Birthing Lambs and Birthing a Book
Good Day Colorful Friends!
The beginning of the new year always brings such anticipation of good things to come. We are full of hope here for lots of healthy little lambs. Lambing began just around Christmas and we are now in the thick of babies popping out. It is a challenging time of the year on a sheep farm because we are faced with so many different situations that most normal folks never have to deal with - life, death, difficult births, chilled lambs in the kitchen - the list goes on and on.
My Farmer is at the barns from 7 in the morning until late at night. I am trying to keep him fueled with good food and a warm house by keeping the wood furnace burning. It has been colder than normal and a few days this week we woke up to -10 degrees on the thermometer. I help out at the barns, feeding hay, feeding bottle babies, "tailing" the lambs, and doing whatever else he needs help with. This year we have a young woman named Elissa helping out a few days a week so that she can learn about livestock farming and our friend Terri, a delivery room nurse, is lending a hand too. I'm posting photos on the blog when I can but life is pretty frantic at the moment. If you want to follow lambing, my Instagram feed is full of lambing photos.
On Tuesday, my new book Crafting A Colorful Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to Personalizing Your Space with Color will begin shipping to bookstores and customers in the USA. This book is jam-packed with colorful photos of our farmhouse by the talented Rikki Snyder. Besides all the colorful inspiration, there are instructions for 21 different projects for you to make for your home. Projects include knit, crochet, embroidery, painting, fabric printing, mosaic, sewing, and more. There are 12 different techniques included which center around painting, dyeing, working with color and even how to make a decorative archway. 224 pages full of eye popping color that is sure to brighten up a dull and gray winter day.
BUY FROM ME! Why? You can purchase a signed copy of Crafting a Colorful Home from me on my website. I am offering free shipping, a Kristin designed gouache bookplate, and a set of my photo postcards all for $27.95. Here is the link. Like I wrote in my recent blog post, it is very important for our family that I sign and ship these books directly to customers and friends like you. You can read about why here. Buying direct from an author or from any small independent seller, not only me, helps us all keep writing and creating which at this point in the publishing world is a very difficult gig.
Scroll on down to see 3 exclusive sneak peeks of projects from Crafting a Colorful Home for my newsletter subscribers. If you are an international customer, please order through my Etsy shop as my on-line site does not handle international sales.
Like I said, it has been a busy week. On Wednesday, I went down to Northampton to tape the Webs Yarn podcast with Kathy and Steve Elkins. You can check it out here. Kathy is a great interviewer and it was fun to actually be in the recording studio with them and their producer. They tape their podcast at WRSI (our favorite local radio station).
Winter in the northern hemisphere is such a great time to knit and stitch. At the bottom of this newsletter I have highlighted some popular patterns from my shop and there is a great offer for an "up to 50% off" sale over at Craftsy where I teach Crewel Embroidery. Use this link to receive your discount: http://www.craftsy.com/ext/KristinNicholas_holiday It is getting to be "Super Bowl Season" and if you grew up as I did with a Dad who was crazy for sports, I get the urge to knit every time I see a football game on the t.v. More to my taste, PBS is re-airing The Jewel in The Crown. I cannot wait!
Here are a couple fun things I have found on the web this week.
• Pip, Aussie blogger over at Meet Me at Mike's is doing a project called 52 Hellos. She is writing 52 letters this year - one a week - and asking others to join in. Here is the infomation. Fun!
• Joy the Baker features a recipe for a healthy bone broth. I am always making bone broth. I freeze any bones from roasts, chops, chickens, etc and then make stock for soups and stews when I have time. My freezer might be a bit of a disaster but it tastes good in the end.
Thank you my friends for reading and supporting my work in craft and color.
With best wishes from the busy farm!
Kristin Nicholas
The Crazy Quilt Swatch Blanket. Instructions for making your own blanket out of old swatches or sweaters that are no longer worn.
This project is the result of 30 years of my knitwear design. I have saved all the swatches and sewed them into an astonishing gorgeous double bed size blanket (if I do say so myself).
Mosaic flower pots made of shards of broken bits of ceramics that I couldn't part with. Complete instructions with photos included.
I cannot bear to part with broken antique and handmade plates and pottery. Here is my solution for re-using them.
For crocheters, the Crochet Afghan of Mod Granny Squares worked in my Color By Kristin yarn. I love the graphic quality of this blanket design. Available at Webs Yarn here for $5.49/ball HERE.
That is Petunia, one of our mama cats posing in front of the blanket.
Craftsy - the on-line teaching website that I teach "Stitch It with Wool: Crewel Embroidery" is having an up-to 50% off sale through this evening. Use this link to check out all the new classes including knit, crochet, embroidery, art, painting, drawing, photography, baking and cooking: http://www.craftsy.com/ext/KristinNicholas_holiday
I've recently had an increase in interest in my Knit It Felt It Zip It bag. It is a perfect project for quick knitting - during the games or cold winter evenings. It comes in 4 different sizes. I use one of mine to carry my knitting needles.
Here is the link to purchase from my website or from Ravelry here.
My Circles Sampler Pillow features 26 different stitches. The PDF instant download pattern is $13.00 and has complete how-to illustrations and words for each of the 26 stitches and 71 illustrations and lots and lots of photos. Order here.
A kit is available for the pillow for $46.00 and includes your choice of background color fabric, 19 colors of wool thread and a chenille needle. Check it out here.