Got Owls?

There are a few owls in the shop right now! They are perfectly stitched and looking for new homes. They are a hoot to have around and each has huge safety eyes too! Do you know someone who would love to have one? Have a look here.

Alexa Meade

Alexa Meade uses acrylic paint applied directly onto her subjects. Sometimes, she also paints an entire vignette around them, making your perception of the real and painted blurry. She is a 24-year-old artist from Washington, D.C. who compresses a 3D concept into a 2D plane. I am in awe and amazed by her work. It's bright and bold!

 (via)

Our First Spring Show!

Reminder!
We will be at the Spring Craft Show & Bake Sale in Florence, NJ. There will be many vendors showcased and we're pleased to be one of them. The show will be held April 16th between 9am and 3pm and there will be refreshments sold, egg decorating (plastic eggs & stickers) and the Easter Bunny will be making an appearance too!

We are all ready for Spring and are proud to introduce some new items such as dolls, creatures, gift sets, purses, egg-shaped bags and much more. Hope to see you there and we'd love for you stop stop in and say hello.

The address of this event is: American Legion Post 194, Broad & 6th Streets, Florence, NJ 08518 and if further information is needed, please email Christa.

Also, we are on facebook and twitter where you can keep in touch as well as see our new items (we post special discounts there too).

Springing Ahead!

I can't help but to be excited about Spring being here. My seedlings are inches high, my gardens are in the process of being cleaned up and I even noticed my little robin coming home to check out her empty nest. I posted some photos of her beautiful blue eggs last year. Inspired by her and also by having the honor of watching her tiny fledglings take off each year, I've created a small nest with removable eggs. It's in the shop and I plan on making a few more of these for the shop in the next week, so check back. 

What inspires you most in the Spring?

New In The Shop

I was inspired to make a needle felted monster for my little niece who just turned seven. She will love him so much (he's the purple guy on the right). During the process of creating him from a puff of wool, I fell in love with the technique and created a few more. Murray is the guy on the left with the three eyes and three legs. Vitelli is the blue guy and those are his records which fit into a pocket on his back. George is the red orange guy holding a purple flower. 

Each of these little colorful characters stands between 6-7 inches tall and can be found in the shop.

Inside Out

"I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we'll turn the world...INSIDE OUT." -JR

Can art change the world? Yes! Have a look at the 2011 TED Prize winner's wish here: 

from TED.com:

Working anonymously, pasting his giant images on buildings, trains, bridges, the often-guerrilla artist JR forces us to see each other. Traveling to distant, often dangerous places -- the slums of Kenya, the favelas of Brazil -- he infiltrates communities, befriending inhabitants and recruiting them as models and collaborators. He gets in his subjects’ faces with a 28mm wide-angle lens, resulting in portraits that are unguarded, funny, soulful, real, that capture the spirits of individuals who normally go unseen. The blown-up images pasted on urban surfaces – the sides of buildings, bridges, trains, buses, on rooftops -- confront and engage audiences where they least expect it. Images of Parisian thugs are pasted up in bourgeois neighborhoods; photos of Israelis and Palestinians are posted together on both sides of the walls that separate them.

JR's most recent project, "Women Are Heroes," depicts women "dealing with the effects of war, poverty, violence, and oppression” from Rio de Janeiro, Phnom Penh, Delhi and several African cities. And his TED Prize wish opens an even wider lens on the world -- asking us all to turn the world inside out. Visit insideoutproject.net ...

"I would like to bring art to improbable places, create projects so huge with the community that they are forced to ask themselves questions."

JR, Beaux Arts Magazine

Matthew Cusick

Matthew Cusick was born in New York City in 1970 and graduated from The Cooper Union with a BFA in 1993. His work has been exhibited internationally since 1996.

Cusick lets his work be guided by his various materials: maps, atlases, encyclopedias and school textbooks. “I like to catalog, archive, and arrange information and then dismantle, manipulate, and reconfigure it. I use maps as a surrogate for paint and as a way to expand the limits of representational painting. Through a process of cutting up and reassembling fragments of maps from different places and times, I am attempting a more complete representation of an existence, one that incorporates the geographical and historical timelines of that existence within the matrix of its image.”

lil fish studios

Look what the mail brought today! 2lb of unsorted vintage buttons from lil fish studios. She's had give-aways and listed these bags before, but they were always sold out by the time I got to them. This time, when I saw her post on twitter, I jumped at the chance and I'm not disappointed in the least. There are some real beauties here. I am full of ideas and excited to create things just for certain buttons. If you have a moment to check out her etsy shop, please do.. She does fine work and ships quickly too.

The Boxy Lady

The Boxy Lady is one of four structures Derek Diedricksen built on the property of his Stoughton, MA home. It's extremely small, portable and can possibly be used to help the homeless. Each is mostly made from scavenged materials such as pallets, discarded kitchen cabinets, storm windows, etc. and cost less than $200 on average.

via

Shhhh, I'm pretending it's Spring.

Knit For Needs

There are so many blogs, but not as many doing such a fine job as Knit For Needs. 

They collect more than just knitwear! If you'd prefer to crochet something, that is welcomed too! They collect and donate any and all hand knit/crochet items directly to people in need across the U.S. 

From their site: 

"Blankets, hats, mittens, scarves, socks, slippers, toys... anything you'd like to donate, even if it is just one item, would be much appreciated by someone in need! If you do not knit/crochet and would like to support our cause, we will accept yarn and monetary donations that would be used to make more items to donate as well as for shipping costs."

Just this past December, when Atlanta, GA was bombarded by storms, the founder and her daughter personally handed out hats, mittens and scarves via Rescue Atlanta. There is a facebook group dedicated to this wonderful cause here. For the address and other information, please be sure to check out the Knit For Needs blog. 

I'm starting a hat for them today!

Be Linen

I've been falling more and more in love with linen lately. The way it falls, the softness and the beauty of linen stuns me. I found this lovely short film about linen and wanted to share it with you.

Esther Hörchner

Esther Hörchner is an illustrator who has created a tea set with a sense of humor titled Naked Girls Tea Set. I love that the lady in the cup has left her underwear and shoes on the spoon and saucer. Wonderful stuff by Esther Hörchner who by the way is a fabulous illustrator, more of that on her website here. Imagine the conversations this set would start!

Meemer!

Meet Meemer. He listens to your secrets and never speaks a word. His soft red body is so squishy and flops when tossed upon a chair. He is super special and I can't wait for him to find a great home. Hopefully, he'll find someone who loves him as much as I do. 

He was also featured last month in my Underneath it All post. He was the one with the purple heart carefully stitched below his hand knit skin. His over-sized blue eyes make him really hard to resist.

New In The Shop

Randolph is a Piney. He enjoys strolls through the Pine Barrens. He collects moss and pine cones when no one is looking and appreciates the beauty of the woods.

He loves to cuddle and keeps warm with the handknit sweater I made custom for him from merino wool. Randolph stands at 11 inches, making him perfect for smaller hands. He is entirely handstitched from a repurposed wool, cashmere and angora blend. His features are stitched with cotton thread.

Never Before

Never before have I seen a miniature orchid until last week. All of a sudden, I had to have it.

Sure I've had several orchids. They always look healthy and then it happens. The first leaf drops, then the second and so on. I water/lightly feed them once per month and spritz them with water and supply them carefully with filtered light. Simply put, they hate me and I'm not sure why. I nurture them and tell them how beautiful they are. Some have even never bloomed again, but seem to be happy, growing new leaves.

All this talk about orchids is making me want to watch Adaptation again. If only I could master the keeping of these delicate beauties. I know several people who have given up on them and I have an adopted one here now. This little miniature orchid amazes me and I'm going to carefully primp and try my best to keep it happy and healthy. If you have any advice on the care of orchids, I'd welcome it.

Nestrest

I need one of these! They look so relaxing and inviting. Can you imagine an afternoon nap in one of these? They're designed by Daniel Pouzet and Fred Frety for DEDON. Well done!

Underneath it All

If you ever wonder what is on the inside of my dolls/creatures, besides time and love, I can assure you each of them has a hand-stitched cotton tubing inside. It takes time, but I want to make sure my creations are super durable and hold up to play and your little one's curiosity. These two new dolls even have little hearts. No one will ever see that, but it's there, lovingly sewn underneath it all.

Ai Weiwei, Artist

The Chinese Government has destroyed the studio of Ai Weiwei, a protean artist who is one of the most outspoken critics of the Chinese Communist Party. Even though he said officials told him that the demolition would not take place until after the first day of the Year of the Rabbit (which falls on February 3rd) he was shocked to discover that workers had begun knocking it down today. 

Sad news. They also knocked down a neighboring studio he had designed for a friend. Mr. Ai's studio was to be used as an education center and a site for artists in residence. 

Weiwei compares the seeds in his current installation at the Tate Modern to Twitter "...a vast sea of ideas and communication contributed by individual people." Weiwei had the seeds made in the southern Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Each of the 100 million seeds was molded, fired, and painted with three or four individual brush strokes, often by women taking the objects home to work on them. One thousand six hundred people were involved in the process.

Although the installation was intended to be interactive and in the fist few days of the show people were allowed to walk on them and pick up the seeds, this has resulted in the release of dust from the individual "grains" rubbing together. The dust could "be damaging to health following repeated inhalation over a long period of time." Visitors are now limited to looking at the installation from behind a barrier and they are not happy. I personally would assume the entire 'feeling of the installation would be pointless without having the interaction with the piece.

New In The Shop

I listed this sweet pair of baby mittens in the shop today. They keep selling out and I'm trying to keep up. Each pair is different and the colors are so bright and happy.