Author Archives: R.S. Williams

Things To Do: Berkeley Does Yard Sales

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Berkeley’s temperate weather makes it a hot spot for yard sales. You can spot old skis and slightly broken blenders on many Saturday or Sunday city streets.

Back in the day, the classified adds in your local news papers used to be the easiest way to find yard sales, but today craigslist.com is your best source for searching them out. You will find them under the names: yard sale, garage sale, block sale,or estate sale, however they’re all basically the same. I am writing this on a Saturday in February and I have located 15 yard/garage sales going on in Berkeley at this moment.

To be honest I rarely plan out yard sale shopping trips, I prefer to stop at sales spur-of-the-moment when I drive past a sign on a telephone pole or when I just happen to come across a sale while walking my standard poodle with a sport cut, Ruben.

Both buying and selling in yard sales is fun. My neighbor is a fanatic yard seller, and she organizes a multi-household block sale on my street at least once a year. It is totally satisfying to clean out the basement or garage and get rid of a bunch of stuff you couldn’t live without, that you forgot you had. Most of this stuff will end up at Goodwill anyway so why not kick back with some lemonade and liquify a few tangible assets in the process.

A couple of my favorite yard sale buys over the years are an old oak chair and six large  vintage geometric paintings from the 1970s, for which I have no place to hang. I love the paintings but my 17 and 20 year old daughters refused to put them in their rooms, describing them as an unsettling combination of colors and shapes (Ain’t that the 70s though!).

In the meantime, We have decided to have a virtual yard sale on greetingsfromberkeley.com since it is so easy install an on-line store on a WordPress site using widgets like Edwid, I though it would be fun to sell a couple of things that have some connection to our blog. We’ve decided to start with a few of Teal’s knit dogs and those vintage 1970’s paintings I just told you about.

A note about the “Yard Sale” e-commerce widget:

I looked at a couple of options for adding a store to greetingfromberkeley.com and decided that because Edwid is hosted elsewhere and has top notch security it is the best option for a site like ours. Also and very important, it is free for up to 10 items. I probably won’t be going over the free level for the time being,  but please check back from time to time because we will be changing the items in our yard sale as we publish new posts.

Knit Dogs by Teal Major

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Teal's knit dogs

Click on this photo to see more dogs

For the past fourteen years, Teal has worked most days in her sewing workroom behind her Berkeley home. She loves her job working with fabric, creating custom slipcovers, window treatments, cushions, pillows and other stuff for her Bay Area clients. As her children have grown and required less of her time she’s found that she was using her newly acquired free time to put in even more hours working in her business.

“ As my children have gotten older and needed me to be around less I found that I spent every idle moment working. I would start dinner and instead of helping with homework, as I used to do, I was going back to my workroom. I would spend 10 minutes making dinner and 10 minutes in my workroom, 15 minutes doing dishes and then back to my workroom. I was going mad; I needed a creative outlet that was fun and rewarding. I have always had hobbies but with kids, husband, social commitments and work they had all gone idle.”

Then one day Teal was in a bookstore wandering through the stacks hoping to find something “good” when a small paperback book with a little knit dog on the cover caught her eye. It was called, Knit Your Own Dog. She picked it up and bought it without thinking twice.

“The first dog I knit was a black Labrador. Success! He is adorable! Then I tried a cocker spaniel. Well … he is a bit of a pinhead. Then a few more pups with varying degrees of success but definitely getting better. No matter the final results, knitting these dogs is thoroughly rewarding. I have an attachment to each one of them and by the time they are done I always feel like I’ve created a little pup with a unique personality. We love our (real) dogs so much; somehow these little knitted guys are a tribute to them. They make wonderful special gifts for the dog lovers in your life.”

If you are thinking of trying to knit your own little dog you will need to know at least knitting basics and be able to follow a knitting pattern. These Dogs are small and relatively inexpensive to make but they do take considerable time to complete. Teal does most of her knitting while watching TV or riding in the car. If you want to see a selection of her puppies click on the gallery tab and select Teal’s knit dogs. You can also check out the work she does for her day job at www.customslipcovers.net. Surprise yourself, create something today. RS Williams 2014