Exciting Finds!

I like to window shop; I always have.  There were some times, all through my life, when window shopping was the only kind of shopping we could afford.  Early in our marriage, it was our Sunday entertainment, back when the only things open on Sunday were churches, the grocery store (for a few hours), the police station, the hospital, and the fire station.

Now I'm older, and now I do most of my window shopping online.  Sometimes I find a deal; most of the time I don't.  I did find two just recently, and I'd like to show them to you.  This is a Mary Konior book, one of two I didn't own; now I'm going to be looking for the last one.  I suspect it will be hard to find at a decent price, as the cost of most of her books, even before her death, was pretty steep (now it's mostly astronomical).  It must gall some members of her family to know that someone else is making money off Mary, and they're not getting any of it!

The other find of the month is a tatting shuttle off eBay.  The seller listed it as an "estate find...made of metal with monogram etching on it...no marks like 925...not sure of the metal."  Other bids came in, but finally everyone except me had dropped out, so I won the bid.  It arrived, and David asked what kind of metal it was.  I told him that despite the seller's conviction that it wasn't silver, it felt like silver to me.  It had some old thread wound around the post; I unwound it (Spooky was delighted to paw at it as I pulled it from the shuttle) and found some hard-to-see markings.  I borrowed David's big 'ol honkin' magnifying glass (you think I'm kidding, I have used skillets smaller than this glass) and found the word on the post that I was hoping to find: STERLING.

Baking soda, water, and elbow grease will do a pretty good job of cleaning silver without damaging it.  If you use a glass container, aluminum foil, baking soda, table salt, and boiling water, you can pretty much save the elbow grease for something else.  Here are the "before" and "after" pictures of the monogrammed side:

Quite a difference.  David thinks it looks brand-new!  I'm just tickled that it's clean and shiny again, as it looked when the monogram "L A D" was engraved.  We were also able to identify the hallmark as being that of the Charles Thomae Company, which surprisingly, is still in business.  They opened in 1920 in Attleboro, Massachusetts, and still make "fine gifts, jewelry and appointments for the individual, home, and office made of high quality sterling silver and karat gold."  They included contact info on their homepage, so I will be contacting them to ask what information they can give me about tatting shuttles made by them.

Tomorrow is a bank holiday, so I will have a much-appreciated day off.  I'm looking forward to it!