We Have an Owl

A Christmas present made from a gentleman crafter in North Carolina, made from cedar, a present from my husband:

But last evening THIS is the picture of our very own backyard owl who made a visit.

We are so happy he came around and stayed over half an hour.  Maybe he or she will start a family there up in our tree.  We think it is a saw-whet owl.

Yarn Bowls in Crochet

My friend Mrs. Tittlemouse, whose name comes from a Beatrix Potter character, is quite a crafty gal. She wrote about making crochet bowls on her blog here.

Being one to follow the leader, I was spurred on to copy her in trying to make similar ones.  Mrs. T's are prettier, but mine came out OK, too. Using these instructions for a crochet bowl, I made two different sized bowls.  This is a smaller one:

And this is a larger crochet bowl:

I sorta cheated on the second bowl, making it larger and without a pattern, but it worked out just fine. It is now holding yarn.  See?

Mrs. T. uses beautiful pale pinks and lavenders and and celery greens and cherry reds, her favorite colors I think, for her crochet and sewing projects.  Her pictures make me happy just gazing on them. Please take a look here at the lovely bowls she made.

I am going to use the larger crochet bowl as a roll basket on the table at Easter because the colors whisper spring to me.

Selling the Family Silver

We rarely use sterling silver flatware pieces, and it requires constant polishing. Entertaining around food centered themes?  We usually do that in the back yard in the summer, sans formal table settings. Then throw away plates and plastic forks and spoons are the usual cutlery.

We have an embarrassment of riches in sterling silver. So now it might be the time to sell those three sets (my grandmother's, my mother's and my own),  Each of the patterns has complete settings for eight. That is a lot of sterling silver flatware.

I decided to do some research about how to undertake this task of selling silver without being robbed blind.

Mr.Money Mustache.  Have you heard of him?  He was a wealth of information.   Regarding selling old silverware: unless it has sentimental value, go ahead and ditch the silver plated stuff is his advice. Or give it to someone who can make jewelry from it, like my dad did in his day.  (I have a blog post about dad's jewelry business written in 2010 and you can read it here.)

(some of my dad's hand crafted key rings and jewelry he gave me)

Back to Mr. Money Mustache and his article about selling silver.  He says

Silver flatware actually comes in two varieties: 

Silver Plated, which looks and feels just like silver, but is actually only covered with a thin coating of silver. Other, cheaper metals lie within. This stuff is not worth much in this context 

Solid Sterling, which is always stamped “sterling” on the handle. This stuff is 92.5 percent silver metal.

Today's silver price is $16.86 per ounce, down from a ten year record high in 2011 of around $48 per ounce.

source

So now might not be the best time for selling the solid sterling, but I can get the silver pieces cleaned, sorted and piled into the sell-able silver, the 92.5 percent sterling pieces, vs. the sentimental pieces (mostly my grandmother's from the 1920's).

Let the polishing and sorting begin.