peas and carrots

"Me and Jenny goes together like peas and carrots" —Forest Gump

I've run out of linens with food themes to cut up for pot holders, so I've started embroidering my own fruit and veggie motifs. The two designs shown here are both from a vintage apron I found last summer. There was also a yellow squash on the apron but I've yet to find any fabric that goes with that :)









Patterns for all three vegetables are available for free on my Stitch School blog. They'd be really cute on an apron or tea towel, too, and you should be able to do any one of them in less than an hour.

Next up are birds, Scotty dogs, pears, and grapes. Then I really need to stop with the pot holders and move on to something else for a while.

This coming weekend is the Linen-Button theme weekend at Shupp's Grove flea market in Adamstown, PA. I hope to find lots of great things to work with through the winter—especially handkerchiefs and eyelet for sachets, vintage fabric, and maybe a few feedsacks, too.

still here

My friend Melody popped in to my last post to ask what's up and if I'm OK. I am OK, just very busy. I had to see a specialist about my continuing knee problem, which is not serious but will take a long time to heal. So, I wasn't able to function very well for a week or so while resting it. Having to hang out in bed for days sounds like it might be fun but definitely isn't. You can only read so much, watch so many movies, and do so much embroidery!

And I heard that an online friend is closing her business after many years. I'm happy that she's going to pursue something else now and understand her reasons. But it threw me a bit, too, because she's always been an inspiration. My first thought was, "OMG, if she can't do it then how can I possibly?" Business has been very slow and all these thoughts go through your head—is it just the bad economy, am I doing something wrong, are my prices OK? It's easy to blame yourself.

But, instead, it pushed me to do some marketing for my business—something I'd planned to do anyway. I sent a mailing with a catalog, sales policy sheet, etc. to a bunch of retail shops where my products seem to fit. I've heard that this often doesn't work, but I've already got a very nice wholesale order from a store in Philadelphia, and hope to hear from some of the more local shops in the coming weeks.

And then I sold a pillow, and another, and another. I got an email about a local craft show that sounds interesting. Things are looking up again.

I've also completed the move of all Stitch School posts to their new home and replaced the list here with a small banner that links to the new one. Look for new stitches soon!

p is for peony . . . and poppy

The garden is just exploding with flowers. Everything seems to be blooming early this year and very abundantly, too.

The inside of a perennial poppy. The pollen coating the stamens is purplish-black in color—it looks like velvet.