Seller's remorse (part 2)

Last night a nice son bought a pin from my shop for a mother's day present, and I'm thrilled that it will end up with someone's mom, and at the same time sorry that I sold it.

This pin belonged to my grandmother, Alice, a woman who was less than five feet tall but still imposing. She was a schoolteacher until they made her quit when she got married. She was a good cook and a perfectionist, which meant that cakes went down the toilet if they weren't perfect. (And why the toilet? A throwback to the days on the farm when she had an outhouse?)

I have vivid memories of her big house in Kansas City, where she always had one jar of baby marshmallows and one jar of chocolate chips; she had celluloid reindeer on her mantle every Christmas; there was an attic with holes in the floor over toward one edge, but trunks of old clothes that we were allowed to play with; and she always made the lightest home-baked crescent rolls and a green Jell-O mold with cottage cheese that my sister loved, but not me.

One of my last memories of her, and one of the most vivid, is driving with her into downtown Kansas City at about 40 miles an hour in the left two lanes of the highway. It was the last time I ever let her drive when we were together, though she kept her car (an old Dodge Dart) for a number of years, unwilling to admit she shouldn't use it. It was at least three or four years after that before she was finally diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

I have other pieces of her jewelry, but know I'll miss this brooch and memories of it pinned to her precise little suits. I'm starting a collection of her china though (Russel Wright in chartreuse) and I have her roll recipe, which I haven't made in years. Maybe I'll try it out again for mother's day.

Exploring memory

I just finished The Gathering, by Anne Enright, a marvelous book of a dysfunctional Irish family (does literature have any other kind?) that is told by an unreliable narrator--a grieving woman who freely admits that she's not really sure what did or didn't happen in the past that led her brother to walk into the ocean with a pocket full of rocks.

"We know that real events have real effects," the narrator says. "In a way that unreal events do not. Or nearly real. Or whatever you call the events that play themselves out in my head."

(The book is sort of like that throughout.)

One of the fun things about having kids is watching the unreliability of memory in action. It's much harder to judge where your own memory is playing tricks, since you don't always have the objective ruler to point out your errors. But with your children, as they retell the stories of their lives, you can see where they have conflated events, incorporated bits of movies or stories as their own, or simply made things up.

When my youngest was 3, we got a lab puppy for Christmas from our neighbors. But she wasn't ready to be weaned yet, so Christmas morning we wrapped up a picture of the puppy hanging in a stocking and gave that to the kids. Now my son is convinced, and I've heard him tell this story frequently, that they came down Christmas morning and Stella was hanging there by the fireplace. We've told him a time or two it didn't happen that way, but the memory--borne out of the picture--is as real for him as anything.

Now I'm happy to let that memory ride. As Enright's book shows, there are far darker childhood mysteries to deal with.

Pricing vintage

I've been buying and inheriting and coveting vintage items my whole life, but it's only over the past year that I've had to come up fair prices at which to sell them.

It started with my Barbies on e-bay--finding websites online that specialize in Barbies so I could look at their little butts and hairstyles and figure out what the model was and what year they were made. Then doing searches on e-bay and elsewhere on the Internet to get some idea of what they were going for, and how much it mattered if someone had gnawed off their fingers or drawn on a bra with red pen.

[Side note: My teenage son was helping me list these, and one of my fondest memories is of him bending down to take a close-up photograph of a Barbie butt. If only he hadn't had the camera, it would have made a priceless picture!]

Now for the past three months I've been selling vintage items on Etsy (in addition to my jewelry), and this has proved to be even more of a challenge, since I'm not a specialist and for each new item I need to find new resources. One of the first items I listed was a beautiful green dish with hydrangeas, made by Hutschenreuther Selb, Bavaria. First I had to figure out that the signature on the back said Selb, not Gelb (amazing how many e-bay sellers get this wrong). Finally after several hours of searching, I actually found a website (in German) that showed the manufacturer's marks and dates so I could tell that it was made before 1920.

Once I have a concept of the year and maker, then I need to do a search of e-bay, Etsy, and other online sellers to get an appropriate price. Seldom have I found the exact item, so a lot of it is guesswork. Fortunately, there's a great vintage community at Etsy, and they are a wonderful resource for relative newbies like me.

I can see why people end up specializing. Each new item--costume jewelry, a random leather purse, postcards, buttons--I've had to go through a similar process, and always I'm left wondering. Is this one of those Lisner necklaces that's worth $35 or $65 or $125?

You tell me.

My new necklace

I just finished a steampunk necklace on commission, and now I'm going to keep it. Sorry, Charmaine, hate to break it to you this way, but I like it too much to give it up (let's see if she can track me down).

Charmaine, aka High Desert Diva, sent me some of her grandmother's Victorian buttons, including a beautiful large black mourning button with crepe and beads. She also sent a box full of clock parts, and using some of those and some of my own, I put together a design for her to approve. The finished piece, above, is pretty much the same, with extra reinforcement in the back and a black leather cord.

It's going to look so good on me.

Losing that ace in the hole

I used to work in a bar, several different places at different times of my life, and I also had a brief stint as a waitress at a family restaurant, where I wore a poo-brown uniform and learned to hate all children and generally sucked. The kind of waitress, forgetful and stressed and six orders behind, that you pity and loathe in equal measure.
Still, for some odd reason, after that when I had jobs that I hated for one reason or another (and there always was one reason or another), I consoled myself by thinking, Well, if they fire me, I can always be a waitress again. I don't know why, but I saw this as my ace in the hole. I'd always be able to support myself, so there was no reason to get overwrought about the current situation.
I'm not sure when it dawned on me that this wasn't really so. Maybe it was some time after my back surgery, when I watched a waitress balancing six plates on a tray held above her shoulders like a giant flying saucer. No, I could not do this. In reality I never was any good at it, but now I am physically as well as temperamentally incapable.
I don't mean this to be a reflection on aging and loss, though it could easily go that direction. Rather, I mean to celebrate. I never have to be a waitress again! That possibility is off the table, and the other things that I can pursue--things that don't require me to pilot a flying saucer through a maze of tables while trying to remember who the hell wanted more catsup and why I have an iced tea pitcher in my other hand--these are much more exciting and satisfying possibilities.
Best of all, no uniform required.

Life happens

A week or two ago I was tagged by MelissaKate (who, by the way, has Willy Nelson on her blog this week), and I'd like to follow the rules and share seven random facts about myself, but I've done it a few times already. No one cares that much. So instead, I'm going to share three weird or annoying things that happened to me recently. In no particular order:

• My son found a mouse in the basement yesterday, which is no surprise since the kids leave food down there all the time. He took care of it; I won't go into details. Ewww.
• Some fun-loving teenagers heaved a huge rock from our garden through the back windshield of our car last week. Little pebbly shards of green glass everywhere. We're still cleaning up.
• My dog has epilepsy. She's had occasional seizures over the past year but had a big one this week, so the vet finally put her on meds, and she seems much better.

I'm sure everyone has a similar litany of gripes and distractions. But tonight I'm going to be a bartender at a fund-raiser for a friend who has cancer (pretty bad cancer) and no insurance. What is wrong with this damn country that people who are dealing with a life-threatening illness need to put their pictures in the newspaper and rely on friends and strangers for money? Anyway, it puts all these little things in perspective.

Peace out.

You vote what you eat

Before you pour yourself that white wine for dinner, better ask whether you want to see Hillary in the White House. If you prefer McCain, make it a scotch.

A New York Times article today on micromarketing examines how political strategists are using information on what we buy, eat, and drive to target their campaigns. Among the findings:

• Democrats prefer Pepsi-Cola, Sprite, clear liquors like gin and vodka, white wine, and Evian water. They prefer Popeyes fried chicken and organic foods (the article doesn't explain the apparent contradiction here). They are more likely than Republicans to subscribe to gourmet cooking magazines.
  
• Republicans favor Dr. Pepper, brown liquors like bourbon or scotch, red wine, and Fiji water. They eat at Chick-fil-A.

Strategists break it down even further. The article quotes Mark Penn (Clinton't former chief strategist and a miscrotargeting expert) as saying that Obama "has more of the arugula vote.... Senator Clinton's voters are more likely to be making ends meet and so they do a lot more cooking at home and a lot less eating out at expensive restaurants."

Not everyone buys that this is a great way to target a campaign, of course, and there are many cross-over eaters. Still, next time you're out to dinner with friends, look at what they order and ask yourself, Are these really my kind of people?

Country roadtrip

We thought yesterday, being mid-April, would be a perfect day to get out in the country for a hike and perhaps a quick stop by a winery for lunch, all in celebration of my friend Debra turning the big five-oh. Instead we had a bit of snow, some rain, cold, overcast skies, and wind. So we improvised--skip the hike, spend the whole time at a winery.

Yes, Missouri wine. I'm not here to defend it, though others would. We drank it. We enjoyed it.

The best part: a singer who billed himself as Maury Sinatra. He had a great voice, a fine trio behind him, and a marvelous repertoire. (We could have sung along to all of them but saved it till the drive home.)

No, this is not the winery. Just an interesting ruin of a farmhouse.

Debra and Maury

Dreaming in vintage

On Thursday nights, I dream in vintage--browsing through antique stores, trying on ravishing hats and dresses (I'm size 2 in dreamland), picking up baubles and knick-knacks and treasures.

That's because Thursday evenings in the forums of Etsy (the website of all things handmade and vintage), a group of sellers far more knowledgeable than me gets together to gab and share their latest, or more likely the things they love from other people's shops. The conversation flies so fast you can get up for a drink and come back to find 15 pages have passed and three people have left, three more arrived. It's like antique shopping with a group of hilarious friends. I always leave dizzy and a little overwhelmed.

Here's a brief sampling of some of my new favorites from last night's vintage marathon:





Cactus planter from AuntiePrincess.








Stalker dutch doll from PetitPoulailler
(check out the eyes)








Metalware tray by LorenzStudio










Royal biscuit tin by SurrenderDorothy











Killer red heels by RetroCycle













Green camel salt and pepper shakers by SlushyGirl




This is just a fraction of the gorgeous, and sometimes hilarious, items shared. Newcomers, interlopers, voyeurs all welcome--it's most every Thursday night for 3 or 4 hours (I poop out after 1 or 2), in the Promotions forum, hosted by SurrenderDorothy.

Neglectful posting

My blog has been neglected the past few days, and though inspiration has not come, I'm determined to add a few notes today.

It rained hard here last night, and my dog woke me up, like she always does when there's thunder (brave warrior that she is). So while I was calming her down I looked online (Etsy addict that I am) and discovered my little moss green ring on the front page.

It's a beautiful treasury (collection of items for sale on the Etsy website) put together by starvingartistdsgns. And though it was the middle of the night here, somebody somewhere was up--I got more than 300 hits (and still the little green ring is for sale!).

More later...I've got to go nap.

Vintage Postcards: True Confessions

True confessions: I bought 18 vintage postcards at a huge postcard convention the other day, and if they hadn't closed up (and my friends hadn't borrowed the rest of my cash), I would have bought more. They were fabulous! Probably 50 vendors with millions of postcards each, all arranged in boxes with dividers with intriguing titles like Big Type, Midgets, Dancing, Multiple Babies (found that one after I'd already spent too much), and Enormous Objects.

I'm probably going sell some of the cards--I bought too many to keep them all. Worst of all, I found out from one of the vendors there's a postcard swap a mile from my house the first Monday of every month. I could quickly become addicted!
Almost as interesting as the cards themselves are the messages on the backs. Not all the cards had been mailed, but a number have messages and 1 cent stamps. The writing is all cursive, some beautiful, some hard to read. Many of the messages are mundane, things that would now be taken care of in a phone call or an e-mail. Here's a sample:

From a 1910 card of the flying machine:
"Dear frinds, We will be over Sunday Jnry 3. meet us at the tram good by Mr. Bert Broylis. if we are not there this Sunday we will be next Sunday shore.

From a 1953 postcard of two babies, sent from Michigan.
Dear Bill. We are up at the cottage. Drove thru the Toronto area. I will fung (?) some pape (?) pictures. Just can not describe how bad it was. So sorry for the people whoes homes are leveled to the ground. Writing this in car. Maby you can not read this.

From a 1911 card of a man swatting at mosquitoes, sent from Selma to California:
Dear Cousin: I will drop you a few lines tonight. Well, kid I was sure surprised to hear that aunt & uncle has come home so soon. I want to go to see them as soon as I can. Say Helen I have bought me a piano. What do you think about that? Say come up & we will play a Deut. ha ha.

Impressive condiments

The world's largest catsup bottle is not even an hour from where I live, and surprisingly enough I had not been over to see it until to day (all you people who live by the ocean or mountains, eat your heart out). I was over in Collinsville, Illinois, visiting a friend and going to a vintage postcard sale, where, yes, I spent too much (I'll share some photos later).

A few bonus pictures from my trip: a monkey sign, and a still life with dust and candles from my friend's house.

Tagged by a banana-phobe

I'm not one to make fun of people and their phobias--just want to point out that Emily of Moesewco, who just tagged me, has a much more interesting list of seven random facts than I do. Visit her blog, Discriminating Weirdos, and see. (She just bought my funky pink pin for use on one of her wonderful hats; can't wait to see what it looks like.)

So, on to the list. After being tagged, the rules are, roughly, that I need to list seven random facts about myself and then tag seven more people.

1. I am related by marriage to Tony Randall.
2. I've visited at least three active volcanoes: Vesuvius, Mount St. Helens, and Kilauea (plus a bunch of inactive ones).
3. Last night I went to see Roby Lakatos, a gypsy violinist. It was fantastic! They did a mixture of gypsy, klezmer, jazz--even some Fats Waller. The cimbalom solo brought down the house.
   
4. When I was in third grade, I took violin. They asked me to stop.
5. Stone Phillips went to my high school. He was like super jock, captain of everything, and also valedictorian. He had a date with my sister once.
   
6. I never liked raspberries until we moved into a house with raspberry bushes. Then I decided to make myself like them, since I knew they had to be good and it was just something I had to get over. (I haven't been able to accomplish the same feat with beets.) So now I like raspberries, but I still have a little trouble with raspberry-flavored things. I think it goes back to hard candy I OD's on at my grandma's.
7. I do not like to have my neck touched. I don't know why--strangled in a past life I guess. My kids know this and love to torture me.

That's all. Anyone reading this can consider themselves tagged--I'm off to listen to gypsy music.

The Dolly Parton train wreck brooch

I knew it wasn't a good idea when I made this brooch--I couldn't imagine anyone actually pinning it to their chest. But just think: some stylish woman in some distant time (probably the 1940s) actually wore this hooter on a coat or dress. I would imagine that men couldn't keep their eyes off her!

Anyway, I love this little button, and I couldn't resist making the brooch, but I haven't had the nerve to put it up for sale yet. (I should mention that it's enormous--almost 2 1/2 inches wide and 1 inch deep.) I'd be interested to know whether my assumption is correct--that it's more fun to look at than to wear--or if someone could actually envision the day they would put this on and go out to meet the world.

On an unrelated note: There's an interview of me this week on the Etsy Vintage blog, featuring a few of my less bizarre creations. Check it out.

Illusions of rationality

Anyone who's been paying attention (or even just breathing) knows that people do not always make decisions in their own best interest--from the working stiffs who vote for politicians in favor the elite class, to people who purchase $20 worth of books they don't need to save $3 in shipping fees.

A fascinating article in a recent New Yorker pointed to a new book titled Predictably Irrational in which an M.I.T professor in behavioral economics, Dan Ariely, reveals that "our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless--they are systematic."

In countless experiments--including one in which he asked kids to trade Halloween candy and found that they generally choose something that is "free" over the better deal, chocolate-wise--Ariely "offers a taxonomy of financial folly," according to Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the New Yorker article. One fascinating experiment involved having subjects write down the last two digits of their Social Security number, then write what they would be willing to pay for a list of items. The results showed that those whose SSN ended in a larger number would be willing to pay more than those whose SSN ended in a smaller number.

This effect, called anchoring, shows that price is not just related to intrinsic value or to supply and demand; in some way the stated price establishes the value of the item. It's an interesting concept for retailers, who often ponder whether raising the price of their goods might make them more appealing. Similarly, Ariel's Halloween experiments and others like it belie the argument that "you're not fooling anybody" when you offer free shipping but jack the price of the item. Apparently, as marketers have long known, you can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time.

Etsy's antique mall

Sometimes I dream I'm antique shopping, often with my friend Laurel, whom I don't see much any more but who is the slowest, most thorough browser I have ever met. In these dreams, I am always about to make "the find," which as all vintage aficianados know is the thing that gets your heart racing, that keeps you coming back again. Interestingly, very rarely do I dream about buying; just about shopping.

Well, today is Saturday, estate sale day, so I'll make this brief. The picture above shows a vintage Treasury I made for Etsy, a combination of beautiful items that I "curated," which means I poured through different vintage shops like they were a huge antique mall and came up with these "finds."

These are all items sold by members of the Etsy Vintage Street Team, a group of some 65 sellers who sell vintage items or items made with vintage components. We've got a blog, and a section in the Vintage Buyer and Seller Community, (a larger networking community). It's a great way to meet people who are way more knowledgeable than I am about all things vintage. A great way to learn more and, of course, to shop.

Fictional characters I have known (part I)

My first boss out of college was an enormous man, well over 300 pounds, but with dainty feet encased in expensive black loafers. He had thick white hair puffed up in a pompadour, and gold chains around a neck that looked like a melting layer cake. Most arresting of all, his left eye was nothing but the white, the sclera, with a pale blue iris barely visible underneath, like a blue plate seen through a poached egg. His other eye was a vivid blue, and he combined them to great effect, leering and bugging the good eye, or squinting with a practiced devilishness, while the other, the poached egg eye, gazed blankly into nowhere. It was transfixing.

He had a patch—brushed leather with gold initials—but rarely wore it. “When I go on a sales call,” he explained to me one day, leaning forward in a rush of cologne, “I come in, shake hands, and sit down with a smile. But all they can do is look at the eye. They’re hooked. I don’t need a killer opening line or a gimmick to get their attention—I’ve got it. I keep it. And the next time I call, they remember me.”

During my first few months there, I often had to contend with his pathological need for an audience. He even concocted some pretense for having me sit through a court hearing so he could impress me with his testimony, delivered slowly and dramatically à la William Shatner. In this case, one of six or seven in which he was embroiled, he was suing his landlords because they were trying to evict him for not paying his rent.

Sexual harassment hadn’t yet crept into public awareness, and I had no idea what was going on, not until the day he yanked me onto his lap and kissed me. “I may be an old man,” he said, his mismatched eyes half closed in a twisted imitation of a sultry look, “but I’ve still got it. It’ll be fireworks, baby, all night long.”

That I was surprised, even shocked, at his attack shows how young and naïve I was. I mumbled some excuse, some demure protest, and fled, spitting to get the taste out of my mouth. Then, as women have done for thousands of years, I went back to work—disgusted, angry, but ultimately passive. It never occurred to me to do anything about it, to quit in protest or horror (I wasn’t that traumatized) or to complain to anyone, not even his wife, a sweet, pretty woman who, even through her habitual fog (probably from Valium, that decade’s happy drug of choice), already knew about her husband’s philandering.

Celluloid buttons in black and cream

I just got in this exciting batch of celluloid buttons--this is about half of them, but some of the more interesting. My kids of course think I'm nuts for getting into this stuff, but look at them! Some are beautiful, some are totally hilarious. I've already decided on one combination for making a button pin (the modern-looking zig zag button near the top left, placed on top of a black button with a beautiful border). What I haven't decided is whether to sell it or not--may need to keep it for myself this time. The others I'll take my time with.

Now, does this remind anybody of the I Spy books? You have to have kids to know them, but I love them too--it's like looking through an antique shop. OK, find the button that's shaped like penne pasta. Now find the one that looks like a pause button on your DVD player.

Ugly wins the day

We have a winner! Voters in the Ugly Necklace Contest have overwhelmingly chosen We Three Rings necklace, submitted by Jane of AdlensKrafts. She explains in her entry: "A friend of my daughter's wanted a necklace out of these three wooden rings from an old handbag. Well I tried. Maybe I was asleep when I made it."

We Three Rings practically swept the competition, but other necklaces had their detractors as well. The runners up, in order, were:

One Damn Big Ship, submitted by girleddycreations.







Spring Has Sprung, submitted by shelialk.








These Are the Voyages, submitted by sailorjenny.






And finally, Eeek a Bug, submitted by AnnieHowes.







Significantly, each of these ugly necklaces had at least one person say they thought it was pretty cute. So there's hope for all us who have ever made or tried to unload ugly jewelry!

Congratulations again to the winner. She'll be receiving a pair of lovely bobby pins from Callooh Callay. For the rest of you: Better luck next year.

The Etsy conspiracy

American casinos are well known for their tricks to keep people from leaving. Once you enter, there are no indications of what time of day it is--no clocks, no windows to see the sky turn dark. The music is in a continuous loop, no lyrics, to keep you in a trance-like state. It's safe and cozy, like a womb, with free drinks and the promise of hitting it big.

I believe that Etsy, the online marketplace for all things handmade and vintage, has a similarly devious strategy in the way it's designed. Consider:

• Even if you don't sell anything, you can accumulate "hearts"--little rewards from fellow members to give you hope and keep you putting your quarters in the slots.
• The forums are open 24-7 for chatting, eavesdropping, combat, and titillation.
• To keep things interesting and patrons happy, the management adds new games every now and then (such as Alchemy) or moves things around to make them seem fresh.
• Just as casinos give their big spenders free rooms and airfare, big sellers and the particularly talented at Etsy are rewarded with perks such as featured artists position on page 1 or, more deliciously, a plug on the Martha Stewart Show.

Tonight I had one of those heart-racing moments on Etsy when one of my steampunk pendants was featured in a front page treasury (currated by the talented MissKnits). For more than 2 hours the views stacked up (from 110 to 480 views on the featured item), the hearts accumulated, the anticipation mounted. And even when it failed to sell, the adrenaline kept me going for a while--the knowledge that more than 370 people visited my site, and more than 50 marked the shop or specific items for future reference.

The only thing missing was a hostess in a skimpy outfit serving me drinks. (Maybe my husband will be home soon.)