Flea Market

This week's market was the alternate "little" flea market...though it is nearly as big as the original market lately, just is held a few blocks west. The drive was so pretty through the seashore areas. I took a backroad shortcut through the dunes, now filled with goldenrod and grey bayberry branches and huge flocks of redwing blackbirds.

Again my eyes and imagination were bigger than my pocketbook!

 I found lots of good "stuff"...

More rhinestone pins and shoe buckles for vintage photo frames to hang on a Christmas tree...

A white ironstone low oval bowl, had to have it!

Really great find of chandelier crystals! Again for an all white Christmas tree?---or any tree...

Or for reverse collage....

I got these thinking "garland"...

but maybe wonderful as is?

Here are a few new all white/ all lavender buds hearts in the white bowl. So pretty! I used vintage buttons with a hint of amber and glitz for Autumn.

...[they should be available in my etsy shop / ebay by Monday. 7.oo each.]

And something for ME! Last week I said I adore turquoise...so how could I pass up a bracelet with a turquoise heart! Sterling silver, Mexican not Native American. I love it! The same dealer is holding a needlepoint turquoise Navaho snowflake/ star pin for me for next time. It looks just like a Feathered Star quilt block. Another treasure.

PS The type drawer and all the type were still there...the dealer wanted $100.oo.
There were maybe 75-100 large wooden type blocks, letters and very cool punctuation. She wanted $3.oo each for the individual letters....what do you all think?  (Buy it! Buy it!, right?). What else did I pass up? Lovely china-head and wooden peg Hitty dolls; many great old photos; sheet music for collages; more white linens. And still no mums, couldn't park close enough to the booth.

...next market in TWO weeks!

love

     lizzy

...gone to the beach




my beach, note the looong shadows, a sign of Fall
 and coming shorter days.



One Year Later...

 Today is the one-year anniversary of Gone to the Beach. In blog form, that is. My first brief post was put up  a year ago today: a year I've filled with almost one hundred posts, who knew I had so much to say!

I owe it all to my mother...I began writing my blog mostly to fill the void left in my heart when my mother passed away in January '09.

She and I had a long and cherished history of correspondence. We first started writing letters to each other when I went away to college, more years ago than I care to contemplate.

And no form of communication, not even a phone call--or visit! lol---meant as much as finding one of her letters in my mail box.

We wrote at least once a week---often 10 to 12 pages, and woe betide me  if I missed a week. Had to write...No Matter What. And she faithfully wrote back, no matter what. It meant that much to us both.

We wrote about where we went, what we saw, bought or did. What we wore, what we ate, what we cooked. What kind of car to get, where to find white jeans or black cashmere sweaters. Our letters never spoke of emotions, no angst, no happiness, no introspection. No politics, no religion. Maybe the weather, if it was unusually dire: a hurricane, say. Or a blizzard. Not too much about other people, no gossip, maybe just brief news: your uncle retired sort of thing.

And always about books and authors, always a page or more on What We Read. She'd have been heartbroken when Robert Parker died this spring, along with Spenser and Hawk and Jesse and Sunny Randall. [his famous charcaters, we felt like they were friends....].

My mother liked to enclose clippings from her glossy magazines; I begged for the Cape Cod animal and nature columns instead. She sometimes sent photos; I often made little sketches, easier to draw an idea than describe it.

Not only did we hand-write this huge body of letters, in recent years we began to write in a shared diary called a Circle Journal. I am so happy I have these tiny books, a dozen or more. The letters are too unwieldy, too heartbreaking for me to read. But the journals, I can treasure....

As for my blog, she never saw it. And she would not have understood the concept of writing into ether, hoping to find a kindred spirit. But, even though we never discussed religion or afterlife or whatevers, I sometimes hope she---her spirit?---is somewhere.... Reading this blog.

Maybe she is: Anonymous?

love

                     lizzy

   gone to the beach....

Summer's Glory

Today is the last day of summer 2010...the equinox will roll in around 5 PM, followed almost immediately by the rising full Harvest Moon and Jupiter!

Of course it is in the eighties, hot, hot and sunny here. And my morning glories finally decided to raise their beautiful blue faces to the  last sunrise of summer.

 I know morning glories can be invasive, though they are hard to grow here at the beach. I grow them only in containers and deadhead carefully to avoid scattering seeds.


Isn't this the most perfect sky blue! Burpee's Heavenly Blue, a vintage classic, on the right.

And I think the other one is Flying Saucer,on the left.
There are also a few Moonflowers, they bloom in the dark!

And a "volunteer"..an unusual purple, growing out of my deck.

                     

(Is he invading my house? oooh!) Great color!

And here on the dunes...the last hopeful sweet rose of summer...


                    

Welcome autumn!

love

                    lizzy

   .....gone to the beach