Here's to Thrift Stores!!

No, I didn't get Foxy Angus at a thrift store, but I can't write about him every day!!

Foxy Angus, and here let us be done with the little critter for this post, is, I believe, mostly a wire-haired or broken-haired Jack Russell terrier.  A neighbor came over last night and pointed out the jumping (which he'd just started; he really liked her) and of course there are the beauty parts of him that are Jack Russell...BUT he is not white; he is a uniform russet beige with white face and blaze.  Oh he is so cute. Don't let get me started....

Back to thrift shops.  The pleasure of shopping at a thrift shop is the thrill of the chase.  Sometimes you go with a quite specific item in mind (like Foxy...oh, quit it) and there it is as if you'd ordered it up from the angels. Sometimes you just go in blank and there is a real treasure like the six Rosenthal plates I recently turned down even though they were only six bucks...why did I do it?

I was thinking about San Francisco this morning because I just found out that a worldly and chic friend of mine also likes to thrift-shop. (It's not a prediliction that you should confess broadly about). That made me think if SF as I first knew it in 1957. Just think what I could have found there, then. Makes me want to cry.

And we did buy a lot of things from Goodwill and the Salvation Army in Berkeley: our huge antique mahogany bed, our sofa and chair which were still the most comfy pieces of furniture I've ever owned, the hand painted rustic black dresser with wild flowers on it, the chair made of cow horns...most of these in fact all of them have gone by the wayside over the years.  I'm sorry I let any of them go. They'd nowadays be found only in an antique shop if at all...And the many little wooden tables with fabulous California tile tops...five  dollars here and there and there were plenty of them.

When we moved to Seattle in 1961, we discovered the St Vincent de Paul which was housed in several rough building along Lake Union, I believe.  Running from one building to another was a paradise of "finding", from furniture to old glass coffee jars, which was a never failing source of pleasure and acquisition to us.

I still find thrift shopping to be a source of simple stress relief.  You never know what you'll find.  Everything is different.  One beautiful goblet only, to be succeeded by a different beautiful goblet on the next set of shelves. I have a whole collection of them.  To heck with sets, say I.  I like my motley collection!

And books! Don't get me started on books! They are there. And different books too.  Like the novel, Eucalyptus, by that Australian writer whose name I do not remember. A good, interesting novel that I 'd certainly never have read if I hadnt stumbled on it in a thrift shop.

Why just a couple of days ago I found just by passing by it and grabbing it off the hanger, the very jacket I'll be wearing on this chilly morning. Its silk, Chinese, padded, and it's pale green embroidered and appliqued with more pale green on outside, and it's lined with an iridescent blue lining.  It's more tailored than it sounds and it will look good with my blue-gray-purple colored tee and brown-gray pants, at church. YAZZYBEL