Heart & Soul Christmas Open

NEWS FLASH....Last Saturday, November 7th was so much fun, we're doing it again!  No, my shop at home will not be open, but I'm hauling a trailer load into town and joining Connie and friends at "That Extra Touch" show at the Sawmill Inn...   I'll be there from 8 am to 4 pm...Stop by to check it out, I've found some goodies on my recent dash over to Alex...and today in my workshop some new things were finished...

This last week I made a oddles of ornaments as well as my Ladies on the left.  Don't they look like perfect little angels?  So, to introduce them, from left to right, front row, Lilah, Angel of Lady Bugs and other surveillance devices, and Liona, Angel of all Ladies in Waiting.  Back Row, Lavonne, the Lady of the House, Angel of Household Leadership Skills, and Lillian, Angel of Refined Ladies.  They are quite the bunch!    The 5th angel I worked on this week came into my life in a rather surprising way.  Last September I received a phone call from one of my customers.  She was cleaning out her mother's attic and found a little trunk filled with vintage baby dresses and wanted to know if I'd be interested in them.  Would I!  So we struck up a deal to use one of the dresses and I'd make a doll for her.  I had 3 things to help create the doll, in addition to observing that she had dark hair and dark eyes.  1)  Her nick name is Rainy; 2) She is a deli lady and sells cheese and 3) She just won a blue ribbon at the Itasca County Fair for an apron she made.   I promised to have it completed by November 7th.  So, here I am the morning of November 6th, the doll is made, but I still needed to sew on her wings, add her halo and bell AND  decide on her angel specialty for her tag.....hummm, so this is what I came up with... "Rainydaze, Angel of all Deli Ladies, Showering the World with Cheese and Undisputed Champion Apron Creator"  I think she'll like it!

October Birthday Sale!

Saturday, October 5th is my annual October Birthday Sale! Checkered Past Antiques is celebrating 6 years this month! (oh, and coincidentally, this is my birthday month too, but who's counting anymore!)  My shop is stuffed full of fun things I've gleaned from auction sales and flea markets. There's also fun folk art fresh from the workshop and dried flower bouquets from my garden.  If you're looking for pumpkins, you will find Rasmussen's Cowhorn Crossings Pumpkin Farm, a hop, skip and a jump from me on Dansen Road. The leaves are beautiful right now, so I hope you'll drive out and enjoy the day! 10 am to 5 pm, or call ahead anytime!

falling for fall...

What a glorious fall day we've had today.  70 degrees, with a slight breeze, sunny, and not a cloud in the sky.  This morning I went to the farmers market and bought some sun flowers, pumpkins and corn stalks.  Sure wish I had my own corn field to cut my own stalks, but instead I have trees.  Ahhh, the trees are starting to turn various shades of red, russet, and orange.  We still are not at "peak", or as they say out east, the "height of the foliage season".  Next week should be wonderful.  So to enjoy this day, I just could not stay inside, even though my indoor projects were calling me and my to do list is quite long if I'm going to be ready for my fall shows....but a day like today needed to be cherished.  So in that spirit, I created my annual scarecrow family.  I pulled the bin from the loft and selected the garmets and accessories.  I always have a papa, mama, and baby, just like my own family.  In fact, the little scarecrow always sports the same flannel shirt and bibs that my little guy wore as a baby.  Each year I try something new with my family.  This year I'm trying something different with their heads.  Last year their heads were pumpkins with wacky faces.  This year I used rusty shovel handles I gleaned from a garage sale.  I got quite the looks from people when they asked what I was going to do with them.  Who would have thought rusty shovel heads could become the crowning glory for a scarecrow family!  Well, sometimes you just have to let your imagination run wild and have fun!  Happy Fall.  PS:  My shop will be open the first Saturday in October - that's the 3rd, from 10 am to 5 pm.  Come check out my scarecrow family!

Getting Ready for Fall....

Fall is in the air.  I've spent the last week getting ready for fall.  That may mean many things, like school shopping...(yes, I was saddened to see no crayons on the list this year), getting ready for Rally Sunday at church, and what to do with the perennial gardens.  It was a cool summer, bad for vegetables, but my perennials went WILD.  So I started "cleaning" my large perennial garden behind the house.  I gave away dozens and dozens of hollyhocks, and what to do with all the irises?  I rearranged paths to allow the volunteer maple to thrive, and then decided to dig out the entire rock path and replace the small rocks with larger rocks.  Which reminds me, time to make a chiropractor appointment for next week...  At the last minute, I realized that the bowling balls and pins I recently found at an estate sale would be just the thing I needed for my rock "alley".  Why not have fun in the garden and create a little bit of whimsey!  Checkered Past will be open this Saturday, September 5th and I still have a lot of items that could create whimsey in your yard, like old ladders and buckets, a wheelbarrow, an old barn door.  One of my favorite treasures that I've had for years, is my grandfather's work boot, planted with a hen & chick.  I always keep a lookout for old boots when I'm searching for treasures. Hope to see you on Saturday!

Farm Auctions 101

I left home while it was still dark.  I had waited for this day for months.  I was ready.  My bag was packed with everything I could possibly need to spend the day at a farm auction...enough clothing to be comfortable in any type of weather; rain, snow, wind, mud, heat....you name it, I had it.  I also had footwear options to change 3 times, if needed.  (I would soon discover that my Doc Martins, or what I call my "sh-- stompers", were perfect due to mud, thistles and the various farm animal waste products.)  By the time I drove through Aitkin County, the sun was rising.  It was an orange glow that promised to be a beautiful day.  After a week of cool, rainy weather, this was too good to be true!  Three hours later, I arrived at the auction sale -  an hour early, a must in my book!  I had driven through absolutely beautiful farm country, rolling hills, fields planted in a patchwork quilt pattern, and pristine Amish farms.  The auction was on one of these type of beautiful Amish farms, with a red barn and outbuildings and a big ole freshly painted white house.  I was greeted by the young boys assigned to tell people where to park...the Amish horse and buggy's on the side of the driveway with large shade trees and good grazing pasture for the horses.  The English with their cars and trailers parked across the road in the thistle field.  I didn't mind, I was wearing my Doc Martins.  So the first thing to do when arriving at an auction, is to get your bidding number, especially if you're not early!  Next, I discovered the machine shop had been turned into a market to sell homemade baked goods.  (This is not normal at a farm auction...just the Amish farm auctions!)  I could tell this was the goodie building by all the Amish women carrying baskets through a side door, and the accumulation of men by the front door!  WOW, I loaded up on homemade noodles, pickled beets, jams, jellies and homemade bread.  My first purchase of the day was stellar!!  The next very important step in attending an auction is to "scope it out".  Start going through all the items waiting to be sold and decide what you want to bid on.  However, NEVER appear too anxious over an item as to give away your strategy to the competition!  At this auction there were things I definitely would not be bidding on, but were so fun to see...sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, and hundreds of horses, buggies, sleighs, wagons and horse drawn farm equipment.  And did I mention crates of vegetables and bags of newly hand-stiched quilts?  WOW.  It was somewhat overwhelming, but extremely interesting.  Also at this auction there were two auctioneers calling, so you had to know the route each one would be taking in order to not miss out on your items.  My very favorite part of the auction is listening to the auctioneers.  There's almost a hypnotic rhythm that whips you into a bidding frenzy.  You have to be careful not to get wrapped up in it.  You also have to be careful not to wave, scratch your nose, or signal in any way as you just might buy something!  This particular auctioneer moves very, very fast.  I've been to his auctions before and have missed out on something because I couldn't keep up.  I was determined that today that would not happen.  This would not be an auction for first-time bidders.  You had to know what you wanted, jump in right away, never hesitate with your bidding and know your limit!  The key is to position yourself so the auctioneer AND at least one assistant can see you.  Luckily, I got a spot right up next to the first wagon and 2 assistants.  Once you start bidding on a couple primitive items, they know what you like and will look to you to see if you're interested.  If you're not interested in a particular group of items, "proper" auction etiquette is to back away and let those that are interested have the prime spots.  Luckily, the items I was interested in sold first...old sleds, boxes, crates, milk bottles, old wheels, a couple stools and milk cans.  I was done with my spending spree by noon!  That's when I noticed the crowd of people had grown beyond 1000!  WOW, I don't think I've even been to a farm auction as large as this.  So the rest of the time I participated in another favorite auction activity, "people-watching".  I must say, the Amish were probably more interested in me, than I them!  Can we talk lunch?  With all these people they didn't have the typical "lunch wagon".  Instead, a huge outdoor grill had been set up under a tent and they were frantically trying to keep up with the demand for turkey legs, sausages and hamburgers, all served on homemade buns.  I waited in line nearly an hour to get my hamburger, but it was worth the wait!  Another fun thing to do at auctions is to banter with other bidders, since a lot of the time you're waiting anyway.  I discovered a fellow primitive collector who had driven from Bemidji.  Others had driven from the metro area.  So I wasn't the only crazy person to have driven 3 or more hours to enjoy this auction.  Around 1:00, the horse auction began.  Hundreds of people were sitting around the auction ring on the homemade wooden church benches (they had collapsible legs and I sure wish they would have been for sale!)  These serious bidders came to buy horses raised and broken by the Amish.  It had been many, many years since I've seen a pair of large work horses.  It brought back memories of my Uncle Vic who used to give us rides atop his work horses!  At the auction the work horses sold for $2000 each.  Is that good?  There were also small ponies that sold for around $200, and beautiful horses to pull buggies, some sold for $1000-$1500.  Knowing absolutely nothing about horses, I still enjoyed watching the action.  There was a lot of tension in the air between the bidders, the auctioneer, the men driving the horses into the ring and the spectators.  It was very fast paced, highly organized, and did I mention you had to watch where you walked?  With 2 auctioneers working, it looked like things would wrap up around 4:00.  I, however, had seen enough to satisfy my auction fix and headed for home.  It might be a long time before I see another auction as enjoyable as this, I will certainly cherish the memories.