Flipping through my "Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion," I was excited to see a couple of the advertisements.

First, there was one for a company that is trying to keep the William Morris, Arts and Crafts style alive: Fair Oak Workshops. I love the Arts and Crafts style (and the ethos: it sprang up as sort of an aesthetic revolt against the burgeoning tide of mass-produced, machine-made, poorly-designed stuff in the mid to late 1800s. I'd love to see an Arts and Crafts revival, and I think it could be argued that there is sort of an underground one going on [what with Craftster and all] but maybe in a different format and attitude than the original). I can't really afford the things I've looked at on the site - and honestly, my house is so packed now that I'd not want to buy any more furniture or wall art without seriously planning and getting rid of a few things - but looking at the site is like a cool glass of water on a hot day.

And second, Emily Farmer now has a website to sell her miniature bear, bunny, and cat kits. I bought lots of kits from her in the early and mid 90s through her advertisements in the back of Teddy Bear and Friends, and then I stopped seeing the ads, and I figured she had either gone out of business or had gone wholesale-only, and I couldn't find the places that carried her work. The kits - and I've made a lot of them, maybe 12 or 15 - are very detailed, the instructions are good, and I've never found errors in the patterns. You do have to like doing that kind of small fiddly handwork - some of the smaller animals are an inch and a half tall when finished. (It helps to have a hemostat to turn and stuff them with, and of course all the sewing must be done by hand). I'm glad to see she's still out there, and I might reactivate with PayPal (I had let my account lapse because I got so fed up with all the "phishing" emails I received and realized I'd probably never know it if PayPal itself REALLY e-mailed me about a problem, because I just delete any mail that has PayPal in the subject line) and order a few of the kits I had thought about, but never gotten.


I had pictures for today, maybe they will be up later - I keep getting timed-out messages from my picture host (I don't know if it's OneNet being stupid again or if it's the host site itself being down, but I can't access it at any rate).