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Spice O' Life tea kettle[/caption]
Right now my wife and I are in a bit of a holding pattern. We are, once again, waiting to see if specific intent is going to manifest for us, and when, and in general it means a whole lot of things are up in the air until we know what's going on with this one specific thing.
In order to deal with that, we spent the weekend not thinking about it.
On Saturday we drove up to Scappoose, Oregon. It wasn't a terribly long drive, but it brought us to the home of Blue Moon Fiber Arts, who were having their annual barn sale. They have a property which is almost as gorgeous as the yarn they produce, and the drive was pleasant. We did some yard sailing along the way and stopped in a thrift store in Scappoose, where I got a couple of altar items for Mara and found, in near-mint condition and with its lid, the tea kettle from the classic Corningware "Spice O' Life" pattern. It was three dollars.
On Sunday, after a morning of stumbling onto overpriced vintage sales trying to pass as yard sales, I came across the 10-cup percolator from the same pattern. This one was missing its lid and its heating element, but it was less than two dollars.
Now, up until just recently, we've never committed to a kitchen pattern. Everything we have is secondhand, and most of it is vintage painted enamel just because if I'm going to buy a used pan, I'm going to buy a used pan that I like, dammit. But I think something clicked when we were looking at the Merry Mushroom house a few weeks ago. Since then, my wife found a stoneware dish pattern that she likes, and we decided to commit to a cookware pattern.
We are officially collecting Spice O' Life. It's a little later period than we'd been planning to go with our kitchen but it looks really good against the wood-paneled walls and cabinets, it's easy to find but has more obscure pieces so there's some thrill of the hunt there, and it reminds me of my childhood. What more could I ask for?