2018 Etsy Shop Update for Holiday Gifting + Open House Review
Hello Colorful Friends:
Whew - that is over - the 4th Annual Holiday Open House at Leyden Glen Farm. What a weekend it was last week. Lots of fun meeting new folks, greeting old friends, sharing good food and spreading my love of color, pattern, textiles and the handmade. I wrote a post about it over on the blog and included lots of photos. Check it out here.
There has been no rest for the weary though...... On Tuesday and Wednesday we sheared our sheep. We didn't shear them but our friends Kevin Ford and Jeff Burchstead did. The Farmer and I were there for the other chores - me picking up wool and sweeping and him just watching because he really isn't physically able to catch sheep yet. Here are Kevin and Jeff taking the coats off a few of the sheep with hand blade shears.
Shearing time is the only time we really know how many sheep we have. We've got the count now - we are down in numbers due to Mark's hip surgery and me not being able to cope with hundreds of animals. But we still have about 130 or so and they all look good and healthy. Some in fact look close to lambing.
My big news today is that after 3 days of photographing and writing listings, I have updated my Etsy Shop with some new pottery items and new tea towel designs. Scroll on down to see some photos of the pieces.
I hope you will hop on over and check it out. (In the past I had 2 Etsy shops - one for my handmade items and one for my embroidery items. Recently Etsy has updated their platform and I can have more categories of items so I have combined the two shops into one.)
My Etsy Shop is called kristinnicholas and you can find it here. (Just an aside - I'm not wild about selling with Etsy and want to update my personal website in the coming months. I am researching both Squarespace, Shopify, and Big Cartel. If any of you have any thoughts, I would love to hear.)
I am excited to let you know that I am running a Special Promotion on two of my latest books - Crafting A Patterned Home and Colorful Stitchery. It is a 2 for 1 promo. You can order them through my Etsy Shop here. Help me spread yours and my love of pattern and the handmade by gifting them to your friends and family.
As we get towards the end of the year, it seems I get busier and busier. I have only had a little bit of time on the internet to learn things (because I have been spending so much time typing and uploading) so my link list is short this week. Here's what I think you might like.....
• I make several wreaths for our farmhouse and outbuildings every year. This one looks quite fun -- turning pinecones into flowers with a bit of spray paint and gold leaf. Not exactly my color palette but maybe yours.
• Yorkshire Gold Tea is our house blend here. We discovered it many years ago in Yorkshire. I order it in loose pack from the English Tea Store here. Really delicious. I just discovered that they also make hilarious tea-centric videos like this one.
• This Apple Harvest Cake was a huge hit at the Holiday Open House. It keeps well. It would make a nice end to a holiday meal or brunch or as a breakfast snack.
• I sent my husband The Farmer to the store the other day for a 10 pound bag of yellow onions. He came home with 50 pounds. I'm not sure what I am going to do with them all but I am starting with this recipe. Anyone have any good ideas for using lots of onions?
• Julia and I went to see Bohemian Rhapsody the other night (trailer here). I was never a big fan of Queen but after seeing the movie and now knowing the story, I may be a convert. (Could be that my sophomore year of college, I had neighbors named Sudsy and Dave and every night at about 1:30 a.m., a Queen song would blast through my dorm room wall signaling that their party was over and they were going to bed.) What a fun movie it was, albeit a bit sad. If you want to learn more about the backstory to Queen, check out this video from the BBC. Julia especially loved Freddie Mercury's cats.
I hope you all are enjoying the run-up to the holiday season. Thank you so much for reading and cheering on my creative endeavors. I appreciate everyone of you. Scroll down for some photos of my ceramics and a new Tea Towel design. There is more on my Etsy Shop here.
Colorfully and creatively yours,
Kristin Nicholas
You can send me an email by responding to this newsletter. I love to hear from you.
email: kristinnicholas@gmail.com
website: http://www.kristinnicholas.com/
blog: http://getting-stitched-on-the-farm.blogspot.com/
A preview of our farmhouse in a video shot by Houzz.com
My Google Talk which I presented at Google's Cambridge offices this past June.