Found today at Vinnies for three dollars a trio!
Whoops …will have to practise if I want to continue to use the mosaic quilt as a centre piece for these photoshoots…ever so slightly crooked as you can see below!
I was really excited to find these Japanese trios as they go so well with the three Lustreware ones I found late last year. Those were ten dollars each…the story of how I found them is here.
So now I can have mix and match tea parties!
I was reading Kim’s post on her great thrift find for her Thrift Thursday post and it brought to mind an amusing incident a few years ago at my husband’s then workplace…Paddington Centre of St Vincent de Paul in Sydney.
Paddington Centre gets a lot of designer clothes and antiques donated directly to the store by well meaning patrons of the charity. My husband, once he started dealing with antiques started going to antique fairs and antique centres in his spare time and built up quite a knowledge base so that the charity would get a good price for their valuable donations.
In his time there as manager he was responsible for a lot of really valuable items fnding new homes, benefiting the customer and the charity. His main area of expertise, apart from everything that he was required to do to successfully run one of the most successful charity shops in an exclusive area of Sydney was the antigues and various bric a brac. While he pottered around with that he was able to see what was going on in the store.
One extremely quiet day he asked his staff if they would like to go up to the local Westfield [shopping mall] to get an idea of pricing for the designer clothes which they were fortunate enough to receive…often new season designer originals. The store uses various magazines like Vogue etc and also phones shops to ask prices but he thought it would be a good idea and also motivate his staff to actually go out to the centre and get a feel for what was currently in fashion and also to help motivate them in their work . One by one they refused, you could not even pay them to take a coffee break and have a few hours off window shopping! Is it any wonder that finds like my stunning Bally thong/ sandals slipped under the radar?
My husband and I popped into Bally on Wednesday to see how much their sandals actually were, they do not show the price from the outside of the store, one has to go inside and actually lift a shoe to see the sticker beneanth! The flat thongs were six hundred dollars and the strappy sandals nine hundred, the sandals I found are in between that., strappy thong sandals…exquisitely made.
The dress above by Marina Rinaldi I found at Randwick centre, I paid eight dollars each for a lot of her clothing range which was donated, more and more came in each day and I kept on snapping it up as it is plus sized and quite sort after. After about three days the Supervisor in Charge realised, as well she might as I have googled prices for Vinnies for her on many an occasion, and upped the remaining items to between twenty and sixty dollars each! A good move considering one of the new blouses had five hundred dollars on the attached label!
Kim’s story of the five dollar chest of drawers which was supposedly missing a drawer is a classic example of this kind of mentality, except in this case Kim was the winner, not the charity and certainly not the person who donated the item in good faith to the charity.
The table I have shown here is another case of the ignorance shown by some staff in charity shops, I found it early last year in Randwick Centre and paid 
eighty five dollars for it. It is a craftsman made mid twentieth century table, unusual to find here and my husband said it would have sold for around three hundred and fifty dollars in Paddington Centre. Unbeknown to me he later gave his Area Manager another seventy or so dollars for the table, which was not necessary in my mind, it was my purchase and if they wanted the right price for it they should have sent it to him to sell in the first place! So the charity gained an extra seventy dollars because of our knowledge and my husband’s honesty …..this is particularly galling to me because of the way we have been treated by this charity recently.
Anyway, it is abut time charity shop workers lifted their game, and it is up to the people who employ them to ensure that they are earning their salary. St Vincent de Paul workers in Sydney are relatively well paid for shop workers…they earn more than Myer staff and also receive tax benefits which boost their salaries even further…so come on…it is time these workers started doing the work necessary to earn their salaries and to honour the people who donate the goods which make their jobs possible!
Found some gorgeous Johnson’s Australia vintage crockery today….
I adore the colour combination and the simplicity of the design…I think it works well today. It also works with various things I am sewing at present!
and these sandals which i found a few years ago…
I have tried to find the name of the design but no luck so far….but am only up to b on the list of designs…..lots of fun ahead! I found some great resources though which I will add to a thrifting resources page here soon.
Okay….prices…the cups and saucers were three dollars each set and the bundle of plates and dishes were four dollars…not bad when current Johnson Brother’s plates are going for a minimum eight dollars a plate. I am hoping to mix and match these with a few other sets ….once I find some which will offset it well. Wish me luck in the hunt!
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This is the second post on my countdown to 200 posts…it was published on 28/2/08……..this shows I believe how naive I was when I first started blogging! I now know not to mention p$rn&gr%phy other wise I might get linked to a po#n blog. Also I was very idealistic about copyright theft and trying to protect my designs online…now I generally say go for it and tell people how to make the item! I am even going to license most my work with creative commons license…it will save a whole lot of trouble. If anyone is confused about what I mean by all this feel free to mention it on the comments or email me. Lastly my joyful thrifting style I realise has been curtailed somewhat by the dispicable goings on at my local shop but am hoping my husband will make a difference there…or is that still showing my naivete considering what is going on at present with him?
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Earlier this week as I was sifting through boxes of jewellery I heard a young lady say “could I please have a look at that purple glass vase that is up on the wall behind the counter? I meantime, while recovering from the shock of what I had heard, am holding my breath saying to myself….whatever it is you will not like it . I looked up cautiously through my unruly locks and saw a glorious vase about 13 cm x 15cm in a really dense purple. After realizing that I was feeling quite dizzy I took a breath and proceeded to try to hypnotize the young lady with the powers of my mind. She calmly proceeded to pay while I meantime, am mortified at myself for my behaviour, where was my community spirit, my to the victor go the spoils?
What it taught me is not that one should not covet another persons thrift find but that I have only myself to blame and I should look behind the counter as soon as I enter the shop….that is after I look in the china and antiques cabinet on the way to the counter and then to glance on the counter[ while looking for possible finds on the wall] to casually check out the jewellery cases etc. All the time remembering not to make any sudden moves so as not to alert any possible market dealers, customers and staff that there may be a find somewhere there. If this is confusing to you imagine what it was like writing it out…I may need to write a manifesto of thrift shopping.
While I was still fretting about my stupidity in not spotting the vase, I have only been collecting coloured glass for about six months so am at that every piece is critical stage. I happened to look up, no not for divine guidance but to see what she might have missed, and I saw a gorgeous handbag with fifties style women on it. Now I don’t think that in my meme I mentioned that I have slight handbag addiction. I think second hand bags are fair game so I calmly, though there was a slight tremor in my voice, asked if they could get the bag down so I could examine it [ their best bags are kept behind the counter] and to my amazement it was brand new. Not only that but very well designed with two magnetic clasps attached to either side of the centre compartment to keep it all neat and tidy and best of all, in shape.
After that I popped upstairs to look for fabric and low and behold [who says that anymore?] I spotted a Laura Ashley duvet cover, king size, and it was virtually new as well. I recognized the pattern from my perusal of their archive of fabric. So I carefully wandered over and removed the quilt from the rack and sauntered around the bookshelves a bit. Couldn’t concentrate as was too excited so paid up [don't think they knew it was a Laura Ashley] and raced down to the coffee shop so I could examine my loot at leisure.
The next day I found a large piece of retro fabric that has screen printed by hand on the selvage and another glass vase in deep ruby red. Today I found a hardcover book on Tiffany and a feminist science fiction book by Pamela Sargent, The Shore of Women. Also spotted a yellowish glass vase so scooped that up as I went along to give one of the workers the reading glasses that she had been looking for for hours…found them amongst a lot of goods on a table. Also grabbed a magazine that has some great knitting patterns in it, though had to look for another copy as someone had removed the patterns from the first copy of the magazine I found.
While I was talking to the manager and paying, I spotted a Royal Albert small ruby glass vase, you guessed it, behind the counter! So I guess the moral of this is that if you are meant to find something you will. I ended up with two beautiful pieces of glass, both of which suit my collection far more than the purple one.
So prices now $8 for the handbag.
$12 for the duvet cover
$4 for the red vase
$4 for the yellow vase
$2 for the Royal Albert [I know, a whole lot of excitement there]
$4 for the fabric
50c for the magazine $3 for the sci fi book and $5 for the Tiffany book.
$42.50…… think I might start putting a $50 a week limit on myself to make it more interesting.
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I googled myself the other day,
mostly to see if this awful German site had taken my site off their directory. It was a directory of all things magic, which may make sense but right across the top of each page was the most vile pornography that I have ever seen. Course I have never seen much, but I have been around, and it appeared that the site was also a directory of porn videos of the utmost filth, also phone sex. It was in German so had to work out how to translate my email insisting that they take it down. There was also no way of knowing if they got the email as the webmaster’s contact details was on the site. I was so rattled by the filth that I did not think to bookmark my email, that is how I had proof of where my blog was on their site…I had bookmarked it, as had Google. So after doing that I looked into the Google report abuse and decided that as it would be up on Google for anyone to see if they searched I would ask them to remove all traces of it. Sorry this is long winded but it turns out that Google did remove the pages, thank goodness as I had felt quite sick about it. Apparently if you have the strongest form of safe filter on and you can still see filth then they will remove it somehow. Phew!
So when I was checking it out I also found another website had taken my photos from the flickr group Sustainable Style and was really quite nasty when I asked if it was a mistake. Seemed to question my commitment to helping the environment. Several other places that sell upholstery fabric also have taken some of my quilts and put them up as a way to use their fabrics I guess. It is I guess flattering but they seem to be unaware that even though up on the computer for all to see they are still my intellectual property…it says on the page All Rights Reserved. It is a worry as a lot of my quilts are my own design, and by rights I should be approached for the pattern for them if people want to make them.
Thank you everyone who joined in the meme, did not realize it could be such fun.
And that was just the comments.
