Author: Laura

Canadian urban explorer, ASCII artist, directory editor, creative web publisher and web writer since 1996.

Old Luggage Is a Trip

I remember luggage from the old movies. Big trunks, body size standing up and deep enough for a couple of bodies. Inside were drawers and a full closet with a mirror.

When I started planning for my first big trip as a kid I wanted one of those. My Mother and I went shopping for my first luggage (of my own!)  I was looking for one of those big trunks. Even though I had no idea how I would cart that trunk around on my own, I was already having the adventure of  planning everything I would pack into it!

I didn’t find a big trunk. But I wasn’t disappointed. I got a new suitcase, vintage 1970’s, blue, with tiny wheels. Mine was pretty plain and practical, none of those handles that extend out, no extra pockets on the outside to stash secret treasures or books to read. It’s long gone now. On some kind of trip of it’s own I guess.

Later, I wanted a suitcase like my Grandmother’s. It was plain brown with a broken handle. It’s only real charm were stickers from all kinds of places. I don’t know if she had been to all of them herself or if some came from other family and she kept adding to them that way. I do know that she came from Ireland as a young woman and went out to BC as a married women with her husband and children. After that she moved back to Ontario again, when I was already born or at least heading that way.

We went on family trips, sometimes my Grandmother took trips with us. I never noticed her getting stickers for that suitcase then, but I was just a kid. There was a lot I didn’t notice and a lot I did notice. We were in dozens of US states up and down starting from Ontario and ending up back there eventually. We took drives out to BC in a big, huge camper which we delivered to Red Deer, Alberta and then took the train the rest of the way. She may have added more stickers to that suitcase all along the way.

She’s been gone awhile now. I don’t know where the suitcase is. I never would have dared to go looking through her things, it just wasn’t something I would have felt right to do and I know she liked to have her things left alone. I don’t have any truly firm beliefs about what happens after we die. But, if we get to choose I think my Grandma would be keeping up with what we are doing and yet, I hope, she takes a few road trips too. Pack up her suitcase with the essentials and enjoy her sense of adventure forever.

Flickr: Vintage Luggage

Go Nomad: Travel Chic: How to Refurbish Vintage Luggage

The Queen of Re: Vintage Luggage as a sculpture.

Those Wonderful Coffee Making Machines

If you ask yourself why you actually like coffee do you have a reason? Sometimes I think it isn’t the coffee that I really like so much as the social side of coffee drinking and coffee making. Starting with the beans and how you grind them, then to the type of coffee maker or the process you use to make coffee and then ending with the classic: cream, milk, sugar, sweetener…?  Even the way you serve the coffee, do you prefer a mug or do you use something fancier like a teacup?

Where do you drink your coffee? Typically, I drink my coffee alone in a crowd of people who don’t know me. I like it that way. Sometimes I make coffee at home when I work in front of the computer. I also feel alone and yet in a crowd of people there too. Coffee is a part of going out. How many times are you out somewhere and end up going out for a coffee? You could just come home and make it yourself. But, there is something kind of special about being out for coffee. Something kind of grown up, cosmopolitan, elegant and sophisticated about sitting with a coffee in a cafe or even over lunch.

I have a small collection of coffee makers. The process of making coffee is as interesting and sometimes elegant too. My favourite is the Bodum French Press, for practical reasons. With the press I don’t need coffee filters, just the beans themselves, to make a cup of coffee. I can take the press with me and make coffee any where that I can boil water. It is very handy when I go babysitting for the weekend at my sister’s house.  My French Press pot is a bit small though. Fine for a regular sized mug. But, when I’m at home working on the computer I like a big, deep mug of coffee. A mug so huge as to appear bottomless, as close to it as any mug could ever be. So, for making coffee at those times, I use a portable cone filter which I hold over the mug, pouring the boiling water over the beans. I doubt this makes full use of the beans. They have less brewing time. So it seems a bit of a shame to make coffee this way. But, it does work.

I have an old percolator (Corning) which I picked up at the thrift store. It must have been used very seldom as it looks pristine. I have only used it a few times in th years I have had the pot. It is fun to hear the coffee brew in the percolator. You get more coffee smell this way too I have noticed. My other pot is a cone filter too but it comes with it’s own pot, lid and scoop. The pot itself is glass but the rest of it is all my favourite shade of red. A Melitta pot which I bought when I was 16 and had my first apartment, living away from my family.

Flickr: Coffee Maker Museum

Flickr: The Coffee Machine Collector

Ning: The Vintage Coffee Maker

Jitterbuzz: Coffee Paraphernalia

Vintage Coffee Grinders

Talk About Coffee

A to Z Coffee Makers – Reviews.

Coffee Sage – Blog about coffee, beans and news.

Transcend Coffee – Committed to fresh roasted beans.

Jim Seven – James Hoffman’s coffee blog.

Brewed Coffee – For caffeine addicts only.

On Coffee Makers

Royal Coffee Maker – When you want something really deluxe!

Shower Caps

I haven’t worn a shower cap since I was a little girl visiting my Grandmother. I wasn’t even in the shower.  We were having a girl’s night and I went to bed with my head full of curlers. The shower cap was pink and plastic, with frills. My Grandmother would wear it in the shower when she just wanted a quick wash or to cool down in the summer, without getting her hair wet.

There are alternate uses for shower caps. If you’re traveling light you can wrap it around your toothbrush, toothpaste and shampoo to keep them sorted out in your luggage. Saves buying an extra little bag just to hold your bathing essentials. I bought my niece curlers last year. I hadn’t even thought of myself with curlers and the shower cap so many years ago. As I took the curlers out of her hair the next morning I used the shower cap to store them in, thinking it would keep them together for the next time we curled her hair. She also had the shower cap on overnight, it does work to keep the curlers from coming loose over night. One little tradition passed on to the next generation.

These days I’m usually in the shower to wash my hair, scrub up and get out. I like to shower in the evening to give myself a little time to stand there and enjoy the hot water.  I don’t use a shower cap. They are one of those nice, old fashioned kind of girly things that (in these days) seem to be more ceremonial than practical. When did you last think of a shower cap? When did you last use one?

How about a royal shower cap?

Fancy new shower caps for sale with Jennifer Lyn, Diva Sharon, Mimi a la Mode and Retro Revival.

A Fan of the Map

I do like maps, strongly, not quite enough to love them. Love being such a big word in small letters. I use a map when I explore rural ruins. I use it to find the locations when others tell me they have found an abandoned farmhouse in my area. I have a backroad map which (so far) has been very reliable, even when I’ve taken some pretty far fetched turns.

For his birthday, I gave my nephew two full poster-sized maps. One of Canada and the other of the World. We put them up in his bedroom. Is it only a co-incidence that geography is the subject he seems to be having the most trouble with this year? I hope so. I may not be ready to tell him everything he needs to know about geography but I would like to see him learn about rocks, maps and navigation. One of the most important things in life is knowing how to navigate your way.

I remember the last time I looked at a really old map. I liked seeing the terrors written on there like monsters and the edge of the world. Thanks to cartographers and world explorers and ancient navigators we know the world does not end with a sudden drop. Modern explorers and those into geocaching use a GPS to find their way around. But even then, the old fashioned map is at the root of every exploration.

Old/ Vintage Maps

Hand Drawn Maps

Old Buttons

My Grandmother had a button box. She would add any buttons from clothes that were worn out and being cut up to use for patches and cleaning rags. Sometimes she bought sets of 4, 6 or more buttons on sale somewhere and brought those back (kept on their cardboard packaging) and put them in the button box too.

As she got older she became legally blind and was no longer able to sew her own buttons (or anything else) as well as she used to. She was always more of a cook anyway. I still remember the white sweater I fixed for her. It had a few loose buttons and one missing. It was one of the very few times I got to look through something of my Grandmothers. She brought out the button box and let me have a look through them all. I found enough new buttons for the white sweater, all matching and all pink.

For years she would brag about how well I sewed those buttons on her sweater. She said I had done them so well they would never come off. I did too. I remember sewing them on and how honoured I was to do something, something real, for my Grandmother. Not just kid stuff playing around. She kept that sweater and the buttons did last years and years.

I still like buttons. I guess I have a soft spot for them. My Mother had a button box. My Grandmother’s buttons became part of that collection in time. My Mother gave me the button box a few years ago, when she started spending winters in Florida. We used to sew together but that was usually around the holidays. Now that I’m alone I still do some baking but not so much sewing.  It’s kind of sad. I have that button box but it’s been many years since I last looked at any of the buttons in it.

There are some nice crafts with buttons, like button bouquets. I’ve seen a few uses for them other than the traditional clothing fasteners. One site has old/ vintage buttons turned into fancy rings. I’ve seen scrapbookers use buttons as flower centres in drawings. We have used buttons in place of game pieces. They string up on ribbon and look pretty girlie and pretty too.

Old, Retro or Vintage Buttons

Button Swaps

People Who Like Buttons

Pincushions

I use a corner of whatever I’m sewing to stick all my pins into while I work. It works fine while I’m repairing something small. Not so great with those bigger projects like hemming curtains, there is a lot of fabric to pin into and those little things can get lost. It’s not an accident that pincushions were invented. Once upon a time pins were more expensive than they are now. The women in those days didn’t want to lose any of them. Not like myself who just thinks I’m risking injury later on when I finally do find that missing pin, in a painful way.

My only pincushions have been a tomato which had been my Aunt Sally’s when I inherited her sewing basket and a plastic thing that was meant to sit on your wrist. I never gave the plastic one much of a try. I just knew I’d never get much done with something on my wrist. But, it was a nice idea as a gift, from someone one Christmas.

I think pincushions are like aprons, very fancy and pretty but mostly practical only in a fashion sense. An apron keeps your fancy dress from getting bacon splatter. A pincushion keeps your pins collected on a pretty little thing. Both practical and yet superfluous too. You can wash your clothes, much easier than your Grandmother could. You can stick your pins onto your sleeve or in a plastic grocery bag while you sew. But, the pincushions are a really sweet and simple craft to make. They can be very detailed with lots of applique and embroidery, crochet or tatted lace too, anything you care to add to that little puff ball for pins.

Crazy Harberdasher has a post about vintage pin cushions.

Matryoshka, the Russian Dolls

She never claimed to be Mother's favourite again.
She never claimed to be Mother's favourite again.

The Russian dolls (also called Russian Nesting Dolls) are called Matroschka, Matryoshka and матрёшка. As a kid I would see these Russian dolls when we went to the Canadian National Exhibition in downtown Toronto at the end of each Summer. I always wanted one. They were exotic, something from a country I heard so many different stories about. They were also so pretty, some were cute and some were so intricately painted they were things of real beauty.

I asked my Mother to buy me one. She told me to wait and see if I still wanted one next year and then I could buy one myself. This is still excellent advice for anything you want, it sure does cut down on my impulse spending when I am out shopping around. (Not that I always follow that rule, of course).

It took me a few years before I had the money to spend on a Russian doll. I couldn’t get one of those really big ones with endless dolls nested inside. But, I did get one that made me happy. She has five dolls, including the tiny baby in the middle. She is a traditional looking Russian doll cause when I took the time to look and remember the very first Russian dolls I had wanted this one seemed to be the most like the very one I had wished for all that time ago. I think she’s pretty. Of course, I have seen cuter dolls since then. But, I am happy to have the doll that I have.

Flickr groups:

Extras:

Buy a pattern for (very cute) crocheted Matryoshka dolls from Handmade Kitty’s Etsy shop.

Soleil Girl has pretty Russian nesting dolls made out of felt, with embroidered features.

The Russian Crafts site has a page up with lots of information about the history and creation of the traditional Russian Nesting Doll.

Where is Your Christmas Tree Going?

This photo is from SmileyGeekGirl on Flickr.
This photo is from SmileyGeekGirl on Flickr.

One of my favourite Christmas things is the tree, all lit up and decorated. The ornaments are a blend of special treasures I bought over the years, vintage ornaments passed down in my family for a generation or three and the real prizes are those ornaments we made ourselves, mostly from some felt, lace and embroidery thread. When it’s in prime Christmas mode the tree is glorious.

That’s why seeing a Christmas tree discarded somewhere, left to become a weathered mess, is so sad. How could some poor tree be plucked from it’s roots, given a grand celebration and then thrown out – treated with less care than the wrapping paper which was once under it.

Why do people do this to the trees? In these days of living green and caring for the planet, when we recycle and reuse and refurbish… why toss out a whole tree this way?

These are photos you can see of abandoned trees in Flickr groups. Maybe between now and the end of the year you will see an abandoned Christmas tree yourself. If you can drag it somewhere it has a chance to be recycled, I hope you will.

—

Thank you to Smiley Geek Girl for the photo of the lonely tree.

Cookie Cutters

cookiecuttersI used to have cookie cutters that belonged to my Grandmother. I remember a gingerbread man. It was aluminum, a dull silver colour. The shape was filled in, not like the modern ones that are open on top. The old gingerbread man was wearing a pointy hat. That’s about all I can really, clearly remember about him any more.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that cookie cutter. Too much moving, too many boxes lost or damaged. Lost due to things like the water heater bursting and flooding the basement. Mice nibbling at boxes which were then thrown out as useless. Or, boxes just being forgotten in some corner of one basement or another. It’s sad to lose things that way. It bothers me more than any other way of losing things. As if the things lost that way were never important enough to remember.

But, I have the hope that my lost things will be found someday and become someone’s great find, treasured all over again, though they won’t know the history. They won’t know that cookie cutter once belonged to my Grandmother. They won’t know my Grandmother, my Mother, my brother and sisters and I made gingerbread people many times with that old cookie cutter in the kitchen of the house I remember best from my growing up days. I wish I could tell whoever finds that cookie cutter the history behind it. Tell them about how my Grandmother was once nicknamed Pepper and how she liked to plant potatoes in the garden to aggravate my Grandfather. I’d like to tell them about how she fought breast cancer for years until she had to show/ teach us all how to die quietly, with pride and courage. I miss her. I really wish we had that cookie cutter still. There is some hope it will turn up in a box not opened during years of moving from place to place. More likely it is gone, to be found by someone who will wonder about that cookie cutter and other things that may be in the box they find in some corner of the basement of the house they move into.

It would be nice to tell them about that cookie cutter. To let them know it’s not just another old cookie cutter. But, it doesn’t work that way with lost treasures. The story becomes a secret known only to those who lost it. Those who find it can only wonder or imagine what the history behind it might be. Maybe, when they imagine the story they will get some of it right. That would be nice.

I have other new cookie cutters. A small collection of them. This Christmas I tried making gingerbread men again. I made the batter from a recipe online. But, when I tried to cut out the cookies the batter was too runny and sticky. It could not hold the shape. So no gingerbread men again this year. I will find a better recipe next year. Ideally, I’d like to get matching cookie cutters for gingerbread men and women and another for a gingerbread house cookie shape. Those would be the pinnacle of my collection.

Note: The aluminum gingerbread man in this article, from HubPages: Collecting Vintage Cookie Cutters, looks like my Grandmother’s old one. It might be the very same kind that she had. Also, we had a Christmas tree and that bunny from this collection too. Ours was badly dented in the middle though.

Resources:

The Cookie Cutter Collector’s Club – Based in the US. The 2010 convention will be in California, in June.

Cookie Cutter Search – From the Cookie Cutter Collector’s Club.

There are cookie cutter collectors displaying their cookie cutters in photos on Flickr: Cookie Cutters.

After you look at that group, see how the cookies were decorated on Flickr: Cookie Cutter Cookies.

Brand Name Cooking – Has posted a good article about collecting cookie cutters.

The First House I Ever Explored

oldhouse1

oldhousetop

oldhousefront

oldhouse

This is the first house I ever explored. I had my first digital camera from my Mother for my birthday/ Christmas, an early present before she went down to Florida for the winter. It was great. But, I did not know I would need to buy a memory card. I assumed the memory with the camera would give me all the space I needed to photograph the house.

I never did get all the way around to the back of it. Not long after the house was demolished so now I never will get back there for more exploring. But, I did learn to do my best while at the site and not leave anything for another trip. Another trip might not happen.