Salvage Love Vintage Shop on Etsy

I've been adding items to my vintage shop, finally. Slowly. I'm out of practice photographing vintage items, and when I set them up and take photos, it makes me want to keep everything, ha. Like this gorgeous, hand embroidered runner with those big, sexy red flowers...

Buy it here in my Etsy shop.

Birthday Bellybutton Kitty

I crocheted this kitty for my bellybutton-loving daughter for her 2nd birthday.  Unable to find the perfect cat pattern, I used one I found online for a stuffed puppy, then searched for other patterns for cat ears and a long tail.  If you can crochet rounds, making little stuffed lovies like this one isn't hard, and you probably don't even need a pattern if you can figure out the size of the shapes you want.  After that, it's just a matter of stuffing each form, then sewing them all together with your yarn and a large blunt needle.  For the eyes, I have a jar full of mismatched vintage buttons that my mom sent with me when I left home, and these black flower buttons in different sizes were perfect.

Crochet Striped Sweater Puppy

I was happy to find these photos of the crocheted amigurumi puppy for my nephew, wearing the striped sweater he requested.  Here it is with my camera-loving daughter.

OakdaleFarm etsy store

I have always had an empty etsy store, and a couple of months ago, I finally managed to list some items for sale.  I sold the two needle felted mushrooms I had available, and have left a needle felted tree stump and some crocheted gourds, pumpkins, and squash. The tree stump has two little red-capped mushrooms and has wool yarn hand felted to the surface for tree bark.  I have completed a needle felted cupcake I still need to list, and I really want to make some more mushrooms; they're fun to create and people like them.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/OakdaleFarm

    

 My sold mushrooms:

 

Crocheted puppies

I took a crochet class around Thanksgiving and learned how to make a hat and went a little insane with it since then, buying books and teaching myself how to make other things and use other stitches.  Here's an amigurumi puppy I made for my son.  My nephew wanted one, too, and he asked for a striped sweater on his. I took a photo of it, but I think it might be on my phone...

All A Blur....

My son's fifth birthday party was today, and as usual, I can't remember much of what I said to anyone. I probably sounded silly and distracted, and I have a habit of stopping mid-sentence and just sort of trailing off. I used to stay awake at night going over everything I said and cringing, but now I realize that I'm not so important that people are obsessing over what I say...I hope.

I've stayed up too late. Again. I go upstairs to bed, and my husband and son are lying next to each other, in mirror image poses with arms above their heads, which makes me laugh. My husband, still wearing his clothes from the party, and obviously exhausted, doesn't move. My son whispers in his sleep, the only time he's quiet, and moves toward me, laying his head on my hip. As much as it exasperates me during the times I'm busy, I love how my children don't seem to see me as separate from their own bodies, and climb over me, press into me, and rub their lips and faces on my clothing. My son's most precious possession is a black stuffed bear toy made from my favorite sweater that he took from a laundry basket and nuzzled and burrowed into until he put a hole in it. Sometimes, he'll surreptitiously take a shirt I've worn into his room, and I'll find it later in his bed.

Now, at the start of his sixth year, he is balancing his adoration with separation. He sometimes covers his body with his hands, and no longer wants or needs my help in the bathroom. When he cried last week, he told me he wanted to be alone. I look at him, his sweet face asleep, and I sit up, leaning forward to more easily type, and he makes a soft kitten noise, moves with me and presses his cheek against my back, eyes closed and still dreaming. I know it won't last, and it shouldn't, I want him to push away from me and grow and be strong and have adventures and everything else a mother wants for her son, but just for right now, instead of carrying him to his bed, I'm going to hold my son tightly and sleep.

Naked Lunch

I haven't been this excited about doing something in our home in a long time!  After the birth of our daughter last March, renovations have slowed to a crawl.  We have the kitchen mostly completed, but there are the little things that get left until the end and sometimes never get done, especially when you have a husband who really doesn't mind minor things, like mismatched light switches and gaps in the trim.  Five years ago or so, my brother found an amazing set of vintage diner signs for sale on the side of the road and bought them.  I was living in Miami at the time, but I made him promise to save me the other half of the "Lunch" sign; I would find some way to get it, I vowed.  He now has his own sign hanging in his family room; these are like our version of two halves of a "BFF" necklace.

Fast forward a few years, and we're now living in an old farmhouse in Michigan, with the Lunch sign stored in our barn.  My husband claimed he didn't like it, but I suspected that it was more that he was overwhelmed by how we would hang such a large, heavy sign.  In my former life, I worked for an art services company that, among many things, hung artwork for museums, galleries, etc., and one of my favorite tricks is hanging heavy things with a cleat.  You cut a piece of board to fit behind the object, screw it into the studs, then hang your objet d'art from the board.  In this case, we cut a piece of 1x4 oak that we had in the barn, then screwed the sign directly to it through some holes that were already in the sign.  It looks like it was originally lit by roping a strand of lights around each letter with some broken clamps that I removed when I was cleaning the sign.  I love the idea of adding lights back to it someday, and using it as a nightlight for the kitchen.

The Fragrance of Peonies

Up until this summer, I have been hesitant to cut flowers to bring into the house.  Part of the reason was that I didn't know how long the blooms would last in a vase, and another part of me felt that flowers should be left outside to grow.  This year, I realized that we have an abundance of flowers, and clipping a few really wouldn't do any harm.  Earlier this summer, I cut some sprigs of lilac and loved how our home filled with the sweet fragrance.  We also had a few hydrangea branches that were almost as short-lived as the lilacs, and pretty, but no scent.  Tonight, I risked being devoured by mosquitoes to cut an armful of peonies before several days of predicted storms, which ruined our peonies last year.  When I first walked into the house with them, I dumped them in our farmhouse sink, and loved the way they looked, spilling over the edge.

Those annoying people who think their kids are so cute...

Yes, I am one of them.  And I can't help laughing every time that my four-year-old son says that he "bomb-ed it" when he means that he "vomited".  Maybe it's just that it's so rare now that he gets something wrong - gone are the days when he pronounced "sandwich" as "flatherch", said apples as "appoos", and called our dog Good Girl, because he thought that was her name.  He used to say that the moon must love him, because it followed him wherever we went.  Once he told me that the crescent moon must be really hungry, because it was so thin now.  It was months later that I made the connection: a full moon and a hungry moon.

Now, he knows the truth about so many things that I wish he didn't.  He tells me things that make me angry and break my heart and make me despair that I am an inadequate parent.  He asks for toys and video games and candy and ice cream and soda and all of those things that I have to remember I longed for, too.  He refuses to wear the expensive clothes and shoes that I buy him, things that my own parents could never afford, claiming that they're too tight or too loose, too long or too short.  He tells me that he wishes I would leave our family, then cries when I go into the bathroom and he thinks I've gone.  He tells me that he is a frog, then a baby cow, then a king, then a dinosaur, and when I find him asleep in his bed, he has wrapped one of my sweaters around himself, the arms of it encircling his tiny body like a phantom hug.


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Happy Birthday, Jeffrey

It's been a few years now, and I suppose it's finally sinking in that you will not somehow reappear or just call me to talk, and that I will not miss you less and my heart will not stop breaking each time I think of you.  I wasn't sure if I wanted to write about you this year, because sometimes it's easier to avoid the memories.  Still...

When my husband and I were married in Greece, you told me that of course you'd be there.  By then, you had moved to New York, and we'd gone from seeing each other every day to weekly phone calls.  When we arrived in Chios, I didn't hear anything from you, and you hadn't booked a flight, so I assumed you weren't coming.  My parents and Janelle were staying in Karfas, and as we walked to the taverna to meet everyone for dinner (my mom and Janelle giggling the whole way, keeping you a surprise), there you were, looking like you'd planned this all along.  Which, of course, you hadn't.  You went to a travel agent in Manhattan on Monday, got a lower price for your ticket than any of us, ran home to pack your bags, and went to the airport on Monday afternoon for your flight.  You had no idea where you were going, only that you needed to get to the island of Chios, got a taxi at the airport, and when the driver somehow took you to the area of Karfas Beach, you saw my mother and shouted her name.  Then you got a little room with a sea view across the street from where my parents were staying.  The matronly proprietress adored you and was washing your clothes for you and inviting you to dinner with her family.  That night at dinner, we held hands and fawned over each other, and I saw George's dad looking at us with narrowed eyes, until he came to the likely conclusion and relaxed and smiled at you.  We talked about reading "The Dogs of Babel" and quoted "I remember my wife in white" to each other.  It's bittersweet to think of that now.  We and the dear friends who had also made the long trip across the ocean, spent a day on scooters in the fortress village of Pyrgi, where we dreamed about owning one of the crumbly little houses, and then at my favorite beach, sunbathing on black lava rocks and wading in the breathtaking blue of the Aegean Sea.  On my wedding day, I asked our florist for wildflowers and lilies, and you commiserated with me when my bouquet was a ball of roses and I cried in the melodramatic way that brides do.

Only Jeffrey, I thought.  Only you would arrive with elan on an island in a country to which you'd never been, with no names, addresses or phone numbers.  Only you would book a flight for a song at the last moment, find my mother within minutes of landing, get the best room at the best rate, and on a whim, continue on to other islands.  Only you, in that selfless way you were famous for, would replace my wedding bouquet with an armful of achingly beautiful lilies that we put in my honeymoon suite and reminded me of how much you loved me.

Only you.



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