Weekly Thrifting Report: Vacation Edition

You heard we launched our Etsy store last Friday, right? To celebrate, we headed up to Santa Ynez Valley to go wine tasting. We stayed at a Super 8 motel Friday night and were pleasantly surprised to find two large thrift store within walking distance. Lo and behold, they were both great!

I've been jonesing for my first Wiiinblad, and this pewter-lidded stein for Rosenthal did the trick! Some initial research says this is part of a series of steins depicting a series of tales that I am not familiar with. The lid is personalized, which...

Fun spotting something I'd only ever seen pictures of. This Rosti pitcher is great.

This facet-cut sommerso vase is beautiful but unsigned. I feel like vintage glass is the great beyond for me, but I'm slowly learning. I assume this is murano, but I haven't been able to find a match anywhere online. If anyone reading this can help ID it, please let me know.

I pick up vintage signed art glass as a rule. This vase is from 1985 and has a great shape.

More Mexican carved ironwood! This pelican is very tall at more than a foot, but the real selling point was seeing all the original stickers on the bottom with the original price in Pesos, the carver's name (Jose Manuel Romero–check out this photo of him!), an official Seri Indian sticker, and some other stickers with something like serial numbers.

More Vera. Janel put the thin tapered-end scarf on and I was astounded at how contemporary it looked.

I could go on for a while, but we'll wrap it up for now with some Christmas swag. This cut glass ornament is large and came in a lot with two other smaller but similar bulbs. Super classy.

What's not classy? These super creepy flocked plastic ornaments. They came in a bag lot of 20 or so similar ornaments. They'd be perfect for some subversive Xmas decor.

Santa Ynez

In case you were wondering (and you probably weren't) here's a quick review of our wine tasting trip:

• The Lompoc Wine Ghetto  (real name) is an excellent way to hit a bunch of wineries without driving all day. Not terribly scenic, but high quality in a very condensed area. Stolpman was the highlight, but Longoria and Zotovich (lots of amazing free cheese!) were also excellent.
• We stopped at Avant for a light lunch, and our server would. not. stop. talking about how much I looked like her boyfriend (awkward).
• Protip: when taking a nap after drinking wine all day, set your alarm for the right time so you don't accidentally sleep through your 8:00 P.M. reservation at The Hitching Post...
• If you sleep through said reservation, the Solvang Brewery serves food late, has live music and lots of people, and a good tap list and decent cocktails.
• Los Olivos is another excellent way to kit a bunch of different wineries in a single day, but a whole lot more scenic.
• Los Olivos wineries visited: Byron (great Pinots), Toretti (more good Pinots, and some older ones too), Carhart (super-relaxed outdoor patio, good wine), Beckman (not in town, but just outside. Excellent Grenache and other area-appropriate varietals. Do the Reserve tasting rather than the Estate.)

Again, I could go on, but I'll stop [for now].