Merry Christmas!

The moon is peaking through cloudy weather, and the last large sunflower still standing tall is drooping in front of the window. There are candles burning, a fire going and it's Christmas Day! I hope to enjoy the day today with family, treasures, and food preparation! Here's to the clear day we're about to have, with crystal ice on windows and toast feet in bed. Merry Christmas.

The Flower Fairies

Cicely Mary Barker has penned and illustrated some of the loveliest children's books. As an adult I still love them, and each seasonal book is still lovingly placed out on a table to flip through and admire. Her books have accompanied my growing up years, through each season, marked with images of beauty and delicate poetry in a style all her own. Flower Fairies of the Winter is out now, and here is an illustration of the Christmas tree fairie that is in the book.

I've been working on my ornament collection for about a year now and have amassed quite a few that just appeared, so I spent some time putting those on the tree last night, finishing wrapping, and ice skating out in the open air and frigid winds of the big northeast!

Music Mind

Today I'd like to feature the music of Nik Bartsch and the collaborting quintent, Ronin. They call it zen funk, and I think that is a great description of what they do. I don't even remember where I came across this music, but it's positively magical I think. So creative rythmically and timing wise they make very odd time signatures so effortless in these compositions. This music feels very grey, and very winter and matches the day perfectly. Please enjoy.

An excerpt from their website:

"There are two paths a samurai can walk: that of a clan member, and that of a ronin, a lonely warrior. The former is highly esteemed in Japan, the latter is bitterly detested"

Wood Series: Christmas Tree's

What better way to grace our spaces with the beautiful messengers of the woods themselves, silent in snow and wind, they hold down the fort, putting up with our holiday attire that we adorn them with, sturdy and pleased with themselves, some of them puff out with the grandeur, others droop with embarrassment, but whatever kind of tree you have, or with whatever personality, you know the holiday season has arrived when they accompany you day and night. When they light up the night sky outside, or greet you in your dark early morning, they are bringers of hope and light.

Wood Series: Tobacco Barns

Images via google images.

Today's wood series is inspired by old Tobacco Barns. It may not be know that here in the Northeast there are still many tobacco barns that still stand from the days when it was widely produced here. I think all of these pictures though were taken in places down south. I love that they are these positively huge relics that still stand in half grown over fields, watching over the land after they've been abandoned, or just waiting out the season till the work and the sweat return to their walls. A testament to the wood that made them, and the labor that lives all around it's being.

I attended The National Biodynamic Conference back at the start of October, and during the first day there was a half day offering of a gathering for young people, farmers, and those involved in agriculture. The first activity that we did was to answer the question "If you were a beehive, where would you live?" I answered that I would live in the corner of an old abandoned tobacco barn in North Carolina, next to an old oak tree.

Where would you live?

Kraft Paper Lables and Cards

Here is a fun quick last minute craft project (if you have more time to cram another project in)

A little group of Christmas trees cards! Draw out your tree shape on paper, trace onto fabric, and then cut out. I used batting for snow, and free form sewed around in a contrasting thread. Select your favorite fabrics and buttons and use embroidery thread to attach your star/button to the top of the tree.

I've been utilizing some leftover Kraft card stock paper that I used for making labels for my Brown Boot Salvage table a few weeks ago and folding small squares to turn into Christmas cards!

I cut out a template of a kind of funky Dr. Seuss like tree, pinned it to fabric and then cut it out. I then sewed the tree shape to the card stock with my sewing machine.

Then I picked out my favorite color if embroidery thread accenting the tree, chose some leftover wool fabric (you could use an old sweater, or any other textured funky fabric) and embroidered on the trunk of the tree. Then I sewed on a little button for the star! Voila a sweet looking and totally handmade Christmas card.





Now I'm working on some shape cut outs for gift labels!





Just tear or cut squares of the same Kraft paper card stock, cut out shapes from some pretty fabrics ( I used silk, cotton and linen) and sew onto your cards. Mine are still a work in progress right here, but now they are hiding in a closet and adorning gifts.

Steppin with the Handmade Revolution turns Dubstep

The reggae/dubstep/funk obsession has begun to amplify itself over the past few months. Friends have passed along good albums, and the what I like to call "band association research" has taken place over and over. Basically I like to make a map, starting with musician/artist number 1. Then look up what collaboration they've done with others, (via album covers, online wikipedia searches, or music articles and reviews) who their band mates are what they've done musically etc. It doesn't take very long to make a musical map of a specific area or music scene.

Try it out with a favorite track on an album. Look up names. Do the leg work (in this case it generally means dancing to all the good tracks you've found) and enjoy!

Here are some videos that I've found that I really enjoyed, starting with Rootsmanuva. Jamaican born, UK rapper. Great great rythms.

This video features the track Witness

Here is the UK Dj duo Coldcut featuring Roots Manuva.

The track is called True Skool

Check out this wonderfully creative video by Coldcut
Coldcut-Colors of the Soul

I hope you've enjoyed the days mashup of musical selections. Keep searchin and keep moving!

Christmas in the Sticks

The holiday festivities have kicked into high gear around these parts. I've spent the day today finishing a knit garment for a Christmas gift, baking sugar cookies, and decorating a huge tree that required a ladder to reach the top! We're expecting our first snowy messy weather day tomorrow and it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas out here in the sticks!

I'm excited I've really been getting to do a lot of work on projects that needed doing for presents, and also for Brown Boot Salvage. I had some help in getting a beautiful wooden stand for my bags made, so that I could bring them to a local retail shop that sells things at Christmas time. Though I don't have a picture of it yet, I'm really proud of how my garlands and bags look hanging there on a real rack in a real store.

More on my recent projects soon, one of which includes a pink silk elf hat complete with pom pom and magical bird adornment...

Indie Extravaganza Photo Update

My Booth at the Space over the weekend

My new Brown Boot banner, bags and booth!

A veiw of all the makers in the main room at the Indie Craft Extravaganza

Once again I had a wonderful time at the craft fair and met many great folks and made some great connections. I already have some more ideas for improving my booth for next time and I'm working on some new product ideas. Thanks for looking.

In the wood and Stave Churches

I am always inspired artistically by the element of wood. I love it in art, in homes, in architecture, and in so many forms. I have grown up as a carpenters daughter so the sound of an axe splitting wood in the early morning hours is something that feels very visceral to me. I remember being woken up with the subtle vibration of the splitting maul hitting the wood (driven by my father) so hard that the ground shook up through the house, and underneath my pillow, to awake me to the sounds of the wood stove door creaking open and the freshly split logs getting loaded inside.

We live in an old re built cape, and the homes of New England feature wood as a primary structural element, with exposed beams, wood floors, old wide shingles and the ever present backyard barn. This exposure to the northern style homes, and living out in the sticks near a lot of woodland has made me a forest and tree's kind of lady, so in lieu of my interest in the uses, history and craft of using wood in human life, I'm going to be doing a series on this special and integral part of our lives.

First I'd like to take a look at the work of the Stave Churches of Norway. A medieval form of post and beam construction many were built in the 1500's and still stand to this day. Here are what I found to be some inspiring images.

After the Show when the lights go down...

I had such a wonderful time at the Indie Craft Extravaganza yesterday at The Space. I've been working so hard to get all of my products, packaging and display booth ready I haven't had much time to post on my blog. If you're reading this because you took a card or met me at my booth yesterday, welcome, and thanks so much! Drop me a line if you feel like saying hello.

As my first craft show experience as a seller and not just an attendee I was really impressed with the turn out of the crowd and vendors, and also the quality of the workmanship that people put into there goods. I feel like I walked away with some new friends, some good feedback on my products and booth and a bunch of great resources. My neighbor seller, Treasures of the Moon bought a bag from me, and I bartered an amazing fabric cuff with Magaly Ohika.

I worked so hard to get everything done for the fair, but walking away with some products left over, I'm now moving on to the next goal of getting my bags in a local antique shop and

food co-op.

I'll be posting pictures later on of the craft fair and of my booth, and everyone cloaked in pretty lights and christmas music!

Indie Extravaganza!

I recently just entered into my first craft fair! I'm so excited, it's been a goal of mine for a while now, and it's finally happening. It is held at The Space a venue where I have performed a number of times, and they have a constant full calendar of events and music. I am hard at work creating my handmade items for the fair, working on packaging, my display and general production. I am a lover of all things handmade so participating in this event is going to be a great time. Come and say hello, and check out the beginning of my product line for Brown Boot Salvage, handmade bags, garlands, collages and more.

Thanks be to the ovens for the world

Here is a picture from when we used the oven on my birthday this year, I made the chair in the foreground as gift for my father, and also the fall themed banner (now complete) hanging from underneath the oven roof. We worked for months on and off to finish the oven in our spare time, even having to redo half of the cob building over again!

November is here and the family plans for the Thanksgiving holiday abound. This year we will be bucking tradition (something that happens a lot around here anyway) and having a pizza party in the cob oven. We worked so hard on it over the warmer months, and though there is more still to be done till it's finished, it'll be great to use it again.

I though I'd share my little menu that I've got planned, and it seems that every day I'd like to add something else to it to see how it does in the oven. Some of the cooking temperatures will vary, and we'll have to stagger the cooking times, it's still such a learning process but it makes the cooking so active and fun.



Thanksgiving 2010 Cob Style!

Whole Wheat Bread and Dark Rye from Laurels Kitchen Bread book (highly recommended)

Individual NY style pizzas with fresh mozzarella and sauce

Baked Potatoes with roasted garlic, cheddar cheese and sour cream

Roasted Vegetables-Sweet potatoes, onions, carrots, acorn and butternut squash

Roasted Peanuts

Mulled Cider

Pumpkin pie (made with fresh pumpkin puree, my favorite baking ingredient)

Chocolate cookies



A simple but fun menu, I'm excited to try out the grand experiment.

Matt and Kim

Yes it has been a while, but here I sit again, now in the summer heat, prepared to write again. Thanks to my leaving my headlights on all day, and now my waiting to get a jump, and my being in a place with a computer, this opportunity has extended itself to me.

I feel that I am perhaps a bit late in this discovery because this band I was just told about is nothing near infancy, they seem to have quite the following. Check out Matt and Kim. Catchy pop hooks and vocals, simplistic yet slamming drumming, it all adds up to a good car trip in the hot sun. I heard these two on the car ride that led me here.

Click on the picture, it'll take you to their myspace and their music!

The V Dub

I had to smile today when I was invited to a big VW rally next weekend. A fellow v dub driver told me about it. I think when you have an oldy but a goody of a car, and you wave to vintage plate drivers, and give full on salutes to other rabbit drivers you are officially in the club. I'm not in too many camps, but I think I'm in this one. People who drive them understand the care and attention and number of breakdowns that must be endured. That must be what binds us together. The triumph of still rolling down the road.

I'll have to get you a real picture of her, the car otherwise known as "the Agen" "the Beanpod" and the "Leaky SOB"...Though whenever I call her that she stops running, so it's best to not jinx it and keep her going.

Thread Nests and a little Peek

(my heart pincushion gettin some serious use today)

Hello all,

I spent a lot of time sewing today, I'm so excited to finally be persuing my goal of having an etsy shop in the next couple of months. I've wanted to sell some of my handmade wares for a long time but haven't been quite sure how to approach it, but now, thanks in a large part to the Indie Business class, I'm creating goals and moving forward. I'm going to be creating tote bags, some knitted items, big mixed media collages, and hopefully some other surprises. Here is a little sneak peek...

If you live where the weather is fine this week, I hope you get out and enjoy it. The daffodils are blooming here, the tomatoe seedlings are coming up in their little soil blocks, and it seems that spring has really arrived. I'll be outside all day tomorrow, painting a house yellow, have a good one!

Buckets

I recently had the late night pleasure of bailing out a basement filled with water. Not as much pleasure as the owners of the house who have sadly spent several days without sleep, borrowing buying and probably wanting to steal sump pumps, buckets, hoses, and a new basement. Geysers spurting up from the cracks in the concrete floor, and no stopping the water that wanted to come in. In the northeast there was LOTS of flooding this past week, a much more scary situation for some then others, but a general feeling of not being able to do much about it at all is somewhat thrilling. Roads were washed away, dam's flooded, and the fact that peoples travel, and peoples belongings that make up their lives are easily lost when the rain wants to wash it away...
As I spent several hours filling buckets with water (which my back is paying for now) I chuckled to myself, because of buckets. When it boils down to it, when people are in human crisis, and for all the "wonders of technology" that exist, the tool that people turn to is the use of buckets to bail themselves out. When you have to deal with the fire or the flood yourself, what better thing is there to reach for than the old fashioned, age old glory we know as bucket.
I know a girl who wishes for an easter bucket for the holiday instead of a basket, and I heartily wish for the same, Happy Easter!

Natchaug River Flood

I apologize for the nasal quality of my voice in this video. I have the understandable seasonal cold. This is the Natchaug River, a really awesome sight when it floods after days of rain. Natchaug means "the land between the rivers" and this river certainly defines some aspects of life around here. From the roadside secret fishing and swimming spots, to the large foundation of an old silk mill the used to sit on it's banks back in the 1800's, to the indigenous people that lived here long ago, this is the place where I was born, and where I will always be from, and that land that I am indigenous to myself. Here's a little video that I took this afternoon, from the vantage point of a large standing rock on the side of the river where lots of people come to sun bath on in the summertime.

Some New ART

Here are some artists that I have come across in the past couple of weeks that I really enjoyed. Their shops were great to peruse through, all pretty different mediums, but they are all very talented at what they do. Enjoy!

Roadside

betsywalton

flatlandkitchen

kleinfamily

BluLima

New Name! Welcome to the new Brown Boot Salvage.

Hey folks, as you may notice, if you haven't checked back in a few days I've got a brand new URL and and a new name! As part of my Indie business class, I am taking one of the first steps toward creating more of the life I want to have, which also includes having an independently run craft business, as one of my many disciplines! I feel that "yawantapeanut" must go as I enjoy eating peanuts, but it doesn't stand for who I am, or really anything to do with what I'm interested in. A humbling admission. So, I really hope that I'll still have the same readership, so bookmark my new URL http://brownbootsalvage.blogspot.com and tell your friends!
The word Salvage to me means a lot of things. It first recalls memories of going to the salvage yard with my father as a young girl and holding wrenches and tools while he took off car parts to help repair our old vehicles. We would go hunting for treasures at the dump, and I was the kid who would rescue baseball hats, shirts, and pennies from muddy parking lots, and wear them proudly as my free finds. I was the kid who got feathers from roadside red tailed hawks that had been killed, books from the swap shop at the dump, and made friends with a hammer and a nail and scrap pieces of wood that I would play with for hours.
He has taught me to be a recycler, a dumpster diver, and a roadside searcher. And not in the popular sense of the word. It was just something that we did. It wasn't a movement or a cause, but a way of looking at and just living life. My grandparents are this way, my mother is this way. This mentality has taught me to be a re-user, a maker of things, and a curious human.
But to me it is not just "reduce reuse recycle" it is about recreating the social structure of what we consume and what we deem as useful and un useful in our everyday throwaway society. Salvaging the old fashioned systems of "using what you have" or "work with what you've got" the way of being that has been for so so long until the past couple of centuries. We need to salvage our wounded soil and bring back a thriving food system, (thats where "Brown Boot" comes into play here) and we need innovators who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty, be creative, be curious, and to thrive!
So I guess my new goals with this blog are along the lines of sharing more of my interests in agriculture, in thrifting, in re using, in making things, on how to be self reliant, and my craft projects. I believe that there is craft in the everyday, in baking bread, in playing music, in fixing a tractor, in building a house, in knitting a sweater. I would love to have some guest writers, to share my music with you, and to share the everyday craft of life, and those around me. And I hope to give images and words of inspiration. Thanks for reading.-
Emma

Baloji

I wanted to share with you one of my favorite new musical sharing's that made it's way to me in the past couple weeks. A Congolese born, and Belgian bred rapper with a lot of style. Even if you don't understand the words, you can tell the amount of soul and effort hat he puts into the music. I think this video is great, I hope you enjoy

Baloji.com

These are a Few of my Favorite things

This dress by Shihar. I love all the clothing that Shira makes, I've put pictures of her on my blog here before, I just love the lines in her clothing.

Porcelain ring by NiuTaller

This brown leather messenger bag by The Leather Store

Mermaid necklace by dizzydame

Poster in the Greenhorns shop. I mentioned the Greenhorns in my last post, a non profit organization for young farmers. I've always loved tiny drawings.

Farm Film Feast, and a great big sign.

This weekend was pretty jam packed. I got to travel to western Massachusetts to the Farm Film Feast hosted in Williamstown MA. A multi day film festival with author signings, talks, and gatherings it turned out to be a pretty good time. My favorite movie was called Dirt. A film about how the origins of humans, our spirituality, our world conflicts, and our very beings are the essence and the stuff of dirt. It is also where the most healing needs to happen, and our largest shift in consciousness needs to take place. A great documentary, I'd highly recommend it, it has great imagery, a lot of interviews with farmers, artists, and people who are advocates for the health of our soil. They used the book Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Bryant Logan (which I read a few years ago) for the concept for the movie. Watch the trailer below

After the last movie we walked around for a while, ate grilled cheese and gilato's in the Williams College student center, found the local watering hole and met a few very nice folks there, saw the last bit of the NCAA division 3 basketball game that was taking place next door, and got a tour of the area by a lovely student taking time out of her night to walk through the slush and snow to show us where we needed to go!

To cap off the evening we went to a panel discussion on farming, with two local farmers and also Severine von Tscharner Fleming who is doing a movie called Greenhorn all about young farmers, she is also one herself, and is also the director of the Greenhorns project which is a land based non profit for young farmers. Check out the website, a blog, radio show, resources for young farmers, merchandise, maps, events, an overwhelming a cool site!

We drove home in what we found out would be categorized as a hurricane, up in the mountains it was snowing and lightning at the same time, a regular two and a half hour drive turned into over four, you get the picture. The overall feel of this weekend felt very inspiring and I can't wait to get started on new projects, spring coming, new business ideas, and making some of my dreams a reality.

Blue Color Monday

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I had an especially good time finding these photos this week. I had a leisurely Saturday morning to spend time on it this week. It now being Monday, is of course a different story than Saturday was, whereas on Saturday I had an injured arm that needed rest from picking up ladders the wrong way, to now today where I'm afraid I might have finally gotten the flu. Or an unpleasant illness I should say. I couldn't sleep much last night, so I spent some time under a sleeping bag on the couch watching a movie I loved when I was eleven. I don't dare tell you what it was though. So in short, I guess I must have known that this sickness was coming on Saturday, because I certainly feel pretty blue today...