playing around with vintage toys

it seemed that everywhere i turned at the flea market, there were lovely old toys. and no, i didn't buy any, i only photographed them. and i only got yelled at about it once, by an extremely thick and repulsive angry old man. such a jerk. but i got so many great pictures (including the 3rd to last one of HIS little cars), that not even that encounter could spoil the day.

playing knights(?) and indians

wait, isn't that a civil war soldier?

battle in full head dress

is he doing a ceremonial dance in the midst of the battle?

and the birds apparently looked on.

adored these little trucks.

here are the overpriced old cars belonging to the nasty old man who didn't like my camera.

such a charming little truck.

a bit blurry, but i still had to share these sweet little bikes.

it's funny, i adore seeing the old toys, especially painted metal ones, in the antique places, but i've never begun to collect them. i guess i only collect photos and enjoy imagining all of the little hands and little imaginations that have touched them over the years. such memories they hold.

flea market fancy (no, not the fabric)

husband and i spent the day at a flea market with like-minded friends. bliss, i tell you, bliss. here's just the first round of what we saw...

stacks of beautiful vintage crochet.
husband rather unnecessarily cracked that it was from the time before everyone spent all of their time in front of the internet.
and by everyone, i suspect he means me.

*sigh*

i saw a guy walking away with this, but i don't know what he paid.

from when silverware mattered.

i had this odd grandma moment looking at this. i wanted the whole set.

happily, the same did not happen with these, but i like how they're displayed.

royal copenhagen

a bit of more modern scandinavian goodness.

more tomorrow....happy saturday!

without further ado

i apologize for being a bit later than i said i would be on announcing the winner of the garland giveaway. we went to ikea yesterday and, as you may imagine, wandering slavishly through a ginormous store along the prescribed arrows is exhausting, so once we got home my lovely assistant fell asleep before we could do our drawing.  plus, we ate the crack meatballs and they always let you down hard after the initial high(possibly due to high carb, low meat content). but this morning, we drew a name out of sabin's hat and we are pleased to announce that tracy golightly-garcia is our winner! tracy, i have your address, so i'll be popping the springy garland in the mail to you on monday!  thank you all for participating! we'll be doing this again soon. (the giveaway part, not the ikea part, you can only take that once in awhile.)

overheard on the train

slightly autistic-seeming man to wife in serious need of a good shampoo:

wife going on and on about a friend and husband says, "i think you're tired of one another."

he then proceeds to ask how it was going with the friend's "economic ruin." no way to tell if that was a general comment or a money pit of a house.

then, suddenly, out of the blue, unrelated to anything in the conversation up to that point, wife says, "i think we have a CO2 friendly life."

* * *

"so i had a talk with simon at the end of the day. he admitted it hadn't been a good first month in the IT support job, but said it was ok because he had decided to leave to pursue his passion...(long pause)...birdwatching."

* * *

what have you overheard lately?

* * *

originally posted on the julie project - april 29, 2009

the ship has sailed

i've been listening to loads of TED talks (they have a way of restoring my faith in humanity, as well as making me think). somehow, i always end up on the tech ones or the ones that are talking about the future of the internet or educating through gaming (those gaming guys have no respect for apple, and they just totally did not see angry birds coming). one thing that i think is in the future of it (but which hasn't been mentioned) is that we'll stop capitalizing it. that's totally unnecessary (of course, i largely dispense with capitals in a general sorta way, so i would think that).

but it has me thinking about the whole social networking thing that is going on in the world today - gmail, facebook, twitter, flickr, instagram - just to name the ones i check in on every morning when i wake up. and that in turn makes me think about content and the emphemeral nature of it. once you put it up for all to see, is it still yours? you have no idea what people are doing with it unless they tell you - desktops, screensavers, tumblr blogs, links on their blogs, advertising for their stallion, advertising for a castle in lithuania - you just never know. and it's the risk you take when you put it out there. that people will see it. and that they'll like it or relate to it. invite it in.

so all of this rabidity among some flickr folks just puzzles me (no new incidents have happened, i've just seen some dire warnings on photos and profiles of late). if you don't want anyone to see your pictures or react to them or relate to them, don't put them online on a site that is designed for exactly that. and just relax a little bit. you have to give something of yourself to get something in return - it's part of the social contract.

just think about music and news and magazines...so much free content is available today (i spent half my evening on the new york times website). and images are a big part of it. if we're going to share our images, someone's going to appropriate them. what you have to do is something to add value to the sharing...make cards or other photo-related art available on etsy. someone who tumbles your photo on their tumblr blog isn't going to bother to do that with your images. and if they saw it on flickr and liked it, chances are, they might be interested in buying your cards featuring it. good things can come of sharing. 

i think new models of defining intellectual and creative property are on the horizon. i'm not sure exactly what they are, but the outlines are beginning to be there (the apple app store is a hint of what's to come). but the world is overloaded with input, so i think people should just be glad their work is seen (especially on flickr) and if they want to profit from every instance where it's used or linked, find other ways or don't put it there.  the ship has sailed, my friends and we have to decide if we're onboard or not.

cleaning frenzy

i've reached a point of idea overload. 

there's so much floating in my head that it's very hard to focus. 

so, i'm making a huge batch of clarity birds, 

hoping to encounter some clarity along the way. 

to quiet my mind from all these ideas.

to be able to just work on just a few of them.

and feel it's ok to leave the rest alone for now.

some of them will wait.

and get even better with age.

i just need to get down and DO something.

but first, a cleaning frenzy.

it's what i do.

when i can't do anything else.

* * *

don't forget the garland giveaway. i'll ask my lovely assistant to draw one lucky name tomorrow!

happy memories: rearranged design house tour

some time back, the lovely ana from rearranged design approached me on flickr about featuring our house. of course, the pictures she'd come across on flickr were of our old house. as you know, there's not much worth featuring in this place, unless your site is called "decorating disasters by cheap-ass people" (hmm, that has kind of a ring to it). so for the sake of a stroll down memory lane and because i'm really proud of what we did there, i explained our move to her and she agreed to go ahead and do the house tour featuring the old place. i added a link to my post yesterday, but that doesn't do ana's nice feature justice, so i'm giving it its own space today.

please go and check out our house tour over on rearranged design. and do stay to look around a bit - ana has a good eye for lovely things.