Off the wall......

Winter is taking it's toll on old L.D. ........

This was posted on a house next to a light house in Maine.  I guess I am insulted but maybe it is just suppose to be cute.

Did you know that they grow ostriches in Iowa?  These are some chicks that were on display at the State Fair.  I wonder if ostrich meat tastes like chicken?

All you meat eaters, enjoy the view.  I miss going outside and grilling on the patio.

This little burro kept walking around behind this zoo worker and butting her in the behind.  I don't know if it were trained to do that or if it was the burro's way of saying feed me.  The girl got understandable disgusted after while.

On a final note, this is a moss garden that I found while hiking up the hills in Acadia National Park in Maine.  It should make you think I am coming back from my "off the wall" behavior.  It is green and calming.  I was so off the wall that I almost forgot to blog yesterday,  but I am back on schedule.  

I bought this wonderful external drive that was going to be so nice to have, and my old laptop doesn't have enough power to make the drive work.  The usb connection sends out some power but not enough. I really am disappointed as it was going to be so nice to have a 500GB storage for pictures.  I have so many photos on my IPhoto that it makes it so slow and I can't shut it down after I work on it. 
Anyway, thanks for your visit.  I really know things will smooth out and I will see you tomorrow.

Twirl design mystery....

I like how one can find information on the net about something and when you return you can't pull it up again.  I have a sugar and creamer, small size, that has a pattern on it that I can't find anywhere in antique books, or glass company sites.   Two days ago, I found one visual of this on the internet and they described that the glass companies had become inspired to design glass in memory of the Comet.  I thought it was Hiailey's comet, but I can't find the site again, and I know I should have bookmarked it.

They said it was a twirling comet around a star. It was a confusing description when they also showed bowls with spiral decorations that looked more like tornadoes.

The set was given to me by an older woman and man, long gone now, who my mom and dad were friends.  We visited them often on their farm and she was an avid old time gardener. I found out at a reunion the other day, that their son use to be my mom's boyfriend.  I really don't know if dad knew that but my middle name came from that boyfriend's name.  No, he was long gone before I was born, I can hear your thinking out there. I guess after having three boys, it seemed easy to tack an old boyfriend's middle name on your fourth son.

Here is the bottom view.  I have yet to find a glass book that will give one a simple vocabulary on the glass designs.  I found that they use to sell sets of  glass pieces in one box and one design is called a wheat pattern, but the star and the rosette are names that come to my mind when I look at them.  Berry sets came in a set in a box and they also had dessert sets.  I have one pitcher from that set.

I am not too concerned by all of this, I will get off the glass theme for awhile.  When I can actually find truth in books about it I might revisit the whole thing. I really am more fascinated by the history of the what's and the when's.  Oh yes, what few things that I did find, just like on the Antique's Road Show, I am not going to be rich.   Thanks for reading.......

Color Therapy For All.......

I miss it all. The Christmas colors are great but the natural colors of growing things are better. I am going through withdrawal and I need to see it again, soon.

Here is some green for us all to soak in. The neighbor's dog Penny and her plastic beer bottle is enjoying a romp on green grass.

A splash of magenta will be good for all of us. It has been a long time since my zinnia's were alive, so here is a fix of a great color.

Orange is good for the system also.  I was noticing oranges in the bowl the other day and thought warmth.  Now that they are all getting frozen and dying in the south, we probably won't see oranges for a while.  This orange geranium can fill the bill for now.

Yellow is good for warming the blood.  The green grasshopper will hatch out in the spring but we do need to see yellow now to keep us going.

More color to let you know that white is not the only color out there.  I know snow has shades of blue and can be beautiful but it really isn't as exciting as a garden full of blooms of many colors.

Lastly a warm blue sky.  The clouds are floating by with a gentle breeze to help one to relax and appreciate the air and the green grass.

We have one day of melting coming on Thursday but things don't melt much at 37 degrees.  Sorry to jerk you around so much,  I hope a little of the  color above will help you through until I don't know when.  Thanks........

Curiosity Shop........

I like to turn old things into useful items.  This cupboard was in the back of an old furniture store. The cupboard has it's original glass on it and the shelves were filled with very old containers of stains and oils used by the store to touch up scratches on their wood furniture that they sold. I salvaged this probably thirty years ago.

I had forgotten that the stains were in it until this summer when I was cleaning out the basement and noticed a box full of antique containers, both metal and glass with glass stoppers. One real curious thing about it is that the top of it has pulleys on it.  It makes me think that it might be a dumb waiter cupboard in a kitchen, that was raised and lowered from a kitchen to a basement area to keep foods cool. I don't have any proof of it but the brass rollers are old and the intent seems logical.

This is not a great picture, as you can see that there is a reflection of another "what not" cupboard of my wife's.  I will reshoot the whole thing sometime to share more of the contents but the major things that you can see I will explain.

The brown pitcher is old and belong to my Grandma Brooks. It has seen better days and if I had actual access to a kiln, I could reconnect all pieces with glaze and a refire.  The blue mixing bowl behind it is one of my other collections.  I like to keep antique clay bowls and this blue glazed bowl is beautiful.  It was not in the cupboard but was just sitting out holding some oranges to snack on whenever.

The orange molded quail on the top shelf is from one of my students who gave it to me during one of first years of teaching in the 70's.  He was a sweet guy who had made it in shop, and he wanted me to have it.  That was back when I was so young as a teacher that I never thought about students actually liking me.

The three pottery pieces have three diverse histories.  The middle pot is one that I bought in California probably thirty years ago at a then Pottery Barn business.  It sold dishes and thrown pots.

The one on the right, shown above, is one that I inherited or begged for from my kids relatives.  It is actually a tourist trap pot that is probably fifty years old or more. A distant cousin of my kid's grandmother would send her these things every once in awhile. It came from the New Mexico area.  It wasn't made by someone famous as there is no name on it but it done well as an old pueblo Indian pot.

The one on the left, shown above, was made by me.  It has a forked tongue snake carved into its shoulder rim.  I took a graduate class in which we were to create artifact artworks.  I created this pot by using the coil method and then I polished it with a smooth rock from Lake Superior.  Maria Montoya Martinez and her husband used this method with their famous blackware pottery.  I originally fired it on a beach with charcoal, but right before I quit teaching I put it in a kiln and fired it to 1200 degrees F.  It made it stronger than the low firing that it has had all these years.

I have many different things in the cupboard and others cupboards too, that have memories. Pinecones, driftwood, and a marjolica bird that my father-in-law had found in an auction box of junk can be seen in the picture.

I appreciate history and the things that came from different eras, so many things that I grab up are meaningless to some, but to me they tell a story of how things were made and about the designs used in our country's past.  Some items are just everyday items that were used by a generation back, but to me they are a piece of their lives.  They aren't living  anymore but some of the things that surrounded them can be appreciated.   Yes, I am the junk man, but I doubt I am not the only one in blog land as I view others' blogs.  It is fun to collect and fun to remember.     Thanks for reading......

Sunday's stuff.....

A box in my spare room that I  brought home from my parents' place. The label is clear  as to whatto originally came in the box.

Contents on the label are all in there, but what is with the extra stuff? An extra engine, caboose and a few cars that probably fit in between.  I don't know for sure why there are more.  My brother sent this set to my dad, who was in his 70's at the time.  He never played with it nor wanted to, but he watched my two boys set it up and play with it.  That was fun for him.  He really loved his grandkids and never saw them enough.

Again, I have a train with no track, well, yes there is one piece as you can see.
I thought the box and it's contents made a neat photo.  When I get them sorted into the two sets, then I will try my hand a taking some fun photos.  It would look great set up on that new dining room table.  Well maybe I shouldn't do that!  Well on the tablecloth on the dining room table.  I don't want to be the first to put a scratch in it.

I wanted to show you the thing that I have been working on beside the rocks.  This is a piece of scrap walnut that the shop teacher had thrown away, The back part that looks like rocks in the back is actually the rough part of the walnut slab.  I don't know if I am done with it.  I need to add a couple more things.

We are getting out of the house today. The side streets aren't great but the main streets and highways are pretty much clear now.  It still is an unbelievable cold experience to be outside.  Have a restful Sunday.   Thanks for stopping by.......

Saturday Scatterings.......

Can you imagine sitting on somebody's lap and it is  snowing, and you stay there until your lap filled with a snowdrift?

Ok, it is funky I know but this picture hit me funny as the snow kept loading up the seat of the top chair.

Have you ever worked on an assembly line?  Can you imagine being on this assembly line and painting just one part as it travels by you.  The shoes are all the same, but there is not a single one of these that are painted alike.  What are the odds that just two would have turned out just alike?  When I took my tree apart, I evaluated the things that were being removed. I suppose the smaller six came as a set and either I have lost one of the bigger Santa's or broke it because it should be an even number of four.

Does "work to be done," stare out at you everywhere you go?  I see that the roof of this birdhouse is becoming unfastened.  I was just going to take a picture, not find more work to do.  The birdhouse was a thrown away birdhouse by one of the shop kids at school after their class.  They had tossed it into the dumpster. I brought it home, nailed it back together in places, then painted it myself.  I also see the hole is too small for even a wren. I also need to drill the hole to be bigger in size.

Can you find the Fluer de Lis design on this dish?  I was taking pictures of glass a couple of days ago and I had never seen that  design before in this dish.  Can you see it?  It is the design that can be seen decorating family crests and is used to decorate flags in European countries.  I thought it was French in origin, but I see that the British also have claim to it also. It is actually a divided relish tray, and I got it form my mom's things. I think it belonged to my Grandmother first. If you click on the image you can see the design has been blended in with a rosette flower below it.  It almost looks like a folk art design when it is combined with the flower and a couple of dots.


I asked a question the other day on my "photo a day" blog about Jack Sparrow and asked about what he said in the second movie of "Pirates of the Caribbean."  In the movie he has been pulled out of the water from escaping a prison island.  He was asked about what was going on and they were somewhat disgusted with him, so he told them he was now looking for something.  He said he was looking for "shiny" and that was the direction the boat should be directed.  He didn't explain it at all and the crew looked like he has lost his mind.   It was a confusing line even to the viewers, but what he had was a drawing of a key, the sketch of the  key that would fit the chest that holds the heart of Davy Jones.  He was looking for "shiny."   He never explained it and you had to follow the movie through for quite awhile to think back about the definition of shiny.

We will have survived -15 degrees F. by the time your read this.  We are now promised that it will be our coldest and our last for quite some time.  We are suppose to see 27 degrees in the future maybe even 30.   Thanks for reading my scatter........

Snowed in again...

Another snow storm and getting a little stir crazy, so I  took down one of the Christmas trees.  While in the dining room,  I put some of the dishes away that we had washed and left until later to put into the built-in buffet.  While moving things around in there, I found some things that were stored away for awhile and this saucer came out.

I like to collect things that are well done artistically and this illustration on this plate fascinated me.  I found it at a large flea market area on the North shore of Minnesota.  All summer they leave out large tables, night and day, covered with dishes and such things.  They have tarps that they put over it all when it rains but it is a lot of tarps that they need to cover them all.   We haven't been up there of six years so I must have bought it back then sometime and we just stuffed it in the buffet.

I at first thought it was hand-painted but now I see that it is a great stencil of a painting.  I also found that the saucer is a little rare, made in the 1935 time era, in England.  When I researched it, I found companies that were searching for everything in the set.  They actually had saucers but cups get broken more easily and they were looking for them.  You could buy from the company and also put your wish list on there if you wanted to find something.

No, I am not going to collect a set of dishes when I only have one.  It just makes me a little curious if I could ever buy a cup to go with it.  There were two variations of the Greenwood Tree pattern and mine is with the gold trim.  The other pattern has a green glaze trim and the handles of the cups are glazed green.

On ebay, I found a person who sells out things like this and she had one item that I wouldn't want in that pattern.  The plates are neat but I am still not going to do anything with this.

One has to wonder, how the one saucer got to an area near Silver Bay, Minnesota.  One also has to wonder if it ever was a complete set or they had just the cup and saucer.  I always find the history to be interesting and one would love to follow it's movements just like we do with genealogy. We bought a very nice set of dishes at that Minnesota flea sale for ten dollars and we  still use them everyday.  I assume the owners actually could be going to the cities and be bringing things up from estate sales there and in Duluth too.

Something else that I found in the buffet today.  I pick up marbles and put them in my pocket when I would find them down at my parents place.  I must have found this, brought it home and dropped it into a vase.  I found it there along with the other in the photo.  I remember having glass marbles that looked like that as a kid. It actually had a broken chip in it so I can sit it down and it won't roll away.

When I was a kid in our old house on the farm, I would put marbles behind a wood block and the remove it and watch them roll to the other end of the room.  It was a crooked floor.

The other marble is one that they call a bisque marble.  In pottery when you fire clay for the first time it is called a bisque firing.  Marbles in the 1900's were made this way, fired balls of clay and then sold to kids.  They are not very uniform and wouldn't roll around much.  I find these out in my garden while digging around in the soil.  I have four or five of them and they are all different sizes and color.  Again, I must have put it in my pocket and then dropped it in the vase which use to be setting out,  kept it safe for me.

It is a time for a change around here. We got out on Tuesday to get ready for this storm.  I doubt we get out any sooner than Saturday.  I hear 27 degrees above is coming sometime next week.  That will be a heatwave.   Thanks for reading.....