More things I didn't buy: Toikka birds and Scary Monsters

How happy was I to find a Toikka?

I know it's not right to bitch, but it does bum me out when an estate sale service does a good job executing its fiduciary responsibility to get the best price for its clients. Toikka birds are the work of Oiva Toikka, glass designer extraordinaire for the Finnish design company Iitalla, and they aren't free. They're also as scarce as peacocks in South Texas (actually my neighbor has peacocks so I don't know why I said that—as scarce as kiwi birds?), and I hardly ever find any Finnish design objects...

The original brochure!

...let alone Finnish design objects with the original paperwork! You might be thinking, doesn't she have enough Finnish design objects? But you know the answer to that. Anyway, I passed. Too rich for my blood, especially after I paid money I don't have on such a great score at the same sale! Which I'll share soon.

Bowie forever stamps

I didn't buy these limited-edition David Bowie Scary Monsters stamps, which apparently came from some obscure import 12-inch, because they were $20. That might have been a mistake. I don't know the market for David Bowie stamps; I just know I wasn't sure what I would do with them. Frame them? Bah.

An unnecessary object

If you're ever on the estate sale trail you know indoor barometers were once mighty popular items. Makes me wonder how we've been managing without them. Anyway, I usually see them in a nautical theme, not this supercute German Black Forest cuckoo style, but $20? I don't pay $20 for just anything.

Pikku, the Finnish Memory game

As promised, this week I'm strolling down Memory game lane. I got this one on my storied trip to Finland back in 1975, and look how beautiful it is! You wouldn't expect anything less from a Finnish Memory game, would you now. I've talked about how I only had a few things with which to amuse myself on that three-week trip—complimentary puzzles and art supplies given to all kids on the Finnair flight, a farm-animal stencil kit, my Asterix books, my brother's Tintin books, a book about mammals entirely in Finnish... Well, suffice to say, I squeezed a lot of good times out of this game, on the trip and for many years after. Like the Eames House of Cards, its images are burned on my retinas, deposited for good in my memory bank, and see below—there's even at least one photograph from the House of Cards, the nails (or are they pins? I've never been sure).

Sometimes I let my kids play with this game, when I'm feeling very generous, but mostly it stays on a high shelf of treasures while they use their own, a 1980 version put out by Milton-Bradley, which I forgot to photograph but you can see all over etsy (like here, for example). It's cute, but not as cute as this one—nor is it a repository of my precious memories!

But the 1980 Memory is waay cuter than the current incarnation put out by Hasbro, which is seriously fugly. My kids have received several over the years as birthday presents, and I keep donating them or regifting them yet somehow there's always one in the game closet. Maybe it's like the proverbial single fruitcake being passed around the universe?

I think if you want a new Memory game that in any way rivals the vintage ones you have to make it yourself. As I was photographing these game cards a couple weeks ago, I suddenly realized how much their perfect squareness makes them resemble Instagram photos (really good Instagram photos, anyway, not so much the ones of your dinner or your latte). Naturally, I thought I'd hit on a great money-making idea—custom Memory games made out of your favorite Instagrams!—but a few seconds of googling confirmed that I was a little late to that particular party. But is anyone Instagramming images of vintage Memory games and turning them into Insta-Vintage Memory games? Hmmm... that might just be meta enough to work...

Finnish Fridays: Sauna postcard

Ah, if I had a nickel for every sauna postcard I've received par avion... This one was sent by my parents when they were in the motherland back in October 1993, if I'm reading the postmark correctly. Anyway. What can I say? The sauna is a beautiful thing. Let your birch branches and your freak flags fly, people, and have a nice weekend.

Finnish Fridays: I'm an Arabia teapot, short and stout

A belated Happy Finnish Friday to one and all. Been a little busy today because my (Finnish) mother is here and there's no better excuse for going to five estate sales in one day. I was hoping to hit seven, which might have been a personal record, but the AC died in the guest room last night so we had to wait on the AC repairman for half the morning (Finns like their rooms just-under-the-arctic-circle cold for optimal sleep, so choices had to be made).

In honor of the day, I give you one of two vintage teapots made by the incomparable Finnish ceramics company Arabia. They're not marked because they're "seconds," which my mother bought at the Arabia factory outlet store in 1960. Gives you shopping chills, right? Why can't there be an Arabia outlet store at my outlet mall instead of all that cut-rate DKNY and Michael Kors?

Finnish Fridays: Shroomin'

Finland is the land of trolls and toadstools. So here are some cute little wooden toadstool candlesticks for your viewing pleasure. In truth, these toadstools were made in Sweden (the little blue labels underneath clearly state this fact), which probably makes this the perfect opportunity to explore the centuries-long fractious love-hate relationship between Finland and Sweden, but I don't have time to wade into those frigid waters right now. Right now, I need to get in my car and drive a few miles to an ugly neighborhood with a promising-sounding estate sale before it's time to meet the kids at the bus stop. If I see anything interesting, I'll share on instagram. Happy Friday!

Finnish Fridays: I am Aires, Hear Me Bleat

Warning: If you're a very naive believer in the zodiac, don't read the next paragraph.

I used to write horoscopes for magazines despite having received no astrological training. I mean, I guess it's not entirely accurate to say that I wrote them. It might be slightly more accurate to say that I jazzed up/embellished/fleshed out the predictions written by a bona fide astrologist. But still. I kinda wrote them. I.e., made them up.

Like most things that require a suspension of disbelief, astrology is something I disbelieve in. Maybe in part because I'm an Aires (a "true" Aires, mind you, not one of those "on the cusp" Aires) and my personality traits seem to bear little resemblance to the Aires dossier. Astrology buffs have been known to spit-take when they learn that I'm a fire sign, let alone an Aires, purported to be the fieriest of all fire signs. Sometimes this is insulting.

So how does a skeptic end up with so many zodiac tchotchkes? When your Finnish relatives give them to you, of course. And I'm not complaining—this guy is supercute.

Finnish Fridays: Tango til they're sore

Today on Finnish Fridays we're featuring a pair of dancing Finns carved from wood, which my mother gave me, I don't remember when. Underneath someone has written in neat ballpoint print "Souvenir from Finland, 1953." This tchotchke has never really pleased my eye but the kids love it for some reason, and have managed to incorporate it into the ongoing Verdopolis-like sagas they weave with Playmobil, Littlest Pet Shop, Polly Pocket and Papo figures.

It does remind me of this Morley Safer segment that aired on 60 Minutes in the early ’90s about the alleged passion the Finns have for the tango. I say "alleged" because overall the tone of the piece is quite patronizing and it makes it seem like you can hardly make your way through a public space in Finland without running smack into a flash mob of mopey Finns sadly tangoing. Ptooey. I never heard anything about this Finnish love affair with the tango till I saw it on 60 Minutes.

Finnish Fridays: And this little piggy went weeweewee

I've never associated pigs with Finland—except in the form of sauna sausage (mmm...sauna sausage)—so I'm not sure how we're ending up with a porcine theme here on Finnish Fridays, but let's go with it.

This little piggy was some sort of giveaway from the bank Postipannki, and it's so wee it couldn't hold more than a dollar or so in pennies—not sure what its capacity would've been for Finn markka, or Euro for that matter. You can't open this bank because apparently only the bank staff had the key. I guess this was fun for kids? Seems like you'd be making a lot of trips to the bank. Anyway, according to wikepdia, Postipannki closed/merged in 1997 so this pig serves no purpose, except as a repository for money you don't plan to use. But it is pleasant to look at, don't you agree?

Finnish Fridays: Picky, picky

Is the world divided between pickers and flossers? If so, I fall in the latter camp, though if I were a picker, I doubt I'd use toothpicks like these, since they're about the size of tongue depressors. Probably some indication here of the state of Northern European dentistry, circa the 1970s, when I think my parents received this as a gift. For decades it remained in some box, original packaging still intact, till it mysteriously arrived on my doorstep, and what am I supposed to do with it? Too cute to get rid of, like most Finnish things, even porcine toothpick holders. The word "kaivinkone" is stamped on the side, which seems to translate as a digger or excavating vehicle. I guess that's a play on the toothpick's purpose? Grody.

One cool thing: The company that made this item, Nikkarien Oy, is still in business. They seem to specialize in cute home goods, mostly sauna paraphernalia, which I love gawking at even though a sauna would be the wrongest thing to have in South Texas. Sauna hats and sauna guestbooks—it's a whole 'nother world of things to buy.

Finnish Fridays: Fun with stencils!

Our two-week trip to NJ culminated with a late flight from Newark to San Antonio, which got us in well after midnight. When I arranged for the tickets, I was a wee bit trepidatious—my kids do not sleep in cars or on planes or on anything that doesn't resemble a comfortable bed in an air-conditioned room fortified with blackout shades and a full complement of stuffies. Would they be able to keep their shit together on a plane at that hour? Never liking to leave anything to chance, I packed their rolling carry-ons with more entertainment and food than most humans would require for an Atlantic crossing. Pointlessly, as it turned out, because we were lucky enough to end up on a plane equipped with individual Direct TV screens in coach. We swiped our debit cards and the overstuffed carry-ons remained untouched at the kids' feet till landing.

Back in January 1976, when I flew from Helsinki to NYC (with stops in Copenhagen and Amsterdam), the DC-10 did not have Direct TV. I've already written about some of the contents of my meager carry-on, but neglected to mention this cute farm-animal stencil kit that my parents bought for me at some Helsinki book shop. My favorite thing about it is the "As seen on TV!" in the corner. At least that's what I think it says; you know my Finnish isn't too good. Anyway, just trying to imagine what a Finnish TV commercial for stencils would've been like is a pleasant way to pass five minutes.

Finnish Fridays: Some bunny loves you!

When people learn that I'm 51% Finnish, they often ask if I speak the language. It's a crazy question. Who speaks Finnish, apart from the five million or so multilingual Finns? Finnish is one of the hardest, most obscure languages you can learn; it's in the Fenno-Ugric group and thus counts Estonian, Hungarian and a handful of minor languages spoken in Russia as its nearest cousins. Don't think, however, that the idea of learning Finnish never crossed my mind; I attended one of the few (I'm assuming) universities that offer Finnish and I'm sure I dog-eared that page in the course catalog. But, you know, it was just a whole bunch of credits and a whole bunch of work and most inconveniently held what seemed like all day on FRIDAY, when I purposely confined my classes to Monday through Thursday, so to my everlasting shame as a 51% Finn, I stuck with Latin, a language spoken by even fewer people.

But! I know a couple of important words. Kiitos is thank you. Hei is Hi. Spider is hamahakki (mentally put umlauts over all those a's because I don't know how). And bunny, as in this adorable fellow that I bought at a flea market in Helsinki: pupujussi.

Finnish Fridays: Mmm...pie.

What—this doesn't look delicious to you? Then you must not be Finnish (or even 51% Finnish) because this, my friends, is a Karelian Rice Pie (a.k.a., Rice Pasty) and there ain't nothing finer smeared with a little egg butter (that would be hard-boiled egg smushed up with butter—YUM). And here you thought Finnish cuisine was all vodka and blackest licorice!

I used to get a fairly steady, or at least semiannual, supply of Karelian Rice Pies from my parents, whenever they hit the Scandinavian Festival circuit. But at some point several years ago, the ScanFest stopped coming to town, and I moved away, so in lieu of delectable hearty rice pies, all I have now is this sculpture of a rice pie. Not quite the same. There are myriad rice pie recipes on the internets, but, I dunno, it seems kinda hard.

Finnish Fridays: Trawling for trolls

Finland is full of trolls, and not just Moomins. Expect to see more.

Finnish Fridays: Dog cards

So this is one of the items I had with which to entertain myself on the flight from Helsinki to JFK (with a significant stopover in Amsterdam). It was 1976, I was 7 years old, and the DC-10 felt like the QE2 compared to the DC-8 we'd flown over on. I did not know, and still do not know, what this card game was all about; I just liked dogs (still do) and made up my own games. That is, when I wasn't watching the in-flight movie (Paper Moon, starring Ryan and Tatum O'Neal) or reading my new Asterix comic books or my brother's Tintins. If memory serves, the journey was 14 hours long and I was terribly well-behaved. There was no air rage. The stewardesses—they were still called stewardesses then—kept the vodka flowing.

Ah, what a difference 36 years makes. Right now, I'm packing for a three-hour 6am flight to Minneapolis, which will be followed by a five-hour drive to the deepest, darkest, albino-deer-fullest woods and muskiest lakes of Wisconsin. Lindsay is busily downloading new kid-friendly apps to his iPad (a.k.a. "Paddy") as well as movies (the Rex Harrison Dr. Doolittle). I've already packed a dozen DVDs to play on my laptop, and downloaded several audiobooks to my older daughter's iPod. The DS is charged. The kids have packed their matching, monogrammed Pottery Barn Kids wheelie backpacks with books, sketchpads, coloring books, pastels, watercolors, markers, snacks, water bottles, stuffies and cuddle-cuddle-up-its-blankets-that-are-puppets.

Do kids really need all this stuff to endure a domestic flight? Probably not, though flying really does suck incredibly compared to the ’70s. I'm not going to wring my hands over it. With Kindle, iphone, pack of gum and bag of almonds, I'm flying about as light as I did 36 years ago, to the closest thing to Finland the US of A has. Funny, no?

I doubt I'll be blogging next week, though you might find me on instagram. I've sussed out at least one flea market in deepest, darkest Wisconsin. Fingers crossed.

Sisu, and the beginning of Finnish Fridays

This blog is supposed to mostly be devoted to the stuff I buy at estate sales (and thrift stores and flea markets and occasionally on the internets) but as I sift through my possessions and ponder their origins, I'm realizing that's a little limiting. Or at least, that one theme keeps recurring—one that speaks with a lilting accent and has a taste for vodka, herring and good design: Finland.

See, my mother hails from the land of Marimekko and Moomins, and according to a keychain she once bought me at ScanFest (the Scandinavian festival that used to blow through our corner of Jersey once a year), this makes me 51% Finnish. I'm also a barrel of laffs because I've got a mug that proclaims it so ("Finns are Fun"). And, naturally, I've got Sisu—which is like the Finnish je ne sais qua but not quite so perky—because I had one of those license plate frames trumpeting the fact.

True story: I was once idling at red light here in San Antonio when suddenly the driver of the car behind me appeared at my window. I nearly had a heart attack—was my car on fire?? No, she'd seen my Sisu license plate and couldn't quell the urge to express Sisu solidarity. (At great personal risk, I might add; this being Texas, I probably had the right to shoot her.) But there you go: Sisu—which translates roughly as a powerful will, determination, stoicism in the face of adversity—encapsulated in one anecdote.

So along with Sisu, I've got a lot of Finnish stuff. Stuff that my mother brought over on the ocean liner back in 1961 and that she's slowly been relinquishing. Stuff my relatives have sent me for Christmas over the past many decades (always in the best wrapping paper bound with ribbon—never tape. Finns don't use tape, which may be a Sisu thing, not sure). Stuff I got—just a few things really, but naturally I still have them—when I went to Finland as a kid. See below, that's the puzzle that came in a bag of toys Finnair bestowed on all kid passengers back in the ’70s. Stuff I got when I returned to the motherland in my 20s. See above, that's me, age 25 and aglow with acquisitiveness, outside a Helsinki antique shop where I scored the WWII German pilot hat I'm wearing. The perfectly distressed leather schoolbag came from an animal-shelter thrift shop the day prior. And inside the plastic bag is a wooden elk I held on my lap the whole flight home. See the elk in question below—did you doubt that I still had it? You couldn't have—not if you've made it this far.



The first time I went to Finland I was 7—and it was a pretty seminal experience. Maybe it's something about being 7, when you're first consumed by that fever pitch of curiosity about the world, and some stuff actually starts making sense. Maybe it's because we didn't travel much as a family; we spent almost all vacations on the Jersey shore so Christmas in the Arctic—well, that one really stood out. Maybe it's because Finland truly is a singular place—Marimekko and Moomins? Come on! Maybe that's why I remember everything from that trip. It also probably helped that my parents gave me a travel journal in which I assiduously documented my observations for three whole weeks. (And yes, I still have that journal but don't ask me where it is just now.) These days, I feel that whenever I buy something for my house I'm consciously/subconsciously circling back to what I saw on that trip (minus all the snow). If someone were to say my home reminded them of ’70s Finland I'd totally be thrilled. Some stuff just gets under your skin and stays there.

And so that's why I will be featuring all things Finnish on Fridays, until I run out of Finnish things. TGIF!