yard sales, july 17.

I've noticed that during the middle of the summer, yard sales die off.  This might be more of a Raleigh thing, because I don't remember this being the case back in Lenoir, which is much cooler in June, July, and August.  Then again, the season here extends all the way through October, whereas in Lenoir it peters out in early September.  Yard sale seasons are like growing seasons; they vary depending on your location.  You could plot the season here by the number of ads in the News and Observer.  I thought very seriously about doing that, and then decided that it was too dorky of an endeavor for even me.

Anyway, we're in the thick of the summer doldrums around here.  That doesn't mean that I'm not going to sales.  Let's not be silly.  It just means that there are fewer sales to go to, and almost all of them are single family sales.  Come September, maybe we'll get some big church sales again.

There was a small church sale, and I bought these small glass nesting bowls.  I bought them for a silly reason:  the Pioneer Woman has a set, which I've seen in the pictures that accompany her recipes.  It's really the equivalent of buying strawberry pop tarts because they're the favorite breakfast food of the youngest New Kid on the Block, as revealed in this month's Tiger Beat.  These Duralex-brand bowls are sold as a set of nine, but I guess the original owner of these didn't have much use for the tiny bowls, probably because they're not internet cooking stars.

Aside from being cute, these bowls are both French and indestructible.  Josh threatened to test their promise of unbreakability by dropping my sweet new bowls on our hardwood floors.  I was temporarily insane at the time, so I took that as a challenge.  I took the bowls from him, and just dropped them.  The tiniest one went flying across the room, but they all remained intact and free of chips or cracks.  Which is a relief, because we were both barefoot, and it was a pretty stupid thing to do.  Still!  Now we know.  Duralex:  can't bust 'em.

My main purchase of the day was a cast iron skillet.  I've been sorta-kinda looking for one for over a year now.  I could wax poetic about the lesson of delayed gratification inherent in buying secondhand, but to be honest, I've seen several cast iron skillets at sales, but never bought them.  When the time would come to pick it up and pay for it, I just never did.  Maybe it was because I didn't really have any idea what it was I was going to do with one, only that I had some sort of vague notion that it was a good thing to have in my cookware.  Also, I didn't really know anything about cast iron, so I wasn't sure what to look for.

Two weeks ago, Josh told me he thought we should have one.  Last week, I read a blog entry about cast iron skillets and which brands to look for.  These elements combined to give me the motivation to buy a skillet.  So Saturday, I bought a Wagner 10 1/2 inch, which is a brand recommended by that other blog (also:  Griswold and Lodge).  I bought it from a guy who clearly used to be an avid fisherman.  He was selling a dozen fishing rods and a bunch of outdoor cooking gear.  I felt bad for him, that he was being forced to let go of a hobby which must have brought him a lot of joy (or at least cost him a lot of money), but I liked the idea of having a skillet that had cooked fresh fish over a campfire.

I still don't know what I'm going to do with the dang thing, other than wield it threateningly during arguments, of course.  IT'S YOUR TURN TO DO THE DISHES!

Finally, this little table is more than just a prop in my front porch photography studio.  I went to an estate sale of someone who did a lot of woodworking.  Is it odd to pick up someone else's homemade project?  Seems like those are the kinds of things most people keep because they feel obligated to the person who made it.  But I like it's rusticity, and I think it would be a good place to put a couple of potted plants.  Will I ever actually put potted plants on it?  Who knows?  I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the skillet.

Oh, okay, one more thing.  Best yard sale sign ever.