I say that of course, realizing that it is completely usual in it’s unusual-ness. My family is really not that strange and confusing, and just like everyone else’s family, it is filled with random members that collect hurricane shelters full of tinned yams and horde wood for y2k. It also has (just like everyone else) a quartet of organ-players, a banjo-soloist, a tarzan impersonator, a unicyclist, a zebra collector, a fraud specialist, and some Australians.

The thing about my family is that we really don’t have that many heirlooms. Some people have heirlooms up the yin-yang! Some people have hutches and desks and cabinetry built by their great-great-grandfer on the prairies of Oregon and hand-crocheted cat-ear cozies crafted crazily for a crotchety kitten who crankily crammed their cute meta-carpals into his craw.

It’s not like I’m jealous.

But my family is severely lacking in heirlooms. We haven’t been close to my paternal Grandparents in my lifetime. My maternal Grandmother began suffering from Altzheimer’s when I was about seven, so even my memories of her are tainted with memory loss, both of hers and my own.

I was twelve when she died, and not old enough to understand the desire to preserve trinkets and memories. I am left with photographs of her as my heirlooms. I love them! Seeing her as a young woman makes me feel like maybe I did know her, in a somewhat metaphorical way.

My Grandpa remarried a few years later, to an old friend of the family he reconnected with at my Grandmother’s death. I never identified with her, but now I wish I had tried harder to get to know her. She passed away this spring, and we have been slowly helping Grandpa weed through her possessions and send them off to her relations.

The entire time they were married, she had a collection hanging on her wall.

A collection of spoons.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. In fact, I thought the same thing when I first saw them. “Oh my gosh. SPOONS. How typically old-lady! What a silly thing to collect. I mean, SPOONS.”

If I knew how to triple-underscore and draw skulls and cross-bones around a word like I would in the notes I’d pass around school in the 7th grade in HTML, I would do so. That would fully-articulate the true disdain and hatred I felt whenever I saw them hanging on the dining-room wall.

Spoons.

I hated them. And honestly, as a 16 year old whose Grandpa re-married to a woman who had never had children of her own, no-less, I found that woman and her spoons to be-less-than-fantastic.

When she died earlier this spring, and Grandpa started sorting out through the last of her possessions, I knew the spoons would end up at a thriftstore.

When I visited his house, Grandpa would trot out many items of hers and offer them to me. I turned most of them down. He finally offered me her collector’s spoons.

They stared at me. Silver and tarnished, covered in plastic, embossed and emblazoned with words and names of places. I realized that she had travelled the world with her spoons, and had no one to look after them.

I hadn’t recieved anything from my grandmother, so it’s not like I had an issue with competing storage space. And the spoons… the spoons with their windmills and tarnished silver camels and necks covered in wildflowers… they were kinda cool.

In fact, oh hey! That one has a windmill that spins! And a cuckoo-clock that dangles! Oh wow, yeah I forgot she was a missionary in Bolivia… and she even went to Vatican City!

I suddenly was overwhelmed with this strange and fulfilling need to keep her heirlooms, as a substitute for my own. As a collector and a person who finds happiness in collecting things, the concept of leaving behind my favourite items without someone to value them too is pretty heartbreaking.

So I agreed to take the spoons, to everyone on the planet’s shock and awe.

And I love them.

The collection is rather large (to me!). I think I am now the proud owner of 30+ spoons from various places around the world. These are just my favourites to share right now.

I love seeing all the places she has been, and have even… started collecting a few of my own.

Here and there, you know, to commemorate big trips. Not anything… excessive.

They are spoons, after all.

Just spoons.

In Sisters, my friend Savannah and I went antiquing:

Also I got these cool red and white sunnies. Awesome, no? I love them!

We found many cool and also many terribly ugly things.

Cool:

Terribly ugly:

My sister and I share an extreme fondness for camels. It’s… it’s kind of a long story.

I’m still kind of disappointed this doesn’t match ANYTHING in my future apartment!

Also I wish I would have purchased this:

I guess this is proof that I’m apparently a hat person. Saturday Jane, I guess you’re right. But I never wear hats!

The next day we went to the Petersen Rock Garden and it was kind of amazingly gorgeous.

I love peacocks. I love the way they look and I also love harassing them. Yeah… I’m kind of a jerk.

It was a very neat place! This guy built all of these structures and little houses on his property from the 1930s through the 50s! It was pretty neat, and the waterlilies were amazing!

It was a most interesting and unusual place! What weird tourist attractions have you been to lately? Are there any that I should add to my list? (I LOVE TOURISTS! hahaahaa)

I only have photos from day 1 and 2 so far, so you’ll get to see more later!

And yeah, I have to admit, I’m a terrible calligraphy student. Half the time I’m in class, I’m wishing I was somewhere else, and when we’re supposed to practice, I’m generally off in my own little world, cutting letters out of construction paper or doodling monsters out of ink splatters in my notebook.

I still love lettering though. More and more in the last year I’ve gotten interested in numbers. In most of my calligraphy classes, numbers tend to get skipped over in favour of the more numerous (and admittedly, much easier to use in communications) and prettier alphabet. 26 letters x 2 (lowercase and capitals) + flourishes (another 10 variations on various letters) + connections (drawing letters like “ft” together) + cool things like ampersands means you don’t get much time to devote to good old 0123456789 !

I keep finding myself drawing numbers, though, and I find most of my inspiration from clock faces.
Whenever I go antiquing now, it’s with the goal of finding a cool clock to photograph and maybe purchase. I haven’t bought any yet, but I fully intend to own many, besides my photographs.

This clock face is one of my favourites, look at the numbers and their delicate curlicues! I love it so, I took a picture with my cell phone and made it my background! I would buy it, if only for the face (the rest of the clock is… to be honest, kind of ugly) but it’s sadly out of my budget.

How about this one? I love the dramatic widths of the numbers, as well as how the upper swoop on the 2’s loop back almost like a balloon! This clock has a slightly better shape, but still! Out of budget. Sigh.

I love that this one has the wood panel straight in the middle, and the almost cursive numbers! To me this one would need to be on top of one of those big old-fashioned radios you see in History Channel shows.

And lastly, I’m completely heartbroken that this photo turned out blurry, because this is probably my favourite clock! I love the shape, the fact that the background is black and the numbers bright, and how bold the numbers are! This clock clocks-in (haha) at about $25, and I really need to buy it, even though I have no place to put it. Hear me, clock? You will be mine.

I honestly don’t know why I’m so into clocks. I think it’s how they’re symmetrical without absolutely being symmetrical, and how much of a day-to-day often-ignored item they are.

I can’t honestly be the only person on this earth who finds random things like this to admire and obsess about. What are your obsessions? Things you find aesthetically pleasing that you could look at all day?

(psycho music plays)

I went back to Goodwill!

$40 later, and I’m completely satisfied with my purchase. (Along with a gold belt, a long plaid jacket, and a pair of intensely fugly skyscraper heels that I am going to marry!)

I’m thinking that it’ll be best (someday) on a low coffee table, filled with books in the middle of my future living room. What do you think of it’s potential?

Wow, that’s like the vaguest and most Hallmarky thing I’ve ever said, eh?

My aunt passed away last Friday. She had been fighting cancer for the last 12 years, and we are happy that she is in a better place, and no longer in pain, but we’re still all a little shell-shocked at her leaving, and the anticipation of the upcoming memorial service has us all speaking in hushed voices.

My Aunt and Uncle from Australia are here, serving us wine and keeping us chipper (as they always do), and we have begun our recovery process in the only way we know how.

By going shopping.

On Saturday we went to Macy’s, on Sunday, Old Navy and Ross, and today we hit up the antique stores in a neighboring city (and of course, Goodwill!). I love antique stores, mostly because every find truly is a discovery, entailing searching through piles of unsorted jewelry, a thousand china cups stacked on a shelf, and similar other oddities, not to mention the artistic way dealers arrange their sections in the big antique malls. Today I brought my camera along, to demonstrate to the uninitiated how absolutely charming antique stores can be.

How about these two little ladies? A pair of salt and pepper shakers for $25; I see them as friends, waiting to adorn your table.

I love bunched up jewelry displays, I can’t help myself. I’m rather fond of the blue rhinestones, but I think my favourite ones are the silver cowboys on the right.

This little corner seemed very quiet and solemn, the way the angel was sitting in the corner was just too perfect! Sometimes it’s hard to shop around in fear of disturbing the wonderful arrangement of objects.

How about these little blue pitchers? I love the way the doe is eyeing them.

As for me, I came home with two items: This lovely rhinestone bracelet, which I shall wear to the next wedding I’m invited to.

And this funny little contraption, which I hope a few of you will be able to identify: it’s a walnut grinder!

My mother inherited one from her mother, and I associate many days of my childhood with this tool, chopping walnuts for a pie or cookies and such. My sister, being the eldest, has claimed priority on inheriting Mom’s grinder, and I’m pretty excited to have one of my own to add to my hope chest!

Antique stores remind me of the silver lining in history: Tragic things happened, wars went on, friends grew sick and died, but there was still a cup of tea at the end of the day, and a friendly pair of salt shakers on the table. It’s nice to have little familiar things in times of grief.

It’s become a tradition for my sister and I to go whenever we’re both stuck at home and bored for whatever reason. Today I caved and bought a necklace I have looked at three times* now:

Isn’t it gorgeous? For $6, I think it was highly worth it. It certainly packs a statement, and is a great add to the rest of my jewelry collection.

What have been your great finds lately?

*Which, for anyone who has ever gone shopping or antiquing should know: is nearly impossible and basically means that I was DESTINED to own this necklace.