For free stuff, you can read the bloody background story. :-)
I just got back from Winnipeg (cousin is safely married, I dressed the flower girls, they were appropriately sweet and beautiful, pictures will come when I get around to cropping and scaling down the images), and brought with me a bunch of stuff from my grandmother's house. My grandmother is 87 years old, and last year moved into an assisted living facility with my grandfather. She hasn't been able to do more than shrug one shoulder to acknowledge the people who speak to her. While it's very sad to see her in this state, and hear only the mind's echo of her great laugh, I have no desire to KEEP my grandmother's stuff that my mother stuffed into the car's trunk the day we left. (At the risk of sounding like a vulture, she's been giving her stuff away just as she began to lose her faculties, and allowed us to pick over the best stuff before she lost her ability to speak. I've already got the things she wanted me to have, and the things I want to keep: like the kilometres of yarn she crocheted for me in granny squares and shell chains. I'd give it all back, too, if that would restore her ability to laugh.)
My grandmother was a fantastic knitter/crocheter. And she subscribed/purchased a LOT of knitting magazines, patterns, and things like that. SO, having gone through the small box of old, old paper, and taken what musty, crumbling pages I want to keep, I offer up the tattered remains for either knitting up, or turning into vintage accessories, like the Spanish horror comic purse I saw a little while ago. Or as covers for the Japanese boxes. That kind of crafting really isn't my thing. I'll even pay for the stamps.
I have a few dribs and drabs (Baba never saved WHOLE magazines, just the bits she wanted) of patterns which, according to the pictures and general condition of the paper itself, date between 1940 and 1980. We've got doilies, pot-holders, and two doll dresses (bride and bridesmaid) which are kind of freaky-looking in the pictures, sweaters, afghans, socks, and the like for babies, children, and adults. I've had to tape some of the pages back together -- they're not salvageable or valuable as ephemerae -- to preserve some of the instructions. Craftgrrls, I even have some MIMEOGRAPHED copies, still legible. :-D
They're paper, they're heavy, and I won't mail the whole thing to just one person because that's just too expensive, and Baba (and my great-Baba) was about spreading the joy around. The first person who indicates in the comments that they want the bride/bridesmaid doll dress pattern will get it. Everyone else, I'll do my best to accommodate, but I don't really have much. I hope you like surprises.
Oh, and my absolute favourite "fact" published in Women's Day: "It is scientifically confirmed: the
health-giving UV rays do, in fact, reach the skin through wool. So wear your woollies." *boggle* How times have changed, huh?
EDITED at 11PM to close the requests with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nirethak -- my supply has been claimed. I will contact those who left email addies for their snail addies soon, and try to accommodate the requests.
Thanks, everyone, for the condolences. We've had about 5 years to come to grips with Baba's condition: it's known as "Pick's Syndrome". It's in the Alzheimer family, but if you have to get some form of neurological degeneration, this is the one you want. There's no violent behaviour, no disturbing hallucinations, and as far as I can tell, she's got her memories. The real problem is that the first thing to go is the motivation, the gear-shift, if you will, that puts the body's motor to work going forward or backward. For example, she would stand at the front door of her house, and not dig the keys out of her purse to unlock it until someone suggested that would be the best thing to do, in order to get the ice cream into the freezer. That was our first clue that she should not be driving anymore. Getting her diagnosed was an arduous process of elimination ("It's NOT Alzheimer's, and it's NOT depression. It's NOT a stroke. It's NOT..."), and then accepted into a 24-hour assisted living facility that would allow her to continue to live with her husband of 60+ years (wow!), who also needed assistance... That was the more traumatizing part of her decline. But the place is good, the people are wonderful, and no one has any bed sores or fractured hips, the residents don't complain about being forced to eat cat food, and no one's turned up missing yet. :-)
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