White elephants

Last weekend Mom, Dad, Tom and I went to a "Taste of the Town" event that was a fundraiser for scholarships. There was food from all the area restaurants, live jazz music, and a white elephant silent auction.

The food was delicious, and it was fun to see so many of our town's population in one place at one time. Dad asked if I'd looked at the items for auction and I said that I hadn't. He said that there was nothing there that he'd bid on.

But after eating and chatting awhile, Tom and I moseyed through the three rooms of "stuff." Almost all the starting bids were $1! How could we resist? And the "junk' was interesting.

I was drawn to a massive old stainless steel "vacuum" beverage dispenser that held somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 gallons. As I gazed at it admiringly I realized that it would be impossible to lift once it was full - or even half full. And it was so HUGE! The opening bid was $1 and no one was bidding on it. Discretion finally won out, and I turned away from the beautiful and impractical beverage dispenser.

Tom bid on a trio of model ships, a trio of brass sailboats, a lamp, and a pipe rack. I bid $3 on a pair of American Tourister suitcases.

At the end of the evening, after we'd already come home, our neighbor dropped off our winnings. Tom won the pipe rack and brass boats (for a total of $4), and I won the suitcases.

I use old luggage in the linen closets for storing sheets, but these two are for storing wool yarn. I immediately filled the larger of the two with the yarn I have for my next large project, David's blanket.


I'm going to check Apron Thrift Girl's site to see what antiques/thrift finds/white elephants others found over the weekend, too.