Shop owners discuss in Spanish what they'll charge a couple of Scandinavians who lost their way, finally coming up with $350 for a beautiful tapestry that was too long anyway and would introduce a new color into our scheme. We passed.
Adventure on Grant
Saturday morning we headed downtown to shop for a big pot to put in the big slot in the wall system next to the TV. We had seen an ad in the Tucson Newcomers Guide for a dusty enterprise called Pottery Blow-out on Grant Street near Alvarado. The ad said they had 10,000 pots in stock at all times and since we needed just one, we figured the odds were good.
They had lots of pots alright, mostly from Vietnam and China and the Philippines, but they were all too short or too tall or too fat. We saw some interesting pot feet, and a neat potted water feature, frogs, turtles, and chimineas galore (two were lit and made a smokey haze over everything), but not the right pot.Disappointed, we got back into the Rendezvous and retraced our route back up Grant. We impulsively topped at Mi Casa (I think that means "Our House" -- see how our Spanish is improving?) and there was this nice couple (above) who have been in business there for 10 years. Rooms full of Mexican tables, chairs, place settings, statuary, pots, headboards, urns, hinges, all piggly wiggly and colorful. Senor is a welder so he makes a lot of their wrought iron stuff out back and would make me a nice door for my wine cellar, but most of the stuff is imported from various provinces in Mexico -- he told me which ones, I nodded my head knowledgeably, but I don't think I can report it here with any accuracy, which is the standard for this blog. Anyway, we found this great wonderful thing to put on the wall, which will remain top secret until we reveal the new kitchen/family room we've been working on when we aren't shopping.
They also had a ton of tile samples (below) which we looked over as well as some textiles. As Kathleen likes to say as she leaves a store "we'll be back."Taking a right onto Oracle, we stopped at a huge outdoor Mexican pottery yard that looked like it had 20,000 pots, so we figured this must be the one. (At left) We were right, we found one just the right height, width and color to go in the Rolfsrud house in Tucson.
The pot weighed more than I wanted to carry, so the boss summoned a kid who looked to be 10 years old who slung the big old pot over his shoulder and put it in the back of the Rendezvous.
