Consumer Report

Costume Jewelry-a-Rama-a-Go-Go

Saturday was a shopping day! A few of my WeHo SnB buddies, Darcy, Natalie and Carla came over to my house early (10 am) and we zoomed west to a little swap meet in Santa Monica. The location of this swap meet shall remain nameless. Find your own cache of good ol' stuff to buy!

Anyway, one of the booths at this little swap is chock full o' costume jewelry. My good friend, Rhoda discovered this swap. She is the supreme queen of costume jewelry. She knows the history, artisans and value of everything. The prices are very reasonable at this booth and we all went kinda' crazy. We barely even looked at any of the other booths. Many shekels were spent.

After all of this shopping we were starving, so we drove over to our fave westside taco place, Tacos Por Favor on Olympic and 14th to chow down.

Rhoda had to leave us after lunch, but Darcy, Carla , Natalie and I then drove over to the Talking Stick on Ocean Park near 17th St. None of them had been to the site where the Tuesday SnB meets. We noticed that the owners had mounted and hung the beautiful Talking Stick blanket that a few of us had contributed squares for. Two doors down from the Talking Stick is this store that specializes in Oaxacan arts and crafts. Faith purchased a bag there made out of colorful oil cloth that we all admired. Of course, we all wanted one. There were lots of choices, styles, colors. There were tote bags, suitcases, makeup-cases, messenger bags, etc., all verrrrry colorful. More purchases, more money spent!!!

I suppose we hadn't spent quite enough money or shopped quite enough, because we all decided to visit Shannita at her new venture....A Mano Yarn Center in Mar Vista! Shannita is now one of the owners of this great yarn shop. Too bad Shannita wasn't there at the time...we left her a note. Shannita knitted these darling dolls to represent the owners of the shop. Of course, we had to purchase a few items!!! We started talking about granny squares while we were at A Mano, so instead of doing any more shopping, we went back to my house for a granny square crochet lesson. Carla, Natalie and Darcy are now on their way to realizing my mantra....."granny squares are the building blocks to fashion."