Thank goodness it's Saturday so I can hunt for Pyrex

Not long ago, a fellow Pyrex collective contributor had written that once she made room in her cupboards for Pyrex she found some.  I sold all of my blue cornflower corningware, which I blogged about here, this week.  I never really loved it and I wasn't using it so it went to a better home.  After that, with corningware money burning a hole in my pocket, I was hoping that would kickstart a Pyrex finding streak!

Even though the weather was terrible this morning, I drove 1/2 hour to an estate sale promising "tons of Pyrex".  I expected that the estate sale company might exagerate so I wasn't too optimistic, but just the promise of some Pyrex was enough to lure me.  After waiting in line in the freezing rain, I was disappointed to see only 2 homestead mixing bowls on the table labelled $5 each.  I actually bought some homestead mixing bowls as part of the mystery pyrex lot so I left those behind.  They were quickly bought up by someone else.  I found a Kathie Winkle teapot in great condition but I don't collect them so I left it behind for someone who would appreciate it.

I was pretty disappointed at this point.  I decided to take a look in the rest of the house.  I was happy to find a sewing machine table with drawers full of vintage sewing items. 

Look at all those cute wooden spools of thread, buttons and trim.  I needed some embroidery scissors so I was happy to find 3 pairs, along with some heavy duty pinking shears and fabric scissors. There were also a few vintage patterns.  How cute and mad men-esque is this outfit?

It seems that the homeowner subscribed to patterns that were shipped to her by The Star Weekly's "pattern department" back in 1965:

And how cheaky is this little guy:

While I was excitedly sifting through these sewing drawers, many "pickers" came by and started looking through them too, only to mutter that it was "junk" and walked away.  Well I was happy to have it all to myself.

I also picked out a few pretty scarves, including some souvenir ones from London, Italy and Calgary Olympics:

I then decided to see if I could find any vintage Christmas ball ornaments for a new online friend who I've bonded with over our mutual love of Pyrex and other vintage things.  I ended up going into the basement and found myself all alone.  I saw a few boxes marked "Christmas $10" sitting on the top of a shelf.  I lugged them to the ground so I could take a peak.  Unfortunately, a lot of it was in pretty bad condition.  I was able to salvage this - it's not much but it's pink, a little sparkly and in decent shape so I hope my friend will like it:

In another box, I noticed this:

It looked old and kinda neat so I just threw it in my bag, figuring they wouldn't really charge me extra for it.  Well when I got home and quickly googled it, turns out it's very collectible.  In fact, someone was selling a similar set for over $50!  Here's what's inside:

Basically, it's a set of paper shades that go over Christmas lights and will spin due to the heat of the bulbs.  These were made all the way back in 1936.  Frankly I was surprised that these frangile paper shades survived this long and are in such good shape.  I have a feeling they may never have been used.  The box says that it's actually box no.2 in a 2 box set.  Sadly, I never found box no.1 and I worry it was thrown away at the end of the sale today.

I was almost ready to leave but I decided to take one last look in the kitchen for Pyrex.  Some of the shelves in the cupboard were quite high and I pull over a step ladder and climbed up (yes I'm crazy).  I looked into the back of the cupboards hoping to spot something.  Nope, nada.  Then I saw just a peak of blue from a stack of very ordinary bowls right in front of my face.  Could it be?  Yes it is...Pyrex delphite!!  But then my heart sank when I saw this:

Yikes!  Who would do such a horrible thing?!  After I gathered my wits, I did a quick nail scrape test and luckily, a little came off so I decided it was worth saving.

A look at one last cupboard (in hopes of more delphite), I found this:

Again with the blue cornflower corningware...what are the thrifting gods trying to tell me?  Well I figured I'd take a peak at the inside, and if it was stained (like these teapots usually are), I will definitely leave it.  And what do I see inside?

Yes, it's pristine and there's the pamphlet for the teapot, which suggests it may never have been used.  I can't fight kismet can I?  So I took her home too...

As I was waiting for the estate sale person to look over my bag of goodies and give me a price, I spotted this cute pair:

The doggie still had his blue mountain pottery sticker on, but it fell off as I was adding it to my loot bag.

The grand total I paid for all these goodies?!  $10!  And to give this story a happy ending, here's what my delphite bowl looked like after I cleaned it.

Oh, and I found a pair of woodland mugs at a rummage sale for 10 cents each (but was charged $2 admission/donation).  When I first saw them on one of the tables, I wasn't even sure they were for sale because they were filled with pricing stickers but luckily one of the people working the sale just emptied the stickers into another cup and let me buy them.  I enjoyed a nice hot chocolate in one of them to warm up once I got home.