For the last several months I’ve been scouring poking around on the Internet, looking for a dressmaker’s form that I can use to display shawls and things on, so that I don’t have to hang them over the railing. The glass blocks are nice enough, but are rather distracting. I’ve periodically tried to enlist Dave’s help, but that doesn’t really work, either. That’s not the sort of photography he excels at. He’s much better at landscapes, and closeups of flowers.

We’ve talked about making the rounds of thrift shops in the area, and that didn’t really get anywhere until this weekend. We were out running errands anyway, and drove down a street in town that has a couple of thrift shops, so we stopped in. We had fun browsing, but no luck. Drove across town to another thrift shop we know. Score! She’s perfect. Alas, she’s not for sale. Even if she were, we were informed, she’d be $400. Egads. That’s rather out of the budget. Drat. Onward.

There’s a nice area of old-town Orange that has a bunch of antique stores. We parked, went into the first one we came across, and there’s a great dress form, sitting up on a ledge. The only thing is that she’s being held for someone. Drat. Well, doesn’t hurt to ask, so we did. The folks there called the owner up, things progressed. Turns out the person who put her on hold was supposed to have picked her up first thing after opening that day. Here it is, after 1:00, and she still hasn’t come in. The owner decided that since we were there, and no one had the phone number of the person who’d put the form on hold, that we’d buy her. The agreement had just been made, but no money had yet exchanged hands, when a young woman came in to claim her. Drat. Ah well. Timing. The price on this one was certainly attractive, but the form wasn’t as adjustable as I really wanted, being meant for table-top display.

But then one of the women behind the counter that we’d been talking to told us to wait a bit. We can do that. She finished up the transaction for the young woman, she left, a couple other people were checked out. Then she said she had another dress form in storage. She grabbed a helper, and ran off, begging us to wait just a moment. We did. She came out with the perfect thing. Just what I wanted. This one has a full stand that can be adjusted for height, but the body is not adjustable. It’s been recovered in a lush green velour, has a tiny bit of rust here and there on the stand, but is otherwise in fabulous condition.

At $200, the price tag was still a bit higher than I wanted to spend. But she’s perfect. Just what I wanted. There, available, and I wouldn’t have to spend a ton of time—or gas—running around town. I handed over the money, we loaded her into my trunk, and we brought her home.

On the way home I brought up the fact that she needed a name. Dave wanted to know why. Well, I guess we could just caller her She. Please move She into the living room, so I can clean in here. Hm. Doesn’t really work for me. Him either. She has a finial at the top to help hold everything in place. Dave thinks of that as a tiny head, but basically she’s headless, which reminded him of Nearly-Headless Nick. What’s the female version of that name? We’ve known a couple of women who go by Nikki. Oh yeah. Nicole. So, her name is Nicole.

I love the way they used to make things. The details are always splendid. They also often took advantage of places to advertise. Nicole’s base has some interesting information about her. Because the makers molded their name and address into the stand, I know that she came here from 25 Howard Street, New York, New York. The whole company name is there, and I’m clearly going to have to go look at it again when it gets light, as I didn’t get a good picture of the fourth stand leg. Drat. After I do that, I’ll poke around, see if there’s any information about this company online. I’ll let you know what I find out.

At some point I’m going to enlist the aid of a friend who sews a lot of clothes, get her help in making a cover for Nicole in a lighter color of fabric. Until then, I’ll probably just throw a sheet over her, belt it, and use her that way to display all my dark-colored knits.