Finishing part three of the fall festival linen quilt class: embroidery. All the pomegranates. Shout-out to Freeman’s Creative in Durham for all the new linen yarn they’ve gotten in lots of color if you’re looking for nicer Italian linen yarns in North Carolina. So many colors! Also, finished our 50-60 local RTP community gardens survey in an attempt to figure out how to survive a century extreme drought next time. Some community gardens failed too, but a number sailed through with no problems which are worth sharing. The ones doing the best are 40-50 raised beds with fertilizer around a water central source from wells and rainwater barrels for easy watering. Little libraries, benches, food pantries, and counting scales feature heavily. Many churches have an adopt a bed program for roughly $10-20/year to cover costs of fertilizer which is clever. Small children’s books are loved. Edges of the gardens often have fences with pretty passion flowers, herbs, and grapes on them to produce 1,000-2,000 lb/year on average. Some gardens are doing closer to 5,000-8,000 lb/year, but that’s the exception. It is nice...
July 4th weekend went great in downtown Raleigh. Grills were popping chicken and burgers. Epic fireworks. The city did an excellent job organizing events and managing traffic. Neighbors smiling and people being happy everywhere. A gentle feeling of mercy and goodwill wandering around. What a nice experience. Hope you had a great time and are blessed too. If you missed it, no worries, most sales are still going. 250 years...wow. Being an American can be complicated like adulting or marriage as no place or person is perfect so the good moments are worth remembering and sharing. Need to go watch the Young Washington movie that’s getting all the positive buzz too. Good job everyone who worked so hard to pull this nationwide event off. You did good people. Speaking of good things, the new raised beds in the backyard garden have become a cat magnet as trying to Tetris a layout now that they’re done before starting to repaint the shop. If you’ve ever seen a cat and cardboard box before, raised beds are the next...
Last night, I literally watched a wild owl swoop down and snatch a squirrel right outside the window. I'm talking full-on nature documentary moment—and got to witness it live. Absolutely wild. This week, I'm dropping the first video in a 5-part YouTube class series (https://youtu.be/DE8zSTIHyVg) on making linen embroidered quilts. Perfect timing if you're thinking about creating something cool for the Fall Harvest Festival or Sukkot at the end of September. Consider it your warm-up lap before the big September 29th Linen Swap (6:30–8:30 PM). Here's the thing: I've been all-in on linen for the past couple years—wearing it, sleeping on it, the whole deal. And honestly? Game changer. My favorite creation is the linen quilt (I've made a few for friends...
The new frog pond behind the shop is up and running to help control mosquitoes which the birds are loving. A family of wrens has moved in and a few baby bunnies. It’s a cliche, but still shocking how much improving the soil helps gardening by doing heavy lifting for the health of your plants. The trees have never had such full green leaves unbothered by hot summer days. Although it just rained, so even the newly planted purple basil is happy. Only 10 more herb flats to go. Trying to figure out this fall’s harvest festival/Sukkot project. Been seeing Shema blessing bracelets out and about on the college students which is a nice positive surprise. Thinking about doing a linen embroidery baby blanket or throw since that’s the type of small project a person could do on a vacation week get-a-way or going back and forth to work on the train commuting. I’ve made several linen...
It’s been a busy week. Definitely paying with muscles for all the moving mulch, raking compost, and planting drought tolerant herbs. The roses are LOVING it. Anyone else feel like the weather this year leaves one guessing? Thankfully herbs are easy to grow. Like you don’t even know what questions to ask to find the answer? Feels human. We should all strive to ask better questions. Finishing the new website, finally getting to use some AI thumbnails to overhaul the product service pages. Hopefully people will enjoy it, the backlinks to older works like Instructable tutorials and YouTube videos remain for nerdy fashion people who want to see how the sausage is made. Ten to fifteen years ago, it was crisp, clear pictures of your retail venue for customers to get an idea of what to expect when they visited your store...still works today with the Google and makes money. Five to ten years ago, it was editorial photos on Facebook and Instagram which did not make money. Then video for...
