January-March 2022

Youch! I picked a perfect time for a house visit!

This is our kitchen thermostat. This is what happens when an uninsulated room is heated.  The small number is what the thermostat is trying to do. The big number is the ambient room temperature. This is the thermostat peaking at 56 degrees. 

Taking the weather into consideration, it was especially lovely to arrive with the cozy fire burning! Pete moved the gas fireplace to the fern room from the kitchen. The fern room had no heat, the kitchen has the radiator, so we are trying to make two rooms as habitable as possible.

Trying to organize

I take a certain amount of pride attempting to keep to keep Pete organized. This was the easiest way for him to keep his clothes where they should be.

I'm not sure what I'm gonna do when we get real dressers. 

Cooking upgrade

We moved the sideboard counter into the kitchen. There's so much more space to prepare food! 

In keeping with trendy "What I ate today" photos, we had Amy's fire roasted Southwestern soup, vegan cubano sandwiches, and a half assed side salad. Served on a bath towel table cloth over a Tupperware storage tub.

 Porch-Part Six

Pete and I painted the porch balusters in the basement. In spite of the painting lathe, this is still a slow process due to the application, drying and sanding of wood filler, the primer, the necessary two coats of paint, and most of all the multiple color scheme. Building that wraparound front porch is gonna be like building an entire other house!

Nonetheless, I really enjoy these projects, there's something relaxing about being forced to slow down.

Each baluster was labeled with a number, this is especially essential for the ones going on the stairs. The first two are painted to establish the color scheme.

Each baluster got a quick hand sanding to remove any loose debris. Interesting how different the sanded one (number 17) looks from the unsanded.

Here's the primer coat. If you enjoy slow cooking this type of project may be for you.

It was easy to lose track on progress if I had two different steps going at the same time. Did I complete the second coat of teal on that batch?!?

While I was painting Pete was sanding the beveled edges on porch bat number one.

Looking more and more like a candy house-yum!

New Acquisitions

Sending "anonymous" romantic letters and cards seemed popular in the Victorian/Gilded era.

 "Will you let me hold your hand while the car goes by?" Cars were new and probably pretty scary in 1909, one year after Model T was available to the public.

I know nothing about perfume bottles, but this one is pretty.

I really like the big headed animals in this old children's book!

Pete bought these posters in New Orleans at the Museum of Death illustrated by the talented Madame Talbot.

I bought this Victorian dye cut scrapbook at a great antique shop on Long Island. 

Before pigeons were considered the rats of the air.

The computer screen does not do justice to the beautiful saturated colors of these ladies accompanied by beer steins, monkeys and cats (?)

There's no shortage of old timey model cars out there in junk shop world for Pete to alter.

Salt and pepper shakers representing both classy and trashy.

I couldn't resist these new/old stock mini reproduction radios!

My Currier and Ives ladies of the quarter

Little Flower Girl

I wish this one was painted, but the price was so low I couldn't pass it up.

 I believe this frame was made by C & I, Ill be keeping it and using it for something else. 

Take A Peach

Harriet

This embroidered electric Studebaker mounted behind the Harriet print. 

Batwing typewriter!

We found this in a local antique store, I've been looking for one of these forever. Although army green is not my first color choice, the keys work. In a perfect world I would get it refurbished and painted matte black. 

We got this enamel address sign to mount by the mailbox.

How did you write these?!?

If anyone asked, I would describe my dad as stoic. His emotional spectrum goes from calm apathy to nose flaring rage. I was delighted and confused when he gave me these postcards. He wrote fictitious stories about family members that don't exist, using the people printed on the postcards as inspiration.

Inspiration

Seasonal depression is nothing new. Scandinavians have been jolting themselves out of it by jumping in frozen lakes since who knows when. Rich steel producer Henry Phipps Jr. built a botanical garden to help people deal with the brutal winters, opening the Phipps Conservatory in December of 1893. 

Built in a year, the conservatory consists of nine adjoining greenhouses. Current exhibits include two pools, an orchid room, a desert room, waterfalls, a bonsai collection, and a fern room.

Pete and I make sure we bring all of our out of town visitors there. Its impressive any time of year, but especially enchanting in the winter months.

Flower show in 1929

Lady on a giant lily pad

How amazing it must have been to see all of these exotic botanical wonders in 1893! 

This plant is much bigger than it looks!

Photos from:

Phipps Conservatory 

Jim Cheney via Uncovering PA 

Sean Collier via Pittsburgh Magazine

and me

Sterling Collection

I hadn't given a lot of thought to these unusual goggles when I was photographing and cataloging our Sterling Collection treasures. I thought they were missing their lenses, but what were the metal occluders for? 

Thanks to Google reverse image search I learned that these are called hoodwink goggles, used by fraternities for initiations.  A Masonic website innocently talks about candidates wearing these goggles being brought from the darkness (ignorance) into the light (knowledge), but I'm confident these were used for more sinister activities. Goggles like this were commercially manufactured by a company called DeMoulin, still in business, who currently manufactures marching band uniforms.

How often are initiates blindfolded in hazing incidents? The earliest example I found was fraternity candidate Mortimer Leggett. He died during a hazing while allegedly blindfolded. He was walking through the woods at night and fell down a cliff at Cornell University in 1893.

This research took me down a bizarre rabbit hole of early university hazing. 

You can view a 1930 DeMoulin catalog here. Scroll down to view each page. The strangest and most unsettling products for sale are here, here, and here. 

Poetry Corner

I know lover boy is trying to say his woman takes him places far away with this one, but the "no longer shape or form" phrase just reminds me of shape shifting space aliens.