There’s a segment of the population that just gets the heebie-jeebies at the very notion of an estate sale — picking through a dead person’s possessions before they’re even room temperature in the grave.

Me, I like the little peek into someone else’s life that an estate sale affords. But if you prefer to confine your shopping to actual shops, you should check out the Roy Dudley Estate Sale Center, now open on the back side of the Tanglewood Shopping Center at Cantrell and Mississippi. It’s a central location where Dudley can sell merchandise from estates that are too small for their own sale, or where in-home sales just aren’t convenient or possible. And he can also sell individual items on consignment.

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Last weekend’s debut sale combined three estates. There was a beautiful taupe dupioni silk sofa ($2,200), and a really interesting small framed drawing of an Indian man that had what I’m guessing was Hindi writing at the top and bottom. It was only $25, but I couldn’t stand the thought of looking at the picture every day without knowing what the writing said.

The next sale at the center, Nov. 11-13, will be items from a storage basement in a Heights home, containing things from about the turn of the 20th century through the 1930s. It’ll be a collection people will want to root through, Dudley said. Hours for each sale — look for one or two a month — are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. Everything’s 20 percent off on Saturday, and much goes to 50 percent off on Sunday.

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I won’t give them the full-rant treatment I gave gauchos in my last column, but I gotta say something about the latest innovation at the Gap. Now, kudos are due the company for acknowledging not all women come equipped with a standard waist-to-hip ratio. But. Unsvelte though I may be, I still have a general shape well within the boundaries of normal, and the “curvy” jeans I tried on still had so much extra room in the waist that you could see all the way to Panama if the angle was right. And it seems almost intentionally cruel that the only style available in “curvy” is the dreaded fit-and-flare, which could not possibly be less flattering to the amply hipped. I believe I’ll pass.

And it’s fine, really, because every pair of Gap jeans I don’t buy is 60 bucks I have to spend this weekend at the Ten Thousand Villages holiday bag sale. From 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 5, you’ll get 20 percent off everything you can fit into a TTV shopping bag. The store has an incredible selection of nativity scenes made by craftspeople all over the world — some so delicate and intricate it’s hard to imagine human hands produced them.

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As if you needed any extra incentive to get out and shop this time of year, there are open houses galore the weekend of Nov. 12-13. Celebrate Retro Christmas at Oliver’s Antiques in Jacksonville; back in Little Rock, make the rounds in Bowman Curve, Riverdale, the Heights and Hillcrest on Nov. 13.

Speaking of the holidays, let me do your Christmas shopping. Sort of. If you’ve got a difficult giftee on your list this year, tell me about it in an e-mail, and I might use it in a future column — with all identifying details changed to protect the stymied, of course. You get your problem solved, and I get a really good excuse to duck out of the office for a few hours.

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Everybody wins.

shoppingchick@staging.arktimes.com

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