Because I’d only made one finished item for the two sewing patterns I bought when we were last in Walla Walla–and because I’m still drowning in buttons I bought on that same trip, my haul from our Thanksgiving trip to eastern Washington this year was much smaller.

But first, what I didn’t buy:

A vintage patent purse in the loveliest royal purple and a vintage purse with an oversized tortoise snap.

A Bissell vacuum and intricate patchwork potholders.

And a ruffled dress in electric blue with a bow and crystal closure.

Tomorrow I’ll be sure to share the few things that did make the cut!

Related reading:

Walla Walla Thrift Haul

What $4.25 in Walla Walla Gets You

Walla Walla Thrift Shopping

Well, maybe not a week…

I knew these Steve Madden boots, though not super distinctive, would go with everything.  And they fit my calves!

Now that there’s 25 pages worth of ‘Keep Calm & Carry On’ products on Etsy, I couldn’t help smiling when I saw this variation on the trend.

There’s plenty others in Dippy Lulu’s shop.

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the States.

Every other email I get these days seems to be offering some kind of discount or announcing a sale so I wanted to make sure to pass these on.

Threadless is having their annual holiday sale so all tees are $5, $10 or $15 dollars.  If I hadn’t just donated a couple of tees, I’d be all over this.

Planet Shoes is offering 15% off all items using code shop15 through December 2nd.  I can vouch that they ship quickly and their prices match or beat most other online vendors.  (The pairs here are by Poetic Licence and Kenneth Cole, by the way.)

Prismera is offering 25% through 12/31 using code friends25.  The organic forms of this jewelry have always tempted me…if only the cat weren’t having surgery, I might indulge myself.

Finally, the wonderfully talented Jess Gonacha is offering a free print with the purchase of any of her gorgeous 2009 calendars.  If I had a craft room, this calendar would be front and center.  Maybe for my cubicle…?

We won’t even get into the number of coupons and discount codes I’ve gotten via regular mail…

We’ll be heading to Walla Walla for the long holiday weekend.  I’m really looking forward to it with all of the high drama of the past few months–between the election and varying sea changes at work in response to the economic climate, I’m more than due for a quiet couple of days antique shopping with the madre.

Given this absence, any item purchased from the shop starting Thursday will not ship until Monday.  Posting will be certain to continue since Walla Walla is so rich in subject matter & I’m sure we’ll have down time at the hotel.

Also, a heads up that with the traffic from my old domain on the decline, I finally deleted the old blog.  Someone has already snapped up the domain so if you have not updated your links, I cannot vouch for what content will now live at the old link.  If it’s latex and shoe fetish shots (wardrobe_remix has given me more insight into both than I ever thought possible), you can’t say I didn’t warn you.  The new link should be:

http://into-thefray.com/blog

Finally, given that our coat closet is overflowing, I decided to put up the unlined Zara coat that had been a sort-of fix to my cape craving on ebay.  The auction is here.

Posts about shoes, crafting, and my boyfriend’s fixation with old cameras will resume tomorrow.

Take care.

This quilt is driving me bonkers.  It’s so gorgeous!

This is the kind of quilt I think I might have the patience to finish.

By ouno.

Perhaps it’s because winter here means skies of perpetual gray.

Situated between two mountain ranges at sea level, winter means overcast skies that on some days are murky and gray, on others are white and glaring.

I think though, as much as I maintain I’m reluctant to acknowledge the holidays, it leaks it’s way in somehow.

In quartz and coral, crystal and shell.  All in the shop.

The 1952 version of Moulin Rouge isn’t very good, but it did make me wish I had a pair of frilly pantaloons and a ruffly slip.

After going on about capes and leather coats, hunting online for weeks on end for the perfect deal, and bargaining with myself about the prices of various options, I bought neither.

When presented with this pristine beauty at the antique mall, I forgot entirely about the coat styles I’d been obsessing over.  It’s a little big but taking it in shouldn’t be an issue; I might pay to have someone do it since I’m worried I might butcher the lining…and the cost is fine with me since I paid less than $40 for the coat itself.

I’ve never owned vintage or even faux fur before, but I’m not the only one who’s recently taken the plunge: Robin, Emily, Anabela and Karla have given me the impression I’m not alone.

A custom order got me into the rhythm of paper piecing patchwork again.  While I was at it, I made a similar item for the shop.

The colors made me think of Strawberry Shortcake, hence the name.

I was appalled to see Macy’s decked out in white Christmas trees with a little throne waiting for Santa Claus the Sunday after Halloween.  I try to put off thinking about the holidays until Thanksgiving (though I do get started on some of my handmade gifts before that.)  But I’m going to break my own habit of pretending Christmas carols aren’t playing wherever I go by mentioning the holiday cards I bought.

Ever since I discovered Etsy 3 years ago, I’ve gotten my holiday cards from a variety of sellers–I like to mix up what I send out.  These are by Kooties Closet, Pell Mell Press and  Paper Schmaper.

& please forgive me for mentioning the holidays early.

Living in a tech driven region, I was skeptical when I was introduced to TED by a friend.  Even the acronym, the first letter of which stands for ‘technology’, sounded a little too IT focused to me.  However, the ‘E’ and ‘D’ stand for ‘entertainment’ and ‘design’ so you can imagine my delight when I saw amazing talks by Isaac Mizrahi on fashion and creativity as well as talks by Al Gore & Jane Goodall (and for the readers out there, Dave Eggers and Malcolm Gladwell have talks available, too.)  The talk by cultural critic Virginia Postrell on glamour, however, has to be my favorite.

…..

As someone whose dress collection has only grown over the past few years, I definitely get annoyed when the first reaction is wonderment at my having gotten so dressed up.  Erin at A Dress a Day provides a great rant about my second annoyance, the wonderment at attempting to do anything other than sit with legs demurely crossed.

…..

I realize it may come across as sacrilege but wait.  I once drank the Kool-Aid, worshiping at the altar of vintage-inspired clothing and pretty, pretty advertising.  But repeated purchases have shown a real hit and miss aspect to the quality of the clothing; tops that pill after one wash, sweaters that pill with zero washes and buttons that go loose with two or three wears.  I’ve long known about the connection between Richard Haynes and Rick Santorum and have made a conscious choice not to shop there in the past few months, a shopping habit reinforced by this recent piece of news.  Despite the comments on this article stating that it is sometimes the norm for retailers to destroy merchandise, the two major retailers I worked for did not have this practice.  Pretty appalling really.  Via love maegan.

…..

I’m so sorry, I can’t remember who tagged Sal, thank you for tagging me to list the five things I love about my state!  Google has not helped and neither has my reader so huge apologies.  That said, here are the 5 things I love about Washington.

1.  Diversity.  Though my sister complains it’s not half as diverse as other cities (and Susan would likely agree) Seattle and a good deal of Washington rarely leave me feeling isolated.  ‘Nguyen’ passed ‘Smith’ to become the most common name in the phone book sime time ago.

2.  Industry.  There are so many companies that call the Seattle area home; that means people relocate here, the local economy generally does well and talking work at a party doesn’t sound like the bore it often can be in other settings.

3.  Food.  This is the direct result of number 1 in my mind.  I was drinking chai years before Starbucks started carrying it, eating home made hum bao and lumpia at fairs & slurping pho from any number of local restaurants.  & it’s more strange if you haven’t tried those things than if you have.

4.  Scenery.  It’s just a pretty place.  From the orchards and grape fields of eastern Washington, to the coasts, to the rain forests on the peninsula and the Puget Sound.  Driving around never gets tiresome because the view is just that great.

5. Music/Culture.  Living in Prague made me appreciate how lucky I am that artists like M.I.A. and Santogold include my home town when they’re touring.  I actually subscribe to the mailing lists for the smaller venues in town because it’s so easy to find out about a show long after the band has passed through.

I’d been contemplating finally knitting a cowl for myself but after seeing the lovely one Krissy made, the equally lovely one by Jean C’est Quoi, and this post by Fashion Spinach I finally picked up my long neglected needles.

I don’t know if I’ll want to wear my scarves again.

I can’t recall how I stumbled across this flickr stream but I adore it.

The hair styles remind me of sculpture, like the new wave cuts of the early 80s crossed with the hip hop precision of the 90s.

There are shorter, simpler cuts too, still interesting with asymmetry and wisping pieces.  Not that I could justify going to Lisbon just for a hair cut.

We’d been on the look out for a bench sofa to replace the generic thing the boyfriend got from Ikea a few years ago.  A department store brochure featured one for a more than reasonable price so we hiked into downtown and placed our order.  It came last weekend.

We weren’t insane about the color but the only other option was near-white (no way) and purple.  From the second photo, you might guess why we weren’t crazy about brown; our coffee and side table are dark brown wood–as are most of the furnishings in the apartment.  Obviously we’ll get some colorful pillows–and in a year or three, when we buy a place with hardwood floors, there will be colorful carpets.  Another option that Julie of Belle Maison brought to mind is a colorful tray.

These are both by Marimekko available at Relish.  Seeing them brought to mind Velocity, whose trays I think I first saw on Kingdom of Style.

This was perhaps my favorite though the price is far more than I can justify.  When we hit up the antique mall earlier this week, our intent was to find some kind of colorful tray.  Unfortunately, everything vintage was covered in flowers.  Or brown in color, the very thing we’re trying to avoid.

We’ll just have to keep looking.

Loving the dresses at Mociun.

I thought I saw this one in gray too but it looks like it’s gone already…

via Lena Corwin

Did anyone else have a strange attachment to The Last Unicorn?  I realize it may have come out after some of you were born, but I remember it being shown on TV when I was a kid and just being enraptured by the story.

Which doesn’t have much to do with this post, but it is my last agate.

In the form of a simple necklace.

The boyfriend’s mom was in town this past week so we repeated our trip to the Aurora Antique Mall, one of her favorite stops when she was here last.

We had housewares in mind while we looked (more on that later), but I also kept my eye out for vintage capes.  I found several but bought zero.

The same booth that held a 1930s/1940s dress I did end up buying also had a drawer full of fur collars and scarfs.

This one was dyed a dark green and made me feel like Oscar the Grouch.  I had to get a picture.

My favorite booth held more hats and gloves than ever.

While we didn’t find the housewares we were looking for, I did find an insanely wonderful coat along with the dress.  I’ll be sure to share them later this week.

Related Reading:

Antique Mall Extravaganza

Antique Mall Extravaganza II

Seriously, I could just cut a hole in one of the boyfriend’s old lap blankets and save myself 30 bucks.

Thanks to Urban Outfitters.

I managed to catch the majority of a Harold Lloyd movie the other night.  Lloyd, along with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, was one of the most recognized and highest paid comedians of the silent film era.  I was enjoying the slapstick of Doctor Jack when I was caught off guard by the beauty of the leading lady.

While I’m frequently inspired by the style of the between-the-wars era, I’m not always enamored of the actresses of early silent film.  Theda Bara’s appeal completely mystifies me while the girlishness of many other big stars of the day leaves me cold.  While I understand that cultural constraints pretty much necessitated women be paragons of innocence and child-like virtue, it doesn’t really do much for me (except maybe Lillian Gish, who is an amazing actress even to modern eyes.)

Mildred Davis’s beauty and feisty demeanor in Doctor Jack, however, really resonated with me.  Not only is she funny, she’s absolutely lovely with an oval face and crooked smile that oddly reminded me of Drew Barrymore.

I found myself trying to learn more about her and smiled to see that Lloyd married her shortly after the movie.  She quit acting to raise their children and remained his wife until her death–a rarity even then.

If you ever have a chance to see her, please do.