Shamrocks and Auctions

Actually, there weren't any shamrocks but if you go to an auction on St. Patrick's Day, as my sister, my mom and I did last Saturday, you know you're going to want to bid on the green chandelier, right?

Okay, I didn't bid but in the right setting, that lamp might look mighty fine.  The woman that bought it paid $165 for the privilege of owning it, can you imagine?

The auction itself was held in an interesting place, a building that used to be a barn. Check out the size of the logs holding up the ceiling above us!

Here's a closer look.

There were two rooms full of things to be auctioned off and two auctioneers selling items simultaneously, which meant we spent some time going back and forth between rooms to be sure we didn't miss out the items we were interested in.

The first thing I bought was this box of miscellaneous religious items for a mere $4.00.

I wanted this little book that looks like it has a mother of pearl cover.

Check out the groovy inside cover (the contents of the book appear to be written in Polish).

Then I bought two books for $2 a piece, one of which was entitled "Shooting with Guns" - I gave that one away to the woman behind us who bid on 2 similar books right after my purchase, and kept the 1929 volume about a girl named Jeanne in France (more on that later, I took it to work to copy some of the pages).

Then I bought a box of pretty little bottles with glass stopper lids.  They look like they came from a chemical lab of some sort. Some of them have unusual looking liquids inside, not sure how I'll dispose of those!

I missed out on this intriguing Niagara Falls lamp:

and didn't bid on any of the model railroad pieces (some of the cars went for over $300 a piece!)

All 3 of us really wanted the crown and anchor wheel (complete with the wooden boards for laying down your bets) but couldn't afford the close to $800 price tag.

We didn't intend to stay all day but the items I really wanted, these various Ziploc bags and cardboard boxes full of ephemera (pronounced "ef-em-era", I've been told, not "efa-mira"!)

didn't get auctioned off until the very absolute end of the sale.  In fact, after almost having these items put on the block several times and then held back, the auctioneer called an end to the auction around 5:30 p.m. and I had to run up to the front to beg him to keep going, since we'd been there, no word of a lie, since 9 that morning waiting for these very things to go on sale.  Luckily, one of the other auctioneers took pity on me and sold me the Ziploc bags for $5 a piece (old greeting cards, cabinet card photos and old B&W photos).   When the bidding was over for the cardboard boxes (filled with old maps, letters, telegrams, more B&W photos and various other paper bits and pieces, some dating back as far as 1907), they were each mine for a mere $8 a piece.  And that was after I'd offered to pay $20 a box, he very kindly started the bidding on them at only $1 a piece.  What a steal!  Well worth the hours and hours of waiting.  It was good entertainment though, the time seemed to fly by.

Doors Open

It's hard to believe it's mid-March when it feels so much more like May.  I had the balcony door wide open today.  Gus and Beans seemed enthralled by all the sounds - birds, traffic, neighbours on their balconies...

Not the most flattering pose for Gus (left),
but he seemed quite comfortable in that position!

Beans and Gus

Then Yonhee decided to climb the screen like the little monkey that she is, and that was that.  Door closed to a mere couple of inches and I went out for a walk instead. :)

Cleaning Out My Colon

Water.
Ginger ale.
Chicken broth.
Yellow jello.
Apple juice.

This is my "diet" today, as I prepare for a routine colonoscopy tomorrow.  (Much to my amusement, Blogger's spellcheck doesn't recognize the "c" word, the options are "cloudscape" and "kaleidoscope".  Now that's funny.)

It's rather a boring selection, so I thought I'd watch some TV to distract myself, until I realized how many food commercials there are on TV.  Dairy Queen, Pizza Hut, Nutella, that puffy little Pillsbury dough boy - they've all been tempting me today. 

But it's only one day.  After the procedure tomorrow, I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want.  In the meantime, it's a liquid diet for me and time spent sitting in the bathroom while ignoring the siren's call of the food in my cupboard and fridge.  Piece of cake.  (damn, why did I have to mention cake?!)

Photo courtesy of betterlifestylesinc.com

By the way, if you are due for a colonoscopy (for example, if you have a family history of colon cancer, as I do, not to mention that everyone should have one every 5 or 10 years starting at age 50) and have been putting it off, please don't. It's an easy procedure. The preparation isn't wonderful but it isn't that bad either, it's only a day and a half out of your life and it might actually save your life by locating a problem that has a much higher chance of being completely cured than if you wait. 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The Last Snowbank?

I'm thinking, actually I'm hoping, this is the last snowbank in Toronto. 

I photographed it Wed night on my way to the Toronto Bead Society meeting.  It might even be gone by now, we've had two days of "warmer than usual for this time of year" weather.  We're scheduled to get several more days of it, in fact.  Supposed to be more like late spring rather than late winter weather for the next few days - whoo hoo!

See you next year, snowbank!

Beware the Ides of March

But only if your name is Julius Caesar, of course.

Or Craig, and your sister has a blog and decides to post a cute photo of the two of you in celebration of  your birthday!

Not Quite Finished

My Bag of Beads project for tonight's meeting of the Toronto Bead Society is not quite finished but I'm okay with that. I'm really excited about where it is going.  When I realized I wasn't going to have time to finish a couple of days ago, I decided that rather than rush the last beading bits, I would just finish what I could and save the last hour or two of beading for a later day, when I can relax and enjoy the process instead of rushing to finish just for sake of being done and risk making mistakes or bad decisions in the flurry of the hurry. 

Here's where I'm at as of today:

Jane P. was right when she guessed last week that I was making a journal cover.  But as I've been beading, the ideas have been percolating in my head about what I was making and what it wanted to be (I find that a lot of art happens by letting the art itself lead you along to where it wants to go).  The circus theme came to me about three or four hours in and the more I've worked on it, the more it feels right.  I'll write a longer post in a few days about what it was going to be (something to go on the front of a vintage book) and what it became instead (part of a journal cover of a book that has yet to be made), but in the meantime, here's another sneak peek at how the cover is coming together:

Those at the meeting tonight will see a more polished version, as I've put it all together except for attaching the beaded piece, so I can keep working on that part of it and add it later when it's all done.

Also stay tuned over the next few days for photos of what my fellow TBS members have made, I'm pretty sure they've been making some AWESOME works of art!!