If you’re so inclined – which I am not – you can show some originality with a hand-crafted present.
• Benni went to one of those pay-by-the-hour pottery studios, and made a beautiful bowl for his partner’s wedding gift.
• Kim made me two stunning bracelets out of vintage rhinestone and Bakelite buttons. These one-of-a-kind pieces are real attention-getters, and I crave attention! 
• One Christmas, Kim and her sister made spectacular wreaths out of twigs, pine cones, dried flowers, berries and ribbons for all their friends. When I think of the long hours of patient labor that went into this project, I get overwhelmed with fatigue. Fortunately, not all of my friends are as slothful as I am.
• Brenda picks up interesting ceramic containers at yard sales. When she needs to bring a house gift, she takes a cutting from one of her succulents, and plants it in one of these pots.
FLEA MARKETS
These are fun to browse, but the prices of professional dealers are usually too high for me. If I do go to a flea market, I try to get there for the last hour. That’s when the vendors are ready to make deals and clear out the inventory. By the way, I often see those same vendors picking through the goods at yard sales. And they can sometimes be a little arrogant.
Quite a while ago, I fell in love with Bakelite jewelry and started buying it cheaply on country weekends. I wandered into a fancy-dancy shop off Madison 
Avenue and saw that they had duplicates of my pieces, so I offered to sell the owner some of my collection. He sneered at me like I was some kind of filthy rag peddler, “Sorry. I do not buy from the STREET!” I held on to my Bakelite, which is worth a lot more now than it was then. A little while ago, I sold a few pieces to a dealer, who told me that she is a “picker” for that very same shop. I was tempted to include a note, “Regards from the street!”
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