Holiday Prep, Colorful Pottery, Good Links
Hello Colorful Friends:
I hope you all are enjoying the run-up to upcoming holiday season. Today Julia and I went to Northampton to see the lights and the decorations. She made a little money selling pom poms last weekend at our Open House and it is burning a whole in her pocket. Mostly she wants to buy presents for her grandma and me which is a sweet thing.
Last weekend, we had our first Open House here at the Farm. It was a rousing success. It was so nice to meet so many of you and to share our colorful home, our sheep, and dogs with you all. So many visitors loved seeing the photos of our home in real life after seeing them in my book Crafting A Colorful Home or in magazine articles. I have heard from many that they were inspired to add a little more color to their own homes. People traveled from all over - eastern MA, CT, VT, NH, NY, CA, MN and more. Mark did a demonstration with Kate and Ness herding the sheep and it was a great hit.
The header of this newsletter shows one of the Christmas displays I made with the birch houses I have made over the years. You can read more about the Open House on my blog here and here. I had the three main rooms set up with things to sell, including my pottery in the dining room, books in the library, and cards, lampshades and tea towels in the living room. Check out was in the kitchen. Amazingly it all worked!
I listed the rest of my pottery on my Etsy site. You can check it out here and buy some for your home or gifts. I have shared some of the available pieces at the bottom of this email. Just to clarify how the shipping works with my Etsy site and my regular website. I basically guess at shipping costs. If there is a huge discrepancy, I will refund any shipping overcharges to your Paypal account.
Here is my set-up for photographing my pottery. For the white seamless background, I use an 18 x 24" inch piece of Penny Sketch Bond Paper that is available in a pad. It is the perfect size and not too expensive. Not very fancy but it works fine - especially on a cloudy day. It took all week to get the pottery photographed and listed! I am sick to death of staring at that computer screen.
It is going to be a busy week this week shipping lots of orders. I am still in amazement with what the internet has made possible. I can make things in my studio and actually get them out there in the world and into people's hands all without printing a single piece of paper or making a phone call! Incredible.
Here are some interesting links that I found this week.
• The Addicted To Sheep Movie that I shared a couple months ago is now available on DVD for pre-order here. Check out the trailer here. It is a movie about a family that raises sheep in the UK. I can't wait to see it.
• Kay and Ann of Mason-Dixon Knitting Fame have self-published a Coloring Book for Knitters. It is available from Amazon here. Genius! It has been #1 in Knitting Books on Amazon for a few days now. They used CreateSpace which is Amazon's platform for self-publishing.
• The Food52 website has been singing the praises of ceramic French butter keepers. My friend Lucy hand throws them on her pottery wheel out of porcelain and you can see and buy them here.
• Salley Mavor travelled to Scotland and she has a nice series of photos of houses and doorways on here blog. Check it out here. I love when people have the nerve to paint the outside of their homes a bright color. It seems to really work in the UK.
• There is a nice post about Aran Sweaters on the Selvedge blog here.
• I always get a hankering for gingerbread at this time of year. This gingerbread cake looks awesome.
• One day I am going to write a family cookbook. Blurb has a nice service for self-publishing one so that everyone can write their own and share it with their family. Check it out here.
• This is a cute quick gift idea for crocheters.
Thank you so much for your support over the past year in the form of comments, orders, reading my blog, lovely notes and more. I cannot imagine doing what I do without your enthusiasm, your love of color, craft and learning. It has been so nice to meet many of you in person here at the farm for the Getting Stitched on the Farm Classes this past summer and fall or at the Open House last week.
With colorful Merry, Merry wishes to all,
Kristin Nicholas
Signed copies of my book Crafting A Colorful Home make very nice Christmas presents. Order via my website here. $27.95 and I pick up the shipping charges. I'll also enclose a free illustrated bookplate and 5 "kristin" postcards.
Christmas Stockings Featured in Yankee Magazine. Knit your own with my PDF Instant Download.
Kristin's Colorful Christmas Stockings features 5 different designs that use only one color per row. If you are a newish knitter and frightened of stranded colorwork, I highly suggest this design. ORDER PDF FOR $12 HERE. Or order on Ravelry here.
Kristin's Creative Christmas Stockings is a bit more traditional in design, it features stranded colorwork in many different motifs. There are even extra charts for you to use to design your own version. Each of the styles is given in 4 different sizes. ORDER PDF FOR $12 HERE. Or on Ravelry here.
My newest book The Amazing Stitching Handbook for Kids makes a great Christmas gift for those little ones you want to encourage. Signed copies $16.95 available on my website here.
Learn how I make colorful pom poms. Use up your odds and ends and make beautiful garlands for holiday decorations and gifting.
This is the first video of our farm and farmhouse produced by Houzz.com. In it, you will see our sheep, our dogs - including Winston, chickens, family, and colorful home.