Happy New Year!

Hi All,

Well, we are all totally quite over the past months, we must be all creatively diverted?!

I know I am...I got two new jobs, both part time, the one at the chocolate company has finished last week, then we have glided quietly and peacefully through Christmas. My other PT job is at a local furniture store two days a week, fun but I need a couple more days on the floor, so I can get more opportunities to make sales and then commission... but for now it's fine and dandy.



Meanwhile I am working on developing a greeting card line for a local company, my next to final presentation to them is scheduled for next Friday, it is very cool in concept and hopefully I can get it all expressed in paper form, and will let you know how it pans out.



We have had full fledged winter here in NH, lots of snow, except the last week we keep getting rain, so it is washing away the almost 20 inches that had fallen sine the beginning of the month. I love the snow, my new year's resolution is to go out in it more this winter and cross country ski.

Happy New Year let's get back to sharing our creativity soon, I miss you all.

Yup Fall here too

Well, I am back from Miami and the HD Boutique Show, and it is 80 degrees here in SW New Hampshire. Summer! The leaves are slowly turning, and for the first year in the 7 we have lived here, there is actual variety in color. One of the sugar maples over my studio is going into oranges. I guess that's what very little rain does.

I have a project featured in a book written by Carol Cypher called How We Felt. She highlights a number of feltmakers and we each submitted a beautiful object and supplied her with the recipe for the instructions. I must say it looks great.

This week was my Birhday and Annies' anniversary! Happy days for each of us.

Though, that said we had a hard week. Our little bunny girl Babette, broke her back in the garden Saturday afternoon. She got xrayed and pain meds, and we brought her back in the AM, none of our bunny vets were availbale so we were recommended to take her to Tufts in Wooster MA, their exotic Dr was on vacation, so the intern suggested we go to Boston to Angell, MSCPA. 5 hours later, our bunny girl was admitted, over night to start. We got a hotel room, and went back the next morning. She was xrayed again and she has a small fracture in her back that most likely pierced her spinal cord. Everyone at Angell were wonderful and we had lots of other guidance during the stressful event. This story is longer so I will keep it short...She is home, we are keeping her safe, she is eating and trying to scoot about. She can do the side to side, a bit forward and circles. She gets frustrated and pushes off too hard a few times and turns her self upside down. But we think she is going to get the hang of it. We are going to get a bunny mobile for her, and strap her up! Bionic Bunny here we come!

Also other news I am taking a part time job dipping chocolate at Burdicks. It is a seasonal thing and I just keep seeing visions of Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory. Except it will be my girlfriend and me!

AND...Annie, did you check out the Fall issue of Country Living? The Keene Pumpkin Festival is featured in it. We are going this year. We have never gone but I have made a promise to do it this Fall, and very excited about it!

I have done nothing. Nothing, I tell you. Kate is a whirling dervish- crawling, climbing, almost walking, charming, silly, wailing, teething, giggling, babbling- you name it, she's doing it! Oh- but not sleeping. She still isn't much a fan of sleeping. Drat.

My beloved old Necchi bit the dust this summer, but it was resuscitated by a gem of a man named Harold. Harold is a sewing machine repairman from Idaho Falls, and at a mere 80-something years old, he still makes the trip to Jackson once a month to fix machines. He said it was a treat to work on an oldie but a goodie- I grinned and forked over $60. Hooray!

I've been writing a bit, researching agents and publishers for picture books, and getting fairly no where with it. But I've had fun thinking visually. I've been fairly uninspired, otherwise- but horray, fall has settled in Teton Valley and the October issues of Country Home and Country Living have arrived, so my head is buzzing again! Those October/Halloween issues rock my world every year, and I don't even care about Halloween much- go figure? Buth they are consistently my most favorite... aaahh, pumpkins, glowy warm colors, recipes for pies and spice cakes, visions of sweaters and toasty socks dancing in my head...

I think I'm going to make a square wreath for our front door made of sticks and felt leaves. Our door is an orangey-ish stained wood, so I'm thinking plain sticks wouldn't show up very well, so I'm thinking that I will spray paint the sticks a nice chocolate brown- don't chocolate dipped sticks sound nice? And since the only fall color here is the yellow that the aspens go out blazing in, I'll just do yellow leaves. I really do miss oranges and reds... we do catch glimpses of some nice reds along the creek banks from the willows, but it just isn't enough for me.

Miss Lovely's new favorite book is The Mitten- you've probably heard the story somewhere along the line. A little boy asks his grandmother to knit him some snow white mittens, but she tells him that if he drops one, it would be really hard to find in the snow. But she knits them anyway, and lo and behold, plop a mitten goes into the snow. A mole crawls in the mitten, then a rabbit, next an owl, then a badger snuggles in, next a fox, a grizzly bear, and finally a mouse- yup, the mitten is stretched 38 times its original size. The mouse tickles the bear's whiskers, the bear sneezes, and all the animals come flying out. The mitten shoots into the air, and the little boy catches it. Phew. The last page of the book shows the grandmother holding the two mittens- one boy-sized, and the other all stretched out.

Miss Lovely is also obsessed with putting things inside other things lately, so I was thinking I should make her a mitten and all the little animals that go in the mitten- how darn sweet would that be? Now if I would just get around to making it...

Happy fall! Happy raking! Happy log-splitting!

Annie

It is starting to feel like Fall!

Most of the leaves on our trees are still green but they are taking on that yellowy orangy tinge of early fall. Because we had no rain here for over 6 weeks, (we just had a nice 2 days finally) I think the leaves will be very colorful. Some had a hard time with the hot weather and no rain, but...I keep picking up little gems like the ones I scanned here...this is what I love about Fall...

ALSO:

sweaters

Wool

Toasty fires

One pot meals

The smell of the heat coming on in the house (after I stop sneezing!)

Seeing my breath in the air

The ideas of apple picking

making apple pies (or any pies)

waiting for my butternut squash to rippen

My birthday - coming up soon...happy anniversary to Annie (the same day as my birthday)

Halloween and doing goofy things for when the kids come asking for treats

So as I list these great things I also am heading to Florida to a trade show next week. I will stay with my sister and her boys, who are almost men now, we visit the middle nephew in college, he's a freshman and loving it so far. They are taking me to Islands of Adventure for the day. I have never done anything like that kind of theme park so it should be fun. My sister also says there is a tropical stoorm brewing so if it builds to anything it will probably be when I am ready to get on the plane and go back! It is hurricane season in Florida after all!

Have a great week everyone, drop a line when you get a change too, let us hear what we all have been up to...I know crazy busy...but at least you aren't alone!

No sketching going on here at the moment...

Hi everyone,

boy summer sure has taken over our lives it looks like! (This is what I imagine is going on in our fantasies!!!) By the way the stout floater on the left is me with my cutie new hair cut, and I am so on the verge of dyeing my whites away and going dark red and funky...

My August is F.U.L.L and it is half over. I taught a 3 day workshop last week called a "Split Personality" workshop some gals made a Rug and some made ottomans. They were all outstanding! I had two gals from Australia, one from Florida, Georgia, Boston and Surry, NH right down the road! As I geared up for that I am also getting ready for a week long felting 'symposium' called Felters Fling which I am one teacher of many. There are over 50 people coming in from all over the world and I teach two tracks, one is Color and Design for Interiors the other is designing and making an ottoman. 18 students in all. I am especially excited about the Color and Design class as it is 2/3rds theory and 1/3rd felt making. As I get my teaching items together for the C&D class I am thinking this could make a really good book.

I buzzed down to NYC the other day to see the NY Home Textiles Show (in conjunction with the NY Gift Show) to see if it would be an outlet for NCD Designs, (Not until I have product) am also gearing up to go walk the HD Boutique show in Miami in September and see if this is a better suited market for my new business...I know it is, and I should get a clearer picture in my mind as how best to present my new company's services. I am also realizing that I need to show at the Licensing Show come next June in NY. *** Anyone want to share a booth with me?

OK I also know it is back to school time with a lot of kiddies so I hope your last week (or week and a half) is productive and school routines are set again as we step into Fall. I love Fall...brisk, cool sweater weather....mmmmm

Check in soon, I miss you all

New Issue of Dwell Magazine

I got my Sept Issue of my Dwell Magazine yesterday, and only got not even half way through when I stop to share the cutest things with you all. Isn't the doll house by Sparkability so cute? I actually make a house for my bunny girl Babette out of cardboard boxes. She can go in and hang in a dark protected place, and pop out her bunny hole for snacks! She even eats the cardboard, and when I was a good recycle-er and compost-er, I would compost the cage stuff for my gardens, now talk about recycle! And then check out the cutest woolie stuffed animals, oh so sweet.

I am dyeing fiber like crazy for two big workshop the middle and end of August. And the rain here has stopped for the day, I want to get outside and paint a few flowers...I have the most amazing deep red day lilies, the most delicate petite purple poppies, the end of some glorious purple irises, and a pint of gooseberries I picked last Sunday that I plan on turning in jam or preserves. So I think I will take my paints and set myself up outside and paint. Oh yes and finish reading my magazine.

New Banner Please

And, please someone else make a new banner, I see tangled lino, or cutie duckies or some picnic themes here!!!