Mid September News from the Farm

And a chance to win an incredible tote bag by Tannei Casey out of Kristin Nicholas' fabric design!

Hello Colorful Friends:

It has been since May that I have last written this newsletter. Please excuse my absence from this space. I’ve had a busy summer and I’m sure you have been busy too. It has been filled with days in the garden….

helping with the sheep,

making pottery on my pottery wheel in my little throwing shed…..

at the Amherst Farmer’s Market selling our Leyden Glen Farm’s pasture raised lamb and my handmade pottery….. (LOTS of delicious lamb recipes on our website here.)

and the regular things of life. I have cooked many good meals using veggies from my garden. The squash (zucchini, yellow, patty pan) and cukes have been so prolific this year. I planted some squash seeds late in the season and they are beginning to bear fruit.

We’ve had a lot of rain and I mean a lot. The Farmer has been challenged to get hay in for the sheep this winter but he thinks he has enough to feed them til next spring. It just doesn’t seem right that we are waterlogged when so many areas are plagued with fire and heat.

The sunflowers that I plant every year have been blooming the past couple weeks. Maybe you have seen them on my Instagram feed? They are starting to gently bend over and become heavy with seed. The bees and butterflies have been enjoying them. Soon the birds will move in to harvest the seeds.

I hope your summer has been good. I hope you and your family are safe and healthy and well-fed. These last two years have been such a challenge for all of us. I hope you have found some good in all of it.

GIVEAWAY!!!! A TANNEI CASEY BAG!

Since I have been on an unplanned but very welcome hiatus from writing a blog or newsletter this summer, I’m going to be back at it this fall. To celebrate the return of the newsletter, I’ve got a fabulous giveaway chance for you all - my newsletter readers. I met Tannei Casey through my friend Susan Anderson. Tannei makes a huge selection of incredible bags from small to large. She has used my Vines and Flowers fabric design to make this beautiful bag. Check out Tannei’s Shop Here. You can see all of my fabric designs over on my Spoonflower shop here.

Here’s how to enter……. Head on over to my Instagram feed and sign up to follow me if you aren’t already. Leave a comment on the post with the photo of TanneI’s bag. While you are there, you might want to follow Tannei too. I will pick a winner on Monday evening and announce the lucky person in next week’s newsletter. U.S. Addresses only.

Over the summer, I have had many new readers sign up for this newsletter. I thank you all for your interest and for reading. If you are new here, read the P.S. at the bottom of this email for my background and a video about our farm and life here.

Now for everyone’s favorite part of the newsletter….. LINKS I’M LOVING…….

• A lovely article about favorite plants over on British House and Garden

• We have enjoyed the Amazon Prime Video Series called Clarkson’s Farm. Very entertaining and gives a window on how hard it is to be a farmer and to turn a profit.

• This post by best-selling author Austin Kleon about knitting and making things is good. BTW, Austin has a fantastic newsletter that he sends out each Friday morning. Sign up here if you like to read newsletters and be inspired.

• Rhonda Hetzel is an Australian blogger and author who still blogs weekly at Down To Earth. Every Friday, she does a post on what she is doing and gives suggestions for Weekend Reading. Her links are always interesting to me.

• Podcasts have been my companion in the pottery studio and on long drives this summer. Here are three that I’m loving lately.

The Potter’s Cast - a podcast for potters. Lots of interesting interviews with makers in all stages of their careers. The most recent one was with Paul Lowe (aka Sweet Paul).

The Modern House Podcast - from the UK. Interviews with designers, architects and more about their 3 favorite homes.

Windowsill Chats with Margo Tantau - interviews with designers and small business people in the surface design (mostly) industry.

• I loved this podcast interview on Cherry Bombe with Stephanie Hersh who was Julia Child’s assistant for many years. Stephanie tells the story of how she got her job and is full of really good stories as you can probably imagine.

I hope to have a bunch of new pottery and tea towels added to my website this fall. I’ll announce it here first.

Thanks so much for reading. Have a lovely weekend.

Colorfully yours,

Kristin Nicholas

P.S. For new readers, a little background. And WELCOME…..

For many, many years beginning in 2006, I wrote a blog called Getting Stitched on the Farm. It is still on-line and you can check it out here. It was my happy place where I wrote about our lives on the farm, my creative life and what I was making, stitching (way back I was the Creative Director at Classic Elite Yarns for 16 years. ——— omg - I am getting old…..), painting and cooking (including favorite recipes) and where I wrote about the process of the books I was writing. (I’ve written 12 books that you can find on my website and on Amazon and wherever books are sold.) The blog opened up many new avenues for me for which I am grateful. I miss writing it and so this newsletter is a bit like the blog was.

As with all things in our world today, the internet moved on. Now it is all about Instagram (@kristinnicholas), Facebook (@kristinnicholasdesigns), TikTok (don’t think I will be doing that) and who knows what else is coming next. I am in my sixth decade of life and although I have always liked to stay current, there is only so much time in the day. Mostly I am enjoying Instagram and try to post a few times a week. I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook and will go months without checking in.

This newsletter shares a bit of my creative and farm life on our working sheep farm (Leyden Glen Farm). I have been married to “The Farmer” - my husband Mark for 37 years and we have a daughter - Julia - who is currently a part-time college student. I make and have made a lot of things with my hands in my life. My current love is ceramics and gardening and decorating our 1751 farmhouse. We have a lot of animals on our farm - over 300 sheep, 3 dogs (about to be 5), 8 cats, and lots of chickens.

If you are new to what I do, the best place to start is to watch the video below which was made by the fine folks at Houzz.com back in 2015. It will give you a feel for our farm and lives and how we live here on our patch of ground in western Massachusetts.

If for any reason, you no longer wish to read or subscribe, you can click the link at the bottom of this email.