Flea Market Outing

Yesterday I went to the Alemany Flea Market. I woke up really early--4:30AM--and I just couldn't get back to sleep, so at 5:30 I got out of bed. I've never been to this flea market before 9:00, so I was excited to be there with all the early birds. One thing I think I prefer about going later is the chance of getting a better deal. I'm terrible at asking for a better deal, and rarely do, so I like it when vendors just offer up a better price than what's marked. Toward the end of the day it seems people are willing to come down on their prices a little more. This flea market isn't especially cheap (a very small wood aqua chippy painted side table for $87?), but you can find some really good deals now and then, and it's always fun to look around. I just bought one thing, which is now one of my favorite things ever, an amazing vintage fabric quilt top for $20. I love it! My mom's going to help me finish it and then it will go in the baby room. Here it is along with some other fun things I saw.

There's my quilt top! Mine's the one on the right, with a good bit of yellow in it.

Here it is a little closer. Click on the picture to see it larger--aren't all those little prints great?


Ah, a lovely lady. But do I really need another lady painting? I'd like another one, but she looked a little too melancholy for me today, and I wasn't sure I wanted to pay $65, though I think she was definitely worth it. The frame alone was great.


A huge bird cage! Not quite as big as Lisa's, but still very big and it looked really old.


One vendor that I really like a lot always has boxes of stuff in groupings--box of clocks, box of doll shoes, box of doll heads, box of door knobs, box of cars and trucks, box of vintage books, etc. I love looking through his boxes. He was also the one selling the lady portrait that I liked. And he sells re-purposed little brooms like you see in the first picture at the top of this post.


What a great trunk! I want a trunk for the baby room to serve as storage and a coffee table to go in front of the daybed we're getting ready to buy. The trunk was in Mary Millman's space, whose space always looks like a little antique shop. She does a great job arranging things so that everything looks nice and so you can see everything at once. A little decorated corner of the flea market. We got to talking and learned we both love the south! Ah, the south, where it's hot. Call me crazy, but I wouldn't have minded a little hot. Anyway, Mary is featured this month in the Maine Antiques Digest and can be found at the flea market on Sundays or by appointment if you might be interested in her antiques: sfflea@earthlink.net. She also had a great rug, below.