Category: cluttering

gifts from the thrift

How is the first official week of winter treating you? (Game of Thrones fans will get the reference here….)

Here is some vegetable bunting I made for the kitchen because….well, just because:

Here’s some stuff from the op-shop lately. (I buy most of my clothes from the op-shop also, but they aren’t all that exciting to photograph.) The sweet, the curious and the plain old strange have come my way…

Something about this wee vintage dog appealed to me – the way he is obviously such a good dog and his face is on that angle of appealing to a person standing near….also he is standing on the tucker box – guarding it, or wanting to eat it’s contents…?

New (to-me) art for the wall – an American Jay bird. I love the pencil of the foliage and the way only the bird is coloured. This is on wood and has a kind of enameled or something surface. Quite unusual.

A Holly Hobbie tile, mounted on wood. This will go to one of the manifold little girls in my life.

Not op-shopped, but these two sweeties were being thrown out when Fraser’s grandfather moved house, so I duly rescued them.

Finally, a strange little mushroom man. Yes, I am aware that he is quite penile in appearance…I think this is partly what appealed. He’s like a wee fertility totem! 🙂

This is why I love op-shopping – the randomness, the chance – you just never know what you might uncover. It really is a treasure hunt.

June 6, 2013
poetry-nerd-gasm

The Red Cross hold an annual book sale here. It is amazing – two giant halls filled with books, magazines, music. It is so big and so busy it can be more than a little overwhelming! I go every year and always find incredible things.

This year I decided to focus just on vintage children’s books (one of my passions) and I found plenty….but then I couldn’t help myself having a stroll past the poetry table on the way out and I am SO GLAD I did.

Firstly I found these beauties – the Plath is a recent edition and looks in mint condition – like no one ever read it (shame on you, previous owner). I love the mushrooms on the cover. I was excited to find this early James K Baxter (pre-beard!) and someone had sellotaped a cutting out of the newspaper about his death in the back cover with a rather depressing photograph of him dead in his coffin.

Then I found the Lowell and Ashberry and was very happy. I had nothing by either poet in my collection so they fill a substantial gap.

But then…..THEN…>>>>>>

I found a copy of Turtle Island by Gary Snyder! A book I’ve been hunting for for years.

I was so excited I yelped ‘OH MY GOD!’ out very loud and clutched it to my chest in a possessive manner.

A man standing next to me looked at me with some amusement and said ‘What? WHAT??’

so I held up the book so he could see the cover.

He pulled a face conveying how unimpressed he was and shrugged….proving that one person’s poetry-nerd-gasm is another’s ‘whatevs’.

I love Gary Snyder is an irrational, gushing kind of way. His books are hard to find. (If anyone has any Snyder they feel ambivalent about….contact me, maybe we could swap or I can buy them off you!)

There is a wonderful photograph on the back of the book of him with his wee son Kai. I guess he was in his 30s here:

In my studio, I have a photograph of him in his late 70s, with Alan Ginsberg which I snipped out of a New Yorker and framed. I love how happy he looks and how typically lugubrious Ginsberg looks. When I’m feeling blah about poetry, I just need to look at this picture and it makes me feel a bit better. It reminds me that a) poetry is for life and therefore I (hopefully!) have a long time to write, to improve, to grow in my work…and b) friendship, especially friendship with other writers is how you keep going through the poetry life:

Here it is in all it’s beauty:

Best Red Cross book sale find EVER.

June 17, 2012