Meh and Feh.

I know I missed my usual Xmas Gift Horror posts for the past couple holidays but there's been a complete lack of new material.  I keep hoping I'll encounter some bad vintage crafts made from chicken bones and army boots or bleach bottles and glitter but all I'm finding these days is relatively new and incredibly lame.  I think the local thrift stores are on to my crap and now just throw those magazines out instead of putting them out in the racks.

On a recent parental visit my trip to the thrift store scored me 25-30 old Workbasket magazines from the 1970s and I fully expected it to be knee-deep in bad crafts but they've mostly been a disappointment.  Loads of ads for magnifying glasses, compression stockings, laxatives of all kinds and incontinence pants make retirement seem like a long, slow road to death with no reward at the end but pain and shame. 

Most of the knitting/crocheting is pretty dull and it seems to be geared towards those elderly crafters who are counting their last days and just plain don't care enough to bother making insane things out of outdated pills and false teeth glue.

I managed to weed out a couple things from my sad sad Workbasket stack and because I seem to have a radar for things made of garbage I found this prize.  Behold, the Googly-Eyed Church Bazaar Owl, because gluing googly eyes on anything makes it fun!  Try that on some random item, like a dead frog or a tampon.  For some reason the designer thinks this particular prize would fetch 50-75 cents.  I suspect over-medication was involved and she perhaps meant she would give you spare change if you take one of her magnets.

I've always been confused by the plethora of bazaar items made from food.  I dimly recall a varnished Oreo cookie on the fridge when I was young though it seemed to have disappeared by the time I started high school and was replaced with a weird molded rubber version.  God knows why it wasn't covered in ants. 

I think this sweater commemorates the comment General McCauliffe made to the German commander when he requested the 101st Armored Division's surrender during the Battle of the Bulge, though I think I'd knit a tank instead of the squirrel to save confusion.

Long before bored crafters crocheted cooter tissue boxes there were weird grandmas on the wrong medications making severed head Kleenex dispensers.  I know when I hack a hole in someone's skull the first thing I want to see pouring out of it is tissue paper. 

Back to my nap.