Indulge Your Shelf

Am I the only person who decides each year not to eat lunch because it will spoil the earlier dinner, and then is starving when the turkey/casserole/guests take longer than usual? And then continues to starve, afraid to eat and spoil my appetite for dinner? I have decided that the people who make the cans of mixed cocktail nuts throw in those big Brazil nuts just to (a) take up room, or (b) because they know once you eat one, you'll immediately need to eat a bunch of other nuts to get the taste out of your mouth, therefore ingesting more nuts.  Either way, it's a conspiracy. Why do I always leave the Thanksgiving table vowing next year to include a dish with some garlic in it?  And then forget this vow for exactly 365 days? My last several turkeys have had no wish bones in them.  What is up with that? I hope you have had a lovely day and meal, surrounded by loved ones and feeling grateful.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Two of the classes I took at Silver Bella were with the gracious and friendly Charlotte Lyons.  First, we made a chatelaine -- a holder for sewing tools worn around the neck.  Here I am with Charlotte, and we're both wearing our chatelaines. I added lace, buttons and beads to the ribbon and wool that made up the necklace. We brought spools of thread from home, and any trims we wanted to add.  I added some pink tatting which I tied to a chain of yarn I'd crocheted.   We made the tiny strawberry from some dyed velvet and wool provided by Charlotte, and added seed beads as...seeds. I loved the strawberry and could have made a hundred of them! Fiskars donated a pair of Gingher bird scissors for each of us to use on our chatelaine -- I was so excited!  I used to have a pair of them, but they were accidentally thrown out about 10 years ago and I've longed for another pair ever since! Charlotte had us bring a phrase or book quote, and I brought this one "It...

Let's take a little break from Silver Bella talk and look at some of my thrifty finds!  Today's category: paper, and everything here is from the garage sale of an antiques dealer who was going out of business, or from an estate sale.  I got this all at low garage sale pricing!  This is such a fun old book of Christmas carols and activities, put out by the Richfield company as a corporate giveaway. It contains Christmas carols, as the cover says, but also... crafts, like this snowman to cut out.  I was charmed! Do you remember this series of books on big American cities?  I do; and I love the iconic illustrations in that forgone style, of sights that are so familiar to me from growing up there!  This is the feathery endpaper of another great book I found...  Can you guess what book?  That's right... It's not an original edition but it is a favorite edition, and every other page has amazing pictures of birds to scan for art! A s...

I hope you're not tired of hearing about Silver Bella, because I have so much more I want to tell you about the event! Everything was beautiful, and well-planned, and I felt spoiled and lucky at every turn: with the selection of classes, the venue, the food: all of it! Dessert - complete with chocolate top hat - on closing night But the best part of Silver Bella was the other women who attended.  They were my people .  There I stood alongside gals who wouldn't furrow their eyebrows if I started talking about old fabric, or tattered paper, or vintage seam binding.  Some of them probably owned more buttons and lace than I do.  And, a few of these ladies had made special trips to another state just to buy old wallpaper. My Vendor Fair Night hat -- embellished with my studio button Silver Bella is the only place I've ever felt comfortable wearing my rhinestone crown brooches; it was also the only occasion that could have convinced me to wear a fantastic hat, ...