Morels, Washing Machines, Painting and Glass: What We've Been Up to

It is such a beautiful time of year. 

Redbuds are in bloom, the dogwood is just starting,

and Daisy still doesn't like thunder.

She wanted in last week when we had a stormy day, and who could resist those eyes? She did give us a scare the other day and we are not sure what's up, but have an ominous feeling about it. She couldn't get up on her own. Not even a bribe with a treat would get her up. She came inside, laid down, and didn't get up again for about 12 hours. Finally we gave her some ibuprofen in desperation, and after another half hour or so she wobbled to her feet and went outside. By mid-day she was back to normal. What we are afraid of is those dreaded tumors that are so common with this breed of dog. I remember my son's dog behaved something like this for about a year before he finally died. I hope it was something simpler--maybe a pulled muscle or something like that, but we shall see. She is getting older, and yellow labs usually have a lifespan of about 10 years, sadly.

On a happier note, we got this old wood washing machine base in the online auction the other day, and now are in the process of using my old machine that fell apart to make this one whole again. It will be a little more work than we had hoped but it will work just fine once we're done.

And we've made progress on the typewriters I got in the first online auction a couple weeks ago. One is cleaned up and ready to go, and Larry has worked on the other once since this photo was taken.

I also won this cabinet in the auction. Talk about dirty! The photo on the auction site only showed the top right corner, so it was a veritable pig in a poke. It is larger than I thought it might be, so that's a good thing. I've scrubbed it up since the photo and now it is loaded in the van to go to the booth tomorrow.

This is the cool part of the cabinet--those little holes covered with screen wire. I supposed this was used as a pie cupboard?

I am just about done with this little dresser too. The mis-matched knobs are because I was trying to decide which ones to use, but have now settled on the one on the top right. That's because...

I painted the drawers pale pink, with this little flower stencil in the center of each. I really wanted this piece to have a springtime look, so I went for spring colors.

Outside is greening up nicely. The bridal wreath spirea is outdoing itself this year.

Some of the other auction finds:

This large black vase was a surprise. It was in with a box of blue glass--actually there are two of these. This one has clear "threading" which is actually spun glass; looks like silver, doesn't it? The other has amber threading that looks like gold. They're about 12" tall each. I wasn't much interested in them and to be honest thought there were something from Walmart or similar place, but that glass threading--and the fact that they were black glass and not pottery/ceramic--made me pause. After cleaning them up, they looked really nice so I posted this photo to a Facebook glass group. To make this long story shorter, these are HC Fry Glass and are fairly rare! So now I've ordered a book on Fry Glass to learn more.

Some of the other glass from the online auction, after being washed up. It was all so dirty from years or being stored in a buiding right by the road, so years of dust and dirt and dead bugs. Yuck. But all of this plus the black vases cost less than $20 so I didn't mind a little elbow grease. All is now priced for the booths or listed on ebay.

And one other thing: it's mushroom season! Larry found these lovelies last week and went back and got more over the weekend. He calls these mollymoochers but most people call them morels. Delicious eating, I assure you, once they've been cleaned up.

That's a bit of what's been going on in our neck of the woods. What's happening at your place?

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