frontpagers

Lizzie  brought this to my attention, of course I missed it, but luckily there are some hard working folks who collect screenshots of (almost) all of the Etsy front pages. Check it out here.

I'm going to be spending the next few days photographing and posting some of the new items from the craft shows, but if there is something you had your eye on and don't see it posted, please feel free to shoot me an email and I'll get on it!

I hope everyone has a peaceful and prosperous new year.

Divine Studio Holiday Sale

Here's the poster for the Divine Studio Sale, hope to see you there! (or at Bust!)

(click on the image to see it larger)

for the 14th

A few lovelies that will be available for sale on the 14th.

And a few of the lovelies keeping me company in the studio.

I might be crazy

Forget about 'might' it's undeniable. Jewelweeds will be overly represented in the NYC craft fair scene on December 14th. You can find us here:

Bust Magazine's Holiday Craftacular

The Metropolitan Pavilion

125 West 18th Street

New York, NY

10:00am —7:30 pm

*please note that the date and place is different than Bust originally advertised*

More info here.

and

Holiday Craft Sale at Divine Studios

Divine Studios NYC

21 East 4th Street at Lafayette 

Suite 605

New York, NY

11:00-6:00pm

*Vendors include Laura Normandin, Marcie McGoldrick, Lena Corwin, Alyssa Ettinger, Lotta Jansdotter, Moontree Letterpress and many more.*

honeymoon

We took a last minute honeymoon for a few days in Montauk and a few days in apple picking country. Unfortunately I completely forgot to bring my camera to Montauk, but it was absolutely beautiful. Not swimming weather, but that meant that we had the hotel almost completely to ourselves which was very nice.
Luckily I remembered to pack the camera when we went upstate. However the only pictures I took were in the car on the way up. You can see the daytime moon behind the tree in last picture. One amazing thing that I didn't get any pictures of was a family of bears (yes, bears) crossing the road in Sterling Forest. It was breathtaking, in a slightly scary way and as a great observation of the natural world.

the road to victory

A little late in posting this, we were just a bit hung over wednesday morning.... I wish that I remembered to bring my camera when we went to our friend's house to watch the results, the mood on the street was quite amazing. Lena captured here.

VOTE!!!

the (not real) flowers

I just found these pictures on my camera, they were tests for the personal flowers. I have to say that I liked the tests a little better than the real thing. I just used greenery from around the house, the one above uses a few sprigs of the fern in the studio (the name of which escapes me at the moment) and the one below showcases my lovely sweet bay leaves. I had planned to harvest greenery from the yard at the house, but I ran out of time to really find anything good. Most of the greens had leaves that were way out of scale for boutonnieres, and by the time I got to do them, it was less than two hours before go time and I still hadn't even gotten the curlers in my hair.



This is what I wanted to do for the mothers' corsages (my mother insisted on a wrist corsage...) but then my mother balked at the idea of a red dahlia with her gold/cream dress, so I ended up doing them in ivory dahlias with matching grosgrain ribbon, in my humble opinion, not quite as nice, but still quite beautiful. Hopefully I'll have pro pictures soon, but it might be awhile as our lovely Liz is organizing a human rights conference in Kenya.



All the flowers (real and otherwise) are from Lebak Flower Farm. They don't have a website, but they are at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket on saturdays (although I'm not sure how many more weekends they'll be around for the winter) more on them to come.

a few wedding details

The bridesmaids dresses. J. Crew on sale, $39.99 (oh yeah!). I made the belts, flowers from Tinsel Trading, ribbons from—I don't remember—I bought about 100 yards of different ribbon at the last minute because I was worried that we'd need extra stuff to decorate with. I think we probably used about 10 yards total. But I'm sure I'll find plenty of uses for it in the future. You can never have too much ribbon.

{please ignore the massive clutter in the background of the first picture. I'd love to say that we've totally tackled the snarl of  wedding-era clutter, but the truth is we are not even close. We have done a lot of moving stuff around, and we switched our bedroom to the front room so we don't have to sleep and wake up in the bat cave—i digress, please just hold up your fingers around the dress, so that you aren't assaulted by the chaos!} 

i'm still here

Apologies for  the long absence. Many things have happened since I last posted, most importantly (and the real reason I haven't been posting) Ben and I got married. It's amazing how much time weddings absorb. The wedding was just over two weeks ago and I'm just now starting to feel recovered. We did nearly everything ourselves, I'll be sharing some of those projects soon. But I wanted to acknowledge all the great blog mentions Jewelweeds has gotten in the past few months. Sorry that I wasn't able to do this sooner, I really appreciate all the lovely things you've all said about my products. It's great to be getting such wonderful feedback.

Little Love Blue is run by Cary Walker, who lives in Brooklyn and I suspect we've crossed paths before without knowing it. Her little creatures are so charming, I have a feeling that some of the little people I know will be unwrapping them come holiday season. Cary does a shopping list feature on her blog that she included my linen runner in, the theme of which was natural beauty.

Scoutie Girl is a great indie shopping blog that is new to me, but is now a daily read. Jan has wonderful taste (if i do say so myself!) and it was great to be featured alongside some of my favorite designers. Jan is also a brilliant textile designer and sells her fabrics on Etsy shop Daisy Janie. And I'm just realizing now that her fabric was also part of Cary's shopping list, what a fun coincidence!

Perennial favorite, Poppytalk gave a wonderful birthday present and featured my little room on their Poppytalk Handmade Market Studio Spaces series. The handmade market has been great for me, I highly recommend it for anyone looking to get  more exposure. Blogger is being a pain with uploading images, but you can see pictures of the studio here. (and no, it's not always that neat...) 

More to come later. Thanks again for all your support.

there's still time...

to catch Jewelweeds in the Poppytalk Handmade Market. The "Home Sweet Home" markets runs through August 8th. Come check it out.

in the blink of an eye

July has been a complete whirlwind, lots of visiting with family, a few panic attacks about the wedding being only two months away, and lots to do before then. Luckily some of this craziness took me here:

There's a pattern in here somewhere:

accidental red, white & blue

Breakfast a few weeks ago. Nothing beats fresh strawberries that are red all the way through. They actually taste the way strawberries are meant to taste like. They make summer in the city a little bit more bearable. 

swatch swap

Jesse is organizing a handprinted swatch swap. I'm excited to see what everyone comes up with. I've really been enjoying printing with linocuts, I love the tactile-ness of the stamps themselves. Making them is just as fun as printing.  The swap will give me an excuse to get some of the designs that have been floating around in head down on  paper/fabric! 

*photo courtesy of Jezzeblog

news

We're trying not to melt here in brooklyn, and not really succeeding, I must say. As I write this, my laptop is scarily hot. Almost too hot to type. I better turn this baby off and forget about all the work that needs to be done. In addition to work that requires the service of my trusty laptop, I have a great deal of ironing to be done. Why does it always turn out that when you have tons of ironing to do, that must be done before you can do any other work, there is a massive heat wave? Why? 

In non-heat wave related news, there are some new items in the Etsy shop. It's stuff I've been working on for some time, but for some reason it's taken me a while to get the shop updated. But it's there now!

Jewelweeds is also a part of the Poppytalk Handmade Market for June. The theme is "Here Comes the Sun!" and I think the new poppy pillows and bags are a perfect fit. 

some sadness

I just read the most devastating and true column. I didn't realize that I missed Judith Warner, I guess I really did. There's not too much to say about, you really just have to read it for yourself. I've never kept my views on the state of feminism (or much else for that matter) under wraps, and I've endured much derision as a result, so it was such a breathe of fresh air to know that there are intelligent people out there who are also able to see this ugliness in the zeitgeist. I was very encouraged by a vast majority of positive comments about this column. I have to say that is a little scary at this moment of the world to be at the front door of starting a family, I worry a lot about how hard it will be to raise girls and boys in a 'Sex and the City,' 'Hillary Nutcracker' world. How do you instill in children the importance of civic involvement if the civics are throughly and doggedly uncivilized?

If you need any more proof of this, please watch this.

I would also like to point out that Belva Lockwood, my great-aunt, at least six generations back, is undoubtedly whirlpooling in her grave.

growing & cooking

The beginnings of some yummy beans (and rice) featuring window-grown bay leaves. We got too hungry to take pictures of the finished product, but it was good. You can see the Sweet Bay in action at the far left of the bottom picture. I think we have broken the record for amount of plants crammed into one window. It took quite of bit of arranging and re-arranging, but we did it and it makes both of us really happy.

beginning, middle, end

First rhubarb pie of the season (and a bit of a delay in posting...) and a little bit of show and tell for my latest ebay finds. A lovely set of robin's egg blue vintage pyrex bowls and a set of silverplate serving utensils. More to come soon! (I've been experiencing a little bit of an ebay problem lately....) 

good green news

This morning I went on a tour of the wholesale flower markets. It was a one time BBG class and it was wonderful. I'd been very curious (and fully intimidated) about the markets since my FIT days when I traipsed through the heart of it every day. Anyway the tour was a lovely whirlwind, I don't think I've totally processed it yet. But I did learn a lot, most importantly we learned about a few stores that will sell to individuals. Another great thing was that the teacher, Nancy Kitchen, offered to help/advise on flowers for the wedding. I'm still hoping to use Lebak Flower Farm, but in case it doesn't work out it's good to know what the alternatives are. 

Some other good news; Mood now carries organic cotton knits and twills, as well as some bamboo and hemp knits. Not really anything that will work for current Jewelweeds products, but someday. Hopefully if enough people ask, they will start sourcing more sustainable fabrics. It's nice to have a resource for these that I can actually touch! There are more and more companies selling online, but I really need to touch stuff. Swatches really don't do it for me, you can't see how it drapes and many times fabrics look and feel totally different when uncut. I can't really explain it, but somehow you don't get the full essence of the fiber.

Also, Daytona is trying to cut back on using so many plastic bags. It used to be that even the smallest piece of ribbon got put in a small plastic bag and the ladies would mark the yardage and price right on it so there was no way around getting plastic from them. But today, I was escorted to the cash register so that she could just tell the owner how much to charge me. And she asked if she could just put my stuff in a bag I already had. And, and they had a sign on the counter asking customers to bring their own bags! Progress!

plant sale and a new project

A few new beauties to add to our survivors. Hopefully we can get a new window box soon! The pea crate on the right has lasted much longer than expected, I think this would have been it's 3th summer. Can that be right? The most exciting new plant is a Sweet Bay. I've wanted one for a while now. I love the idea of just picking your bay leaves off the tree and putting them directly into your soup. I hope it does well in a container for for now, maybe someday we can plant it in a garden...

I love how the lavender looks next to the chive blossoms. 

I've finally got to doing some block printing this weekend. I've been meaning to get to this for so long! Hopefully that means I'll have some new stuff in the shop soon....

a little rant

I promise that this will not become a wedding blog, but I couldn't keep this to myself. Also it's not totally wedding related, it's just how I came this unfortunate information. I was about to purchase some paper lanterns for the wedding on the Pearl River website (despite my nothing from China decree, well, let's make that a less from China decree, because honestly it's almost impossible, especially when labeling is so bad in this country, but that's a whole other topic) and I decided to take a look at their ceramics. Soon how we never have enough bowls, so I figured I'd get a few to match the ones we already have. Well, apparently we've been eating out of lead-laced "decorative only" bowls. ARGHHHH! I bought a set of these (along with a matching teapot) when I lived in San Francisco and was totally broke and shopping at the dollar stores.

This has unleashed a great fury of obsessive behavior (no surprise to anyone who knows me) to figure out the safest options for anything and everything that has anything to do with anything I put in my mouth. My father recently freaked me out by telling me that the beautiful yellow fiestaware bowl that I love and is the only thing big enough to handle dough for two loaves of bread, may have lead in the glaze. I did a little internet research and the results were inconclusive for yellow. I did however discover that you can buy a lead testing kit here. So I think that's what I'll do.

So all this takes me back to why I'm freaking out about this in the first place. I've been trying to put together our wedding registry, and this put a kink in the works. That's not true, I would have freaked out anyway, but the idea of creating this nest of stuff that will be with you and see you through all sorts of Thanksgivings, bake sales and the nourishment of  your future family really kicked me over the edge.

If anyone has any suggestions for bake ware, I'd love to hear them. I think I've found some good options for cookware (All-Clad and Le Creuset, which I wanted anyway, lucky me!), but everything in the baking sections have some sort of non-stick finish or are made of aluminum. I just wish they specified what kind of non-stick it was. ARGH.....

rhubarb

This past weekend we took a little road trip to visit the house where the wedding will be held. We brought along my mother and Rachel, our lovely caterer. She wanted to come see the kitchen and get the lay of the land, and we wanted to do some measuring and figure out some more detailed logistics. The house was even better than we remembered it and Ben and I congratulated each other for finding such a great spot. (We won't mention that I found it on The Knot....) Hopefully Ben will be able to finish off the website he is building for the owner of the house soon, I'll keep you posted on that. 

I also want to give a shout out to Rachel, whom we've connived into catering our wedding, something that she doesn't usually do, which I do not blame her for at all! Her company Particular Events, has charming new website which you should check out, especially if you are in the market for an awesome caterer for your next dinner party, picnic, or gallery opening. Rachel is also one of only a few people who worship rhubarb as much as I do. She's got a blog post all about it, complete with a simple and delicious recipe. Speaking of which I still have a few cups of rhubarb in my freezer that I put up last summer. I think I must make a pie. I'm excited about preserving more food this summer, it was really nice being about to dig into the freezer and pull out something fresh (well, you know what I mean) I've learned a lot too of what not to do this year. Invest in better freezer bags, or better yet find something non-plastic in which to freeze in. Any ideas? I would also like to learn more about canning. And get a deep freeze!

Poppytalk Handmade!

Come visit Jewelweeds at the Poppytalk Handmade Market! This month it's a Mother's Day and Kid's theme. Thanks to Jan and Earl making it all happen.

see you there!

74 degrees at bbg