Outing/SallyShop/Bonsai??

Still working on my newest shawl project - with the Jo-Anne's brush acrylic multi-color yarn  - I got one big ball for $6 on sale (blue) & the multi for $6. Hope it's enough! (But it's equal to about 4 reg. balls.)

Finished off the little fun fur shawl (dk. turquoise with "Impressionist" stripes of pink/yellow/mauve etc.) & repaired the holes! (with this stuff if you darn it - it doesn't show!) Was going to put some beading mounted on turquoise ribbon on the ends - but when I unrolled the package, it was so pretty by itself, that I decided to tie the ends & wear it as a necklace! (stylish this season).  This was for $2.79 - so if you are inclined - find some beaded fringe left over from the old trend of embellishing your pant hems!  My beading is faux plastic turquoise/silver - but everything else out there in the stores is plastic, too - so why pay thru the nose for it? (I saw plastic bangles for outrageous prices at my trip to Nordstom's!)

Also found my pink (the box reads "lilac") boat shoes which hubby bought me at the Boater's World closeout sale for $15 (down from $45).  These are Sperry Topsiders & will last for YEARS.  (I had a pair of off-white ones which unfortunately had a peeling surface - & hubby hated them - so now he scouts nice boat shoes for me!) Sporting goods stores of all sorts are often good for deals on everyday shoes on SALE. Hubby has also gotten nice, sturdy shoes at Big 5 from time to time.

Spent the week on social networking/marketing - I am on zannel.com/pamphyila and twitter.com/pamphyila and Facebook at facebook.com/pamelaruthmunro (another pamela munro got there first, I have several doppelgangers out there!) check me out for quips, including frugal ones.

I also signed up to be a wowOwow.com Virtual Exec. "intern" - which means that I will volunteer to help them spread the word about this great site for sophisticated women. (Candice Bergen & Whoppi Goldberg on on the site, to name a few.) Check out THEIR wowOwow Facebook page. If you are interested in the ABCs of social networking sites, look at their exposition for their interns - you might be interested, too.  If nothing else, the title wowOwow Virtual "Executive Intern" sounds fabulous! That's the sort of classy folks they are...

Getting more twitter folks becaz I signed up with gary yamazaki - who apparently has more twitter followers than anyone (fyi he's a tech head.) All this is fun, but I wish I had more to crow about than my bargain shopping sprees!  I am "resting" as they used to say about out-of-work theatrical folks - but I DID get a $30 residual check from my Unsolved Mysteries show - which has been "reshuffled" they say.  That show is immortal (becaz I was super, nah...) My brother's Scottish folk singing friends were actually impressed when he told them offhand that I was on that show...

Although I am mostly housebound - the drop in pollen levels from the red zone to yellow according to the Claritin online chart - has made me much more energetic.  No matter what you do, heavy allergy meds just tire you OUT, and the past few weeks have been dreadful. So back to walking & moving around.

Hubby asked me to go out to Pasadena with him.  He was going to the office there & I could browse around in the Sally shop (Sal. Army) there - which is a good one.  Whew, they were loaded with stuff! But it was the 2nd day of a 2-for-one sale for clothes & books - which ironically made it harder to find any good stuff, as it was already picked over.  I had an allotted amount - which I stuck to - and got 2 dresses - one which is more like a negligee and a yellow linen one for summer which will also look good on camera if the occasion arises. (I really don't have that many DRESSES.) And a found a lampshade for the Packer's lamp which hubby wants to give to his brother - and a love blooming artificial bonsai tree for $3.50 - and some paperback mysteries. 

The blooming bonsai was the real bargain.  I imagine it had graced the home of some Pasadena matron - but it was dusty and all askew.  But the leaves and blossoms are all wired, so you can coax it all back into place.  I washed it off in the bathtub (they get dusty) & fiddled with it & it looks lovely now on my windowsill. It's made with glass leaves and blossoms - and when the sun shines through they are really lovely - and I can put them in front of the fan next to my other flowering bonsai.  They sort of mask the window fan & don't really impede the wind flow.

I realize I now have FOUR artificial bonsai - 2 trees - and 2 flowering plants!  It's almost a collection! (all gleaned from thrift shops...) I have one of the pine tree bonsai which looks like a miniature garden with a Japanese musician figurine and gravel in front of the other window fan & when it's very hot, I put water in the shallow dish I put it in & it makes a tiny pond that the air flows over & it's a mini swamp cooler!

(0h, fyi "bonsai" prounounced bon- zi, long 'I") are a Japanese cultural tradition.  They cultivate minature trees and stunt them, growing them in small pots, and trimming their roots, and manipulating the branches with wiring - so they look like real trees a la a Japanese painting - but on a very small scale.  The real ones are VERY expensive!) It helps to have looked at Japanese painting to be able to manipulate the branches of the articifical ones into a pleasing shape. I am good at flower arranging, too - how this ever happened, I really don't KNOW.  Perhaps visiting all those great museums as a child had a side benefit!

Off to the boat tomorrow- I admit it, I have "boatitis'!

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Sally Shop Spree!

Great things at the Pasadena, CA Salvation Army & on sale!

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