The Collecting Bug.




   I love antiques.  I bought my first antique at the age of 17 in the form of a beat up green milk can from a dairy in Fergus and I paid all of $5 for it. That milk can followed me through a number of moves and colour schemes and finally gave up the ghost fifteen years later when the bottom rotted through and I had to junk it. And although my idea of what an antique was has changed during that time, I  still love to hunt and search, and bring home a prize. I have a small collection of flow blue, small is right as I have exactly seven pieces. Some are perfect, like the pitcher from a chamber set I got for Christmas a few years ago, while others are a little worse for wear. Two plates from the 1840s sit on my mantle and have a tiny ding or two on the backside-no matter as it doesn't take away from that hit of indigo it makes in the room.  My favorite two pieces are the large chamber jug and a little creamer I bought for $5 which is really a wreck. It's glaze is crazed, the  once white inside is nearly brown and there are flakes gone from the underside, but it's marking is clear and sitting on the bottom shelf of a tiger oak table, you can't tell it's not perfect-the reason I like it is that it is the exact miniature of a milk pitcher I have but for the decal design. Proof that an antique doesn't have to be perfect nor expensive for you to like it.
  In fact, I like that indigo colour so much I went to my favourite quilting place in Waterford, The Quilt Junction, and bought a few meters of a Civil War reproduction fabric in indigo and paired it with two meters of an unbleached muslin to make an Ohio star quilt. The past two nights have had me up until 3am  putting together the final blocks in a quilt using reproduction fabrics from the 1930s. Same pattern, different era. My spare moments are full, and satisfying and I can't think of a better way to spend them. Hope yours are too. SDW