Last Friday, I packed up the car, picked up Shay and headed down to Still Pond, Maryland for a long weekend at Camp Tockwogh. It’s the fifth year in a row that I’ve spend Labor Day Weekend down at camp and it was just as wonderful and relaxing as always (follow the links for reports on years two, three and four). This year was particularly wonderful, because far-flung friends traveled from Boston, Washington, D.C., Houston and suburban Maryland to spend a few days together.

The camp is adjacent to Chestertown, MD, a small town that reminds me a great deal of Walla Walla, WA (where I went to college). It has a particularly good thrift store and I can’t help but make a stop in when I pass through the town. This year I made a larger than usual purchase, buying a set of six dining room chairs to replace my hazardous ones. The chairs I inherited from my grandparents are rickety, and some are true dangers, often coming to pieces when you lift them the wrong way. I’ve needed to replace them for some time, but haven’t had the budget to buy brand new ones and hadn’t come across anything appropriate in the used world.

The chairs I bought were actually part of a dining set, selling along side a really nice teak table for the fairly low price of $200. However, I’m not in need of a new table (and how would I have gotten it back to Philadelphia?), so I asked if I could buy just the chairs. They were a little reluctant at first, but when I offered $150 for the set of six, the woman looked at me and said, “Well, I guess there’s an exception to every rule.”

So now I have new chairs that need fresh fabric on the seats (and some padding, as they are a bit hard) and old chairs that need to be given the boot. Angie and I have a fabric field trip scheduled for this Saturday and I’m looking forward to the the project. Hooray for camp, good thrift stores and new-to-me chairs.