"It takes ages to finish a quilt you're not working on!"

Friday, August 26, 2005

The joys of Op-shopping!

Over at The Blank Page, S mentioned a new book on the market, called 'The Treasure Hunter's Guide' - a guide to opportunity/thrift shops, second hand stores and trash & treasure markets around Melbourne. I was going to wait until I saw her copy before I bought one, but I found a copy in our local newsagent earlier this week and snapped it up. I only had one job this morning, from 9 to 10 am, then I was free until 2 pm, so I figured I would have time to go and check some of the shops listed in this little book.

Well!! Did I have fun! I didn't bother going to the places I already know about close to home; instead I went a bit further afield, and in doing so, found a mistake in the book. One of the addresses given was a private house, so I kept on driving, and around the corner I found the shop listed. It was an obvious error - the street changes name around a bend in the road, instead of being a definite corner, so if the author was unfamiliar with the suburb, I guess she just assumed it was the same road. I also found two more op-shops that aren't in the book, so I will be contacting the authors to let them know, as they have indicated in this book that if they get enough responses, they will publish another edition.

So was it worth all that driving around? Most definitely! Here is what I bought at several shops:
Two Chicken Scratch cloths
Two embroidered table cloths
Four aprons (three embroidered, one plain with unworked design)
Three plain huckabuck towels
Two embroidered huckabuck towels
Three large embroidered doilies (one exquisite whitework)
One pillowsham
A small embroidered calico bag (not sure of its purpose, but it is old)
and three books.
All this for less than $20! Now to get that digital camera working...

3 comments:

Maggie Ann said...

What a great shopper you are! Hope you'll be posting pictures of some of your treasures. By the way, I bought some Thread Heaven last night, haven't used it yet but I am looking forward to it. Thanks for telling me about it. (I think it was you, yes?)

Miss Robyn said...

wow! lots of treasures- love days like this

Gina E. said...

I have washed all my new treasures, Maggie ann, and will iron them tomorrow. Then I can scan the smaller ones and put them on here!