What I carried

 Fewer items that were mine, personally, retrieved from my mom's this time. At some point I should grab George the Giraffe (one of my childhood stuffies - he was one of those "flat sew and stuff" animals that were common in fabric shops in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I know I was very small when I first had George so he was probably early 1970s). But I did find one thing while searching for any lock washer eyes that were leftover for my kobolds (and for the Emotional Support Chicken, whose pictures will come later on).

 This is another one of those Makit and Bakit kits. We had a bunch of those when I was a kid. I kind of enjoyed making them even though I now cringe at what the plastic fumes might have done to my future health (You had little plastic beads, and then put them in the frame, and then baked it on foil in the oven...)

This is a knockoff of Kermit the Frog*. At Christmas I found the knockoff Miss Piggy

 So it's nice to have them together again. (I have to find better quality hooks to hang them in the window; Piggy fell down when the hook I had let loose but fortunately she did not break)

I was also looking for books. I never did find that bird-behavior book I know I had, maybe I didn't keep it. But I did find a book I gave my dad, called "The Secret Under Sherwood Forest" about WWII British oil production for the war effort. I bought it at a museum here. I remember he said he enjoyed reading it and lent it to a British friend of the family (who had been a young teen in WWII over there). She gave it back and my mom and I found it, and I decided I wanted to read it, so I have it now.

 And I found this. I have no memory of the book whatsoever, and since it was with some books inherited from my dad's parents, I kind of wonder if my dad bought it for HIS dad, who was kind of "literary" (he wrote memoirs of his time in the proto-Army-Air-Corps in WWI, and he wrote poetry and had at least one published). This was a local-to-where-I-grew-up poet, I guess - almost nothing about him online but apparently he taught at Kent State and lived in Hudson

 It's a very small chapbook of poems. "Privately Published" I guess

I will say, if it's not impolite....he wasn't famous-famous for a reason. The poems are not BAD but they are not GREAT, and he kind of dabbles in a lot of different styles - some of them are kind of that weird banal comedy that rubs me a bit the wrong way, a couple are straight-up observations, a few seem to be an attempt at a Spoon River Anthology sort of thing...

But I'm a sucker for a signed book, and this one is:

 

Like I said, I know next to nothing about the author, and I really can't find much online. I presume had he been more famous/recognized there'd be more. 

Anyway, I guess I'll keep the book. I think it DID belong to my paternal grandpa, and my dad probably bought it for him. 

A couple of other photos:

 

This is from Fusion Brew, the boba tea place in Normal that I like, it made me laugh. It's a dinosaur made to be a planter for one of those air plants, but they made a tiny little Fusion Brew cup and put it in his hand:

 And I had a Michael's voucher, and we had to go out that way one day, and they were closing out these funny "flatsy" kids for $5, and the voucher was for $5. I was fully prepared to pay a little sales tax on it, but the checkout person said they didn't do that. (I don't know if that was her discretion to save a little work, or Illinois has a law against sales tax on free things, or what)

I think this is like a tiny version of those "blanket friends" toys, where the body of the animal or doll is like a security blanket and they are unstuffed. It looks like the head and front legs here (and the spikes on the body) are stuffed, but the rest is not. And the body IS chenille, which is an evil yarn to work with, but it's not SO bad with crochet (it's not fun to knit with)