It's A Poodle Thang

My mom was a "knick knack" collector. Salt and pepper shakers were her favorites. These were arranged carefully on the "knick knack shelf" in the living room and dusted weekly. I remember coming home from school to my mother listening to Paul Harvey on the radio and dusting her knick knacks. Mom was a bit obsessive about those knick knacks. Her name, by the way, is Pat. Does that make her a Knick Knack Patty Whack?

When Mom switched from the night to day nursing shift she must have had trouble finding time to dust the knick knacks so she packed the salt and pepper shakers up in boxes and scattered the remaining knick knacks around the house. This was also around the time she started taking a ceramics class, so the knick knack shelf now held her own hand painted creations. She specialized in those big-eyed elf like pieces that you can paint up to look like your own kid. You pick from molds featuring the elf dressed up for all sorts of sports and activities. My poor brothers had a room lined with elfin football players, dirt bike riders, tennis and hockey champs. That was before the days of Title IX so there weren't any sporty girl elves, luckily for my sister and I.

Anyhow, my parents moved out of their home into a condo when my oldest daughter was going into college. My mother unearthed a few of the old knick knacks during the move, and passed along two prized porcelain poodles to my daughter. Suprisingly, my daughter grew to love these knick knacks, so like any good mother, I began to pick up vintage poodles for her in my thrift store and yard sale forays. She's now out of college and living in an apartment in Boston. Her poodle collection outgrew the top of her dresser and she now has her very own knick knack shelf. She denies obsessively dusting her knick knacks, however, but time will tell.

Her TwentySomething friends find her poodle collection quite a curiosity and have joined in with adding to it--she even sometimes gets randomly "poodled". Recently, a woman she briefly met through a mutual friend surprised her with a vintage poodle mailed all the way from California. Just a couple of weeks ago, I also "poodled" her--this time with a framed print entitled "Cheezy Poodle" from Etsy seller ColourShoppe Vintage:http://www.etsy.com/view_transaction.php?transaction_id=17524559




So last week, at the yard sale where I lucked upon the box of authentic trailer trash, I also bought someone's entire small, yet very diverse cheezy poodle collection. Just look at these darlings. Each more expressive than the next. No canine can cop an attitude like a poodle.