velvet on the page: October 2011

When I title this blog evil blackberries, you may have this in mind....

Evil blackberry image by fernando-gutierrez

But it's not that kind of evil blackberry. It's this kind:
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Blackberry image by farmersmarketonline.com

Last weekend my friends Judy, Kathy and my sister Leslie made plans to band together for an estate sale adventure. We decided we would meet for coffee, then go off to hunt for treasures, then meet our friend Colleen for lunch to celebrate her birthday. Good plan!

Then- I realized I had scheduled senior pictures for my son Wedge at 11:00 am- right in the middle of our adventure! Argh.

Judy said it was no problem, since she is the estate sale queen and knows all about how to find great sales. She said we would just find sales around the photographer's studio in Raleigh Hills, and I could bring my own car and leave when I needed to and then meet them for lunch. Well, that day, the sales were all in the beautiful area of Scholls, the rural area just past SW Portland, Oregon. So we drove and drove and drove through gorgeous farmland to some sales. And they were worth the drive.

At the first sale, Kathy picked up a little vintage case, opened it, and some oily brown stuff leaked onto her pristine white shirt. It was her favorite shirt and she was horrified. I suggested alcohol-based hand sanitizer, which works so well to take out greasy stains, but my handy bottle was empty. Luckily, Judy had a few drops left in a bottle, and after much dabbing, the stain started to come out! Meanwhile, I found a cool old padlock and some vintage Portland rock concert posters from the 1970's....

The next sale was a popular one and you had to park along a narrow country road. It was hard to get out of the car on the passenger side. But we came to the sale and Kathy said, "Hey, look at how well that hand sanitizer took out that brown stain on my favorite white shirt." We all looked down and saw----that she had very dark blue-black blackberry stains all over her shirt in the exact same place! She'd brushed against a bush full of ripe blackberries getting out of the car. I almost fell down in the driveway I was laughing so hard.

Anyway, the sale was full of stuff including a huge salt and pepper collection. I could have bought all of them and made plant markers for everyone, but just bought a couple and some other treasures.

I went off and had Wedge get his senior pictures taken- I was surprised how into it he got for being a cynical teenager. I think the photos will be great, and afterwards I went off and met my friends for lunch.

The funny thing is, Kathy kept finding blackberry stains on everything throughout the rest of our time together. Finally she figured out some blackberries had fallen into her purse too and everything was stained that beautiful purple-black color- her hands, her address book, the inside of her purse, EVERYTHING inside of her purse....

I love the treasures I found that day and they will soon be made into something cool, but the best part of the day was those damn blackberries.

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