Tag: Shopping

An idea to sell my thrift store finds online

I have always been a great thrift store shopper.
I don’t mind dust, mold and the odd smell of old clothes at all if it means turning up a Glidden bowl for a dollar. (I’ve researched online and this bowl circa maybe 1950 is worth around 36 to 55 dollars.)

I’m very lucky to have so close to me an “open air” thrift store. Open air because they sell directly out of the back of a moving van and on a piece of sidewalk. A chain link fence serves as a makeshift clothing rack.

If one wanted to spend much time musing over the morbid details of how they might have acquired these goods (I think it is when an old dear dies) it might spoil it. Especially the bags of clothes… ignominiously jumbled together in 40 gallon black trash bags. But that is how I found a genuine Pashmina. I thought seriously of the person that owned it and what became of them and it wasn’t with a light heart that I added it to my collection. But it was of obvious quality and I had to nab it.

My love of ceramics began when I was about 11 and tried to learn how to throw pots on a potting wheel. We had a real live potter staying with us and she gave lessons to a bunch of neighborhood kids for free. But there was limited clay and time and only one wheel and the endeavor was too short lived to make me a child prodigy in the art of pottery making.

I began to collect vases in my 20’s all of which eventually got broken; the saddest breakage case was an large, baby blue Abingdon vase. Until my junk guys showed up last year I hadn’t been able to find a decent stick of pottery at a decent price for ages. So my collection stagnated at just a few bowls and odds and ends.

Shows like Antique Roadshow and Cash in the Attic make everyone know the value of what they’ve got and it’s impossible to nab a real find in actual thrift stores which is why I love my neighborhood junk guys. I think they do know what they’ve got but their boss has already overseen the initial haul and what ends up in Brooklyn in the back of a truck has been deemed second rate-not quite worthy of antique dealers.So it’s no skin off their noses to let me have gem after gem for a fraction of what they’re really worth.

Because they haven’t got walls, open air means weather permitting, this past week is the 1st time I’ve seen them in months. It might be a blessing that they hide out all winter otherwise I would have an overflowing collection on every table and counter in my house. One can only indulge in collecting for so long before one has to start thinking about storage.
My idea to sell my finds online solves this problem, if folks want to buy them of course.
But you never know until you try.
JunkShop@mccormicky.yawn coming soon!

Ditching your wardrobe.

I think I overdosed on Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style. I cleaned out my closets, getting rid of quite a lot of clothes. I really envied the women he advised being able to walk to their closets or dressers and pick out surefire outfits they knew looked good on them.I have never been able to do that and it pissed me off.I also don’t have any of the 10 things on the checklist they say every woman needs to have in order to be in style except one very tatty old cashmere sweater and a couple of black dresses.
After about 4 episodes I thinned my closet of all the clothes I had that I didn’t wear or that didn’t look good on me which left me with hardly anything to wear at all. This show ought to have have a warning label of don’t try this at home unless you have a 5,000 clothes budget to replace everything you just gave to charity (or bagged, meaning to give to charity).

I veered toward black,baggy clothes pretty much all my life (body issues) except while in art school. But I was thinner. For me, wearing colorful more body conscious clothes goes hand in hand with how thin I think I am. The bigger I feel the bigger and blacker the clothes I buy. It’s definitely time to lose 15 pounds. Easier said than done but my weight and the style of clothes I buy and wear go hand in hand. I really won’t like anything I try on until I lose a bit of weight.

So it seems I will put off really restocking my closet or else I will end up with just another batch of heavy black shrouds in my closet. Besides, now that it is winter all I need is a great new coat! A. is getting me one for my birthday.Yay.

Shopper’s Bulimia

lynn.jpg
This is the style lady for the Village Voice,Lynn Yaeger, the one who put a name on my disorder for me:shopper’s bulimia.This is the thing that I do. I buy clothes and return them or want to return them the instant I get them home and try them on in front of my harsh mirrors.

I try to read her column when I can because her personal look is so strange and I find it compelling to read about what such a strange looking woman thinks about fashion. She does dirty work, like me and she gets paid to write about her bad shopping experiences,unlike me, although she is positively, chirpily cheerful about it. I’m much more disagreeable than she in my reviews of badly staffed stores. She last wrote about trekking out to Target in Brooklyn to see the line by Alice Temperly Continue reading Shopper’s Bulimia

My Head is exploding!

I wanted more work.
I got more work.
Then I got too much work with offers of more work on top of that!

It’s all repeat clients, too. Not one ad I answered paid off.To know me is to love me, I guess.

My boyfriend’s youngest brother came to stay with us right as this wave of work hit me. Since then I have barely left the desk in the living room and he probably thinks I am a huge freak. Of course I am a huge freak, so that’s ok.

I had to run out of the house today before I shot someone. I had done the dishes 4 times since I woke up. They just kept coming. I’d hoped a whiff of a clue would dawn on my roommates but it did not, not once.

It’s like they all decided that if it has tits it can do the dishes.
And then it can put the lotion back in the basket.

Even my roommate who isn’t on my team (euphemism) said “oh yeah, I know” as he put his peanut buttered knife into the sink just as I was putting the last dish on the drainboard and bitching to him as I slaved. I’m all alone with a crew of dish users. And I’ve had ridiculous fits of hatred over it.
So I ran to the haven of Macy’s where all the fall clothes live and taunt me with their higher price tags… summer clothes are cheaper, aren’t they, especially when your uniform of choice is a tshirt and jeans and flip flips. I sound snazzy, don’t I?

All of a sudden Calvin Klein has decided to produce a line of clothes I could actually imagine wearing. Almost. I tried on the raincoat/trenchcoat with flared skirt thing and felt too much of a Vivienne Westwood vibe. It’s amazing: since I pledged to try clothes on before I buy them I hardly ever buy clothes any more.

To further put off the rechaining of myself to the computer I watched a movie I’d rented last week and finally cleared time on the tv to watch it. This was only done with much passive aggressive huffing. I’m not proud but I have my ways. The film is Broken English and it was pretty good. Parker Posey stars and it’s directed by Zoe Cassavettes (sp) so her mom (Gena Rowlands) was in it,too. The lead character drinks her way from beginning to end. I was impressed.