before the rise of the internet, and before the availability of really cheap office supplies and instant access to thousands upon thousands of potential readers and friends. If you were a kind of alienated, shy person, looking to find like minds out there somewhere in the world, you had to work really hard on your personal zine. My zines usually looked very low-budget (because they were), but a lot of time and care went into putting each issue together. And to help out with the design, I kept a stash of vintage books and magazines with lots of great illustrations and melodramatic titles. And I'd write about the music I liked or the films I'd seen and occasionally had contributions from others, but it was still edited according to my tastes and aesthetics.

When I see what the kids have available to them these days, I get a little bit jealous. A lot of the old zine editing involved an awful lot of manual labor. It was part craft, really, I suppose, with all of the cutting and pasting and assembling. And it was so much fun to create the things that you'd want to read.

I suppose that's what I'm trying to do with this blog. I'm trying to craft together something that looks like something I'd want to read. In the end, it might even look a bit like my old zines, once I find my "voice," or whatever. Or it might just look like a big collection of random objects. We'll see.

What will I do with it?
Keep it for a while. But you can buy a copy here! (Or here, temporarily!)

Merry Hearts and Bold

Oh, this book is part of my textbook trilogy for the day. I love this book for its variety. There are myths, legends, and biographies all mixed together. My favorite story is about a young Thomas Gainsborough, because it talks about how school was such a bad fit for him, but he still succeeded because he followed his interests. I see this as being a great example of the value of Unschooling. I also love this particular story, because Gainsborough hails from my husband's hometown. So it's nice to think of how little has changed from Gainsborough's day.

What will I do with it?
Keep it for now, but you can buy it here! (Or here, temporarily!)

Just For Fun

Isn't this cover great? The artwork inside is excellent as well, but this cover makes me want to make lots of chicken prints and embroidery. Those colors are so perfect for a little Gocco print. Hmmm . . . Maybe for the Spring . . .

What will I do with it?
Keep it for now, but you can buy it here. (Or here, temporarily!)

Musee Mecanique LP

The music on this album is so beautiful. The songs are recorded directly from machines at the Musee Mecanique in San Francisco, which houses several antique music players and arcade machines. And by antique, I mean that some are over 100 years old and a lot are at least 70 years old. There are newer models as well, but the real charm of the place is to feel as if you've stepped into a seaside entertainment center from the early 20th century.

The screen printing on the album art is really beautiful too. It features Laughing Sal, who seems to be the mascot for the place. Put some coins in her box and she laughs and laughs. You can hear her laughter here!

What will I do with it?
Sell it here! I'll have to buy the cds instead, because there's no room for albums in my future life.

Tubs Twist Single

What will I do with it?
Sell it here!

Television Pictures

My little boy did this portrait of our family. He's the character in the middle with a bag on his head. I'm on the left and his daddy's on the right. And we're on television! I don't know what inspired this portrait or why there's no mention of his baby brother. But I love the idea that we're just eyes, smiles, and legs!

What will I do with it?
Keep it, of course. It's our first family portrait!

Runaway Robot

I'm a fool for vintage sci-fi graphics, sounds, and scenarios. I especially love really technophobic science fiction. What if machines took over the world? What if?!? I love to imagine renegade Roombas and rogue robots (yes, I just saw Wall[dot]E.) plotting together in a series of bleeps and binary code.

01101100 01100101 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101001 01100011 01101011 01101100 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100001 01100010 01111001

01101100 01100101 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01101111 01110010 01100100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110000 01101001 01111010 01111010 01100001

01101100 01100101 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01100010 01110101 01111001 00100000 01110011 01101111 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101010 01100001 01110000 01100001 01101110 01100101 01110011 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110100 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 01100101 01110010 01111001 00101110

What will I do with it?
Exterminate? No, I'll sell it here and let someone else enjoy the beauty of its cover for years to come.

Jerry Cole Outer Limits

Ooooh, I love this spooky sci-fi surf music. And this record's one of the absolute BEST!

However. I don't have a turntable. And it doesn't look like there are any turntables in my future. (I don't even own a real cd player any more. My whole world is condensed onto my shiny black MacBook!)

So. . .

What will I do with it?
Sell it here! It's really fantastic. You should buy it!

Organic Cloth Diaper Case

So, I guess I should write about the things I purchase while I write about the things I sell.

We've meant to use cloth diapers for ages, but have been a little worried about how difficult it would be or how messy or how different from disposables it would be. At our new little organic baby store in town, though, we found the perfect solution. It's a snappable case that holds the cloth diaper in place. So it works like a disposable, but is washable and great. (It looks kind of like the diaper above, but with elastic and snaps.) It seems to hold the moisture in pretty well, too. He's only soaked through once and that was from sleeping through the night.

So we're going to save hundreds on diapers and we're going to reduce our trash by probably 30 - 40 percent. And our little baby will gets lots more attention because we'll have to change him a bit more often.

What will I do with it?
I'll probably buy a couple more cases (They're $14 each) and a dozen more cloth prefolds so I'm not washing diapers all day.

Bend the Rules Placemats and Napkins

These are the evidence of my very first swap. I joined the Bend the Rules Sewing Group's second swap, because I wanted to see how swaps worked and if they were any fun. And indeed they are. I made these for a woman who said that her kitchen was country-themed. She said that the theme was specifically roosters, but I couldn't find any good rooster prints. So, I thought a nice bandana print would do for a country kitchen. Hope she likes them!

What will I do with them?
I had to send them off, even though I really liked them after I was finished with them. Lucky me, though, I got these in return!

Big Eyed Girl with Kitty

There's something so sweet to me about this kind of art. But my husband's tastes run a little more contemporary and subdued. So, a wall full of cute kids is out of the question. And these days, I'm much more likely to hang up the latest collage by my 3 year old than anything thrifted or found.

What will I do with it?
Sell it! Even though it wouldn't look good in my home, it's still a lovely piece of art from half a century ago.

UPDATE:
It sold to a woman who bought it with its partner little boy with puppy picture. I'm so happy that the two can live together still.

Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days

I found my copy on this very useful and wonderful website.

I avoid a lot of marketing books, because I resent being marketed to, and I don't want to be the obnoxious marketer who makes you more likely to flee than to buy. However, it just turns out that I dislike bad marketing and would actually happily support marketing that brought things that I like to me. So, that's how I'm trying to view marketing now. I'm trying to see it as merely a way to introduce myself to people who don't already know where to find my product.

Like this blog, for instance. In a way, it's marketing, because every image points you to a place where you can find the object so that you can own it yourself. This might be annoying. Or it might be very helpful that someone else found the exact item that you sought and told you exactly where to go to find it. I know when I look at other peoples' books, I often think that I'd like to buy a copy for myself, but I forget to look for it later, or I don't know the exact specifics to be sure I'm buying the right thing.

And everything that I have on this site is something that I've connected to at some point in my life. So I'm sharing my life and sending it off at the same time. And rather than marketing, I see this as a sort of seeking for similar souls. I'm cataloging my life and hoping to make friends with people with similar catalogs.

What will I do with it?
I've got much to learn, so I'm going to keep it, but you can find your own copy here!

Blue Ridge Parkway Viewmaster Reel

And I just love the 3 dimensional. And with Viewmaster, I love the outdated photos; the muted colors of the landscapes, the un-sophisticated poses of the models, and the layering of the dimensions. My favorite Viewmaster reels are the ones with the claymation puppets. But these scenery sets are great, too, because their pre-Photoshop blandness makes them so beautifully dull.

What will I do with it?
I have to sell my whole collection! You can buy this one here.

Screen Life

Once upon a time, I was a huge Michael Nesmith fan. I loved the Monkees. I loved his solo work. And I collected tons of stuff related to the Monkees and Michael Nesmith. I've gotten rid of most of it, but this one got stuck in with all of my old magazines and gossip rags.

What will I do with it?
Sell it here! It's just another thing that is just too delicate for me to keep. And should I feel the urge to collect again, I know that this little piece of history is out there somewhere waiting for me to find it. Perhaps before I sell it, I should check out the article about Elvis's newborn baby girl, now that I know what her life is like now.

Dotty Dripple and Taffy

Oh, how I love these old Dell comics with their sweet pledges to parents to publish only wholesome fare. But they're in such delicate condition and I'm in a not-so-delicate state of flux right now. . .

What will I do with it?
I have to sell it. I've read it plenty and it's not strong enough to survive 2 tots.

Cooking is Fun

Oh, this book is too cute! We'll see if I can figure out a way to keep my little collection of vintage cookbooks. I love their illustrations so much. And I love their decadent recipes. And this one has such lovely illustrations!

What will I do with it?
I have to keep it. It's so very tiny and so very beautiful. But I do recommend buying it. You can find a copy here.

Rose Hawthorne

And yet more New England nostalgia for the day!

This book was in our school library, in my favorite section, Biography. I still love to know the stories of people's lives, which is why I love to read blogs so much or why I love Hollywood gossip so much, or why I constantly look up Wikipedia pages about the most random people.

But this book has stayed with me, because I especially loved to read about the Hawthornes of Massachusetts. And this book was particularly gripping because it was about her dedication to helping people with incurable cancer. After her husband died, she started her own order of nuns and they tended to incurables in their last days. It seemed quite noble to me and made me love her family all the more.

What will I do with it?
I'll keep it and maybe my sons will read it one day too, when I'm teaching them the history of New England with special emphasis on the authors and their families. But you, of course, can find your own copy here.

The Pilgrim Story

This lovely book is from a trip to New England in my youth. It was such a sweet period of nautical nostalgia and pilgrim obsession. Oh and Nathaniel Hawthorne. We toured his homes and the house that inspired The House of the Seven Gables. And I fell in love with the mystery and drama of the early puritans. Sadly, though, the witch museum in Salem was closed for repairs. So I never got to witness as much of the history as I wanted. Perhaps a trip north is in order.

What will I do with it?
Too many memories. I've gotta keep it. But you can buy it here!

A Collector's Guide to Salem Witchcraft & Souvenirs

I bought this book just for the pretty pictures and because I was truly fascinated by the witch-hunts of the late 1600s in my younger days. I suppose I worried that, had I lived in that time, I might have been accused for being a little bit different.

In later years, I learned that one of the mothers of the accused shared my exact name. Could I be sharing the spirit of a woman who mourned her daughter's suffering? Could her memories have passed down to me through the generations? I'd heard that our ancestors were some of the early settlers, but I thought it might be misinformation.

So, it keeps me on the lookout for information about Salem and the witches, because I feel an ancient kinship to my namesake and to the outcasts of the past.

And this book provides a nice little synopsis of the events and a very informative history of the collector spoon craze, which originated in Salem in 1898 when a clever business owner decided to make a tea spoon to sell to the tourists who wanted to take home a tiny piece of Salem's history.

What will I do with it?
Oh, I have to keep this book too. But it's such a great read, even if you don't collect Salem witch souvenirs, that you should buy your own copy here.

Passionate Journey

This book is so gorgeous that I hardly want to think about it living with 2 vivacious little boys. Each image is so very moving, though.

So. . .

What will I do with it?
I'm going to sell it. But I've listed it a bit high so that only someone who loves the book will buy it.

Now We Are Six

Now We Are Six

I loved this little set of Winnie the Pooh books that I received as a boxed set as a child. I especially loved this book with its whimsical, sweet poetry. And now I can read the poems to my own children.

What will I do with it?
Treasure it. It's still in great shape and my 3 year old loves bears.

Van Gogh: The Passionate Eye

This lovely little book includes a brief biography of the artist and some critical essays of his work as well. Of course, it also features some nice samples of his work.

And I have it because I've been obsessed with Vincent Van Gogh since childhood. I heard this song and had to know more.



As I got older, I felt a little embarrassed that this song might be so cheesy and that it might be a bit cliche'd to be an alienated teenager into Van Gogh. So I didn't talk about how much I loved his passionate, expressive style.

But later, I heard this song and fell in love with his work again.



When I went to Amsterdam to the Van Gogh Museum, it made me feel connected and alienated at the same time. You could feel his aloneness, but you felt it so much that there was a connection.

What will I do with it?
I've gotta keep it, but you can buy your own copy here!

Simple Sewing With A French Twist

Holy cow! Or should I say Sacre Bleu? This book is so full of beautiful photos and excellent little projects. It's amazing just to browse it.

But. . .
What Will I Do With It?
I have to sell it. I'll make a few things and then pass it along to a new novice like myself.

Retail Business Kit for Dummies

This is really such a useful book that it's a bit hard to think about getting rid of it.

But. . .

What Will I Do With It?
I will sell it, because there are so many useful books about the same thing available at the library. Sigh. No time for clutter! Time to move on!

Facts of Life and Love for Teenagers

This was the only romantic guidance I had when I was a teenager. I highly recommend it, despite the datedness of some of its advice.

What will I do with it?
Keep it for now, but I might sell it later. Until then, you can find it here.

Stitch 'n Bitch The Knitters Companion

This is such a fantastic, useful book that it's hard to think of parting with it, but I think I'll be able to get it again if I need it.

What Will I Do With It?
Sell it.

Stitch 'n Bitch Nation

And here's another great book from the same author, editor, Debbie Stoller.

What will I do with it?
Sell. It's a great book and somebody somewhere needs it more than me.

Happy Hooker

I've learned that we're probably going to leave Kentucky within a year. At first, we thought we'd move in 3 months, but now it looks like we'll move in 6 months. Where will we go? We don't really know. But it's time for a huge change! And it means that I'm going to get rid of 10 times more stuff than I thought when I started this blog. Liberating? You bet! But very, very scary.

So, this book, which has wonderful patterns and serves as a wonderful reference, is going to find its own new home.

What will I do with it?
Sell it! I've learned all I can from it and I can find it used again when I need it in my new land .

The Stuff Game

I have a little game that I play when I need to clean or just need to deal with piles of stuff.

First, I look at the numbers shown on the digital clock in the kitchen. I add up all of the numbers and then I flit from pile of clutter to pile of clutter and I sort out exactly as many items as determined by the digital clock tally.

So, if the time is 10:55, as it is now, I add 1+0+5+5 to get 11. Then I go to my bedroom and sort 11 items in there, then I go to the dining room and sort 11 items in there and so on. Nothing ever gets completely clean, but after an hour or so of this game, things look at least respectable.

Please let me know any cleaning games that you play! I'm curious!