Thrifty Acres - From Grandma's Attic Part 1

Hello! I guess I should start off by stating that the title of this post isn't meant to be literal - rather, lately I've found a number of things that came from a grandmother's attic - or, at least look like they did! 

For example, a few weeks ago I went to a neighborhood garage sale. I usually avoid these neighborhood-run events - they can get congested, and often much of the stuff offered for sale is outgrown baby/young child stuff. Not in the market for any of that. 

But this recent sale was in a neighborhood of ranch homes, so I figured there might be some older people there, selling some older things. And I was right. 

One of the first houses I visited had several stacks of older magazines, many of which had crafting themes. And at 10c per magazine, the price was right. The only problem was that the magazines weren't very well organized, and I didn't have time to dig through the boxes in a thorough way. But I did purchase this small stack:

The magazines date from 1968-1984. The 1968 publication is McCall's
Christmas Make-It Ideas. It's so loaded with ideas both useful and off-beat that I ought to do a separate post on it sometime! Well worth the dime, that's for sure. 

For awhile now, I have been looking for an electric frying pan in the thrift stores, but didn't like the prices being charged. If I'm not sure how an electric appliance is going to perform, I don't want to pay much money for it. 

Several houses away from the magazine lady I spotted an electric frying pan for sale. The woman said she thought it still worked; it had been her mother-in-law's and had been in storage down in her basement. Since the electric frying pan looked like it'd been around awhile, I asked how old it was. The woman said she thought it was from the 70's. She was asking $2.50 for it, which I thought was a fair price. I hadn't seen an electric frying pan for less than $4.00 at the thrift stores, with vintage ones going for considerably more. So I bought it and hoped it still worked.

I thought it looked a bit older than the 1970's; checked the Internet later for info. Found an ad from 1965 that featured the same model. This doesn't mean, of course, that the electric frying pan is from that year, since I don't know how long that particular model was manufactured. But it could be that old, of course. 

Here's what it looks like:

Lid closed. 

Lid raised (the lid can be attached on the edge of the frying pan so that it stays raised on its own), with temperature control/plug and frying basket inside. 

The skillet was made by the Dominion Electric Corporation of Mansfield, OH. I'd never heard of that company before, so either they went out of business at some point or were  bought out by another company. 

I tried out this purchase two days later at our daughter's open house; it kept several cans of refried beans warm in the taco bar area. Worked just fine!

There was nothing of interest to purchase at the house across the street, but I picked this out of the "free" box there:

A handmade shower cap - not for use, but for show. The blue of the flowers is close to the blue of the shower curtain/bath mat set I have in one of our bathrooms. So now this shower cap hangs up in that bathroom to give it a bit of retro glamor. Or so I like to think! 

And that's it for Part 1 of my "Grandma's Attic" finds - more to come in future posts.