Lots of things.

First off: Charlotte was earlier speculating on her blog as to whether fireworks sales would be down due to the poor economy.

While I have heard of some communities cancelling or scaling back their shows, I can say with confidence that in my neighborhood, "personal" fireworks sales were most definitely not down.

It was very very loud last night. And remained so until sometime after midnight, when it started to rain. I don't deal well with loud noises, and even though I had gone around and watered the perimeter of my lawn - and any dry patches - earlier in the day, I still worried about stray bottle rockets or sparks.

This is the only place where I have lived where fireworks are "legal," or where the city at least seems to wink at it on the Fourth. I know my neighbors were setting them off; I could hear them out in front of my house and also off to the north side (I live near a corner of two streets; people at least set the fireworks off in the street so there's less chance of burning stuff).

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I did go antiquing on Friday. In retrospect, I probably should not have - it was extremely hot (I think it reached 104* without the heat index added on) and by the end of the day, I was really worn out. And my allergies and asthma were bad on Saturday from having been out in it.

I also somehow pulled a muscle right around the 6th or 7th rib on the left side (I think it was one of the times I sneezed hard from allergies yesterday). And it's one of those pulled muscles that just kind of hurts in an odd way - you turn the wrong way, it hurts. You stretch to get something off a high shelf (I am 5'7" in a kitchen apparently built for someone who was 6'4", so i do a lot of stretching) and it hurts. Too deep of a breath hurts too.

But I did find a couple of cute things.



This is a little piece of souvenir ware - it's a small vase, about 4 1/2" tall. It features the high school from Mansfield, Ohio. Mansfield is NOT very far (in the grand scheme of things) from where I grew up (the internets tells me it's about 72 miles, which is actually further than I thought...I was remembering Mansfield as being closer to Akron. Maybe I was thinking of Massilon...)

Anyway, I bought it partly because of the Ohio connection (How it got to Sherman, Texas, I'll never know) and because it was kind of interesting. It's probably older than most of the souvenir plates I have; it is stamped "Made in Germany" on the bottom and typically the "cheap" stuff from Germany predates the "cheap" stuff from Japan.

I also like it because it kind of calls to mind that "Abandoned Ohio" website I linked to some months back, the high school looks a little spooky on that vase.

(Though it would have been far spookier if I had walked into the antique shop and found a piece of souvenirware from Western Reserve Academy - the high school I attended - on it. I once found what was probably an ashtray with Cook Hall at Illinois State University on it when I was living in Ann Arbor. (My dad has it now). It's always odd to find something from a place that you "know" in another, faraway, place.)

I also added to my small collection of "cottage ware." I now have a teapot:



This one is marked "made in Occupied Japan" which means it must date from between 1945 and 1952. (I had to look that up; at one time I actually knew it from memory). "Occupied Japan" stuff is often worth more - though I am not sure why - than comparable stuff not so marked. (The teapot was cheap because there's a chip on the other side of the handle. Because I buy stuff to have for its decorative value, and not because I plan on selling it some day for a bundle, I don't worry about such things. Actually, I envision my puzzled heirs someday going through my house - maybe nieces and nephews, maybe second cousins - and wondering at all the random stuff I have collected.)

I also bought a few books (Well, I always do.) I found a copy of "The Shaker Cookbook" and also "A World of Good Cooking," which is broken down by ingredient - say, green beans - and lists eight or twelve recipes that are either authentic to, or have the flavorings typical of, a certain country. And it's an interesting and diverse cookbook - alongside the predictable China and Mexico and France and Germany, there are also dishes reminiscent of the Philippines, of Korea, of Morocco, of Java, and of Latvia.

There are a number of interesting soups in there, and also a few vegetable dishes I want to try. And I was just intrigued by the format of the book - it's kind of a cool way to compare how people cook in different parts of the world (or perhaps, how the author thinks they cook - though she refers often to her travels).

This next item is one I bought a while back, here in town, but I'm going to include it here as well:

It's a souvenir of Wales (made in England, however - Crown Devon. And it has marks on the underside that, if I really cared to research it, could probably tell me roughly when it was made. (Again - I once knew more about that kind of thing, I've forgotten a lot of it now*)

(*Years and years ago, my dad learned to be an auctioneer as sort of a side business. And I helped him sometimes, so I did a lot of looking stuff up in library books to get ideas of how old and how potentially-valuable things were. I also did a lot of research on stuff that was inherited from his parents - they had a partial set of "Napoleons," china figures made by (I want to say) Meissen? Stuff like that.)



I believe it's supposed to be a cream pitcher, or something like that. This is the back, with what I think is the Welsh national crest (And I'm pretty sure "Llanelly" is the town it was a souvenir of).

The front, though, is why I bought it:



I love this kind of thing. A very detailed little picture, of two women in traditional Welsh dress, standing in the dooryard of a viney cottage. One of them is standing by a spinning wheel (the big, old-fashioned kind, which is what most people think of when you say "spinning wheel" - not like the nice little efficient Lendrums or Schachts.)

The other lady - it's hard to see in the photo, and I didn't notice until I got it home and looked at it more closely - is knitting something (perhaps a sock? It is dark grey with red stripes) on double pointed needles. (So I was MEANT to have this little pitcher).

There is one thing that is a bit of a mystery to me:



Sadly, I do not read Welsh. (And none of my Romance-language experience, or even my tiny bit of German, helps). (The word "A" is obscured by the reflection. So it says:
"Llefrith a gwen/ Nid ewch yn hen" with a circumflex or "caret" (^) over the e in "gwen" and in "hen")

(Edited to add: someone on Ravelry speaks Welsh! It says: "Milk and a smile; you'll never grow old." Well, I do drink lots of milk...)

Anyone read Welsh? I'm guessing it's some kind of old saying or proverb, something like that. I would like to know what it says. (I presume it's not anything saucy or naughty; the style of the pitcher does not seem to suggest that).



And then one last thing for this weekend:



At last, it looks like a really-real sweater! I joined the sleeves on to the body last night and am now working through the yoke. (There are a number of short-rows to make the back yoke higher than the front yoke - so the neckline sits right. Clever, clever.) I'm excited by this sweater now because I can really visualize it being done - I might even get it done this week! (I pulled out the bright blue yarn for the Basketweave pullover - I do think that will be the next sweater because the yarn color is really calling to me right now - a very bright cool blue like a clear spring day up North.)