The Buying, It Does Not End

Since I'm still tootling away on my Christmas in July Stashbuster swap (a few minutes ago, while labelling the dinosaurs Willow was drawing on thank-you cards in preparation for the girls' birthday bash this coming weekend--pteranodon, apatosaurus, stegosaurus, and triceratops so far--I had the awesomest idea for what I'm going to make for the littlest member of my swap family. Yay!), I have no actual crafting news to share, other than the fact that hand-sewing is not so much my forte, but I can show you yet more stuff that I've thrifted lately, primarily from our yesterday trip to Indy.

One of the nicest things about our little town, along with the farmer's market, the Recycling Center, Pizza Express, and the fact that it's a liberal hotbed in the middle of Indiana, is its distance--about an hour or so--from Indianapolis. That makes spontaneous trips to the Indianapolis Zoo possible. Thus, while at 9:00 am on Saturday we were sitting around in our filthy living room watching the girls pester the foster kittens, anticipating no more to the day than a little housecleaning and yardwork, by noon we were looking through a lighted window for sea lions

and watching a koala sit on its fat butt and munch eucalyptus leaves (Everyone knows that eucalyptus leaves are notoriously non-nutritive, right, and that's why koalas eat all the time? I suggested to Matt that a better food should be offered to koalas, but somehow, he failed to see the incredible insight in that), and sneaking up on the hundreds of these fluttering around in the giant greenhouse and getting splashed in the Splash Zone at the dolphin show (I'm probably alone in this, but whenever Willow and I sit there I have these frightening fantasies that a dolphin will misjudge its leap and land, spine crushed upon impact, right there on the pavement at our feet. Screaming, rioting, etc. to ensue. Am I alone in that?), and just generally looking like this:

As if that wasn't enough, on the way home we stopped by the most hard-core of thrifting experiences, the Goodwill Outlet Store. Stuff is unsorted here, people. Sold by weight. Stored in big blue bins. It's like community dumpster-diving, basically, complete with old potty chairs with dried pee still in them, and pill bottles, and band-aids. Matt and Sydney sat on a couch and fell asleep, but Will and I were in dumpster heaven. She found a bunch of dinosaur shirts and dinosaur books, and I found an 1890 Bible (beautiful, and now a birthday gift for a treasured little cousin), a pillowcase for a dress that is embroidered, I kid you not, like this

a wool sweater hand-knitted in Ecuadorthat is right this second felting in the washing machine and, most awesomely, this: Hell, yes, Will is jumping on the Master of the Universe himself! There's He-Man, and Skeletor, and Castle Greyskull, and Ram Man, and Teela. Obviously this bedspread visited the sanitary cycle in my washing machine bright and early this morning, and no, I'm not conflicted by my love of 80s crap media versus my refusal to allow my girls to experience commercial media. So they won't have any interest in 20-year-old bedspreads printed with pop culture images when they're 32? Whatever, they can buy space ponies or something instead.