Karen’s Opinion

Hubby and I consider using gas money a luxury. We like to go for drives. I never looked at our love of driving as luxury but now that the cost of gas is so high, driving almost feels like a vice.

After eating Chinese food at our favorite Chinese restaurant tonight, we went for a drive to see what was going on in neighborhoods around our house. I don’t think I have ever seen so many empty houses in my life! I was however, encouraged to see that a few homes that have been empty for months were spruced up by new owners. When the price of gasoline goes down, people are more hopeful and go from renting to owning a home. A friend of ours works for a moving company in our small town and he thinks things are looking up. He had been picking up truck runs that took him across country. He prefers the small moves that allow him to see more of his family. The past few weeks he has been working closer to home and is hoping that new home ownership increases. I’m with him in thinking things are on the way up.

What do you think? Are things beginning to stabilize where you live?

“What do you give?” is how the auctioneer began his spiel when starting the auction for each item from a large estate sale. Mom and I headed to a quilt show Saturday but decided to check out an auction first. We were “just going to look”. Famous last words.

Little did we know that this auction had boxes of fabric and quilts. We were as excited as a shopper with a 700 credit score! We had our eye on a quilt top that looked to be from the 1930′s. It was a Grandmother’s Flower Garden pattern. It was not a finished quilt and the rest of the box held “cheater quilts”.

The auctioneer went through box after box of old dishes that included some carnival glass and depression glass. I did pick up a few salad plates and discovered that two of them might be valuable.

I also bought some old fashioned mixing bowls. I knew I better be careful or I’d be checking my free credit score in order to have some money left over to bid on some quilts.

Mom and I were keeping close tabs on the boxes that held the quilts we were interested in and were a bit put out as we watched several ladies rearranging the boxes contents. We rearranged them back to their original contents more than once! I hoped there wouldn’t be a fight before the auctioneer finally got to the boxes of which we were longingly waiting to bid.

The box that held the quilt went for way more than it was worth, ($80.00), but I did get a box that held 19 quilt blocks. I only paid $5.00. The quilt blocks are paper pieced using newspapers dated 1928! I am so excited to have acquired these old blocks.

When we got in the car to head to the quilt show, the temperature was 98 degrees! We were red in the face and sweating profusely. We were kinda gross to go to a quilt show but off we went.