an old resolution

I just got home from a fun Chicago Sunday getting burned on my shoulders and pawing through lots of previously owned treasures at the Randolph Street Market Festival (formerly the Chicago Antiques Market).

This sale happens the last weekend of each month in the summer in Chicago and this weekend marked the one-year anniversary of the first time I went with my friend Jenny.  We had a wonderful time at that first sale: I got burned that day too, as I recall, and we learned how to haggle.  Our haggling really came in handy that first day and we came home with lots of old tablecloths, aprons, and scraps of fabric which we had resolved to each do something with (I planned to make an old table runner into a pillowcase) before we returned the next month.  Today, as we looked through many "new" pieces of fabric, I remembered this resolution that Jenny and I had made.  As is true for most resolutions that any of us make, we did not see them through.  So I bought more fabric and I again resolve, in the public forum of my blog, that I will use up some of my fabric before my next trip to the antiques market.  

Perhaps even next weekend, when Jenny and I are planning to have one of our crafts days, I could make this dream a reality.  I won't force Jenny as much though, because she is being artistic and creating real art these days.  Check out Jenny's stuff!

Seeing something old for the first time.

While I was in Florida last month, my beloved camera broke.  For the first time in a while, I was surrounded by things I wanted to take pictures of that, if I had had a camera, I wouldn't have looked twice at.  

At the end of June, my dad got me a new (red!) camera for my birthday and equipped with a 2GB memory card, I started taking pictures of just about anything decent looking.  Now, I generally don't approve of those people who take vacations with cameras around their neck, but on this revisit to my mom's town (where I am no stranger) I started to take pictures of the area and finally saw this town not as a ghetto past its heyday, but a beautiful vibrant community full of culture.  I give you, New London:

A New London initiative: filling empty storefronts with artwork.  This one is my favorite/the most disgusting thing I've ever seen:

Right across the street from my mom's house is a graveyard that has gravestones as old as from 1700 or so. Not too shabby. Also, there is a mound where Benedict Arnold stood and watch Groton burning (imagine me as Benedict Arnold):
Thanks to my new camera, for helping me notice these things for the first time!