The Phinney neighborhood sale day has moved around enough that it seems like now many of its residents don’t know when it’s happening. Sure it snowed two years ago, but how many times is it going to snow in April in Seattle? Every 25, maybe every 50 years? It used to be our “spring opener” and I think we are both still bitter about the date change.

Friday night I drove home from work in a huge rainstorm. Heck, if I was having a sale I would think twice. But in the morning it seemed like it would be okay. With Jenny out of town and Karl feeling like he might want to bail, I set out on my own at 8:30.

First issue? Well, lack of sales! The normal traffic issues of getting boxed in on some streets — this year, no problem. I was having a hard time even finding any sales, even at the houses or condos that do a sale every year. When I asked a seller about this, she said that it wasn’t advertised as much and they felt that it was more disorganized this year.

One of my first sales had the usual fodder that folks dig out of their house (Gap clothing, crap from the kitchen, old shoes) … and homemade Worm Tea stored in Coke Zero containers.

I parked and walked around on one street that seemed to have a few sales and followed the “HERE” sign to a small garage sale of a woman who had been a painter. I picked up a wooden ’60s milk crate for $5, and a few small vintage items.

I hit a few more sales, some looked like they could be great, but big doesn’t always mean good stuff.

Ehg, should I just go home?!?

After about two hours I remembered this one sale that an old woman usually has. I thought I would see if she had anything interesting. As soon as I walked up I saw a bag of about 100 patterns for 20 cents each. I took a quick peek and purchased the whole bag, along with a few more items.

I popped by Silvi’s place (she owned a vintage store for many years) and usually she has soooooo much stuff you can’t even look at it all. I think she was kind of half-assing it this time, but she did have this great selection of broken parts.

In the end I did fill up the trunk, but nothing really amazing or interesting happened for most of the morning and by 11:30 I was bored enough to head home …

Meghan let me know that her mom and aunt were coming down to hit sales on Saturday. I’d missed out on making the rounds with them the last couple of times they were here, but it certainly wasn’t deliberate! Guest stars are always fun.

There was an outdoor church rummage sale right up the street, so we stopped and checked it out. I couldn’t believe the “S’mores Maker” appliance – isn’t the whole point of a s’more that all you need is a flame and a stick?

They had a lot of stuff and were pretty organized. For example, someone had carefully laid out a wrench section.

Meghan gasped when she found these boxes of patterns, since we’re pretty sure they’re same boxes we saw at a different church sale a couple weeks back (which are in our video)! Not sure if there’s some church-to-church rummage-sale-leftover donation system going on or what, but it seemed kind of strange.

Next we hit a fundraiser sale at someone’s house. We each picked up some books, and the guest stars bought a few odds and ends. I was intrigued by these robot earrings (but not in a “wanting to own them” kind of way).

Then we headed up to the Blue Ridge neighborhood sale, which claimed to have over 30 houses participating.

A lot of the sales were pretty generic, but a few stood out. This one had a bunch of vintage furniture …

… and this one had a bunch of fun funky junk.

At one sale they mentioned that the sales had started at 7:00. The ad I saw had said 9:00. Hmmm, maybe this is why we weren’t finding a lot of magical treasures …

I noticed this Seattle romance novel and had to take a photo. This whole box seemed a little like “library of a bored housewife.”

We had all bought a few items, but it just seemed okay. Things got exciting when we headed into a different section of the neighborhood and I got to listen to Meghan AND her aunt AND her mom all snarking at the bad driver ahead of us at once.

Finally we got to another sale. This woman had a TON of clothes for sale.

I’m not sure how much clothes you have to own to be able to sell this much of it at your sale. And it was nice stuff — lots of Anthropologie labels and other high-end brands. Most of it was pretty tiny, but I pulled out a few things that seemed like they’d fit … then decided they just weren’t my style. Meghan grabbed a couple of items, then completely fell into the zone and filled up a gigantic bag of stuff. I think it was that thing where once you decide to buy one or two things, it suddenly gets really easy to just keep throwing more stuff in. But not in a bad way — she got some really nice stuff and if anything said she wished she had bought more, since the lady gave her a really good deal.

At this point the trunk was fairly full and Meghan was out of cash. Since we were close to home we decided to do a drop, hit the bank, and make a snack run before continuing on.

We headed to a block sale that was mostly boring, even if one house did have a bear costume out front.

They were getting creative with their labelling …

… and not just on the bear suit.

We drove away without having found much, then had to stop the car in the middle of the street to take a picture of the wackiest item on the block.

We decided to head out to a new area. This is where things got a little strange.

In front of this turquoise house were boxes and boxes, mostly containing packaged sheets from the ’60s to the ’80s. They were all either twin or full sized, and there only seemed to be top sheets. The woman explained they had been her mother’s and she didn’t like fitted sheets. Okay then.

I was about to give up when she mentioned there was more stuff inside. How into turquoise do you have to be to use it for the outside and inside of your house?

There were dishes, christmas crap, and a huge mound of more sheets (and scarves, fabric, and god knows what else).

There was a guy looking through a pile of maybe 50 records. Meghan started to grab a cool stripey ’60s LP holder, and the guy told her that was his. He was with the ladies running the sale, but had apparently claimed it for himself. Then he told us he was putting the records in alphabetical order — why, I do not know. Then I saw another LP case (with polka-dots!) and asked if that was his also. “No, but I don’t think she’ll sell the case without the records,” he said. This seemed strange, since they had seemed eager to get rid of stuff. I took the records out of the case and he grumbled about having to alphabetize those now too.

Meghan pulled out a few gems from the fabric mound, and I took my lone item, the LP case, outside. The woman asked, “Did he say he’d sell just the case?” I told her he said to ask her. “I don’t think I want to sell it without the records,” she said, explaining that then they would have nothing to hold them in. Like any old box wouldn’t do? I asked how much they wanted for the records, thinking if they were cheap enough maybe I’d buy some just to get the case. She wanted $2 each for the crappiest records known to mankind. I walked away empty-handed and annoyed.

Next up was the “Wallingford Yard Sale Tour.” They had put tons of sandwich boards up, but it turned out to have only six sales. It was a fundraiser for a school and the sales we hit were heavy on the kid items. And the just bad items.

Then we were happy to run across a sale that wasn’t part of the tour. It had a burning man kind of vibe. Partly due to the stuff, and partly due to the booming dance music blasting from the porch.

Things were cheap, and their boxes were funny.

And we saw the second bear suit of the day.

Meghan’s mom bought this huge purple glass ball, then when we got to the car she noticed a scrape on it and said she wished she hadn’t bought it. “We’re right here,” Meghan said. “Do you want me to go get your five dollars back?” Her mom nodded, and her aunt chimed in “You should tell them she’s senile!” I think this is the first time I’ve seen someone go back to a sale to do a return. But it worked, even without using the senility line.

It was time to head home, but we saw signs for one more sale. We were greeted by this elegant young man.

He was not for sale, but they had some good stuff. Interesting books — nothing I needed to own, but a cool mix of oddball stuff. Meghan bought a handful of books and some weird electronic items, including a robotic rabbit that can tell you the weather and wave its ears around — I totally made fun of her for buying this, then it turned out they actually sell for a lot of money. Who knew?

We started to drive away, then had to stop at the corner to take pictures of some of their excellent signs.

Having all of those up in one spot is probably overkill, but I guess an excess of signs is never really bad.

And here is part two of the trunk (with a big bag already removed).

Not the greatest scores ever, but all four of us bought stuff and had fun!

The West Seattle Community Garage Sale Day always has so many sales that we usually have to split up our recaps up into multiple posts. So here’s part two in what appears to be turning into a bit of a series.

First, a couple of notes about signs. Meghan already talked about our favorites, with the unicorns and glitter and all. This one wasn’t as artfully crafted, but you can’t deny it gets the job done.

Someone else took the opposite approach: crappy signs, but plastered everywhere so you can’t possibly miss ’em.

On to the stuff we spotted … I was browsing through the books at one sale, and encountered this item.

I realize this falls into the “gag gift” category and probably never actually got used, but you know what? I think “items that somebody might’ve stuck their wang through” is right up there on the list of things you never want to encounter at a yard sale. Nasty!

Later, we pulled up to a sale which seemed familiar. Meghan asked the guy, “Didn’t you have a bunch of Playboys here last year?” He said yes, and then claimed they all sold within the first twenty minutes … but we’re pretty sure it was much later than that when we photographed them last year. This year we didn’t see any dirty magazines, but he did have a bunch of strange paintings.

Actually, there were a lot of sales we remembered from last year. Mostly ones we remembered because they were bad. At least we were able to avoid a few known duds this time around.

Then there was this sale, with a huge amount of stuff spread all over the lawn.

Meghan found a kick-ass ’60s dress here, and I grabbed a couple of books. We passed on this piece of dragon art.

After I paid, the sellers said “Here’s another book!” They had a stack of books they were giving away free with purchase — a bunch of copies of the same book, which was some kind of Dungeons & Dragons themed novel. I said no thanks, and then they offered me a free wooden smiley face back massager. I declined that offer as well and got the heck out of there.

Soon after that we drove up an alley to get to a sale. This is something we usually try to avoid, since people will pull in from both directions and trap you there, but we decided to chance it. The first thing I saw was this mannequin.

Karl bought her shirt.

There were tons of vintage clothes priced cheap — it seemed like the seller had been a vintage dealer and was either getting out of the business, or just unloading some odds and ends. Meghan got an insane prom dress and I picked up two items for my kid (a vintage cotton dress and a crazy dress-up jacket).

We hit a ton of sales, but didn’t even come close to covering the entire area. But we encountered plenty of cool, strange, awful, or just plain baffling items …

masks

And finally, an item that I normally wouldn’t have bothered to take a picture of …

… except that Karl held it up and said, “Hey, you know what this is for?” When I didn’t respond, he whispered: “Remember that penis book?” I screamed, then laughed, and then the sellers really wondered what the hell our problem was.

It didn’t feel like we hit as many sales as last time, but we still managed to fill up the trunk …

… and half the back seat.

And there’s still one more sale we haven’t even mentioned yet! Stay tuned for part three — this one deserves a post of its own.