Buying Trip Therapy

Groundhogs are rodents and I say shoot 'em. Um, does someone need out from under winter? Time for some buying trip therapy somewhere south I say. Seemed reasonable, before the blinding snowstorm in Atlanta that is. Or was it the 35 degree "beach" vacation in Florida. Maybe what I really needed was to drive 2200 miles and sit in front of a television with cable for a week. Well that and a cocktail...or two...Moving on! Dealers were glad to see us and good deals on interesting things got loaded into the pickup. Great giant neon letters, sans the neon for now but that could change, in that old english font which is funky rendered in fabricated sheet metal. They spell "run," a timely message here in Detroit, but maybe Toyota needs them at headquarters or gee someone's office in D.C.? A nice pile of industrial molds that actually can be repurposed for a function other than sculpture. Four of them I'm going to put mirrors into, great round forms with chunk, paint and dimension, kinda cartoonish. They lend themselves well to kid's rooms, modern interiors, cottage or primitive environments. A couple of others are going to make a great table. Giant spools, turned wooden urn forms and boot molds I am designing into table lamps. I'm on a major lighting kick just now, got inspired by all the baskets and parts fashioned into lights that I saw and have lots of parts to design a nice collection in very affordable price ranges. About the most beautiful conveyance for water I've ever seen, tall wooden tapered oval baskets that hang on your (ok not your, but some poor peasant's) back. Flanking a doorway would be stunning with some tall sticks in it, painted some great color. I even thought they could be an interesting base for a console table. Some of them still have the straps. I carted them out to my car on my back and they were surprisingly comfortable, well without the water that is. My favorite thing though is this dry cleaner's scale, weighs the dirty laundry and wants to hold clean towels in your bathroom. Other tasty bits too, come plow through the mess in the shop. Or give me a minute and I'll get them up on the flickr site (www.flickr.com/heritageco2)