Maiden + Mount Curve

The property belonged to a family of serious rock hounds.

They had tons of lapidary equipment, hand tools, books, and much more machinery on top of the usual garage stuff. As usual, I bypassed anything with a set price and went straight for the slab table.

This huge makeshift plywood table was packed with containers of cut slabs. Agates, petrified wood, druzy geodes. . . just tons. Most of them were smooth but far from being perfectly polished. In order to get a better feel for what you might end up with they had little buckets of water you could dunk your slab into and PING! - you could see all the color variations and transleucency beautifully. I had no idea what I was really dealing with so my choices were purely aesthetic: interesting colors, transleucency, amazing detail, and complete borders.

It was cool! There was a lady going through them with me who owns a gem and stone site whotold me to go with my gut and tittered encouragements like, "Oo that's a good one!" whenever I picked up something extra nice. She said she came solely for the equipmetn but couldn't resist going through the pile with her husband. They knew not only the names of the stones but WHERE they were mined just by looking at them.

"Citrine?"

"Citrine."

"Look like Robinson Ranch Hrughmmuh Blahble to you?"

"...Yep."

After parting company with my mineral mentors,I cruised the tables as an afterthought and found an old military belt, a tiny smelting pan and a pretty blue jar WITH A LID. FINALLY.

This day didn't have a whole lot going for it in the beginning. I was late, was on a super set time limit of 15 minutes (unheard of!) and spent about 25 minutes (heard of...), and it wasn't the house's first day. But by staying away from set prices and being nice (seriously. so important. People will actually be happy to cut you a deal if you're pleasant) I made out pretty well.

Here's the loot sitting pretty in the passenger seat :)




Quite a few of the slabs will be kept in our budding rock collection, but many of them I'll shine up a little and sell in little collector bundles in the shop.

Thinking about making little framed slab sun catchers. . .

Silverwood + Wildwood

I don't like missing Eagle Rock sales. They're always worth the drive especially if you're early which I wasn't. In fact I was really late to this one...


But the view was nice!


The guy who used to live here was a toy prototype maker. He had LOTS of specialized tools and precision instruments, clothes, glass and kitchenware (full cupboards which sometimes makes me sad because that means it was sudden), the usual world traveler tchotchkes (incense burners, pottery that fits in suitcases, carved this and that), and more books on sexual dysfunction than I knew what to do with. Poor dude.

Walking through, I stopped in my tracks when I saw a doe-eyed girl holding a steel base, rough wood-topped table. I did an immediate about-face, scanned the back yard again and scored the second one for the house.



I like.

One of the things I liked best about the living room was a tangled piece of driftwood hanging from a chain near the fireplace. I had a tumbleweed I found on the train tracks hanging in my studio for a year, but couldn't bring it because it'd take up a fifth of the living room.

He had a soft spot for natural carved and a GRIP of geodes, but alas... As respectful and cheery as I intend be I had a split-second urge to hip-check this tiny woman who snagged the last one. Estate sales can make people very...human.

One tip that came in handy today was a looking for items without price tags. Usually on tagged items usually they've done their homework and you end up paying about as much as you would on ebay. NOT the goal! And for my searching I was rewarded with a free-ish can opener (after finagling open tomatoes with vintage bottle openers left over from the wedding this was something to celebrate) and some other things I'll post to the shop this week :)