Thrifted treasures

It probably doesn't come as a surprise to anyone that I like thrift stores. I love looking for, and finding, treasure. Mostly treasure I can turn into something else. I've been obsessed with little porcelain cups and plates for a while, ever since I started my teacup collection. (What, I didn't tell you about my teacup collection yet? You can rest easy, that's a post for another day.) Teacup collection soon spread into a saucer collection, and then plate, teapot, sugar pot and creamer collections... you get my drift. All this has gained more purpose recently when I started picking up pretty candle holders, too.

Take a couple of pretty, similar but not matching plates and saucers, add a bit of epoxy (and fix other broken stuff while you're at it) and you have fancy-pants multi-layer cake plates:

Pretty, no? They're quite sturdy, too. Perfect for mad teaparties.

It's always fun to go thrifting with some actual goals in mind, but equally pleasing to see surprising potential in something frivolous and almost free. Like this for example:

It's a little plastic frame that looks like leather with pictures of what I can only surmise is some sort of a crime family lead by an evil naked baby. To hide the atrocity I went through a collection of old photographs and printed three out on photograph paper.

Now that's what I call improvement! It still needs a bit of cleaning up and perhaps a lace trim. We will see.

In knitting news I started an exciting new project and cast on Roxanne Mystery Shawl from Feministy. Two clues have been released, but there's plenty of time to catch up! I'm not going to spoil by posting pics until the whole thing is done, but if you're curious, you can see the result of the first clue on my Rav project page. Mystery knitting is always fun, I heartily recommend it! Even if you don't like the result you can always gift it to someone who will. I myself intend to like this one, because I lack a nice soft shawl I can wear next to skin, and purple is just my color.

The only downside is that you have to wait for the clues. Hence another project, because I'm going away for the weekend. And what is a weekend away without knitting? Nothing, I tell you, nothing! This one's going to be a present, though, so no links or pics for you! It's another shawl, that's all I'm going to say about that now.