Posie Gets Cozy

Walk in the Woods (and Ice Skating Afternoon) Ornament Kits Now on Sale

Good morning, crafters! Please allow me to introduce this year's handmade felt ornament-making kit, Walk in the Woods, available for pre-order now!

It includes the Cozy Cottage, with the wood fires burning:

The Snowy Tree, sparkling with ice crystals:

And my favorite, the Little Deer, who watches shyly from the trees:

Each Walk in the Woods Felt Holiday Ornament Craft Kit includes:

9 pieces of wool/rayon blend felt in assorted colors
9 skeins coordinating DMC cotton embroidery floss
3/4 yd French rick-rack (for hangers)
Sequins and beads
Wool fluff (from a local Oregon sheep farm :-) for the chimney smoke
Stitching instructions
Pattern templates
Illustrated embroidery tutorial

You will need to have your own:

Wool batting or Polyester Fiber-fill
Sharp embroidery needle
Dressmaker's chalk pencil or fabric marker
Dressmaker's chalk carbon paper
Iron-on transfer pencil
Sharp fabric scissors and paper scissors
Fabric glue

This year's ornaments were inspired by our walks in the Oregon woods, and designed to compliment the ornament set I designed last year:

There's the Hot Cocoa Cup, to warm you up:

The Ice Skate, with pom-pon for good measure:

And the Gingerbread Girl, the sweetest of all:

Ice Skating Afternoon kits are once again available now for a limited time as well! All ornament kits cost $25 each, and if you purchase both of them together you will save $5 (yay). Please use the special Paypal button on each page to get the discount (you'll see it). We'll leave the pre-orders open for the next couple of weeks, and make some extras if you miss that window, but if you are interested in these, it's best to order now and make sure we have one for you.

My dynamic duo (and if them working together last year wasn't one of the cutest things I've ever seen in my life) are once again helping me in a major way (thanks again, honey, seriously) to put all of these kits together, and we are planning to ship them all to you around mid-October. That will give you plenty of time to finish them for the holidays. I do ship overseas — just click on the "Buy Now" button and enter your country as the destination to see how much the postage is before completing the order. Please also check your addresses in Paypal before completing the orders, as well. Thanks!!!

About the skill level needed to complete these: Last year I said that, while I don't think of these kits necessarily as a children's or a beginner's project, if you have some experience working some basic stitches, these ornaments take more time and patience than skill. I will include directions on transferring the designs to the felt, and basic diagrams for completing the types of classic embroidery stitches you will need to know — backstitch, lazy-daisy stitch, satin stitch, French knot, and blanket stitch — but once you are comfortable working those stitches, if you just take your time and settle in, you will be fine. These ornaments are about 6" or 7" big — so, they take a bit of precision and attention to detail, but, you know, that's a handmade felt ornament for ya!

I think that's it. Any questions, let me know, and thank you again for your enthusiasm for these! I really appreciate that so much. Thank you!

Summerhouse Pillows, Pattern, and Kit Available Now!

Mmmm, reading. I remember it. I'm hoping to even do it again someday. Not today, since my goal is to do three things: 1) Finish adding eight new ready-made Summerhouse Pillows (sold out now — thank you!!!) to my web shop. 2) Finalize and make available a downloadable PDF pattern for these pillows. And 3) Start taking pre-orders for small-patch pillow kits, starting tomorrow and for about the next week or so. When I have everything ready to go, I will make links available, right here in this paragraph, so check back here tomorrow morning, Thursday, July 2, at 9 a.m. PST. All available now! Thanks!

Let me tell you about the kits real quick. I (with Andy's help, as always) will be putting together kits for you to make your own small-patch Summerhouse Pillows (the one on the right in the photo above). The kits will include everything you need to make the 16" (41cm) square pillow cover: 64 pre-cut assorted calico patches; interfacing; coordinating solid-color cotton backing fabric; piping trim; as well as a printed copy of the step-by-step fully illustrated pattern. I will also have feather-and-down pillow inserts (covered with a 100% cotton cover) available, too — you will have an option to include this pillow with your kit when you purchase it. These natural pillows are really nice, but they are quite bulky and heavy, so the shipping cost to include the pillow will be adjusted accordingly. But then you won't have to go out and try to find one on your own, so I'll leave that to you to decide if you need it.

The fabric patches you'll receive for the pillow cover will be very close to the pillow pictured, but please understand that they will not match exactly, since I'll be including several squares of various Liberty of London Tana Lawn fabrics from my own stash, special extras here and there, and, depending on what part of the fabric the patch is cut from, certain patches cut from the same cloth may look different. But all of the kits will of course be designed by me, your faithful servant, and so will look like closely related cousins of each other, if not identical twins. Andy and I will be cutting all of the patches ourselves, as well, so though we strive for speed and perfection (in this case, if no other, at least), please understand that human hands, a rotary cutter, and elbow grease are the engines that drive our machine here, so it will take us a few weeks to get everything together, based on however many orders come in in the next week (we'll stop taking orders after about a week, and then that will be it for these kits).

What else do I need to tell you. Oh yeah. A warning: Making these pillows is addictive. Spend time now with your family and friends, shop for groceries, clean the house, get a tan, have your Fourth of July, etc. Whatever you need to do. Because once you start making pillows we won't be seeing you for quite a while. You'll be sewing. And since, as I recently learned, a whopping 84.6% of you Posie Gets Cozy readers know how to sew, that means most of you. But no worries. We'll wait.

(And, as promised, more of my thoughts on sewing as soon as I get this pillow stuff on-line. I was completely overwhelmed by your responses, and it's truly taken me a while to absorb it all. But somewhere in my summerbrain there are thoughts.)

Jane Market Bags on Sale Tomorrow!

Whew! Tomorrow, June 10, at 9 a.m. PST I will put the Jane Market Bags I've made up in my web shop. The links won't work until 9, so be there, baby! (Update: All sold out now — thank you so much!)

I think, for the first time ever, a big fat ordering problem I've always had has been solved, too. My friend Shelly helped me yesterday to add a little tiny piece of html code to my Paypal buttons that will prevent double-selling of any bag: In the past, when someone has purchased a bag, I've always yanked it off of the web page as soon as I can, but sometimes the same bag is in two peoples' shopping carts at the exact same time, so they both pay for it, and both think they've bought it, when really there is only one bag (meaning there is one happy person and one unhappy person, and one very stressed-out Mrs. Paulson).

But NOW, because of this little tiny piece of html code, each bag has a specific "invoice" number, and once that bag has been paid for, it cannot be paid for again. So if you see a bag, and you click the "buy now" button, and it tells you that the "invoice has already been paid," that means you know right away that someone got to it just a minute before you did, and you can go right back and choose another bag. If the sale goes through and Paypal allows you to pay for the bag, it's yours.

I say all this with a grain of salt because, though I've tested it, I haven't used the function "live" yet, so bear with me. But I really think it's going to work. As always, thank you so much for your patience and interest in these bags! I am really happy with them, and it has been a blast putting the combinations of fabrics together. Some of the fabrics are old, some new, some are things I've had on my shelves for twenty years already! Shopping one's own stash can be really fun.

To that end, I have also been working like a crazy patching lady on patchwork pillows! I've made nineteen so far, and will have those in the web shop soon, too. For those of you confused by my magic patchwork technique, as I mentioned I will be putting together an illustrated pattern for that in the next week or so, too, and I'll walk you through the whole thing. I'll also be doing pillow kits, with everything you need to make your own, including the pattern, patches, interfacing, piping, backing, and the down-and-feather pillow-form itself. So, stay tuned for those — I'll be taking pre-orders soon, so I can order the right amount of supplies, and begin cutting patches for you. I'm incredibly excited about these!

Friendly Bird Kits Now Available!

Sorry it's taken me so long to get these ready! The kits are now available for pre-order! They contain almost everything you need to make FOUR Friendly Birds — you can see more details on the web site (click the link above). As I mention there, we will be taking pre-orders for these kits through this week and the weekend, and then ordering supplies after we see how many kits we need, so everything will ship around the first week in April. And yes, I do ship overseas, no problem. :-) Thank you!

Here are some photos of birdies past to inspire you:

Blueberries and Bundles

Thank you for all the Tanglewood orders yesterday!!! Wow — I'm so thrilled that that went over well, you have no idea. I was really hoping it would, and I seriously can't wait to see what everyone makes. More fabric for the Precious Bundles arrived yesterday, which was perfect timing because I had almost perfectly sold out of the bundles I'd already put together (which almost never happens — you almost never get the number exactly right). So those will be available indefinitely, and I'll show you something else I did with those little patches next week — obviously, you don't have to use them for the bag, if you have something else in mind. I have now sewn together approximately six-hundred-and fifty 2-inch fabric patches in the past two months. I'm not even kidding. I'm not sure what to think about that, but I was very happy almost all the way through, I would say until about the last eight or nine, where I just let out one long soprano-like scream the whole time, so it's been a good run overall. And definitely let me know if you have any troubles with the patches or the pattern, and I'll do my best to correct that, pronto. Thank you again!

I'm going to take a blog break here and get these orders out, and lay low for a bit this weekend. Next week we are embarking on our first major (maybe it's actually minor, but to me it seems major) remodeling project — I'm crazy excited, I can't even tell you how excited. Anyway, in the spirit of home improvement, a few housekeeping things:

1. Above is a photo of a blueberry clafoutis I made the other day. Several people have written to ask me questions about the cherry clafoutis I made a few weeks ago, including someone who said they tried it and it didn't work (I can't remember who that was, I'm sorry). So I made it again, and baked it at the right temperature, and it came out looking wonderful, so I think the recipe is okay. There are lots of clafoutis recipes out there, and the ratio of eggs to milk to flour that they use varies widely, I've found. It's worth trying a few to find one you like, since this is so easy and lovely — a big, custardy blueberry pancake, really, with more custard than pancake. And you can use any kind of stone fruit — I like more clafoutis than fruit, so I just tossed in a little container of blueberries, and I think with the cherries I used one of those square things. How big are those little green square things, anyway? Is that a pint? [Rolling eyes at myself.]

2. Many people wrote in after listening to The Splendid Table on NPR on Sunday to warn about the dangers of sun tea, discussed on the radio just that afternoon. I'd never heard this before, but apparently brewing tea in a jar in the sun only allows the temperature of the water to reach 130 degrees F — perfect for brewing bacteria. So it sounds like it's best to keep it overnight in the fridge. More info about that is here. I've made about five different kinds of tea this week, using some of the many recipes suggested — and thank you again for so generously sharing those — and I'm going to ask a self-confessed tea guru to tell us what she knows (Miss Howard, please begin work on that book report, won't you?) next week. My next goal is to figure out how to make a good glass of Thai iced tea, which I have never successsfully done. Mine's always weak and tan, instead of yummy and orange like it is in the restaurant. I can't get this right. Yet.

3. What else. I forget. Oh yeah, corgi picnic! Well, I'm sorry to say there really aren't anymore photos of the corgi picnic. With a dozen corgis hanging around and the weather scorching and me in a skirt (forgot those corgis are short, and to take their photos you really have to be in the dirt, so that didn't work). I just put the camera down and watched them . . . not play. It was so bizarre. Everyone was commenting on how nonchalant their dogs were about the whole thing. Apparently, when at the corgi family reunion, the corgis take on a very so-what, who-cares, when-can-we-go-home? kind of attitude toward each other. I could not believe it. Perhaps it blew their minds or something, being confronted with so many others when they thought they were The Only One in the World (at least ours thinks that). She was like, "I really don't know what we're doing here. Let's go over there and sit by that tree by ourselves, like we usually do." Naturally, Clover Meadow was the prettiest girl there, and we have encouraged that kind of thinking, so what can you expect. Unfortunately, it wasn't a fenced-in area so everyone was on a leash, for the most part, so they didn't really get to run and play. But just seeing them together makes me laugh. They look so serious, and then we just bust out laughing right in their faces. Ah, corgis. I love them.

4. Who's psyched for 90210 redux? I am.

Back soon! Thanks again! xo

Strawberry Shortcake, and Bitty Chicken Scratch

More with the strawberries. I just wanted to see them one more time. You know I do love to take pictures like these and these and these of them. (And, because a couple of people have asked me recently, I take all my still life photos at home with the Fuji, and I usually use the Canon when I am out and about around town, on bike rides and stuff. But I did bring the Fuji with me to the farmer's market this weekend, so those photos were shot with that one. But usually I bring small silver when I go out 'cause I don't want to carry big black. But also I think I am learning to love the Fuji more than I used to.)

Now, THE SLICER.

It is the awesomest. It worked beautifully. Why this is my very first time (well, second; the first was the 'shrooms, but as I mentioned I stupidly deleted all my photos of those) using the slicer I don't know. What is my problem! I always see them using this thing on the Food Network but for some reason I never thought it would really work. I thought it would crush something fragile like a strawberry. But it doesn't. At least my neighbor's doesn't. When faced with two pounds of mushrooms at the end of a busy Friday, I ran next door to borrow hers, and I still had it on Saturday. Hers is super-cool, pretty old, works perfectly. Sliced two pounds of 'shrooms in probably five or ten minutes, a whole colander of strawberries in five. Alas, I have to give this one back to her, and use the new plastic one I got on Sunday, which doesn't work as well, but still works faster than a knife for this. I'll be looking for one of these older ones at Goodwill now.

To make sweetened berries for shortcake or to top ice cream, just slice and then toss up two pints of strawberries with 1/4 c. sugar, more or less. Depends on how sweet your berries are. Stir them up in the Texasware bowl your mom bought for you off of eBay since you loved the one you "borrowed" from her last summer when she left it at your house one time (don't lend me anything, people), then put them in the fridge for an hour or two.

When we were growing up, my mother, who loves strawberry shortcake, always bought those spongy golden pucks that come in the celophane, sold near the strawberries in the produce section of the grocery store. That was just what we always did, summer after summer. I didn't make shortcake from scratch until long after I moved away. I told my mom it was better. She was very skeptical; you don't mess with the Family Favorites, baby. Eventually I did make it for her, only a year or two ago, and essentially ruined packaged shortcakes for her forever. Allow me to ruin them for you, too, with this:

Shortcake

2 c. flour
2 T. sugar
1 T. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1/2 c. cold butter, cubed
1 beaten egg
2/3 c. half-and-half

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. In mixing bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Combine the egg and half-and-half, and add all at once to the dry ingredients, stirring with fork just to moisten. Spread dough in a buttered 8" round cake pan, building up the edges a bit. Bake for 15-18 minutes. Remove from pan and cool slightly. Slice cake horizontally and spread butter on inside layer. Add sweetened strawberries and whipped cream.

I'm really not a total shortcake snob, really. I have also been known to pop some refrigerator biscuits in the oven — sprinkle some sugar on their tops before they go in and they do great as a strawberry foundation. However you do it works when it comes to strawberries, you know?

And! The Country Girl Clothespin Doll Kits are back in the web shop! We've made up lots and lots of kits this time they are totally ready to go. Yee-haw!

And just a note: Please make sure your address is correct on Paypal before placing your order. If you need to change it for any reason, or if you are sending a gift to another address, it's no problem, but please email me directly, with the first and last name used on the Paypal account included (some people use a business account, or their husband's account, and it's hard for me to find these if the name and email is different than the one you're using to email me). And yep, overseas orders are no problem — Paypal will now charge the appropriate shipping charge depending on where you are. (Only took me six months to figure that out.) Thank you!

Last Bookbag Sale, Today, Noon PST

I have really loved making these. I've talked about them a lot, since last spring, really: It started with this bit of dialogue, then this nostalgic rainstorm, then this tribute to my college friends and my favorite book, then this peek inside, and then I almost got sick of them when they did this. But I think I'm done now, I think. Sixty-five of one thing is a lot more than I usually do of any one thing, but it's a true testament to how much I enjoyed everything about these. I even took my own to the library yesterday and got severely scolded by the librarian for my overdue fines. I had a LOT of overdue fines. I'm actually embarrassed to say how much, because Andy will read this and then I'll get more grief. Let's just say it was nearing the triple digits and I wish I were kidding. I actually didn't know it could even go that high. It was definitely a record for me. I thought maybe at a certain amount they just turned the counter off, or something. I figure this is how I donate to my non-profit organization of choice. It's almost like I can't return them on time, or something. Like, I look at the due date and it suggests to me that that's the day I put them in the car, and then if I happen to be driving past a library branch sometime in the next two weeks, I should drop them in. Meanwhile, 25 cents per book, per day, ca-ching ca-ching. I have a hard time believing that people were impatiently waiting for me to return Clouds: Biography of a Country House, but maybe they were. Three weeks is just not long enough when you insist on checking out eleven books at once. More than will fit in the bookbag, I'll admit.

ANYway. Where are we here. My mention of L.G. and M.P. was information I got from L.G. herself here, back in September. I don't make this stuff up, people. That's my little pop quiz to see if you've really been reading this blog.

*Bookbags will be here, and scrap bags here. Just refresh the pages to see the Paypal buttons at noon if you go there before hand.

Calico Concoction

I have some scrap bags ready for tomorrow. I was going to do just fabric (and these really are "scraps," some as small as just a few inches, some even just strips), but then I started to go a little bonkers.

Yep. I figured if I was going to take the time to prepare the bags, I'd include some of the vintage passementerie stuff that's building up around here again. So these scrap bags have fabric as well as a vintage pattern and a few other notions/flowers/buttons/ribbon. A few extra little things, kind of like the Passementerie Packs I did last winter, but with a little of everything in one bag. I only made twenty of these. But they'll be in my shop tomorrow at noon, too, with the bookbags.

I don't really know what to think about the Gilmore Girls finale last night, do you? I miss them already. I actually thought it was an oddly appropriate episode, sort of saturated with the collective feeling of being kind of . . . ripped off. It all ended so fast. I was glad Luke and Lorelei kissed (though, honestly, those two kiss like they're at a junior-high dance or something). All I can say is that I hope Lauren Graham can take a little time off now, and find time to date then marry Matthew Perry, thereby fulfilling all my hopes and dreams for both of them.

Where a Fine Layer of Half-Baked Bookbags Slowly Appeared, Covering Every Surface

You know that old phrase "bookbags covering every surface"? You don't? THAT'S weird. We say it around here all the time. "Should we eat this dinner at the dining room table?" "Can't. There's bookbags covering every surface." "Can I stop by and visit you this afternoon?" "I wish, but bookbags are covering every surface, so we'll have to meet somewhere else." "What have you been up to, hunny?" "I have no clue, but there are bookbags covering every single surface. . . ."

I'm planning thirty-two this time. It's only a couple more than I had last time, but I really am pretty much out of sheets. Not to mention mojo. So I seriously doubt there will be more of these anytime soon. Not to pressure you or anything. Nevertheless, these will be on sale at the Posie web shop Thursday, May 17, at 12 noon PST. And maybe this time I can upload the pages to the shop without forgetting half the photos, but I never really can promise that. I get so nervous on sale days that I just start flailing around and all sorts of crazy things happen. You probably know that.

I think I'm going to do fabric scrap bags, too. The basket of little remnants in my studio is overflowing, and they're just so pretty. A half-pound bag of little scraps for applique or flowers or whatever? Yeah, I think I'll do that, too. So bags and scraps, Thursday.

Working Girl

Man, I have a lot to do. My computer is really unhappy with me. When I got big black I set the resolution really high, so the computer is totally stuffed with a million huge images I need to go through and take off, or put on the external hard-drive or whatever the hell. Agh. How did everything get so overstuffed around here. Who snuck in here and overstuffed everything???

So, in the studio all day today. I'm trying to get the bookbags finished before they go on sale this time, which is not what I did last time, but I'm still thinking later this week? Boutties are headed out, too — I still haven't seen the real CL, but blink and you'll miss the blossom; she's just on a mannequin in a little spread about flowery accessories, so not a big deal, don't worry. I didn't know what it was going to be. (They were already featured a couple of years ago in the story about my sis and me here.) I can't quite tell from the scans (thanks for sending them, those that did — that was nice of you to take the time to do that!) what fabrics those are but they look pink, so I'll see if I can whip up some pinks and get them in the shop today, too, and thank you for the orders yesterday! So nice.

Mmm'kay, what else. Wow is it nice out. IT IS SO NICE OUT. It's really really nice out. But I'm staying in. I am staying in. I have to stay in. I can't go out. Even if it is so so so so nice out. I'll be staying in. Really. Seriously. I'll be in here, on the inside. Not outside. Noooooooo. Nope.